Governor's Harbour - New & Improved!

We were able to use the fast internet connection here to post some videos for your viewing pleasure. Click the link at the left called "Video Album". Enjoy!

Governor's Harbour - Who Let the Dogs Out?

Our agenda today was to hike over the hill to the eastern side of the island and hang out on the ocean beach in front of what used to be Club Med (now abandoned due to what appears to be severe hurricane damage). Along the way, we made friends with several locals -- of the four-legged variety. It started when we landed our dinghy in the harbor. Out of nowhere this brown dog came up to us, tail wagging, wanting to play. She had a collar, but her owner was nowhere to be found. She actually jumped in the water and for a minute it looked like she was going to jump in the dinghy. We left the dinghy beached and started walking along the road, and she just trotted alongside as though she belonged to us. Kevin finally said "Stay" in a commanding tone and she looked pathetically sad as she scampered off. The island is only a mile wide here so it wasn't a long trek to get to the eastern shore. As we were coming down the hill past a large house, these two big dogs came barreling out of the front gate. At first I thought they were going to chase us away from the property, but no; they too wanted to come along with us on our trip to the beach. It's as if they took one look at our beach bag and knew exactly where we were headed. No amount of cajoling or stern "Stay!" commands would get them to go back to their house, and once again the owners were not around so what could we do but let them tag along? As it turns out, we were pretty thankful they were with us when we arrived at a fork in the road. We weren't sure which way to go, but the dogs apparently had been to the beach many times before and confidently turned down the left fork, glancing back every once in a while to make sure we were following them.

The beach was gorgeous, with just a hint of pink in the wide expanse of soft sand. We had the place completely to ourselves. We could see why they'd put a Club Med here, the beach was definitely resort-caliber: nice and wide, lined with palm trees, with a big grassy area near the abandoned lifeguard tower. Numerous coral heads dotted the turquoise water, so Kevin got ready to snorkel. Our two companions could barely contain their excitement and went thundering into the surf at top speed jumping over the rollers and getting completely soaked. Then when they got tired of frolicking in the waves, they got out for a good roll in the sand and started digging a hole. I had to shake my head because when we first met them they were so clean and well-groomed. Both wore collars and obviously their owner took good care of them (aside from leaving the front gate open). So I was a little dismayed when the smaller one came up to me, sneezing, with his face encrusted with sand. I had just finished brushing all the sand off his snout when sure enough if he didn't just run off into the water and get all wet again. Eventually the two of them must have tired of our company because they disappeared down the beach and didn't come back. Considering that they practically led the way there, we assumed they must know the way home and would return when they felt like it. We figure this wasn't the first time they'd invited themselves on a beach trip with total strangers and it probably won't be the last.

Governor's Harbour, Eleuthera Island

Once again we are taking our chances on a local mooring. The holding here is as bad as it was in Ten Bay, and a cold front is expected Wednesday night or Thursday morning bringing with it a 180 degree wind shift. So rather than risk our anchor dragging in the poor holding after the wind clocks, we tied ourselves up to one of the government-owned moorings. Kevin dove on it and it is once again a solid concrete block, only this one is about four times the size of the one we dragged at Little Farmer's, plus there is no current here. And Kevin noted that the chain on the mooring is brand new. So we should be alright. The moorings here only cost $5.71 per day. How they came up with that figure instead of just rounding to $6/day, I'll never guess.

Walking around town was a real pleasure. Lots of friendly faces, every one with a cheerful greeting and a wave. Even when we are walking down the street and someone passes in their car, they beep and wave even though they don't know us from Adam. I still can't get over how friendly people are here. They will ask you "how are you doing?" and then actually wait for your answer. Anyway, Governor's Harbor is evidently one of the most prosperous towns we've been to and it shows. All the homes are lovely and the yards are landscaped with lush tropical plants and flowers. There are several brightly painted boutiques and a few open-air cafes. On our walk we discovered by far the nicest library in the country. It is the second largest after the one in Nassau, but it is definitely nicer than the one in Nassau. The entire upstairs is a computer room with something like 8 new PCs, color scanner/printer, and a massive server with wi-fi. The library also boasts the fastest internet connection in the Bahamas, so we took the opportunity to upload photos going back to April 9th. Enjoy!

Where we are:
Lat: N 25 11.769'
Long: W 76 14.814'

Ten Bay, Eleuthera Island

It was a colossal fight. But finally the fish gave in, exhausted, and Kevin hauled in a huge trophy-sized mahi-mahi. Naw, I'm just funnin' with ya. He caught yet another barracuda. But this one was the biggest so far (over 3 feet) and it did put up a doozy of a fight. But in the end we threw him back. You are probably wondering why we keep throwing back barracuda. It is possible to eat them, but as they get older and bigger they can harbor ciguatera toxin which causes at best: nausea, vomiting and vertigo, and at worst: paralysis and death. Nasty stuff. So we just throw 'em back and hope to catch something yummier, non-toxic, and with not-so-scary teeth.

We have anchored off of a lovely beach, with lots of palm trees and a plantation-style house hidden back behind the vegetation. It is very picturesque, and we have the whole bay all to ourselves. We quickly discovered why there aren't any other boats here, though. The charts say that the holding is poor, and we found that out firsthand when we tried to set our anchor. The bottom here is a very thin layer of sand over rock and our anchor just would not dig in the first four times we tried. We could practically hear it scrape along the hard bottom every time. It took us over an hour but we finally found a nice patch of sand up near the beach and the anchor held even when we backed down on it with both engines. Kevin also snorkeled over to have a look and it is well-set so we won't be going anywhere tonight. And even if we do, the anchor alarm will let us know. Good ol' trusty anchor alarm.

Where we are:
Lat: N 25 07.149'
Long: W 76 09.186'

Rock Sound - Into Thin Air

The water was like glass this morning so Kevin decided to climb the mast to see if there was anything we could do to fix the windex (wind speed/direction indicator). "Climbing" the mast actually doesn't involve much climbing, it's really more like I hoist Kevin like a sail. He put on a climbing harness and we attached the main halyard (rope that hoists the mainsail) to the harness. As a precaution he also clipped on a second rope (our spare halyard) just to have a backup. Then I used the electric winch to hoist him slowly up the mast, which stands 60 feet off the water. We used our talkabouts to communicate so that no one had to shout up and down. Last spring when I went up the mast to grease the mainsail track, we were so nervous about it that we didn't take any photos. This time, we were smarter and both of us had cameras. Kevin got some great bird-eye shots of the boat, which we'll post when we get an internet connection. He took a look at the windex and wasn't able to find anything obviously wrong with it. But he did find something else: a sharp edge on our glomex antenna (tv antenna) that keeps chafing the halyard. When we were getting ready to hoist him we discovered that the halyard had chafed halfway through at the end of the line where it attaches to the sail. Not good. So he covered the sharp edge with duct tape and hopefully that solves our chafe problem. As for the windex, we will keep an eye on it and see if the problem worsens.

The rest of our day was spent taking full advantage of the capacity of our watermaker. The watermaker is great! We fired up the diesel generator did two loads of laundry (17 gallons each) and both took showers (5 gallons each). Meanwhile we ran the watermaker on high power (producing 9.5 gallons/hr) for 4.5 hours, then on low power (6 gallons/hr) for 2 hours. In addition, we were running a 15 gallon deficit from yesterday when we didn't run the watermaker. Wow, I just realized that I wrote a math "story problem" just now. Okay class, can you tell me if we were able to refill our water tank? Show your work.

Rock Sound - Around Town

What a lazy day. After three full days' sailing, we decided we needed a little rest. So we relaxed and hung out on the boat, then went into town for dinner. So far we are impressed with Eleuthera. Rock Sound is the biggest town on the island and it is the cleanest and quaintest we have seen in a while. The town was hit hard by Hurricane Floyd a few years ago and you can still see quite a few ruined homes and businesses, but for the most part the people have rebuilt and recovered. A little history lesson: Eleuthera was founded by a group called the Eleutherian Adventurers in the mid-1600's. The name is derived from the Greek word eleuthros, meaning freedom. It was the first republic in the New World with the first Constitution and the first Parliament. The Adventurers arrived in two vessels which were shipwrecked on the north side of the island in an area of reefs called the Devil's Backbone. The island itself is long and skinny (100 miles long and 2 miles wide), and the vegetation is lush which is a nice change from the drier, rocky cays of the Exumas.

We wandered through the town, listening to the singing from the Sunday evening church services (there is a church on every block). The sound was coming from several different churches but it reverberated off the buildings so that it sounded like the whole town was literally singing. We stopped to take a look at the local Blue Hole which is larger than the one we saw in the Berry Islands -- 360 feet across. It looked more like a lake than a cave. For dinner we went to a spot called Sammy's Place. Great BBQ; they sure know how to make ribs here in the Bahamas. We met some other boaters at the restaurant, a couple about our age with a young son. They were very nice and mentioned that they've met a lot of retirees out here but we were the first people they'd seen who were their own age. They have financed their trip by taking a second mortgage on their home, and they were joking that their family thinks they are crazy. I guess we are lucky to have friends and family who are so supportive of our "little adventure". You guys don't think we're crazy, do you?

Rock Sound, Eleuthera Island

More downwind sailing today. On the first leg the swells were 6-8 feet which made it hard for Otto (Our autopilot. We figured that he deserved a name since when we're underway he does more work than both of us) to keep a straight course. Whenever we were lifted by a big swell we would veer one way for a bit, then Otto would overcorrect and we'd veer the other way. Over the long haul, we were going straight along the course line, but between the swells and the zig-zagging it was a little uncomfortable. After we rounded the southern tip of Eleuthera the seas died down a lot and we cruised along at 8 knots. Kevin caught yet another barracuda, which makes me wonder if we will ever catch anything else. They must really like the wiggly plastic lures that Kevin is using (they are pink or green and look like a squid).

We did encounter a problem on today's trip: our windex broke. In sailing-speak the windex is the instrument that tells you wind speed and direction, not the blue ammonia-based household cleaner. The windex consists of a weathervane-type device at the top of the mast, which is connected to a digital display on the instrument panel at the helm. On the display there is a handy little birds-eye view of a boat and an arrow that tells you which way the wind is coming from along with a digital readout of wind speed. Unfortunately, now the arrow won't point straight ahead so even if the wind is coming directly at you the arrow still points a little to the right. So we MacGyvered a solution -- we just tied little pieces of string in the rigging so to indicate which way the wind is blowing. Too bad we can't rig up something to tell us the wind speed though.

Where we are:
Lat: 24 51.819' N
Long: 76 09.725' W

Half Moon Bay, Little San Salvador Island

This morning we decided to quickly explore ashore at New Bight before continuing northward. The guidebooks mentioned a hermitage on Mt. Alverna, the highest peak in the Bahamas (all of 206 feet), so we set out to take a look. The Hermitage was built by Father Jerome, a priest who early in life was an architect and an Anglican minister before converting to Catholicism. He built churches on several islands but the Hermitage, constructed in 1940, is considered his crowning achievement. As we rounded a bend in the road we could see it atop the hill. It was an imposing stone structure, like a castle fortress on a mountain. We hiked up the stairs carved into the rock to the summit, where we had the whole place to ourselves. Father Jerome modeled it on monasteries he'd seen in Europe, so it had a bell tower/turret, a chapel with cathedral-style windows, a small kitchen, even a cloisters leading to his simple dormitory where he lived out the last 16 years of his life in solitude and reflection. It seemed a very holy place, but I could not help irreverently noting that although it had loomed large from a distance, the whole thing was actually built to a very small scale so that even I had to duck very low to get through the doorways and my head nearly touched the ceilings. Square-footage-wise the interior was smaller than my house back home (1100 sq ft). We thought that the reason for the small scale was to put it in proportion to "Mt. Alverna" so that it didn't dwarf the hill and look silly. I was reminded of the castle Camelot from the movie Monty Python & the Holy Grail...to quote Patsy: "It's only a model". Regardless of size it was extremely well-constructed and, for the Bahamas, very well-preserved. We remarked that in the US this place would have been a tourist trap with gift shop, tour guides, a hefty admission charge, and you wouldn't be allowed to TOUCH anything. But here in the Bahamas you are free to wander around, kneel at the single pew in the chapel, sit on the hard wooden cot in the bedroom, whatever. Amazing.

Since that was pretty much the only thing we wanted to see, we headed back to the boat and got under way as we had 40 miles to cover between Cat and Little San Salvador. It was a beautiful day for sailing so we did something we had never done -- we hoisted the sails at anchor and sailed out of the anchorage! It was a proud moment (but for those of you worrywarts we kept the engines on just in case to avoid any collisions with the other anchored boats). We had great sailing the entire day with the wind behind us which is the most comfortable point of sail -- you aren't bashing into any waves, instead they push you along and you just surf down the front of them. Kevin again put out three lines and this time solidly hooked a 2.5 foot barracuda. When he hauled it aboard it scared the hell out of me, thrashing around with its huge, sharp, pointy, nasty teeth. We decided to let it go. Problem was, it was solidly hooked and we had trouble freeing it (while still avoiding the huge, sharp, pointy, nasty teeth). So we gave it a shot of vodka. No, seriously, we did. It's supposed to stun the fish, which it did, and Kevin was able to finesse the hook out and toss it back. We are hoping not to catch too many more of those...we want to eat the fish, not be eaten.

Where we are:
Lat: 24 34.644' N
Long: 75 57.264' W

New Bight, Cat Island

We left George Town yesterday around 8 am. Winds were light so we motored for the first 20 miles, then put the sails up and motorsailed with one engine. Kevin had three fishing lines out, and he was more hopeful than ever. After talking with Don on Paragon the other day, Kevin had gone to the hardware store in George Town and bought bigger hooks and lures; it seems the reason we weren't catching much was because we were using tiny lures that the fish wouldn't even bother with. So we trolled the three lines behind us as we motored along. We got nothing most of the day, and then just as we approached Cat Island, something bit. Kevin reeled it in and it was an 18 inch barracuda. It was small for a barracuda but still exciting, since it was the first good-sized fish we'd caught. I got out the camera ready to take a picture when Kevin hauled him out of the water. But when he started to put the fish in the net, the fish flopped a few times and was gone. I swear, that fish was just messing with us and must have been holding the hook between his teeth so that he could let go at just the right moment. Plus the damn thing ate half the lure. So no fish dinner for us last night.

Instead, as we motored into the anchorage at New Bight, our friends Larry and Tracy on the sailboat Soulmatie hailed us on the radio. They had left George Town with Paragon the day before us, and the two boats invited us to dinner with them. Since all we had to look forward to was spaghetti, we readily accepted the offer and I quickly baked up a batch of cookies to bring as dessert. Larry made a fantastic chicken piccata served over rice with green beans, while Don and Kim made homemade biscuits and mixed up some drinks. The meal was delicious, and for desert we had cookies and a frozen cool whip and marshmallow concoction that Larry whipped up (no pun intended). Afterward the four of them introduced Kevin and I to dominoes. I had never played the game before; I thought playing dominoes just meant that you set up the tiles on their sides in a fancy pattern and then knocked one over to watch them fall down. (I still think that's a great game, I just don't know how viable it is on a rocking boat). But the "real" dominoes game is also excellent fun; Kevin and I may just go out and get ourselves a set when we are back in the States.

Where we are:
Lat: 24 17.153' N
Long: 75 24.962' W

George Town - More Karaoke

The George Town cruising season is definitely winding down. When we got here there were some 200 boats in the harbor and now a few weeks later that number has been reduced to maybe 100. People are slowly starting to migrate north. We'll be heading out of here soon, either tomorrow or Friday depending on wind direction. Yesterday morning we got our laundry done, filled up the dinghy with gasoline, traded books at the library and basically just made as many preparations for moving on as we could. We are now ready to go north to Cat Island when the wind clocks around to the east. Then we spent a nice afternoon with the crew from "Paragon". Over blender drinks, we talked about cruising up in the Chesapeake (which they have done) and NYC and Martha's Vineyard (which we have done). It was good because both of us got the scoop about places we'd never been to but want to visit.

After a long day we turned in kind of early, but were kept awake by a howling dog on a nearby boat and howling karaoke-ers at one of the waterfront bars. It's amazing how karaoke is the best thing ever when you're the one that is tipsy and belting out tunes into the microphone. But the tables are turned when you are trying to sleep and 20 drunk Americans are tunelessly singing (rather, shouting) the lyrics to Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places". We had a choice: close the hatches and suffer the heat or leave the hatches open and face the music. So we suffered with the windows open, trying by sheer force of will to make them stop singing, stop singing, stop SINGING! They finally stopped sometime between 11 and midnight and we thankfully turned in. We may move the boat back across the harbor to Stocking Island today to move away from the noise and near-constant powerboat wakes here on the George Town side.

George Town - Happy Easter

This morning the rest of the cruising community woke up early for sunrise service at Beach Church. "Beach Church" is just that -- every Sunday cruisers get together for a church service held on the beach at Stocking Island. The reverend is a fellow cruiser (which cracks me up!) and he spends the winter here to run the church. Usually it starts at 9:30 but Easter sunrise service was at 6am, too early for us I'm afraid! In my heaven, God doesn't get all bent out of shape if you opt to sleep in rather than going to church. So instead we stuck with the more secular Easter traditions this morning. When Kevin got up, he discovered that the Easter Bunny had hidden the candy bars we bought yesterday all over the boat and he had to find them. Which he did. Good job, Kevin! Then we had a lovely batch of scrambled eggs, our nod to Easter eggs but less work than hard-boiling and dyeing them. For dinner, instead of an Easter ham, we had an Easter pizza (Down to six pounds of mozzarella now...)

Most of the morning Kevin worked to fix a section of the bootstripe along the bow that got torn up by the mooring pendant (rope attached to the mooring) back in Little Farmer's Cay. The bootstripe is a vinyl stripe all around the waterline of the boat. Having a stripe of color (in our case a thick blue and thin yellow stripe) makes the boat look snazzier. But the mooring had torn up a six inch section of the vinyl. Trying to fix it with the boat in the water was a challenge. We shifted all the ballast (spare anchor, sails, and other heavy stuff) from the front end of the boat to the back end to raise the front end as high as possible out of the water. We even filled the dinghy (which hangs from the back of the boat) to add more weight to the stern. Then Kevin got in the water and I lowered supplies down to him to get the repair done. It looks a lot better now. Afterwards he scrubbed along the waterline to get rid of any sludge and salt scale, so add that to last week's rainbath and now the boat looks ship shape!

Then this afternoon we went into town to make a few phone calls. The town was a ghost town, all the Bahamians were at church and everything was closed so there weren't any cruisers either. When we arrived at the dinghy dock we could even hear the sermon through the PA system of the nearest church. Very hellfire and brimstone. But when church let out there was this colorful parade of people all dressed in their Sunday Easter best. Bahamians take church very seriously and usually dress up to the hilt every Sunday, but today was even more so and all the little kids looked so cute in their suits and pastel dresses.

So we had a nice day, despite being far from home. The hardest part of being here is missing all of you, especially our families. It isn't easy to be away from loved ones on holidays, so know that we are thinking of you and missing you.

George Town - Great Saturday

We woke up early this morning and finally the wind had decreased to a light breeze and the skies were clear! So we moved Solstice across the harbor so that we could be closer to town. We are now only a short dinghy trip away from town as opposed to where we were over at Stocking Island which was a mile away. At 8:30 am we headed into town to find out the status on the outboard propeller. Lo and behold, it had arrived! An Easter miracle. So now we are dinghy-enabled and are clear to make the multiple back-and-forth dinghy trips required to provision and fuel up. So we walked directly over to Exuma Markets to pick up more groceries and discovered that our mail had also arrived! Yay! Thanks to those of you who sent letters, it is always appreciated to get something other than bills in our mail packages! We picked up a few things at the market, the most important of which was Easter candy for tomorrow. I use the term "Easter candy" very loosely here, since really we only picked up: a Nestle Crunch, a Hershey bar, and a bag of peanut M&Ms. Chocolate doesn't fare well on import (tends to melt) so most stores don't stock a big variety, and certainly they don't stock large bags of it, let alone anything with Easter-specific wrappers. I feel for the poor Bahamian children whose Easter baskets contain only Skittles, Starbursts, and Payday bars. There wasn't a Cadbury egg in the entire store and we didn't see any jellybeans, either. Perhaps I'll get creative and try to carve the two candy bars into bunny shapes...

Speaking of children, earlier this week we saw a mother and baby dolphin frolicking in the waves that were generated by the windy weather. We have never seen such a small dolphin, he was only a couple feet long and couldn't have been very old. They played around our boat for an hour or so, and the little one came right up to the side and tried to swim under our boat but his mom didn't want him to get so close and she herded him further away. Of course just as they started swimming away, we thought to get out the camera. So we took several photos of two tiny nondescript blotches that you can't even tell apart from the waves. Hopefully we'll see them again so we can get some postable photos.

George Town - Good Friday

So it's Good Friday and everything in town is closed except for Pedro's conch shack on the beach. For us the only good thing about today is that the rain let up a little and the sun came out for a few hours. But now it is late afternoon and the wind is blowing again, so I expect a squall will come up in an hour or so. We have done about as much boat cleaning and maintenance as we can do, and the natives are getting restless. I won't even bore you with how many books I've read during this week of rain. Kevin said that we were turning into "boat potatoes". So we can't wait for the weather to let up, likewise we can't wait for our propeller to arrive. We just want to fix the outboard, fuel up, do a bit more provisioning, and head on to someplace new. 'Course we can't do any of that until the weather lets up a bit. Rain, rain, go away...

George Town - Weather Woes

The past few days have been rainy, with winds steady at 20 knots and higher, gusting to 35 knots. We have been kind of trapped on the boat during this weather because with the outboard propeller slipping, the dinghy won't go very fast and it's no fun to get soaked by waves and rain while puttering along at 2 mph. So we've been hanging out on the boat, doing some spring cleaning and waiting for the weather to abate. We're hoping the new prop arrived today, Kevin will call the hardware store when they open.

Yesterday afternoon around 4pm we heard a call on the radio to another Manta that was leaving the harbor. The boat hailing them (Saltine) asked them to switch to another channel, so we followed them to listen in. Yeah, I know, we eavesdrop. A lot of boaters do it. It's not uncommon to hear two boaters on a working channel talking about repairing a generator, and then you hear a third boat that wasn't part of the original conversation say, "Break, break. What kind of generator do you all have?". So we occasionally eavesdrop, what else are you going to do when you're stuck on the boat in 25 knot winds?

Anyway, Saltine saw this Manta heading out of the harbor in 20-25 knots of wind and rain and asked them if they were going "out there" for research purposes. The Manta replied that they had to be in Fort Lauderdale in 10 days and were worried that the weather would get worse so they wanted to get as far as they could and were planning to sail through the night. Saltine asked if they'd heard the weather that it was supposed to get up to 35 knots of wind that night. The guy also advised them that since it's been blowing steady out of the northeast for the past 3 days they'd have awful seas and if anything happened they would have a lee shore (that is where the wind is blowing you towards land instead of away from it. You don't want to lose power in those conditions because you'll end up on the beach or rocks). The Manta said that they knew all that and thanks for the advice but they were going to go anyway. Saltine was persistent, telling them that Ft. Lauderdale is not that far (300 miles) and they could easily get there before their deadline without risking going out in rough conditions. The Manta thanked him again, but kept going anyway. It is interesting to see two different attitudes about weather conditions. We wouldn't have even wanted to move across the harbor in conditions like yesterday, let alone go out on the Sound. But we remember last year how inexperienced we were. We were leaving Block Island to go back to the dock in Warwick. Conditions weren't great, and no one else was leaving, but we knew the weather would be worse the following day. Another boater saw us leave our mooring and asked, "You're leaving? Right now? Why?" We basically gave the same reply as the other Manta did yesterday -- we have to be somewhere, and the weather might get worse so we're leaving now. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't make that same decision today. What a difference a year makes.

George Town - Water, Water, Everywhere

So our clark pump for our watermaker finally arrived on Monday. And when I say "arrived on Monday" I really mean that it has been here since Thursday, only they delivered it to the wrong place. The package was addressed to us care of Exuma Markets and we had been checking in with them daily for almost a week, when finally on Monday Kevin happened to walk past a place called Forbes shipping where a surly man surrounded by FedEx packages was less than helpful. Kevin actually located the package himself.

He spent most of Monday installing the new pump and then when we tried out the watermaker, to our delight we found that we had tripled our watermaking capacity from 3.5 gallons an hour to 9 gallons. It may not be that exciting to those of you who just turn on the faucet to get water, but for us this increase in output means that we don't have to haul our laundry ashore, and we don't have to haul water jugs back and forth to supplement the watermaker anymore. So we are overjoyed to have a working watermaker again.

I was so excited to finally get some laundry done. Early Tuesday I had everything sorted and Kevin went to fire up the generator. Our washing machine runs on 120 volt AC, which means that running the genset while doing laundry is required. I am all ready to put the first load in when -- cough! sputter! -- the genset shuts down. It seems like it's always something! So Kevin and I spent most of Tuesday troubleshooting what turned out to be a fuel starvation problem. After changing the fuel filter and clearing out air in the fuel line, we were back in business and able to run the washing machine.

Now if only our outboard propeller would get here...

George Town - Steering Clear of The Office

It was unbearably humid all day. Clouds had been building throughout the afternoon and we sat around in a semi-stupor just waiting for a little breeze to cool us off. As soon as it got dark, our prayers were answered. In spades. We could see several thunderstorm systems on the horizon moving towards us. The lightning had us worried (before we bought it our boat had been struck by lightning twice, knocking out all the electronics). So Kevin put out the Strike Shield which is a cable that attaches to the mast and hangs in the water, the idea being that if lightning struck the mast it would follow the cable to ground and miss the electrical circuitry. We don't know how sound that theory is, but we put the cable out whenever we see lightning just in case it works.

We closed the hatches and ports and tried to stow anything on deck as best we could for the squall. We sat outside and watched the storms approach. You know the saying, "the calm before the storm"? Well, it has some basis in reality since the wind went from 3 knots to 20 in about 10 minutes. As the winds kept building we would hear other boaters on the radio clocking 50 knots of wind. Once the rain came, we went inside but kept popping our heads out to see what was going on. It is a very good thing we did this. A motor vessel (looked like a sportfisher but it was dark so we couldn't tell for sure) to the north of us had started dragging and was heading straight for us. Kevin's quick thinking saved the day. He started the engines immediately and asked me to bring out the airhorn. The sportfisher was so close we could see inside the boat and they were all sitting around the table, oblivious to the fact that they were dragging! Kevin sounded the airhorn and one of the guys came to the door so we shouted, "You're dragging! You're dragging!" At this point the boat passed within 15 feet of us and Kevin was gunning the engines in reverse with the wheel turned to port to swing us out of the way so they didn't hit us. The boat kept dragging by until it was a slightly safer distance away, although it was still in our swing circle (the 360 degree circle around our anchor). The guy finally got the message that he had dragged and started his engines.

The winds died down and eventually the rain stopped as well. We stayed out in the cockpit warily eyeing the other boat. We were worried that they would stay there all night, which was definitely not a safe proposition; they were too close, plus we'd already seen their lack of expertise in anchoring. We wanted to radio them, and I shined the spotlight on their transom to get their name, revealing one of my biggest pet peeves about powerboats with names on their back transoms: the door. Lots of sportfishers have their names written across the back of the boat (transom) but many of them have a small door that swings inward to allow them to get to the swim platform. When the door is open, other boats can't read the name. In this case, despite looking with the spotlight and the binoculars the only part of the name I could make out was "The". Helpful.

So again we shouted into the wind that we were trying to hail them on VHF 68. It took several tries until they understood and got on their radio. Turns out the boat name was "The Office". Kevin asked them if all was okay, and the guy said that yeah they seem to be stopped now and he had about 50-60 feet of chain out. Kevin tactfully replied, "Well you're in about 20 feet of water where you are and with that amount of chain you have less than 3:1 scope out. We've got 120 feet out and you are right in our swing circle. You might reconsider." To which the guy replied, "Thanks for the suggestion." Then silence. What did that mean? Was he going to stay there all night? We wanted to know his intentions, so Kevin got back on the radio and said, "Well, you can't let out another 60 feet of rode from where you are and still maintain a safe distance. We aren't sure what the weather is going to do, there might be another squall coming so we are requesting that you move." Luckily the guy came back on and said that they were planning to move as soon as they assessed the situation. We sat outside for another hour watching them maneuver back and forth (their anchor must have snagged on something. We were just thankful it hadn't snagged on OUR anchor.) until finally they got the anchor up and moved off a good distance away. Only then were we able to get ready for bed. We both slept like babies knowing that if we (and the other boats around us besides "The Office") didn't drag in 50 knots of wind, we'd probably be okay for the rest of the night.

George Town - Tour de Force

Our friends on Xanadu invited us to join them on a tour of Great Exuma Island. So on Saturday we headed into town and met up with 13 other boaters for the tour. We were greeted by Christine, a diminutive Bahamian with a big smile and a bigger wig (think James Brown). We all climbed on the bus and headed south out of town. Christine kept us entertained by trying to find herself a husband among the men on the tour. There are some parts of the island where only natives can own land (called "generation land"), and if an outsider wanted to purchase any the only way would be to "chuck that white woman who is your wife and marry Christine". Very persuasive argument. Our first stop was the oldest graveyard on the island where three large tombs rested. The first settlers on the island were the Kays, a husband and wife who came here alone (read: without slaves) in the late 1700's and didn't last long. The wife died in childbirth and was entombed here. The husband died a few years later. Christine told us that there are other guides who tell their tours that the husband was buried in one of the other graves, but she says "Not possible. If he die here all alone, tell me -- who bury him? He not buried here. Who buried in these other two graves? I don't know, nobody know. There no names on them." Refreshingly honest, since she could've made up anything and we wouldn't know the difference.

The next stop was the plantation house. Years after the Kay's brief stay, an American Loyalist named Lord Rolle came here and imported 300 slaves. His overseer, a man by the name of Sayles, built a plantation house which has been preserved through the years. The reason it still stands after nearly 200 years is because local families move there temporarily while their new houses are being built. So over the years people have installed electricity and kept up the roof. Kind of. If you had to live there while your house was being built, conditions would be pretty rough and you'd be sharing your space with several spiders, lots of wasps, and a huge nest of ants. I guess that would be incentive to keep construction moving on your new house. Incidentally, when Lord Rolle died, all 300 slaves were freed and in the tradition of the day they took Rolle as their surname. Which is why nearly everyone in Rolle Town is named Rolle, including Christine.

We stopped for lunch in Williams Town at a beach bar & grille called "Santana's". The proprietress was very friendly and served up some great grouper, shrimp, conch, and steak lunches for us. Her mother, Mom, runs "Mom's Bakery" and every day drives her van from Williams Town up to George Town to sell her cakes and pastries. No one calls her by her real name, she is known to locals and boaters alike as "Mom". After lunch we piled back into the bus and headed back north to George Town. Along the way, Christine pulled over several times to point out plants that had medicinal properties. During the trip she steeped some leaves in boiling water to make a tea which she shared with everyone (I can't remember what it was supposed to cure but it was delicious), and served it with homemade "panny cake" and a coconut confection that tasted like coconut brittle. There's not a whole heck of a lot to see on the island, but somehow Christine managed to make a four-hour tour of it and keep the passengers entertained. Definitely worth the price of admission.

George Town - The Margaritaville Theorem

I have a theory about alcohol and live music: the likelihood of a person being able to sing on-key is inversely proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed by said person. As proof, I offer one word: Karaoke.

Friday evening most of the George Town cruising community gathered at St. Francis Marina for pizza and karaoke. We went for the food, but stayed for the fun. The karaoke was run by one of the other boaters. They actually tote the karaoke setup around with them from anchorage to anchorage. I guess a karaoke machine could be considered "essential equipment" for some. When we got there, the party was in full swing. Cruisers were flocked around the bar, waiting for their turn to sing. There was a profusion of Jimmy Buffet, Elvis, and country songs. A few of the performances were even good. But most...well, most adhered to my Margaritaville Theory. One guy sang Frank Sinatra's "My Way", and the great thing was that English was obviously not his first language. The entertainment value of that performance was off the charts, a classic. With beers costing $4 apiece, I estimated it would've cost us $40 just for me to get the nerve to get up there. So I didn't sing. It goes without saying that Kevin didn't sing, either. But we had a nice time, met a few new people including another couple in their 30's who are from Southern California.

We are still waiting on parts (watermaker and propeller) and our mail is being shipped to us. So we will probably stick around here for at least another week. Hopefully both parts get here by then! We told a fellow cruiser that the guy who ordered our propeller said it would be in by Tuesday or Wednesday. The other cruiser quipped, "Yeah, but did he say which week?".

George Town - Going to **** in a Handbasket

Kevin and I are lucky to share the joy of laughter. At others' expense. Is that wrong? If so, we are probably going to hell but we can't help it -- people are pretty funny as a general rule. Like on the VHF radio. We love the folks who named their boat "Bad Boy". Especially when another boater gets on the radio and coos, "Hey, Bad Boy. This is Sea Kitten. Meet me on channel seven-one," like something off a steamy phone sex commercial. Dumb boat names never get old. Seeing "Dances With Dolphins" tooling around the harbor gets us every time. You really have to wonder what some people are thinking sometimes... A couple weeks ago I picked up a book at a book swap that had been edited by some righteous do-gooder so that all the cuss words were blacked out. Every **** one. Plus it was a hard-boiled detective novel where the characters swear a lot so most of the pages were heavily censored. Strangely enough, "bastard" did not make the cut, but "smartass" was scribbled out. Yeah, it was pretty annoying but we thought it was entertaining as ****. In an email my friend Darlene suggested that I do something similar with some other book, only she said to censor out something silly like all the pronouns or all the color words. That would leave the next person scratching their head for sure, trying to figure out what your hangup was. One thing that really had us chucking was earlier this week we were in town and saw these nice flyers advising kids to read more. The local library has a tutoring program in the mornings where cruisers get together with local schoolkids to help them read. The poster had photos of kids smiling and holding up books. "Wanted: good readers," the sign read, "Kids who join the library reading program will earn a reward." The thing was, the only place in town where we saw these flyers was at the liquor store! You can't make this stuff up.

George Town - Out and About

The other day at the Chat N' Chill we were treated to the unsightly view of a leathery man in a black speedo. Now, I am anti-speedo on principle. Nobody needs to see that. But in this case I was even more repulsed because the elastic was wearing loose and it was definitely a saggy speedo. The guy was from another country and oblivious to the show he was putting on for all the other beach goers. Or so I thought. This morning we wake up and realize that the man on the boat next to us IS Saggy Speedo! Even worse he is walking around in his cockpit completely nude! I guess he had just taken a shower on his outside transom (back part of the boat that allows you to step down to water level) because within a few minutes he put on a towel. But geez! What a way to start the day.

Today we had a long list of things to do in town. We got in the dinghy and just then one of our friends from Xanadu (another Manta catamaran) came up in his dinghy asking if we needed any help. (We had told him about the outboard propeller problem). Jim, who is from the south, has the ultimate southern gentlemen's accent; he sounds like the guys in Gone With the Wind (or Foghorn Leghorn for those of you who haven't seen that classic film). We chatted for a bit, and he offered to tow us if we needed it, or ferry us over to town; turns out he had the same problem and ended up buying a new outboard. But since our propeller was only slipping at higher speeds, it was still usable. So we thanked him and motored very slowly on our own into George Town.

George Town has an interesting setup. There is the outer harbor where all the boats are anchored, and then there is a shallow inner lagoon called Lake Victoria that is shaped like a circle. There is only one way into the lake, and that's by dinghy under a low bridge. Almost all of the businesses are located on the shores of the lake so you just dinghy up to one of the dinghy docks and step ashore. We found Minn's Marine right away and although he wasn't able to get the prop re-hubbed for us, he was able to order us a new prop. So hopefully that will get here by end of week. We wandered around town, stopping in at the internet cafe (yes there are new photos, starting with St. Patrick's Day) and sending a fax to Spectra Watermakers (hopefully they will send us a new clark pump this week also!). We stopped for beers at Eddie's Edgewater (guess that jingle does it's job, since we'll never forget the name of the place) and then had lunch at the Two Turtles Inn. Basically we did a circuit around the whole lake and scoped out the entire town. Our last errand was to pick up a few groceries at Exuma Markets, which is one of two well-stocked grocery stores. Hooray, we have lunchmeat again, no more PB&J!

George Town - Cruisers Net

So our second day in Georgetown and we didn't leave the boat. (Also I discovered that "Georgetown" is actually two words.) Our outboard propeller is busted, and our dinghy is now a dink. You can put the outboard in gear but the propeller starts to slip when you rev it up. So it'll go, just not very fast. Kevin spent the afternoon trying to fix it, but it requires some parts that we don't have on the boat so we'll limp into town tomorrow and see if we can get what we need.

We are finding out that the cruising community here in George Town is very active. In the mornings they actually have a radio "show" called "Cruisers Net" on the VHF where a moderator allows the boats to make announcements for things like bridge games, taxi share, advertisements from local businesses, etc. It's a way for cruisers to "ask around" without having to go in the dinghy from boat to boat. Some of the announcements are important info about weather and local rules/regulations, while others are a little more frivolous in nature. This morning they had: a lady looking for a recipe for peanut butter cookies, a guy looking for his lost bathing suit (which according to him held "sentimental value for reasons I won't go into"), and a guy announcing that they'll host "How to Play Bridge" on volleyball beach this afternoon. Plus a few of the local businesses got on including Eddie's Edgewater Cafe, and the local lady doing the announcement actually sang her own jingle at the end (kind of like those old-timey radio jingles). We both cracked up at that one, but it's nice to know that you can pretty much ask any question on the Net and some helpful cruiser will try to answer it.

Georgetown, Exuma Islands - At Last!

As you can see from the title, we have finally arrived in Georgetown! The "weather window" we were waiting for finally opened up. The winds were 10-15 knots which is right where we like them, but the seas were a little rolly with 3-4 foot swells. At first we motored along at 6.5 knots with both engines. Then for extra speed we put up the sails and sped up to 8 knots with sails and both engines, and then Kevin decided to experiment so we turned off the port engine and still managed to get 7.5 knots. Plus we saved a little fuel that way as well.

We entered the Elizabeth Harbor at Georgetown around noon. We weren't sure what to expect, this is a popular destination and many boats come here for the winter and just stay anchored in the harbor for months at a time. But right about now is when they start heading back north, so the harbor isn't too crowded. Currently there are 191 other boats anchored here, but during big events that number can get as high as 300-500. But we found a nice spot to drop anchor where we wouldn't be too close to any other boats. Then we decided to do some exploring.

Georgetown is on Great Exuma Island. The harbor lies to the east of Georgetown and is sheltered by several outlying islands: Stocking Island is the largest (not to be confused with Lee Stocking island where we spend last week), then Elizabeth Island, and Guana, Fowl, and Welk Cays. "Solstice" is anchored off Stocking Island near Volleyball Beach/Black Point. So in order to get into Georgetown we have to cross the harbor in the dinghy. Since we got in on a Sunday we knew most places in town were closed (laundry, grocery, mail, fuel dock) so we opted instead to take a look around Stocking Island.

Right on Volleyball Beach is the Chat N' Chill beach club. This is a great club with bar, full kitchen, and beach activities. The atmosphere is fun and casual, and Sunday is their Pig Roast so it was packed with nearly 100 people. Some were inside at the bar, others laying out by the beach, and still others were at picnic tables in the shade playing bridge and dominoes. And of course there were several volleyball games in progress at the many courts for which the beach is named. We imagine we'll be spending a lot of time there over the next couple of weeks.

Of course Murphy's Law is that we have to break something important our first day in harbor. In this case our dinghy. On the way back from the club we think we broke the propeller thrust hub (protects the engine in case you hit a rock or something) on the outboard. So getting that fixed is the first order of business, luckily it broke here where we can get parts if we need them. Anyway, we are just happy to have a change of scenery!

Where we are:
Lat: N 23 30.887' (for you geography buffs, we have crossed the Tropic of Cancer!)
Long: W 75 45.308'

Lee Stocking Island - Cracked Conch

So today the weather was perfect and we FINALLY left Lee Stocking Island. Ha-ha, April Fool's! We are going to wait one more day for wave activity to calm down and will try tomorrow (Sunday). This morning we woke up and observed a small skiff with three Bahamians about a quarter mile behind our boat. One of the guys jumped in the water and started hauling out conch left and right. This went on for about half an hour and Kevin estimated they had hauled up between 30-50 of the critters. We weren't sure if it was completely legal, since the charts say that the area around the marine research center is a no-take zone. Later in the day we called up the research center asking permission to go ashore and hike one of the hills. We were denied -- Lee Stocking is a private island and while the research center does two tours and two hiking excursions a week, they try to discourage cruisers from coming ashore at other times. (Although earlier in the week they allowed cruisers from a different boat to go ashore and do the same hike, so I guess the rules aren't always enforced). Anyway Kevin asked about taking conch and the lady said that it was okay if you were a half mile away from the island. So since we had nothing else better to do, we headed out in the dinghy to just a little ways past where the locals were this morning.

We dropped our small dinghy anchor (it looks like a grappling hook) and Kevin dove with snorkel and fins while I stayed with the boat. Within one minute he was back with a huge conch. The bottom was covered with them; he saw one about every 10 feet. We were surprised because it seems everywhere else we have been the conch beds are scoured and are littered with shells that have already been cracked, or the live ones that are left are too small to legally take. So Kevin was excited and over the next few minutes he found three more to add to the first one. The last one was feisty and used his foot to scoot himself all over the boat trying to get away. The other ones just kind of peered at me with their creepy antenna eyes. I was a little unnerved to be sitting there in the boat with them, knowing they weren't going to live much longer. When Kevin asked if he should haul in some more, I replied that we should only take as much as he could eat since I like conch fritters okay but eating a whole plateful of the stuff isn't appealing to me. He took a look at the four we had and decided two of them would get a governor's stay of execution. He put the two smaller ones back and the four of us (including Feisty, I'm afraid) headed back to the boat.

Since it was still early I thought we should have conch for lunch and so Kevin got crackin'. Literally. We had both seen it done, in fact in Grand Bahama the Conch Salad guy had the thing cracked and cleaned in about thirty seconds. And Kevin also had a book showing him how to crack and clean them in theory, but in practice it took a little longer. He started on the first one at 11:30 and it took an hour to extract, clean, and pound the meat to tenderize it. The second one went faster. Meanwhile, I have never cooked this stuff before so I just dipped it in egg and a flour/breadcrumb mixture. That was the easy part. But I was in completely foreign territory as far as telling whether or not it was under- or over-cooked. I just gave it my best guess and within a few minutes we had a whole plate of the stuff. Kevin thought it was pretty good; I took a bite and decided that while the breading was yummy the rubbery texture was too much for me. So I had PB&J instead. But I promised him that he can have it for dinner whenever he wants; he has to do all the hard work anyway and the cooking part is easy and I don't mind it. As long as he doesn't mind that I cook something else for myself.

Lee Stocking Island - Amanda Scissorhands

We woke up again this morning before dawn, just to see if we could sneak out into the Sound, but the wind was much stronger than we wanted it to be. The weather report says it should let up a little Sunday-Tuesday, but of course now that I've typed those words I may have jinxed it. Time will tell. In the meantime, boredom has officially set in. I spent the morning making up two batches of pizza dough so that we can find a use for all the mozzarella. (Funny that I used to have Papa John's on speed dial, my culinary skills have improved considerably). Kevin puttered around a bit, doing a much-needed re-organization of his toolboxes. I was glad, since it seemed like every time I ran to get him a tool I had to dig and always managed to grab a hacksaw by the wrong end. Later we watched a small tanker come through the anchorage just a few feet behind our boat. Our mouths were agape because the charted depths here are only 5-6 feet or so at low water. But he came right on through and docked at the research park for a while before continuing on.

And then one of us (okay, me) got a crazy idea. We knew it would have to happen sooner or later, but it was high time Kevin got a haircut. I'll admit it, we were unprepared. We have only two pairs of scissors on the boat -- kitchen and all-purpose. Both pairs have seen better days. The kitchen pair only cuts with the very tips of the pointy ends while the all-purpose is dull except at the hinge right near the handles. Neither pair should ever be used for personal grooming, but Kevin is a trusting soul. I had hopes of snip-snipping the tips of the hair just like the pros do, but after the first few snips of the bangs I was cackling uncontrollably since the scissors would not cut unless I held the hair taut and hacked away! I had visions of sitting across the dinner table from Dumb and Dumber (remember Jim Carrey's haircut?) for the next month or so. And I can only imagine the thoughts running through poor Kevin's head. But my laughter subsided and I was able to press on, with Kevin encouraging me to "just do your best" every time I said "oops". In the end it didn't turn out too bad, it's not Super Cuts quality but it will do for now and anyway Kevin usually wears a baseball cap. We had the foresight to take before and after shots which we'll post once we get to Georgetown. So, you ask: will I be letting Kevin have a turn with the scissors anytime soon? Not on your life, that's what ponytail holders are made for.

Lee Stocking Island - Shortening the To Do List

So this morning (after waking up before dawn, deciding not to leave, and going back to bed) the natives got a little restless. With the northeasterly winds blowing hard its too chilly to feel much like snorkeling or even laying out in the sun. So instead Kevin decided to fix a few minor things that have been bothering us for a while. A rattle coming from the SSB antenna was silenced with electrical tape and some tightened screws. A broken jib hank (one of the things that holds the front sail onto the forestay) that we broke on our sea trial (over a year ago) was finally sewn back together. And the jib lazy jack (which catches the headsail as it is lowered) was re-installed. So cross three things off the to-do list. Busy day.

We are so eager to get to Georgetown at this point. It is so close and yet so far; the weather forecast says the winds will be steady and strong out of the east for the next few days. And so we wait. We are looking forward to doing a little serious reprovisioning when we get there, as there is no store where we are. When we provisioned at Sam's Club we made some smart decisions and some questionable ones. For example, we looked in the freezer and discovered that we had no less than seven pounds of mozzarella cheese in there. I guess we thought we'd eat a lot more pizza. Also, since we didn't buy enough lunchmeat we've been having a lot of PB&J lunches (nothing wrong with eating like a four-year-old). Of course our freezer reconnaissance turned up a bag of frozen sliced roast beef we had forgotten about, so on a positive note we'll be eating deli-style for the rest of the week. We do have a sliver of fresh tomato left; all other fresh produce that we bought back in in Staniel Cay is long gone. As of today we are out of all snack foods except Pringles and Club crackers. We have plenty of Rice-a-Roni but no plain rice; lots of ground beef but only a small amount of chicken. Guess we thought we'd be eating more fish! However we were smart enough to lay in a tidy supply of Freezer Pops, which are great when it's hot outside but not so much when it's cold like it has been. And of course we overprovisioned for Boris -- he's all set with two and a half bags of cat food and plenty of litter. Lucky cat. So anyway, the sooner we can get to town the sooner we can restock. Anyone know some good recipes using lots of mozzarella?

Lee Stocking Island - Ready, Set, Wait!

So we have been here at Lee Stocking since Saturday. Georgetown is within sight (the other night we watched a fireworks display, which from 20 miles away looked verrry tiny). The route we have been taking so far has mostly had us going southward on the Exuma Banks side, which is in the lee side (protected from the wind) of the islands. Unfortunately from here the best route to Georgetown involves going out to the Exuma Sound side which is on the side of the islands where the wind is coming from (east). Because there is a lot of fetch (open water where waves can build up) on that side, we have been waiting for a weather window where the winds come from a direction other than East or South, which is the way we want to go. We thought today might be the day, which is why I am writing this before 6am on a Thursday morning. Usually the winds are lighter in the early morning, but today for some reason they have decided to kick up to 18 knots before sunrise. Not a good sign. So Captain Kevin called it a "no go" and it looks like we are going to wait some more here since we aren't in any hurry. As for me, I am going back to bed. 5:15 is too early to wake up.

Lee Stocking Island - Inherit the Wind

Well the northerly winds have been pretty strong for the past few days, bringing with them some cooler weather. Today Kevin decided to take a second look at our broken wind generator (windmill-looking-thingy) and see if we couldn't do something about it to get some power out of it. He had already looked at all the electrical connections, no problem there. And he had already sent the generator (without the blades) back to the company for analysis and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. But it had gotten a little banged up back in the Berry Islands and was now way out of whack and wouldn't generate much of anything. So Kevin took it down and took the whole thing apart to try to see if maybe balancing it could help. Balancing the blades is kind of like balancing a new ceiling fan only more complicated. Our wind generator only has two blades but we discovered that one was out of alignment by 1/4 inch, which is probably why the thing made such an awful racket when it was spinning. So after a couple hours of undoing bolts, following the steps in the manual, and re-bolting everything together, the blades were a lot closer in alignment, probably as close as we can get them. Kevin put the whole thing back together and back up on top of the bimini and we both held our breath and crossed our fingers. Success! (Well, sort of.) The blades spun evenly and quietly so that was great but when we checked we were still only getting about 5 amps in 15 knots of wind (we are supposed to get 10 amps). But at least we are now able to trickle-charge the batteries when the wind blows at night and we get the bulk of our charge out of the solar cells during the day.

Also for anyone wondering, we have a resolution to the Cay vs. Island debate. You'd think I might have known, since in college I took the "hard" sciences: astronomy and geology. Only I was super lazy and took the HISTORY of Geology 102 course instead of the Intro 101 course where you learn all this stuff; I can't tell the difference between silicates and silicone, mica and formica. But luckily Dar looked it up online and sent us this from the encyclopedia:
Islands: Oceanic islands can result from volcanic islands rising above the water, esp on or near a mid-ocean ridge. Oceanic islands may also be the emergent tips of volcanoes formed by hotspots.
Cays: Formed when tidal action, wind and sea birds deposit, over a long period of time, coral debris and sand onto reef flats.
So our guess is that "Lee Stocking Island" is a misnomer, since there has never been any volcanic activity in this area and there is no tectonic activity in this region. Plus the "island" is made of limestone with sandstone hills, which sounds more like the encyclopedia's description of "cay". Thus endeth the science lesson.

Lee Stocking Island -- Perry Institute

This morning we were idly watching other boats leave the anchorage when we saw one run aground. It was a falling tide and the boat was a monohull so throughout the morning we have watched as the boat has gone from nearly upright to laying almost on its side (at a 45 degree angle). The crew will have to wait until the tide rises again (in five or six hours) to be able to get going again. All the other boats in the area are happy to help but at this point there is nothing that can be done except to wait.

At 9am we made our way over to the Perry Institute for Marine Research for a tour of the facilities. The institute does all sorts of research on coral, lobster, aquaculture, and other marine life. It is supposed to be funded by the US Government, but this year apparently funds are short so not many projects are going on. The coral tank was interesting, our guide has been working on a project to grow coral specimens and so he was full of information about the different species, how they grow, and how they are impacted by changes in the environment. I both love and hate guided tours. I love hearing someone explain their life's work, but there is always some guy in the group who thinks he is on his own personal tour and keeps interrupting by peppering the guide with questions every two minutes. He's the type of guy where when the tour guide asks a question directed at children, such as "I have a question for our schoolkids: what gas do plants produce?" he (despite being more than sixty) shouts out the (incorrect) answer: "CO2!". The correct answer, which was then pointed out by an 11 year old girl, is "oxygen". Anyway despite Mr. Obnoxious it was a really good tour. My favorite part was when they showed us the hyperbaric chamber which is used to treat SCUBA divers with the bends. It is the only one in the Exuma Islands and has room for one to two people inside. Hopefully they never have to use it. Apparently they have a small two-man submarine as well but that was not included on the tour.

Btw, we did discover that the moorings here are well-made (screwed into the ground as opposed to a concrete block) and inspected annually. Our guide said he's heard all sorts of stories of moorings from Little Farmer's dragging, so I guess we were not the first.

Lee Stocking Island, Exuma Islands

Today we arrived at Lee Stocking Island. In case anyone is wondering, no we don't know why some are called "Cays" but others are called "Islands". We think it might have something to do with size but we can't find the answer anywhere in our guide books. We had a nice sail down here yesterday, the wind was out of the north (behind us) as we sailed south. Sailing downwind is probably the most comfortable point of sail for us, since the boat is gently carried forward by the waves instead of the waves slamming into it. The wind was light, 10-12 knots, which meant our average speed was only 4.7 knots, but we didn't care. It was the first time we had been under sail alone in a while, and it was nice to hear just the wind and the waves instead of the diesel engines for a change. Kevin fished for a bit, and even tried a weird trick we read about where you put WD-40 on the lure, but nothing bit. I just know somehow that the first fish he catches that's big enough to eat is going to be something huge to make up for all the empty hooks. When we got to the anchorage, there were several other boats, including "Beach Magic" (the French-Canadian family) that we met back in the Berry Islands). There is an oceanographic research center here and they provide free moorings. When we arrived, there was one empty mooring ball left but we have learned our lesson and opted instead to just use our own anchor.

Where we are:
Lat: N 23 46.179'
Long: W 76 06.327'

Little Farmers Cay - Meeting Mr. Right

Well we were glad that our mooring dragged last night so that we were able to get off of it and get ourselves anchored securely. A swift-moving cold front came through today with sustained 35 knot winds, dumping rain by the sheet on us for an hour. It was amazing, one minute we could see this gray mass of clouds moving towards us from the NW, then we were right in it and could barely see the shore due to the rain, and then within the hour it was over and the sun started coming out again. Our trusty anchor held solidly through it all.

The nice thing about the storm passing so quickly was that we were able to go ashore to Farmers Cay Yacht Club for their Friday Night Fish Fry. We had met the new manager, Kelly, earlier in the week. She looked to be in her early 30's and she's taking the place over from her parents who are retiring, and has been working for the past two months to get the place in shape. She was born here but lived in Nassau for a time, getting her degree in Marketing and working as a pharmaceutical rep before deciding to get out of the rat race and go back to Little Farmers for the slower pace. She has a very vibrant personality along with big dreams of expanding the place, and I'm sure success will come.

But back to the fish fry...we thought we would see a lot of other folks (both cruisers and locals) at the Club because dinner was relatively inexpensive ($12) and there were some great drink specials. But only one other guy showed up. Let's call him Mr. Right, since that's how he introduced himself to Kelly. Mr. Right was from New England, about 50 years old, and between jobs, although you could say his permanent occupation was a BS Artist. He was on a boat with two other guys, but they decided to stay on the boat while he dinghied over by himself. We quickly came to understand why. He was already inebriated before he arrived, but he proceeded to drink copious amounts of alcohol and flirt shamelessly with Kelly to the point of harassment. Kevin and I had just planned on showing up, having a drink, eating our dinner, and heading back to the boat, but I felt bad leaving her with only this guy for company. You could tell she didn't want us to leave either since she looked at our empty drinks then asked me pleadingly, "Would you two like another round? It's on the house...". Poor thing. So we decided to stay until the cavalry arrived; a boatload of locals with late reservations finally showed up at about 9:30 and we were free to go.

Little Farmers Cay -- What A Drag!

Back while we were in Nassau with wi-fi access Kevin downloaded a developers toolkit for his Pocket PC so that he could run the anchor alarm on the PDA. So in the evenings while I was banging my head over Su Doku puzzles (a new addiction thanks to my friend Kirstie), he was coding the software so that it would work on the Pocket PC. I joked that you can take the boy away from programming but you can't take the programming out of the boy -- I told him that I think he actually enjoys it now that he doesn't do it for a living. He looked at me and deadpanned "this will be the last thing I ever program. I can just walk away." Apparently Kevin is the Bobby Fischer of software development. He may disappear from the programming world but the legend of his genius will live on. Anyway he got the PDA version of the Anchor Alarm working so now we don't even have to get out of bed to check where we are in relation to our anchor.

So here in Farmer's Cay we have kept the anchor alarm on even though we were on a mooring. You know, just in case. Cuz' you ever know. However for the past two days the alarm has kept going off and we kept puzzling over why? We would say "Well the mooring is a massive concrete block, and it has maybe 20 feet of line attached, so there is no way we are 80 feet from the mooring...". We kept thinking the GPS was off by more than a few feet, and I even began to doubt Kevin's anchor alarm, thinking maybe there was a bug somewhere in the programming (sacrelige!). Last night the wind kicked up to 15-20 knots and the current was bubbling at a good pace. And although the anchor alarm kept chirping every once in a while, every time we got up to check on our mooring lines we were still firmly attached to the mooring.

Which is why I was shocked when Kevin gently woke me up this morning at 6 am to say "Okay, wake up, everything's okay, but I need your help". In the light of the rising sun we could see that yeah, we were still attached to the mooring, but the mooring itself (the massive concrete block part) had dragged. The anchor alarm, like Lassie, had been trying to tell us all along that Timmy was trapped in the well but we just didn't listen. Over the past three nights the mooring had gradually dragged some 100 feet from its original position! Luckily we were still in 8-9 feet of water, but we were awfully close to the rocky beach, so we started up the engines, cast off the mooring lines, and motored to the opposite side of the anchorage. There are moorings here, but we instead opted to use our own anchor, which has never dragged on us. Two lessons learned: 1. NEVER pay the full mooring fee in advance (we were paid up through tonight...Stupid, stupid!), and 2. ALWAYS trust Kevin's Anchor Alarm.

Farmer's Cay

Today we wandered around on shore for a bit at Farmer's Cay. The settlement here has 55 residents, and most of them are in some way descended from a freed slave named Chrisanna whose two sons bought the island outright from the English Crown and willed it to their descendants. We had lunch at Ocean Cabin (Terry and his wife also own the mooring we are on) and walked down to the Farmers Cay Yacht Club (home to one yacht) to have drinks. Afterwards we dinghied over to Great Guana Cay as we had read there was a large cave in one of the hills. We beached the dinghy and walked along the beach for a bit, spotting a huge eagle's nest with a mother eagle screeching at us to stay away. The trail to the cave was worn but not well marked, by the time we arrived at the cave we were both hot (why, why do we always forget to bring bottles of water?) and ready to get into the shade. Luckily the cave provided more than enough shade, it was 90 feet tall (deep?) and had a huge pool of clear water (if only we'd brought our snorkeling gear). Stalagtites and -mites were still being formed; we could hear the plink, plink of the water dripping constantly. In one spot someone had placed a bucket to catch the drips. But they must've put it there a long time ago because it was completely calcified inside and out and had long ago become a solid stone. Someone had left a plastic cup to drink water from the bucket and Kevin actually tried a taste. It's no different than the cisterns the locals use to catch the rainwater. The pool in the cave had some tiny shrimp swimming around, and along the shore were swarms of hermit crabs. Lord knows how they got there, since the cave was well inland and they would've had to scramble down a 50 foot drop to get into the cave. But now that they were inside I don't think they could get out as was evidenced by the fact that they were all too big for their shells. After resting a while we went back to the boat and had a quick swim to cool off. Kevin inspected our mooring with his snorkel. Basically they sank a huge concrete block (4'x4'x2') with a hole drilled in the middle. They ran a chain around that hole and attached a rope rode with a float that looks like a tetherball. The rope ends in a loop and this is what we tied our lines onto. Kevin said that the chain is a little worn but will still hold us. We wouldn't want to be attached to this thing in a hurricane, but since the weather is calm, it'll do.

Little Farmer's Cay - The Eagle Has Landed

Ugh! Last night neither of us got much sleep in our rolly anchorage at White Point. The waves were relentless, bobbing us up and down constantly. But the rocking wasn't what prevented us from sleeping, it was the incessant sloshing and slapping sounds of the waves hitting the hull. At about midnight I just gave up trying to sleep and read a book instead. So needless to say the first thing on the agenda for this morning was to move someplace else! We motored through the waves down to Farmer's Cay where we picked up a mooring ball ($10/night) and although there is a strong current that spins us back and forth 180 degrees, at least it is relatively flat and quiet. We haven't checked out the town yet, instead we took naps this afternoon since we were exhausted.

But now it is sundown and time for rum drinks. We are trying something new as a mixer -- Tang. Orange and Pineapple flavor. Yeah, I know, but it's not as bad as you'd think. We have looked in several small grocery stores for fruit punch Crystal Light to no avail. However when we saw the Tang we thought we'd give it a shot. If it's good enough for the astronauts it's good enough for us. At the very least we'll get our full dose of Vitamin C and other minerals. What's next? Anyone know a good concoction using Ovaltine?

Where we are:
Lat: N 23 57.936' (woo hoo, crossed another line of latitude!)
Long: W 76 19.118'

Black Point Settlement - The Garden of Eden

So Monday morning we decided to go ashore again to check out the rest of the town and visit Willie Rolle's sculpture garden. It was a little after 9 am and daily life in the settlement was in full swing -- one of the main industries here is straw work so we saw lots of women sitting in their front yards in the shade braiding straw. Everyone we saw along the way had a friendly "good morning" and a smile for us. Willie met up with us at his sculpture garden, which he calls "The Garden of Eden", and apparently we were the first tourists to arrive. It is tough to describe the garden without photos, we will load them when we can. But I will try to give you an idea. Willie goes into the bush here and sees shapes in the twisted dead wood that litters the forest floor. He brings these back to his front yard and puts them together to make sculptures from his imagination. There were probably more than 100 sculptures, ranging in size from 2 feet high to 7 feet, and Willie walked us through his interpretation of each. There was an eagle, a couple dolphins, a mermaid, a woman with one leg and no head, a scorpion, etc. With each one you had to use your imagination, if Willie wasn't there to explain it you probably would've just thought that it was a twisted piece of wood. It was kind of like looking at shapes in the clouds; some of his sculptures it was obvious what they were supposed to be once he told you while others were more of a stretch. We could "see" his vision for most of the pieces but some of them were a little more prone to interpretation. Kevin smirked that there were one too many "snakes" which he said wouldn't be too difficult to "sculpt" since long sticks of wood resemble snakes anyway. But here in the Bahamas I imagine they don't have a National Endowment of the Arts, and Willie's art (whether real art or just for the tourist crowd) is a unique diversion. So we "endowed" him with a small tip for showing us around, I imagine he makes much of his living this way.

The best part of the tour was when he took us to his backyard and showed us his vegetable and fruit garden, which was amazing. His house is small and set back from the road. It is brightly painted but has no running water inside. They have a spigot outside connected to a PVC pipe that runs along the road supplying water to all the residents. The house sits on a good-size plot of land, but you can't really call it land since the whole yard is a limestone rock littered with holes like a slice of swiss cheese. The holes might be a few inches in diameter all the way up to 10 feet wide and five feet deep. It is in these holes that enough soil and moisture collects so that things will grow. It's kind of like growing crops in moon craters. He had a little bit of everything: native plants like papaya, tamarind, guava, mango, banana, pigeon peas, and cassava root grew alongside carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, corn, okra, aloe, and even a cactus. Each plant eked out its living, most of them surviving without irrigation. In the smaller limestone craters only one or maybe two plants grew, while in the larger ones Willie would have one or two trees or several rows of different vegetable plants. I enjoyed it because he stopped at each plant told you what it was, what it was used for, and how to tell when it was ripe. So now I will know guava vs. papaya when I see it. The tour of the sculptures and the garden took two hours and by lunchtime we were back on the boat and off to White Point anchorage a few miles south.

Another Manta catamaran, "Paragon", decided to come with us down to White Point and we had them aboard for drinks at sunset. We've been kind of following each other since Staniel Cay. We gave them a tour of our boat and they noted the differences between their boat (a newer model) and ours. It is like seeing someone whose house has the same floorplan as yours -- everyone does something different with decor and color scheme to make it their own. We loaned them our SSB manual (they have one but no manual and they have a photocopier on board so they wanted to copy ours) and they brought us some fresh baked bread that they bought in Black Point. A pretty fair trade I would say. The anchorage here is extremely rolly though so I think we will just stay here one night and then retrieve our manual and head on further south.

Where we are:
Lat: N 24 01.574'
Long: W 76 21.648'

Great Guana Cay - Black Point Settlement

This morning we decided to move on. The wind was light so instead of traveling down the western side of the islands we headed east through Big Rock Cut to the deeper waters of Exuma Sound so that Kevin could get in some fishing. After two hours, two different lures, three different speeds and several attempts at varying the depth, we still caught nothing. We're not sure what the fish don't like, but we'll try again next time. We came back in through Dotham cut to the calm turquoise waters of the Exuma Bank and motored into the anchorage near Black Point Settlement.

Our main reason for coming here is that yesterday we heard an announcement on the radio about the local School Fair to be held on Saturday, with food and games. So we figured we'd check it out and we are so glad we did. Black Point is a very non-touristy place. There is no marina here and therefore no mega-yachts. The people of the town are friendly (their local store is called "Adderley's Friendly Store" to emphasize the point) and everyone greets you as you pass by on the street. When we arrived a little after noon, the "fair" was still being set up and the games weren't going yet. It was basically two small tents, one for games and one for food. The food tent was in operation and had quite a crowd with good reason -- the food was amazing and plentiful. For $9 we got more food than we'd had at dinner the previous night -- BBQ ribs, homemade macaroni and cheese, corn, and copious amounts of peas n' rice. We walked across the street to the school where we could eat inside in the shade.

The schoolkids were there, and they were all shyly laughing at the adults sitting in their kid-size desks and chairs eating lunch. The school teaches all the kids on the island, but we were in the building that housed the second through fourth grade. It was one room partitioned into two classrooms and decorated with artwork and typical classroom-type stuff. On the third/fourth grade side, it was cute to see posters about telling time and counting money, which were the same two topics my sister Jessica's third and fourth-graders were learning when I went to visit her classroom back in December.

Afterwards we were so hot and so stuffed that we didn't wait around for the games to be set up but instead headed back to the boat to take a swim and a siesta. Around 5pm we headed back into town because we saw that Scorpio Inn, the local bar, had internet access and we have been wanting to upload photos for ages. When we walked up we could hear the music pulsing from the DJ and people were thronging the street -- apparently the fair was winding down but the town was just getting started for their Saturday night. We ordered beers and the bartender Zhivago (what a great name) set us up on the internet. The past few times we have tried to load these photos we've had no luck with satellite internet, so we were pleased that the Scorpio computer was dial-up and crossed our fingers that the uploads would work. After 55 minutes, we had our photos uploaded (woohoo!) and had just 5 minutes to check our yahoo and gmail accounts, so anyone who has sent us emails there we will try to respond in the next couple of days. Anyway, if you want to have a look we have loaded a few photos starting with the Allen Cay Iguanas (the post was one of the last few days in February). Afterward we hung out for a bit at the bar and met a few of the locals (we were the only white people in the bar so we kind of stuck out as tourists). One of them, Willie Rolle, invited us to come around while we're here and have a look at his sculpture garden, which we may do tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after. It sure is nice having no schedule.

Where we are:
Lat: N 24 06.235'
Long: W 76 24.289'

Staniel Cay - St. Patrick's Day

You can tell we had lost track of the days since someone said "hey, there will be a happy hour at the marina on Friday -- wear green." And we were like, huh? Green? Why? And then we checked the calendar and sure enough it was St. Patrick's Day! So we went to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club wearing our only green shirts and met up with some new friends -- Larry & Tracy from "Soulmatie" and Don & Kim from "Paragon" (another Manta catamaran). They had drink specials and free appetizers which of course we took advantage of. The wings were pretty good, not Native New Yorker good (what DO they put in that sauce?), but satisfying nonetheless. And of course as a throwback to my college years I did order a green beer which was basically a bottle of Kalik with a drop of green food coloring. What do you expect? If they dyed a whole keg you know the locals would probably still be drinking green beer two weeks from now...

After that we all headed over to the big barbecue at Club Thunderball. Another family was added to our group -- Stacey, Patty, and Trisha who did not arrive by boat but instead flew their plane here all the way from Iowa (with a few stops of course). They are "cruising" the Bahamas in their own fashion, airstrip to airstrip. Well for dinner Chef David cooked up enough ribs, chicken, baked potato, salad, and corn on the cob for pretty much the whole island. We even spoke with some people from other islands who had made the trip to Staniel Cay just to have some bbq. I am amazed at all the expats who live here. If you looked around the room you'd mostly see Americans, many of them retirement age, who had all bought property here and built a house to live in either full or part-time. Of course the property may be inexpensive but the materials for the houses cost a pretty penny since every 2x4, nail, and roof shingle has to be shipped in here from somewhere else. But every person we talked to said that it was worth it to live in such a happy laid-back place with a tight-knit community and zero crime. They don't even have a police department here as far as I could tell.

Anyway, dinner was delicious (as is any dinner not cooked by me). Plus, someone else did the dishes so even if the meal hadn't been delicious I still wouldn't complain. Happy St. Patty's Day everyone!

Staniel Cay - Pink vs. Blue

Today we went into town to do some provisioning. There are three grocery stores, Isles General Store (which is way on the south side of the island) and two other stores in town called Pink Pearl market and Burke's Blue Market. We went into town and surprisingly the two markets are right next to each other, Pink Pearl is run by the people who own the shocking pink house while Burke's is run by the guy who owns the bright blue house. Deceptively simple. We scouted both out before buying anything and you would think that with two stores right next to each other they would have competitive prices. Not so. One had cheaper produce while the other had cheaper snacks. Butter was cheaper at the Blue store by more than a dollar but the Pink store was the only one that sold rum (at $30 a liter! Yikes!) Neither of the owners were real happy to see me writing down the prices for each item before committing to buy, we did get a glare or two. I guess a lot of shoppers must just choose their favorite color and buy all their goods from the same place, but since they were so close together we just bought stuff wherever it was cheapest. That way everyone wins, since both of them got a little bit of business and we got the best prices.

We were buying produce from the pink lady and I pointed at a piece of fruit and asked "how much are the mangoes". The lady just started laughing and said "well, first of all that's a papaya. These here are mangoes." And then she went on to point out "and that one there, that's a pineapple". Well that made us laugh since we knew at least what a pineapple looked like. She just looked at us like we were loonies, shook her head, rang us up (no cash register, no receipts), and told us to have a nice day.

Staniel Cay - Bond, James Bond

Well today was our 007-themed day. First we dinghied over to Staniel Cay to have lunch (hooray for meals not prepared by me!) at Club Thunderball. Yesterday we did a walkthrough of pretty much the entire town, you could consider it a pub crawl since we had beers at two of the three bars (hooray, beer!). As I mentioned in yesterday's post, it was a crowd of four including the bartender at Happy People, and when we had drinks at Club Thunderball it was just us, David the bartender, and the New York/New Jersey channel 2 local news (everyone here has satellite). Anyway we found out that Club Thunderball was open every day for lunch so we thought today we'd check it out. David was again behind the bar, and apparently it is a one-man show most of the week since he fills all the roles of bouncer, bartender, waiter, and chef. Today was busier than yesterday as there was another couple having drinks and a large family group also having lunch. When we asked for a menu, David said there was no paper menu but the choices were hamburger or fish fingers. Both of us chose burgers with fries. Funny thing was a few minutes later we overheard the other couple asking for munchies like chips or something, and David said "well, I can make you some eggrolls". ???!!! And even though David gave the family group the same two choices we got, the dad was kind of pushy and managed to finagle some conch fritters and conch burgers. So I guess when there is no set menu you can just ask the chef "well, whattaya got back there?". I have to say that chef David made some fabulous burgers. He apologized for not having hamburger buns but he served them on toasted homemade bread (a la Sonic) and it was delicious.

After waiting a half hour after eating (we are rule-followers!) we headed over to the main attraction and the reason for the name "Club Thunderball" -- Thunderball Cave. The cave was used as a location in the James Bond movie "Thunderball" (those of you who've seen the film will probably remember it). It is a small island with a limestone cavern that you can get to by swimming through one of several passages. At low tide, which is when we went, you have plenty of clearance (18 inches) to swim right in. And unlike the other day when we tried to go to Rocky Dundas, today was a perfect day with no waves or wind, so we both snorkeled in without worrying about hitting our heads on the rock ceiling. I was amazed because I expected it to just be a little cave, but the thing was huge and was more like a natural cathedral. The main chamber was 20 feet high with several holes ("skylights") in the ceiling directly above the pool. The water below was ablaze with color and swarming with fish. The skylights sent beams of light down through the water to highlight all the brightly colored coral and reef fish. There were maybe five different passages into the cave, some were easier to get through than others (two of them you had to dive underwater and hold your breath -- I let Kevin explore those on his own). Other people had brought food (frozen peas and corn or cereal) to feed the fish, but really you didn't need it since the fish would flock right around you without hesitation. It is the best snorkeling we have seen on this trip and was definitely a highlight of the day.

To top it all off, tonight we were planning to watch "Thunderball" on DVD just to make it a Bond trifecta (Bond lunch, Bond snorkeling, Bond movie). But when we looked in our stack of DVD's I realized that I USED to have Thunderball on VHS, and we gave away all our videotapes since they took up too much room! I've got "Dr. No", "From Russia With Love", or "Goldfinger", but sadly no "Thunderball". It's a shame since we were so looking forward to seeing the cave. I will make it up by letting Kevin suffer through my best (worst) Sean Connery impression. "Bond, Jamesh Bond"..."shaken not shtirred"...you know the drill.