Well, the solar panels did not arrive as planned. Everyone in the marina was on the lookout for them. When solar panels came in for another boat, about three different people told us our panels were in. But, a quick dinghy trip to the marina office confirmed that the panels were not ours. The company that ordered the panels for us promised to check into the delay and get back to us. Later that day, the owner called and said that there was a mistake and the order was not placed. After a bit of discussion, he replaced the order and promised to have them to us by Friday. The rest of the week was spent getting the boat ready to move if a weather window showed up. A big thing needed was to do a major provisioning, as it is apparently very expensive in the Bahamas. To grocery shop, we dinghied up a small creek near us, locked our dinghy to a dock at a park, and walked about a half mile to the grocery store. The store manager let us take our groceries back to the dinghy using grocery carts as long as we returned them immediately. So Karen and I trundled down the sidewalk beside US 1, with cars and trucks racing by, pushing two grocery carts full of provisions. I left Karen with a dinghy full of groceries, took the carts back to the grocery store, and then walked back to the dinghy. We then motored to the boat and unloaded groceries off a bouncing dinghy onto the boat. We spent the remaining part of the day entertaining ourselves with "where can we stash this item on a full boat and still be able to find it in the future?" Actually, finding stashed items is becoming a bit of a hobby and I have developed an unknown talent of stacking large numbers of oddly shaped can goods and containers into small bins. Vagus's waterline continues to disappear.

The next day we walked about two miles to the Post Office, hardware store and Dollar store for more items. Comfortable walking shoes are a must as everything involves a good walk. Actually this is great exercise but lugging the items back can be a bit tiring. We did draw the line at walking to West Marine, about 4 miles away and over a high level bridge. We tried a taxi and got to the store okay. We then walked back to a mall, wandered around for a while and tried to get a cab to take us back. Well, the cab we had used before was busy. There would be a 2-hour wait. We then tried to find a phone for another cab and there were no cab phones or payphones with phone books anywhere in the mall. The information booth at the mall finally found a cab for us. It seems cab companies are rather fluid around here. We got picked up in an unmarked car, no meters, but we did get back to the marina. The whole area is designed for car travel and I feel sorry for anyone living here without access to a car. Later in the week, Bill and Ruthe loaned us their car for the morning and we did about 3 days of running around in 3 hours.

Our solar panels finally arrived as promised. It was quite entertaining trying to fit two 55in by 20in boxes into our dinghy with Karen as well. She rode like a figurehead on the bow as we slowly made our way back to the boat (I did not want to get the panels wet). We could now have the fun of installing the panels. Actually, the panels were easy to install as we had ordered special rotating brackets (to follow the sun) that clipped onto a lifeline stanchion. This exercise took about an hour. The tricky part was the wiring from the panels (one on each side of the boat) back to the regulator and the batteries. For one panel we had to clean out our cockpit locker, which filled to cockpit with stuff. The other panel required us to clean out the quarter berth (otherwise known as our garage) and remove the ceiling of the quarter berth as well. This exercise filled the interior of the boat with stuff. For those concerned and who know how messy I am when doing boat jobs (somehow everything scatters when I get out my tool kit), Karen was left with a seat on the settee. She had no hope of reaching the head, but she could at least sit down. After a short time for me and a long time for Karen, the wiring was complete and we could put everything back. The only problem was it was now dark and we did not know if the whole effort worked. The next morning, we found out that it did not. After a bit of anxiety, a loose connection was found and the panels started putting silent energy into our battery bank. After listening to a wind generator for awhile, the silent part of this was much appreciated. The panels have been working great and we are happy with them so far.