Friday, March 05, 1999 – Underway to the Turks and Caicos

G’day everyone

As I speak, the beamy seas are thrashing us around a bit, though it’s not all that bad. The stabilizers work very well yet they also make STARSHIP rather jerky if you know what I mean. Without the dear things she would role from side to side which would result in absolutely everything being thrown around where as with the little wings on either side, the vessel just twitch’s from side to side. We left the Atlantis Marina this morning after having had a brief look around at the complex. Although slightly over done in my taste, you must give it to the developers; they did do a good job in their opulence. Just to give you an idea, there are over 27 restaurants, casino, 25 different water based features (pools, slides aquariums etc) and five different accommodations with over 2000 rooms.

We checked out the aquariums which for a non-professional outfit I thought was rather good. Sadly there was no interpretation so visitors had no idea what they were looking at, that education thing again. I also went to my first real casino. What a strange place. No windows, clocks and the drinks were free as long as you were playing something. People of all social strata were throwing their money into either a machine, cards, dice or a spinning dish. This time it was very educational for me.

Anyhow, we left late this morning. It has been quite a trying day, as STARSHIP has had to negotiate autopilot problems and very shallow banks. To get to our destination, we needed to pass over the infamous Yellow banks, which lie SSE of Nassau. The average depth of the banks is about 3m (9’), STARSHIP draws (the depth of her hull in the water) 2m (6’)! To make matters worse, there are numerous coral heads that come up shallower. This meant we had to have a continuous look out on the fly bridge ensuring we were not about to go head on into obstructions. Meanwhile, Michael was driving without autopilot just in case we had to make sudden course changes. To make sighting of the heads easier the sun also had to be high in the sky. Anyhow, thanks to vigilant eyes and sonar technology we are now back in deeper waters without a scratch in the paint job. No thanks to the autopilot though, as it decided to go on the blink shortly before entering the banks! It seems we have a software problem, which we have managed to temporarily overcome. We expect to get a replacement shipped to us at our next stop in the Turks and Caicos.

We should arrive there by very early Sunday morning so we still have some steaming to go. For today I shall sign off then and wish you a top weekend.