Guana

Whale Cay... we made it! Actually, we had really wonderful weather for it and we were wondering why people get so worried about crossing it. Actually, we could see where if the weather were bad, it would be a little scary. Whale Cay is an island between Green Turtle/No Name Cays and Great Guana Cay. You can't go inside of the Cay because of major shoaling, so you have to go ocean side, out and around. It's not a far distance; only took us a couple of hours, but it can be treacherous in bad weather. We had seas "3-5" feet, that seemed more like 2 feet and calmer winds. We were to Guana Cay before noon. We decided instead of anchoring in Baker's Bay, we would come down to the Settlement Harbour. Settlement has the grocery stores, internet(!), and Nippers!!!! A famous local bar/restaurant, overlooking "the world's 3rd largest barrier reef."

We spent much of yesterday wandering down the beach looking for seashells. We found some sea glass even, mostly greens, some brown and clear, and even an occasional blue. We also saw a Lionfish washed up on shore. The Lionfish is a beautiful creature, not native to the Bahamas. It is from the Asian seas, but was somehow brought here. The Lionfish moves very slow in the water, which makes it a great spectacle if you are snorkeling or diving. But beware! Do not touch this fish, as it is very very poisonous and as our friend says "a guaranteed visit to the hospital." The only predator it has in these waters are the Jewfish. We found it odd that this fish was washed up on shore, seemingly recent too, but was too far up the beach to have been brought in on a tide. hmmmm.... no clue there. Even dead they pack a punch, so we just looked and passed on by.

We passed away the afternoon at Nipper's enjoying a grillled assortment of tuna, grouper, and mahi mahi, and tried their sweet potato fries, of course doused in hot sauce! :)

Today is the famous Nipper's Pig Roast. They roast a pig and put on a huge buffett of local foods. It starts at noon with loud music and tons of people. All you can eat! (Dad likes that part) We hope to go check this out this afternoon. We may have to walk more beach this morning to prepare for all this food.

Good weather and Happy Sailing!

Time to Go

Well, it's sad, but it's time to move on from Green Turtle Cay to new places. We have been here for almost 2 weeks and have enjoyed every moment. We have met some wonderful people while here and are sad to leave them behind. We felt like we had the daily living groove down around town. We did our last Thursday of produce shopping and will miss the celery tomorrow. We hope to move on around Whale Cay, a tricky part where we have to go ocean side and apparently if the weather isn't juuuust right we could see very nasty waves. We hear that while it is a short passage around the cay and you aren't in the ocean long, it can be the worst. We hope to get to Great Guana. If we don't make Whale Cay, we'll go to Munjack Cay. We'll see how time goes and weather. Hey, island time.

Good weather and Happy Sailing!

Laundry and Showers

YAY! We finally got to do some laundry. You know its bad when even you can't stand the smell of both yourself... and.... your sheets! Hahaha Mom knew it was bad when she caught me avoiding the v-berth. Dad took a couple loads to the one of two places on the island to do laundry. Mom and I "grocery" shopped, which is basically a much smaller scale shopping than in the states. Thursday is delivery day for fresh produce. We quickly learned that celery wasn't considered in this and was delivered on Friday, thus another trip into town to retrieve that item. It is really funny how it works. You go to one store for the tomatoes, one store for the lettuce, another for the bread, and wait until Friday for celery. We get some fruit too, but they again are all imported; apples, grapes, and bananas. We did find an avocado the size of a football (almost) and are waiting in it to get ripe to enjoy it. We are thoroughly enjoying cracked conch, a fried conch delight, and grouper at the moment, eating it every chance we get.

We spent the day today walking the beaches looking for seashells. We found some wonderful sea urchin remains. That was pretty exciting for us. We also found several beautiful shells. I was amazed looking out how many different colors the water is. At first, it is almost white, reflecting the close sandy bottom, then it turns almost green, then turquoise, then a royal navy blue. It's utterly beautiful. I was also amazed at how much trash lined the beach, but I tried to avoid that thought and kept looking for awesome shells and critters. We saw several crabs running along the beach, and even 1 dead Portuguese Man O War, a very very toxic jellyfish. Even dead the Man O War can sting and put you in the hospital. The beaches here are lined in huge clumps of seaweed and grasses and hiding in those are the shells. Hiding in them are also the Man O War. We decided, upon seeing this guy, we would wear our shoes the rest of the walk. It was a beautiful walk, ended with a wonderful afternoon of more cracked conch and grouper at the local bar and grill, Pineapples.

Things are wonderful here. We wish the States would keep their cold weather. We keep getting cold front after cold front. Of course cold here is mid 60's. It's amazing how your body adjusts and suddenly believes that is cold.

Good weather and Happy sailing!

Map of the Abacos

I borrowed this map from the Bahamas Website to show where we are spending most of our time.

Green Turtle Cay

It's a beautiful place to be. We are currently in the Black Sound tied up to a mooring from a guy by the name of Donny. We had the pleasure of meeting him, since we are tied to his mooring. Our first introduction of him was the blaring ZZ Top music. The next was the speedy driving of a golf cart and out popping a skinny man who calls everyone Mama and Papa (I was Sister) and handles all his friends as though they were his children. He truly made us feel welcome and comfortable in his presence. He took us and fellow cruisers aboard Namaste on a sundown cruise, screaming above the 150 HP engine, "Bet your sailboat doesn't go this fast!" He showed us the place where Gilligan's Island was shot before turning us around to head home. He has kindly allowed us to use his mooring for as long as we want it.

We have met a wonderful friend in Terry Briggs, whom we met at Great Sale Cay, and have caught up with again here at Green Turtle. People may recognize the name, as his Dad was the one who founded The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. Terry has become a welcome friend, stopping by in Great Sale to introduce himself and ask us to please join the schooner race next year. He brought us a Spanish Mackrel that he had caught on his way over here and we are very excited to cook it, though Dad was far from enthused about cleaning it. I think he needed David here to help him. :) Thank you so much Terry!


So far Green Turtle is great. We have managed to walk almost the entire island today, seeing all sorts of interesting plants, fish in the water, and colorful homes. There are a few grocery stores, a couple of restuarants, and souvenier shops. We also ran across.... Longwood University. Turns out Longwood does a study abroad course at Green Turtle Cay. There was a sign with the famous blue rotunda marking. I called for someone and wandered around the garden until someone came out. Unfortunately, I missed all the Longwood students and professors by a day. They left here yesterday to head back to the States for the new semester. Bummer. But really cool!

We think we are in for a bit of a storm and are happy that we are in the safest place, as the lady at the museum told us. The power went out on the island today for most of the day, letting the school out early, and closing up the restaurants. Our hopes of getting some conch today have to be put aside until tomorrow. They must have gotten power back, because I finally got internet again.

Good weather and Happy sailing!

Still working out the glitches

Ok, so because the computer is new to me, it doesn't have my programs to fix my website just yet. Give me a few days there. So here's the deal. There are more photos than the website says there are. Click on any of the photo links then exit out of the slideshow. At the top of the page, you'll find something that allows you to look at all of my public photo albums. There are 2 more. One is from Daytona to Fort Pierce and the others compiles what we have so far of the Bahamas. As soon as I can, I'll get proper links on the page.

We’ve made it to the Bahamas!!!!!!!!!!

I know it’s been awhile, ok so an entire week! And we haven’t updated anything or even said that we’re here!

But we just finally got somewhere where we could access the internet though iffy and only for a minute or two. We crossed over last Saturday evening, heading out a day earlier than expected. We had the weather, the energy, and thought, why wait another day? Weather only changes more frequently then and we didn’t want to get stuck in Fort Pierce. Because we had the wind on our nose the whole way, it took us much longer than expected, and was a little bouncier at first. Surprisingly the Gulf wasn’t that bad. We came into the Bahamas the next morning and crossed that beautiful line between navy blue Atlantic to turquoise blue Bahamas! We only made it to Mangrove Cay because of our time delay, which it was fine by us. We’re on island time now!! We spent the night there and then headed over to Great Sale Cay the next day. We tried to sail it, but the winds were way too light, so we decided that we better motor to make some headway. We stayed at Great Sale for an extra day to wait out a cold front that was coming through, bringing with it some substantial winds and light rain. Dad and I even tried swimming a little bit! Fancy that! A bathing suit in January! We told Mom to join us, and she promptly told us that we had lied, the water was cold! Well, we thought it was warm, especially when thinking back to the water back up in VA. We made it over to Hawksbill Cay the next day (near Foxtown) and then tried to clear customs in Spanish Cay. We had a really nice sail today! It felt great to stretch those sails out and cut the motor noise. The customs agent was sick and so we had to backtrack to Allans-Pensacola Cay to stay for the night. Mom was a little disappointed at being in the Bahamas and not being able to fish yet. There were other cruisers who were out and about in their dingies and one brought back fresh caught conch for dinner. We salivated and were extremely jealous. We had a hard time anchoring at Allans-Pensacola in the sand, and Dad had to go handset it (ie swim) but it was beautiful and the water not too cold. Yesterday we have made it to Spanish Cay to check-in! Mom can fish now! And we can step on land for the first time in 7 days. Boy that was a weird experience. Spanish Cay is a privately owned island, but also has a customs check-in. We have not been to an island yet where we can purchase anything, and couldn’t have anyway, since we couldn’t get off the boat until yesterday.

We made it to Green Turtle Cay today after staying at Powell Cay yesterday. We are moored on a ball next to some of our friends we met back at Great Sale Cay and are happy for the company. There are several other boats moored here as well and I am sure we will get a chance to meet some of them. Green Turtle is a great place for protection and we are expecting another big storm in a day or so. It also has a little town that we can wander around, but we haven’t gotten to yet.

It’s beautiful here and we are having a wonderful time so far. Pictures and more descriptions will have to follow later.

Good weather and Happy Sailing!

Game Plan

We have made Fort Pierce today (Jan 3rd) and have decided to go ahead and cross tonight. We will hang out here for a couple of hours at anchor and then head out. The weather is looking perfect and we heard from a couple who just came in from the Bahamas, that the Gulf Stream if FLAT! We couldn’t ask for better than that. We do hope to sail some, but the main objective is just to get there. We hope to do just that. So no worries if you don’t hear from us for awhile. We might not have internet regularly. We will let you all know we are there when we can, but again…. Don’t fret! We plan to come into Great Sale Cay, anchor, then head over to Spanish Cay in the Abacos to check-in with customs there. That’s the game plan.

Love you all!

Good weather and happy Sailing!

On the Road Again!

We left Daytona on January 1, 2009! After being there for 15 days, we decided it was time to keep moving, despite the wonderful friends we made while there. (Watch out Yancey, we got some stories now!)

We spent the past several days working on minor projects around the boat, fighting bad internet, my computer dying (getting sent a new one, thank you Jane!), going to the beach and hanging out with friends. It was so relaxing! It was amazing how easily we slipped into staying one more day here and there. With help from our friend George, we were able to get around to provision our boat and make ready to leave. We spent Mama’s birthday and New Years on the beach! It was a wonderful day. Dad and I threw the Frisbee for a little while, only having to retrieve it out of the water once! Mom sat on the beach and people-watched, one of her favorite things to do. Believe me, if you like watching people, Daytona Beach is THE place to go. There was all matter of people. There were several speedo sightings, some “that ain’t right” sightings, and some awesome awesome collectible car sightings.

Granny! There was a 1967 Chevy Chevelle Super Sport, in perfect, I mean perfect, condition!!! Mom reminisced about that screaming red car from way back.

We traveled down the ICW now for 2 days and are now in Melbourne (actually just south of there) and will head to Fort Pierce tomorrow. Our trip down was fairly calm and quiet, but a little chilly (still not as cold as you all at home though). We saw several dolphin on the way down. I am always excited about seeing them, no matter how often they come around. We even believe we saw 2 manatees this morning!!! I wasn’t able to get a clear picture of them, but we truly believe we saw these magnicificent creatures. They are in severe trouble, as they only really live in Florida. They are slow and therefore suffer terribly from run-ins with powerboats. I believe there are only 4,000 in existence today. So when you do get a chance to see one, it’s a rarity but so cool!