Day One:

Our house sitter Debbie, a fellow retired cruiser, delivered us to the airport about 7:30am Friday to catch the first of our two flights on Silver Airways connecting through Ft. Lauderdale to Georgetown, Bahamas.  Silver Airways does not have the greatest reputation.  We'd heard that nine out of ten flights arrive experience delays.  But it is the cheapest.

So, sure enough, after kissing our doggie goodbye, we rolled our roller duffles up to the check-in counter where the agent, after tapping away on her computer, gave us a sorry shake of the head and informed us our flight would be delayed until 11:30.  Not good.  Our flight to Georgetown was scheduled for 12:10.  So much for the big buffer. 

After a half hour at the counter, however, with the line forming behind us, the agent looked up brightly and said that the connection would wait for us!  OKay!  Pretty accommodating!

So imagine our surprise as we finished up a sit down breakfast when we heard an announcement for our flight at about 10:30.  Seems Silver had a spare plane and found a crew and got the flight off early!  

When we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, however, there was another delay on the tarmac because there wasn't a gate for us.  So close!  Eventually the plane nosed in, the passengers disembarked, walked to an outside staircase, and ascended into the terminal.  Screens gave us five minutes to dash to the restrooms.  Upon our return, we walked down the very same staircase and boarded the very same plane!  Same seats even! 

And so the miraculous start:  our plane arrived in Georgetown, Great Exuma, on time!

We took a taxi from the airport into town to our rendezvous spot at the local grocery.  The plan had been to meet and provision.  However, we had all failed to remember that it was Good Friday and the grocery was shut tight and no boat was there to meet us.  

The driver finally raised St. Francis resort on the VHF, and they kindly sent a tender to collect us.   

By 3:30 Captain Tom was serving us welcome cocktails of coconut rum and water.  Relaxation lasted about an hour.

By 4:30, we were in the water with mask and snorkle, nylon scrubbies and scrapers in hand to start excavating Quantum Leap's bottom.  

Quantum Leap had been sitting on its hurricane mooring in Hurricane Hole, Stocking Island since the previous July, and the tropical heat and humidity had had its way with her.  Tom joked that we would need an EPA permit to destroy the reef growing on the hulls.  He actually had a bottom job scheduled for the boat in Spanish Wells Eleuthera the next week, but the yard had called and moved him up two days.  The questions was whether we could get the boat ready to sail in time.