All Good Things Must Come to an End

It’s hard to believe that 2.5 months have gone by since we launched Sea Change in Titusville, Florida. It’s been quite a trip!

The last two days in George Town have been recuperation time, and an opportunity to enjoy the sailing regatta which began two days before our arrival here. We reconnected with friends from The Land and Sea Park – Georgie, Larry and their 22-year-old daughter Alysha on Cabernet – here on Exuma for the first time.

Yesterday, I attended the variety show, which attracts talent from both the sailing and the local community – amazingly good performances (especially the locals!). I tried my hand in a conch-blowing contest – didn’t win but felt good about the effort. The winner blew his conch for 38 seconds – that’s a lot of hot air!!

Today, I took the Cabernet crew on their first hike up Monument Hill, and down to the dramatic crashing waves on the ocean beach below. There we had a picnic lunch, sheltered from the howling wind by huge rock formations. It's always fun to show people around what feels like our other home. Jeff chose to stay aboard and rest.

A visit to “Chat and Chill” on Stocking Island for their weekly pig roast on the beach ended the day today. Tomorrow we begin to close up the boat for another year – so this will likely be my last post for this trip. It’s been quite a ride – I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. Until next year …

Happy Birthday, Captain Jeff

We celebrated my captain’s 71^st birthday all day yesterday. It began with a French toast breakfast, and gift and card opening.

Then we weighed anchor and spent 4 lovely hours on the ocean side of the Cays, on mirror-smooth blue water, travelling to Jeff’s favourite anchorage – Rat Cay (no rats involved!). He spliced mooring lines and I waxed the cockpit while we motored along at 6 knots – no wind at all. Very relaxing…

We arrived at about 1:00 pm, had lunch, naps and swims in the clearest turquoise water I’ve ever experienced – we could see bottom 20 feet down!

A dinner of yesterday’s freshly caught lobster, with white wine and home-made chocolate cake by candlelight, in the cockpit, with the full moon sparkling on the water, and a “Happy Birthday” call with our grandchildren ended a perfect day. Jeff said it was one of his best birthdays yet.

2^nd installment – Lost at Sea

While yesterday was for relaxing, today was all adventure! It started with a dinghy trip to the town of Barreterre, 1 mile across the water. This town is the last stop on Great Exuma –a tiny village with one convenience store, a fishing dock and a few colourful houses. We actually found a bit of food in the convenience store, and happily dinghied back to the boat – or so we thought! An hour later, we were still circling around looking for our lost boat … turns out we had gone too far South, and the shoreline all looks the same. It didn’t take long to find our way back, but did make us a little nervous for a while!

Next came lunch, and then another dinghy trip to where knew there was a good snorkeling reef, and maybe some lobster to catch. We anchored there, but the waves were huge – crashing over the rocks and tossing our little boat to and fro. Nope – that wasn’t going to work – so we hightailed it back to our safe harbor, and swam around in our snorkel gear for a while, just because we had it on.

Enough adventures for one day – back to Sea Change to watch the sun set and relax over a pasta dinner. We’ll try again in George Town – two stops away.