Thinking of The Clash

Chris here... I have "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" from The Clash running through my head. Just the song title - not the whole song. We're having a very, very tough time making a decision today. It's past the middle of March, and we're sitting in Bimini. I was listening to the cruising nets on the SSB this morning listening to all of the boats heading back to the US. Starting Saturday, early afternoon, the weather is supposed to deteriorate with strong winds and large waves (25kt+ winds and 8-10' waves) coming through the entire Bahamas region. The decision? Do we leave Bimini this afternoon, anchor off of Gun Cay, head across the Bahama Banks tomorrow all day and all night to get to Nassau, so that we'll be fairly close to the Exumas for when the weather gets better. Or, do we stay in Bimini for a week or more until the weather clears, and then head across.

One side of me says that heading to Nassau now is a symptom of "Get-There-itis", a very bad and dehabilitating disease. We'd be butting up against bad weather, which, if we have a breakdown or it moves in faster, could be a bad thing. On the other hand, our weather guy was pretty sure about Friday and Saturday being OK (5kts Friday morning, to 10-15 in the afternoon, to 15-16 on Saturday morning) and it would be nice to be positioned in a spot that we could just head to the Exumas from as soon as the weather clears. I'm just concerned about it being mid-April before we actually get to the Exumas, and then having to make a decision on when to head out of the hurricane belt as soon as we get there.

Anyway, between the squalls coming through here (we didn't get hit bad, but I understand there were 50-70kt winds in the Abacos north of here) and trying to make this decision, it has put me in a bit of a mood. I know what the safe and prudent thing to do is, but it is supposed to be safe to cross the banks too... Arghhh!!! I just can't make up my mind.

To top it all off, I'm really getting frustrated at our SSB radio. We need it to communicate with our weather guy. We can hear transmissions just fine, but nobody can hear us. There are a million things that can cause the problem, and that's the problem. What do we try to fix? We've already re-crimped the antenna cable to the antenna tuner and shortened the cable, but that hasn't solved the issue. We need to climb up the backstay and check the connection of the cable to the backstay next. If that doesn't solve it, trying to figure out what the problem is will be VERY difficult.

It just makes for a frustrating day. Oh well. We'll figure it out and let y'all know.