BellaVitaBoy

Thank you everyone for all your super thoughtful farewell postings and emails. We really appreciate it so much!

And to everyone that has been emailing us expressing their concern about Hurricane Sandy approaching us as we sit in the remote island at South Point, Long Island Bahamas in the direct path of the hurricane, below is the email that we sent out to our family.

Thank you everyone for all your concern, and I'm sorry to worry you so much, but actually there was lots to be worried about. ALL my predictions about the storms direction were wrong, as I thought it would continue going westward more and the most winds we'd get would be 50-60 mph, but it changed direction and moved 5 degrees to the east which put us straight in its path, and by that time the winds were already too strong to take our canvas down safely so we were stuck with the decisions I'd made earlier.

As it turned out the storm hit us with the NorthEast side of the storm which is the strongest windiest side, or as the locals here call it, "the dirty side". Thankfully it came in the daylight so while it was pretty dark outside, at least we could sometimes see that we were staying put in one place.

My hand held anemometer (wind gauge) only registers to a maximum of 67 mph so we don't know what the speed was when Len and I went to the bow of the boat to check on things because it maxed out, and the rain felt like constant gravel being shot at us. I've ridden my motorcycle in the rain many times which is painful but nothing compares to how hard this rain was blasting at us in this hurricane. We don't leave the inside of the boat without first putting on our jet ski vest life jackets.

At about 80 mph winds we watched a 47' catamaran with multiple anchors out, break away so they beached themselves on shore in the sand, the safest place for them. Then my bimini top and all eisenglass starts to shred so while Len and I are trying to secure it as best we can because we know that the worst is still yet to come. Then we see the fishing boat whose mooring we were on, break anchor and drag his two anchors heading across the bay to the mouth of the opening out to the ocean. We feel guilty because while we are actually hanging on our own anchor, we are also tied to his mooring as a backup. So Len and I prepare my Fortress FX-37 anchor designed for 50' boats, we set it up with 100' of anchor line and 8' of chain, which is all we have, and we load it into the dinghy and wearing jet ski vest life jackets we launch to try to rescue their boat. The dinghy certainly responds differently to steering in 4' choppy waves with 80 mph winds blowing the bow around.

To get the proper visual, picture waves that we can barely see over the top of while standing in the dinghy, and the top 2-3 feet of the waves are white with a 200' long trail of water trailing from it. The wind was so strong it was blasting the top 2-3 feet of each wave off and blowing it sideways and it seemed like it was all directly straight at us. With 18" of water in the dinghy we are up to our knees as the 500 gph bilge pump was no match for the water being dumped on us. We make it to the bow of the 45' lobster boat quickly tie the end of our anchor line to an available shackle then quickly begin backing away into the force of the wind until all 108' of line and chain are full deployed. Then we back full throttle before Len drops the anchor.... it hooks! With the 3rd anchor the boat stops dragging out to sea.

We get back to Barbie Girl and get another call on channel 16, "Barbie Girl the Bahamian government is offering you one more opportunity to come to our storm shelter, after this we cannot help you". We thank them and decline thinking this... we are in a somewhat protected cove and even with no steering, if we break loose we can motor enough that even without steering we can get to the beach. But if we want to go to the shelter if we break loose them we won't be here to keep us from being swept out the mouth of the cove out to sea. Also in the last 15-20 minutes the winds have increased even more. Reports over the radio say the winds are estimated to be 110-125 mph.

Everyone is worried about an old timer named Mike, that everyone calls "Skippy" who is an American and has been sailing the Bahamas since 1976 in a small 30' sailboat. He say's he's seen it all and been through it all. Everyone is worried about him because we can't see his boat in the driving rain and he last radio’ed saying that he thought he was losing his boat and was going to have to abandon ship. He is not in the cove with us, but instead is over near the marina because he waited too long to come into the cove which we can only get in and out of during the highest of tide. We came in on high tide, but he waited too long and got stuck on the outside. From inside the cove before the rain came we could see the waves from ocean crashing 30-50 feet higher than the tree tops of our barrier island.... you do NOT want to get swept out to sea in this.

Now with the driving rain, visibility prevents anyone from seeing beyond your bow railings. Skippy sends out a distress that his boat has broken loose and he is blowing out to sea. The wind is blowing out to sea, but the current is towards the marina, so he says he's jumping ship before the current won't take him to the marina. He throws his dog overboard and jumps in after him, and together they both swim/drift towards the marina.

Len & I crawl to the bow of the Barbie Girl to check our lines and all seems to be okay. You cannot stand or even crawl, you have to make way on your belly because the wind is that strong. All looks good, our anchor line is as tight as a banjo string. We secure more flapping pieces of bimini top before going inside the salon.

An hour later the radio comes on again and Skippy got safely washed into the pilings at the marina and is on land at the Marina that now reports its roof is in the parking lot. I call Skippy, "Magic Mike" but since he hasn't been to the movies in over 40 years he doesn't get the joke and thinks I'm only referring to his miraculous drifting plan of survival.

The storm is now at it's worse. We calculate how long it will last if the storm is still traveling at 18 mph and we figure if we can hang in here for 45 more minutes then we'll be in good shape and the worst will be past us. Just as predicted, 45 minutes later the rain stops and we get an eerie calm, so we know the eye is over us and we're going to be getting hit with the winds from opposite side pretty soon.

I decided to not have the Spot tracking system on during all of this because we are swinging so wildly, I don't want everyone to be worried thinking we broke anchor when it's really just our wide swings since we are over 200' from our anchor to our stern with a 200’ radius the tracking would surely show that we are moving 400’ from anchor. So instead we turn it on at the end of the excitement to send a message letting everyone know we are okay, but not making you suffer through the actually "happening" with us, lol...

With the rain down to a sprinkle, we can see that Skippy's boat is still on anchor. Skippy calls us on the radio and asks us if we can come get him from the marina and take him back to his boat before the back end of the storm comes around. He says he panicked when he thought he was going out to sea. We are super low on fuel in the dinghy and the entire island has lost electric so they can't pump us any so we have to make sure we have enough gas to save ourselves if necessary. We tell Skippy that we can come get him if he can give us a couple gallons of gas. He is thrilled with that "trade". So once again Len and I set out in the dinghy with the waves filling the dinghy and the wind increasing already blasting the now familiar white trails of water off the tops of all the waves, which all seem to be aimed directly at the helm of our dinghy.

We make the less than 2 mile trip to the marina and there is barefoot Skippy with his long gray beard and his scruffy dog and no life jacket on either one of them… unreal! Len is fighting to keep the dingy from bashing into the docks while we load an old man and his dawg. A stern line from the dinghy washes overboard unnoticed so as soon as our passengers are loaded and we begin to back away from the dock, our engine stalls with line twisted all around the prop. Len continues fighting to hold us off the docks while I hang off of the back of the outboard untangling the line from the prop. The old man and his dog seem just happy to be alive as we drive them in pounding seas back to his boat. He gives us a 5 gallon can of gas which we quickly pour into the dinghy. With winds increasing we race back to the lobster boat to check its holding once more before anxiously getting back to Barbie Girl as the back end of the storm is now full on us.

Over the next hour we slowly swing 270 degrees from where we first started as the storm slowly clocks around, which with our 200 feet of anchor line and chain puts us 400 feet on the opposite side of our original resting place. This is probably where Normi thought we broke loose from the mooring. Good observation Normi because most moorings are very steep with almost no scope, with only just enough to stay above water during all tide swings of the year. But this mooring we were later told by the owners has 200' of chain so it was swinging with us on our 200'.

As the eye of the hurricane leaves us, the winds pick back up again and the rain once again begins blasting us. Nothing we can do but wait it out. After another hour when the winds drop down to 50 mph we decide the worst is over so this will be the "norm" for the rest of the day and night. So we take showers preparing to relax from all the day's activities. Barbie makes popcorn as we put a movie in the dvd player when another call comes over the radio for Barbie Girl. The 47' beached catamaran lost a paddle board and its heading out to sea, and would we please retrieve it for them.... Ugh.... We're already showered... we'd go on a life or death rescue mission but saving paddle boards that can be replaced for $600 isn't high on my list of priorities... double ugh.... Then Barbie says she hasn't showered yet so she will go get it. She puts on her foul weather gear, then her life jacket then jumps in the dinghy and jets across the cove flying over waves to the mouth where the current is its strongest as the wind and the current is pushing everything out to sea. She retrieves the paddle board, then sees the crew that was keeping an eye on it farther along the beach and retrieves him too and delivers them both to the beached catamaran. Then she comes back to the Barbie Girl, mission accomplished. She takes her shower and we all settle in to watch TV after I first send out a "We're OK" message.

We wake up this morning and the winds are down to 35-40. We hear the news people are calling the 1,500 mile diameter storm "FrankenStorm" and that the most accurate reports are that it was 105 -110 mph sustained wind speeds where we are, with gusts of 125 -135 mph. 29 people died in the Caribbean yesterday from FrankenStorm but none of them were us.

We woke up this morning and gave a shuttle ride to the lobster boat guys who let us use their mooring. They were thankful of our extra anchor saving their boat. They have a small leak around the rudder so we will help them deal with that today but first we must move our boat out of the blue hole cove we are in which can only be done at high tide. One of the lobster guys gets on our boat to guide us out of the cove but the storm has shifted so many of the sand bars that it is a very VERY tricky trail to get out, especially with no steering and the winds still blowing pretty strong.

We decide to tie up to the city dock for now while we regroup, it's only $5 per day. The marina has no electric. So we tie to the dock and send out another "We're OK" message.

So that's our last couple days. Normi, we're so sorry to cause you so much alarm making you call the coast guard and everything. One thing we have learned here is that they don't seem to want to rescue anyone if they get an epirb distress signal. Before the worst of the storm came an epirb distress signal was received by the Bahamian government but instead of investigating it, they instead call all the boats in the area and required each of us to give them our epirb number so they could make sure it wasn't us with a false alarm. It sounded to us like they were trying to think of any excuse they could not to have to go out into the storm to rescue someone. We never did hear whatever happened to the people giving that distress signal, but one thing we know is that it wasn’t sent from any of us in the marina or cove… it was from someone out at sea…

So as you can see in our Spot, the city dock is very close to the Flying Fish Marina so we can get their Internet connection if they have it on, but with no electric, they only turn it on with their own generator when the manager wants to use the internet himself. So we will keep an eye out for a connection so we can send this update out the next time its connected.

Thank you again for all your concern and thoughtful emails and wishes. We're fine, just a little beat up, but all is well. Right now my primary concern is about how to protect the boat's bridge and all its electronics that we depend on for navigation, from sun, rain, wind and waves since it is completely wide open at this point. So we'll see what we can rig up when more of the dust settles.

Right now, as I write this, FrankenStorm already seems distant in my rear view mirror as I am eating a lobster omelet, hashbrown potatoes and bacon Barbie made for breakfast.

And that's what's happening onboard the Barbie Girl...

If you want to follow our adventurous path as we make our way to the Virgin Islands, you can track us on Google Earth with our satellite tracking system by going to www.FreedomSailingCharters.com/gpstracking.htm

Thank you again everyone for all your concern and support, but as you can see, we survived and all is fine!

Holy Cow!!! This is really going to be a GREAT party! Welcome Back Forever Sunday, it's been much too long!

And Pitchfork, it will be great finally see you again! Here is a tip for you... Instead of getting a hotel room, do this,
Go to Oleta River State Park at http://www.floridast...ctivities.cfm#8
Then reserve one of their air conditioned cabins for only $55 by going to: http://floridastatep...mpsiteSearch.do

Oleta Park is only 1/2 mile from Temptation Island and you can get dropped off on the beach right by your cabin by dinghy so it works out perfectly for you!

But the weather is forecast to be perfect all weekend so why not camp out on your boat for the weekend?

We look forward to seeing everyone!!!

VERY Cool Barbi!!!
And Yes We Are Going To Be Shooting Our Own Call Me Maybe Video At Temptation Island!

Those were super cute and sexy videos, but this one is MY personal favorite!" If you watch all these videos, then by the time you're done, you will have the song memorized, LOL.

Check Out Video Here:


And Remember To Email Us Your Own Video Clips! That's right! Send us your own video clips of you singing Call Me Maybe and we will have it edited right into the video!

Walter just added 2 more Bella Vita members to his list of boats he's taking care of. We just had him wax our boat and it has never looked better. We have him do a nice wax job every 6 months, and we have him do a detailed washing each month right after our regatta after a long weekend of heavy traffic and spilled drinks, food and suntan oils, LOL...

Walter also now offers bottom cleaning by his brother who has worked at the Formula dealership for years. His price is half of what most people charge and he did a MUCH better job. The bottom of my boat looks brand new!

Give Walter a try for all your boat cleaning needs. 786-499-6957

HaHa! That's funny SeaLife842!

Maybe that's YOUR idea of "Pants On The Ground"

But this is My Idea of

"Pants On The Ground"!!!