Crooked Island, Bahamas

Wind: SE 10 knots
0 nm

It’s a beautiful day today. The sun is out, the briny blue clear and wide, foamy horses trotting ashore.

(Can I just say that I don’t know how I’m going to do it? If this alleged circumnavigation of ours takes twenty years, that’s twenty years of describing the sea. Where in tarnation can I find enough adjectives? I’m just going to have to start stealing other people’s. I need to dig up a copy of Moby Dick.)

Nappy also came back this morning, bringing his extremely accomplished painter with him. The guy’s already been all the way through the house, marking every touch-up spot with masking tape. It’s encouraging seeing him work.

Of course, upon Nappy’s arrival, everything kicks into high gear. Within twenty minutes of his showing up, three people had arrived to confer with him. He’s a popular guy. Combine that with his endlessly-ringing Blackberry, and it’s hard to get his attention. Not that we really mind, especially when we found out the commissioner isn’t going to be back until Monday. If she decides to deport us, we can tell them we did them the favor of buying our own tickets out.

So we did a lot of sitting around and waiting. We’re trying to decide if we want to take the highly ambitious step of rowing down to check on Secret. We do need to visit her, if only to get some more measurements and pictures for the new sails we might have made. Karl keeps claiming that the eight-mile row is doable, but I’m a little more skeptical. It would be a great story, one for the books, but I keep hoping that an outboard will show its grungy head. People have asked $300 to give Nappy a ride to Long Cay, the next island down, so you can see why we would prefer to row rather than hire someone to take us down.

We had intended to leave today on our vast rowing adventure, but we’ve put it off until tomorrow, with the promise of another outboard prospect. The outboard is crucial in other ways--if we can manage to get our hands on one, it’ll make our work on Secret at French Wells a lot simpler when we return. Otherwise, we really should bring one back from the States.