As usual, the story starts with a fully loaded plane. So much so, that at the last minute some things didn’t make the cut, mostly my stuff, of course. Apparently, bedding coverlets and paint aren’t a high priority, but beer is after Steve went for most of the Thanksgiving trip without any due to no stores being open.
I spent weeks planning, sending emails, making phone calls, setting up ferries and taxi’s and shipping everything for the solar array to an airline freight company in Florida. We needed everything to go over on a specific date and the only way to ensure everything arrived in Marsh and made it to Lubbers was for us to claim it at customs ourselves and take it to Lubbers. Easy, right? All I have to do is make the stars line up. No problem!
We sent four pallets with two different companies, two mattresses in a box and a couple of other stray boxes. We had plenty of time, and it seemed everything was going to work out after a couple of pallets went missing, but by some miracle showed up again at the last minute. It was a bit stressful, to say the least.
We headed south Saturday morning toward Ft. Pierce and we started our approach just as the airport went IFR. I am not going to lie, it was a little unnerving, as it was my first full instrument approach and we got to be the “trailblazer” that let the airport know the conditions. Two planes ahead of us bailed out and went somewhere else while another guy on the radio lost the airport altogether. Steve landed beautifully. We checked in with the world only to learn the rails for the solar array were not in the shipment with the other solar equipment. They had somehow gotten separated from the rest and were now MIA. Let me just say, I am not a fan of freight companies. Steve called Mark and Chuck and they got right on it, we just crossed our fingers and kept on going.
We landed in Marsh uneventfully (we thought…), again with donuts in hand. The ground crew only eyed Steve’s beer that had made the plane cut. (Note to self). We cleared customs without problems and met our taxi driver. We moved on to Maxwells for groceries and the refrigerator I had bought earlier in the week from someone on Facebook messenger. I was hoping it was legit, but my day was not starting out well, so I had my doubts. Fortunately, the trip through Maxwell’s went smoothly and I saw the fridge head to the ferry on the back of a truck. We were a bit behind in time though so my scheduled ferry to Lubbers was nixed and we ended up waiting for some other Lubbers neighbors coming in behind us to ferry over with them. No problem, right? Except, it turns out the freight barge headed to Hope Town with all the food and supplies for the island was sinking in the harbour and we were tasked with bringing over the freight saving pumps. Just another day in the life of Abaconians.
We finally made it to Lubbers just as the sun went down. After dark was not exactly how we wanted to arrive at the house with no electricity and a refrigerator in tow.
The new Albury, dubbed One Lubb 
Next day we got the fridge into the lower level at least.
Steve got right to work on our inverter cabinet since we had a day before the solar equipment arrived. Electrical panels were moved, a place was built for the inverter and batteries and wiring were prepped where everything would go quickly when the equipment arrived on the freight plane.
We were awakened in the wee hours of the morning to howling wind and torrential rain. We had sprung a few leaks from under windows, around windows and from all sorts of cracks we didn’t even know we had. Nothing changed after daylight, the weather was still terrible. Steve and I agreed “no way” the plane was coming, but …….around 8am I received a notification that the plane took off! Holy crap, I had already called the taxi driver, ferry driver and the truck guy, because I was sure that plane wasn’t coming. I notified everyone, the party was back on and we hurried to the new Albury to go to Marsh Harbour just in case the weather broke and they could land. It was low ceilings and low visibility though so we were skeptical. It was a good sea trial for our new Albury 18.5 and that thing punches way above its weight class. We had to run a compass bearing to Marsh Harbour, because we couldn’t see land until we were about 100 yards out. It was still pouring as we tied the boat up at Calcutta Marina. We loaded in the taxi looking like drowned rats to head to the airport and sure enough, the plane was there. I am still not sure how the pilot was able to land. Steve quizzed the pilot about the ceiling and viz and he laughed and said: “oh about 500 ft'”… yeah, right. We unloaded the plane into a truck, and the taxi then unloaded the truck into the ferry. The taxi set off to haul Steve back to our boat. I text Cole and told him to let Steve know we were still at the ferry dock, and he let me know Steve wasn’t there yet. It turns out the bilge pump switch in the Albury was stuck on because of some hurricane debris, so it had run the entire time we were in town and killed the battery. Steve had to find someone with a jump box and 17 extension cords to reach the nearest running generator. Meanwhile, as I am on the ferry with all of our solar equipment and a couple plumbers, minus the solar panel rails, I get a text from Mark asking if the plane had left Florida yet? The freight company had located the rails at their warehouse! Great, only one day late. I echo Mark’s sentiment in the text post below….lol. If you can’t laugh about it, you will go insane. Steve skirted into the marina at Lubbers just ahead of the ferry and was tieing up as we arrived. Oh, one other thing besides the rails was missing, one mattress in a box, wasn’t sure if it was the queen or the king that was missing, but I was so disappointed. I was really looking forward to sleeping on that new mattress (It is pretty cramped sleeping two people in a full bed). All in all, we unloaded the ferry and hauled everything to the house. It was one heck of a really long, wet day.
We sprung a few leaks! 
Thankfully, the next day dry air moved in, still blowing like stink, but we needed some dry weather bad. We were able to locate some replacement rails in Marsh Harbour and took the Albury once again to town to get them. They, of course, were different than our original rails, so we were going to have to do some “fab work” to make them fit. Why would it be easy? Once we had everything, Steve and Cole got the solar panels up on the roof and inverter installed in record time. Unfortunately, it turns out the inverter had a software glitch and would not work. Of course! It seems Christmas week is a terrible time to need technical support, no one was in the office that could help. We tried everything we could think of but eventually, we gave up and just brought the inverter back with us. It was very disheartening to do all that work and it wouldn’t work though. On a remote island, if you cant deal with adversity, McGyver some solutions with a hammer and a Sawzall, you are probably not cut out for this. It reminds me of the Star Wars exchange during the Solo rescue that went “how are we doing?” – “same as usual” – “that bad, huh?”. That’s us… same as usual.
With no solar power, and incessant wind it was tough to get much done, so we focused on setting up our battery-powered Christmas lights, at one point, the only thing that seemed to work right.
Lulu posing for a Christmas Picture 
Finally a nice day, Christmas day, I think God knew we needed a break. The wind laid down and we took the little Albury to do some spearfishing. Cole loaded the boat with some lobsters for dinner. I saw that look in his eye, he is hooked. It’s going to be tough to keep him out of the water.
Cole and Casey did get to run free between all the wind and rain, and I think Casey settled in well.
When we decided to stay a couple more days we realized we were going to starve if we didn’t go find some food. We found out LVA (a grocery store on Elbow Cay) was open and decided to take our garbage, get some gas and stock up on some groceries. We dropped off the garbage and slowly motored up a skinny canal littered with sunken boats. We tied up to a destroyed bulkhead and made the 1/2 mile hike to the grocery store.
Hope Town Harbour Lodge 
Lighthouse Marina Dock 
Entrance to Hope Town Harbour
We were headed back out of the Hope Town Harbour toward Lubbers, when I told Steve that Abaco Inn was open for breakfast, the boat shockingly made a hard left turn into White Sound. There was no White Sound marker at all and there were only a few piles left standing in the channel. The brand new dock at Abaco Inn was a little wavy but was still intact. We tied up and made the trek to the Inn. It was a breath of fresh air, you could look around at the fresh paint and new furniture and it felt like nothing had happened. For a minute, we felt like we were on vacation at a luxurious resort. We had a great brunch including lobster eggs benedict and an extra spicy bloody mary. But alas, we had to return to generators, flashlights and WIND.
The crazy wind had returned and was not letting up, so we decided we needed to head back to the States to save our sanity. We packed up and headed to Sapelo for some R&R.
When we got back to the plane, Steve discovered that the nose strut seal had failed and leaked all the gas and oil out. Just one more thing to add to the list. He decided it would still be ok to land, so we headed west. The flight back to Florida was great and she got us back just fine. She got to spend the week after we returned at the plane spa (aka the shop) getting a new seal, some oil, nitrogen and a new G5 attitude indicator.
Even with all the adversity we experienced, it is still one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Caribbean Soul 