Bahamas - What Went Wrong and Lessons Learned

Whoever said, "A boat -- doing repairs in exotic places" could not have been closer to the truth. First off, bringing spare parts is critical. But you will rarely have the part you need or need the part you have. So what went wrong?

• Anchor chain locker filled with water. We spent our first two days going up Hawk Chanel into the wind with waves breaking over the bow. Somehow the chain locker filled with water and eventually overflowed into the V-berth. To mitigate this, we slowed down enough on future passages so the waves did not break over the bow. No clue how water is getting in.

• GPS to VHF suddenly stopped working. Our I-don't-know-how-old Raymarine Raystar 125 GPS stopped working and sending location/time data to the VHF about the time we arrived at Mackie Shoal in the middle of nowhere. Not that big a deal since we have about 20 other GPS' on board. Well... unless we needed to hit the distress button on the VHF to transmit location/MMSI data to the Coast Guard. We have an EPIRB and inReach that can send distress notifications via satellite so this was more an annoyance than a concern. I am going to attempt to create a NMEA 2000 network, connected to Raymarine's SeaTalk network to connect the AIS GPS to the VHF. Waiting for one more part...

• Toilet in our stateroom head stopped working. This also happened on Mackie Shoal -- in the middle of nowhere. Took it apart (Gross!) and cleaned it. Two days later it stopped working again. Took it apart and really cleaned it. Two days later it stopped working. We had two options. Simply walk another 10 feet in the middle of the night to the forward head or swap Jabsco Conversion Kits. I decided we'd be inconvenienced and I would replace once we got back to the States. That repair was done in Ft. Pierce after visiting West Marine.

• Generator stopped working. This was not a mechanic problem (unfortunately). This is a generator-not-generating electricity problem. It appears the exciter rotor is missing some wire and a diode or two. This looks like a major repair and I don't know when we'll be in any one place long enough to get it repaired. The generator is bolted to the engine block and has two engine mounts on it. Hopefully just that portion can be removed to repair and not the entire generator removed. Luckily, Derek had a portable generator that he loaned us to keep the house batteries charged -- mainly for the refrigerator that pretty much ran 24/7. I bought one when we returned to the States as our workaround until we can get it repaired.

• Outboard totally unreliable. An electric Torqeedo Travel 1003 sounded perfect. No gas. No ethanol problems. No maintenance. Just keep the battery charged. I am here to tell you it sucks! We continuously get error codes even though the connection pins have been cleaned constantly and are connected properly. Of course this typically happens when we are trying to return TO the boat and it's dark out. At 3 hp, it is way underpowered for the Bahamas. You sometimes need to travel great distances and at 3 knots (at times in strong current), will take you forever to get to where you are going. We constantly had to mooch rides with our friends or get towed back to the boat.

• Received a $688 Verizon Phone Bill. Our normal monthly phone bill is $100. Turns out, Sharon had called the Bahamas twice (most of it on hold) to get our Travel Health Visas straightened out. That was about $588 of 'international calling'. It never occurred to us. Try getting ahold of Verizon when your Verizon SIM card is NOT in your phone and you're overseas. It's impossible! Speaking of SIM cards...

• MrSim. MrSims is a company that sells SIM cards for other country's phone service. They mail you a SIM card and you tell them when to activate (before traveling overseas). They are supposed to put money into your account to give you phone/text/data for a week so you have time to 'top off' your account. In our case, BTC (Bahamas Telecomm). They didn't and our phones didn't work. Luckily we were in a marina that had wifi so we were able to contact them that way. Their 'best plan' was something like 1000 international minutes, text and 15 GB data. Cost $34 each. We never could get texting to work. They want you to use WhatsApp for texting and we don't know many people that use that. AND that $34 is every TWO weeks, not monthly. Keep in mind we were still paying Verizon and Visible monthly charges. For future reference, 15 GB on one phone (that can be used as a hotspot) is more than enough unless you plan on doing a lot of streaming.

• Tony broke his elbow. You just can't appreciate our healthcare system until you are in the Bahamas. The islands that are inhabited have a clinic with a nurse. The nurse is part nurse, part travel agent to get you to Nassau and back. Tony had to fly to Nassau and back to Great Guana Cay, cut their trip short, take their boat to Nassau, fly home (while Michelle remained behind) for follow-up treatment to discover he had fractured his elbow in three places. The hospital in Nassau told him nothing was broken and put him in a soft cast.

• The trip from hell. Sharon already blogged about our 11+ hour trip from Chub Cay to Bimini. We have always picked a good/safe weather window to travel. We were careless and thankfully came out of it unscathed.

Lessons Learned:

• 2FA (2 factor authentication) is great for security. But it's not great when a verification code is sent to your phone that no longer has your normal phone services' SIM card in it. Luckily we use a Google Voice number that sends a text to email and any bank, credit card, etc account was also tied to an email address.  

• VPN (virtual private network). For security purposes this is a no brainer. You securely surf the internet and remain invisible. But the best part is you can make it appear that you are in the U.S. and not the Bahamas (or anywhere overseas). For example: I would make a VPN connection to a server in Miami. As far as my credit union is concerned, I was 'in Miami'.

• Solar panels. I though about getting them but decided not to bother since we have a generator. That worked fine until we didn't have a generator! I highly recommend going with free quiet electricity in the Bahamas. They may have even been able to generate enough watts to run an ice maker.

• Water maker. This would be nice-to-have but totally unnecessary. We left Key West with 230 gallons of fresh water and water costs anywhere from .40-.75 cents/gallon in the Bahamas. A water maker and associated filters would cost wayyyy  more than the cost of water.

• Buddy boating. We have never buddy boated and always travel separately. Traveling with two other boats and good friends made the experience all that more fun and safe and often times one of us would have a part or 'cup of sugar' that someone else needed.