It's hard to believe that it's been 4 months now since my last post. To bring you up to date, we were so close to departing for the Bahamas near the 1st of Feb that we were actually moved aboard. We got up one chilly morning, lit the trawler lamp to take the chill off the air, had some coffee and went topside to strap down the dinghy closing the hatch as we went to keep the warmth in. As we were finishing we heard a beeping and suddenly realized it was the smoke detector. Dashing back and throwing open the hatch we found to our horror Avelinda was completely filled with a heavy oily black smoke and we could not even see the forward cabin. It was quickly discovered that the trawler lamp was belching out the smoke and it was removed to the cockpit and extinguished. It took over an hour to clear the smoke from the cabin and once removed the damage was unbelievable. The overhead was completely black and everything, table, cushions, cabin sole, counter tops, chart table, everything was covered with black oily soot.
   Needless to say, our trip was on hold while we figured out how to clean up the mess. To make a long story short... we are finally back on track. The cleaning took forever as we found that because all of the cabinet doors were louvered the soot had found it's way into all the cabinets and soiled everything within. The cushions required replacing and of course that took time but now we are almost ready to go to sea and have decided due to lost time we will just sail over to Bermuda and spends a little time and return via the Bahamas so we can get in some sea time before the heat of summer sets in.
   The last project before departure is to install a new radar post and that is in work and hopefully will be completed by the end of the week. A quick trip over the side to clean the bottom and we should be off...stay tuned.
   Below are some before and after pictures: Click on an image to enlarge

And the last pictures are aerial views of Avelinda on her mooring taken with my kite cam: