Gibban

It's hard to get scale for the size of the megayachts, but check out the crew member on the bow... One of the surprises in the Exumas is the megayachts. There's at least one in every anchorage and they keep getting bigger!   We are also learning to play Exuma-musical chairs--"Everyone raise anchor at 9:00 and race to the next cay."  Norman Cay :  The Captain, who isn't a morning person (no chit chat before his second cup of coffee or longer), comes out of our berth in Highborne with, "Where to next?!"  After double-checking that this is our last fuel & water stop before Warderick Wells (Land and Sea Park has no services. Compass is the next water stop), the dinghy goes in the water. Seriously, we can barely get the outboard on because of the swells. I hand him the handheld radio and tell him the proper radio protocol is, (overheard from the megayachts) "Odin, Odin, shore team." Lol.  My Captain, Oh Captain, My Hero dinghies the mile to the ...

Merry Christmas to everyone! This year I got a special gift...some ME time to work on the bark canoe up at the cottage while my wife's cousins help out with our 3 month old. Despite the freezing temps, I set to work in the garage making some canoe slings to fit on metal saw-horses with some scrap 4x4 cedar posts and old carpet. Canoe on slings With the canoe safely resting on the soft carpet slings, the next job was to install the permanent thwarts that I had carved months before. These needed to be mortised into the inwales and required some trial and error shaping. I had brought up my portable shaving horse from the city on this trip and this helped while carving with the mini crooked knife and spokeshave. It took a while, but eventually all the thwarts were in nicely. Working on the shaving horse Mortising in the centre thwart Holes were drilled into the thwarts and with some of the remaining spruce roots I had on hand (soaked in a "cooler" of hot water), the permanen...