Now This is More Like it ...

We’re starting to feel like we’re on vacation now – most boat parts are working, the cleaning is done, and we celebrated Christmas on the beach with a pot-luck lunch produced by about 150 sailors. Unfortunately all the work of the last two weeks has taken its toll on Jeff, who had to spend most of Christmas day in bed, resting.

Yesterday, I went to the beach, while Jeff puttered on the boat. I started with a yoga class on the sand – amazing to lie there listening to the surf and staring up at the blue sky and the Casuera trees, swaying in the wind. That was followed by some watercolour painting and a fresh conch salad for lunch. Then I took a ukulele class with fellow sailors, taught by one of us – such fun! Back to the big boat for tea and a late afternoon snooze, followed by a wonderful bar-b-que dinner (after three seasons, our bar-b-que finally works again). It doesn’t get much better than this!

It looks like we won’t be sailing for a few days, as our autopilot needs attention, and one of our fellow sailors offered to come by to consult today. He used to work for the company that makes the unit, so he just might know what he’s doing! Meanwhile, we’ll continue to enjoy this beautiful harbour and all the “adult Summer camp” activities with our fellow cruisers. Someday soon, I hope, we’ll be moving on North to Spanish Wells to get our boat bottom cleaned. Then we'll have some sailing adventures to report :).

A Day in the Life (written yesterday)

It’s not all sailing and sunsets … here’s what a typical once-a-week visit to George Town looks like:

10:00 am, after breakfast and listening to the morning sailor’s net, we board our trusty dinghy and set motor for town, in the pouring rain. Ten minutes later, and thoroughly soaked, Jeff fills four large water jugs with fresh reverse osmosis water, while I drop the garbage bags at the little truck left for that purpose, and drag my rolling box filled with laundry to Lee’s laundromat.

As I finish loading the machines, Jeff picks me up and we head to the immigration office to extend our visas for our full visit (unfortunately, as it turns out, a month too early ☹).

I head back to the laundromat to put the clothes into the dryer, then off to shop for groceries, while Jeff takes the first load of water back to Sea Change, and starts filling the tanks.

Then Jeff meets me at the dinghy dock, where I pass many bags of groceries to him, which he ferries back to Sea Change, along with yet another batch of filled water jugs, and unloads it all. I head back to the laundromat to fold the now dry laundry, while Jeff makes a third trip to fill water jugs, and picks up the clean laundry to take back to the boat.

I take a break and get my nails done for the Christmas party tomorrow. Meanwhile, Jeff buys lobster and wine for our anniversary celebration tonight, and then flakes out on the boat, waiting for my call to be picked up. We head back Sea Change, weigh anchor and high-tail it to our new anchorage at Volleyball beach, where there’s a Christmas sing-along in progress.

After stowing all the groceries and clean laundry, the evening is spent in celebrating our 36^th anniversary, the third night of Chanukah, and Christmas eve – what a day!

Rainy Daze at the "Cottage"

We’re going to need a lot of drying out, if the sun ever appears again! Day after day of rain – today quite heavy – and we’re occupying ourselves with indoor jobs (cozy, actually). It looks like cleaning the bilge might fall to me, while Jeff is going to brave the deep blue to clean the underside of the boat. He won’t notice the rain down there 😊.

We have been snatching between-rainstorm moments for some fun – yesterday we dinghied to our favourite Volleyball Beach for a “kosher” pig roast lunch and feeding the sting rays who come up to us like pet cats (they know which side their conch guts are buttered on). Two days ago we hiked over the hill to the gorgeous ocean beach, with its miles of empty, powdery sand and dramatically crashing waves. We never tire of this sight.

Meanwhile, indoors, I’m practicing my uke and choir music, baking, making Chanukah latkes, painting (sample below), writing blog posts, reading, etc. etc. Jeff has a never-ending list of boat jobs he works on when he’s not resting.

Tomorrow we’ll head back to George Town, now that the wind has calmed, to re-provision and prepare for the upcoming celebrations – Chanukah (as of last night), our 36^th anniversary (tomorrow night) and a Christmas day pot-luck on the beach, weather permitting. It could be worse …. Happy holidays, everyone – whatever you’re celebrating in this season of lights.

The Adventure Begins … Sort of (written yesterday)

Well – we’re back in the hurricane hole (where the boat lives), having spent the last few days getting Sea Change in ship shape. Still lots to do, but we’re almost ready to roll.

Wednesday and yesterday we docked at George Town for fuel, water, provisions, laundry, etc., and then headed over to “Chat ‘n Chill”, on our favourite beach, for a ukulele lesson for Marilyn (great!). But now the wind has whipped up to 28 knots (a lot), and we decided to high-tail it back to the Hurricane hole for safety and so that Jeff can scrape the algae off the hull before we sail away.

Since Christmas is next week, we’ll stay on this Island and join about 150 people from the sailing community in a beach pot-luck lunch on Christmas day. Then we’ll be ready to head to points North (weather permitting of course).

Meanwhile, we just heard a desperate plea from one of our neighbors here, who discovered when he returned to his boat this season, that it had been hit by lightening while he was gone. All of his electricals are kaput, including refrigeration. So he, his daughter and her boyfriend are eating out of cans. Of course, we invited them to dinner – so I’ve just spent the afternoon cooking a ham curry, pasta, broccoli, a salad and poached pears for dessert. That along with our favorite Bahama Mama drink (two parts fruit juice to one part rum) and some red wine should make for a nice dinner. They will be here in an hour, so got to go – I’ll write again soon.

A Soggy Start

A Soggy Start

We made it! Up at 6:00 am last Saturday to catch a 10:30 plane that was an hour delayed for de-icing. We arrived in George Town with two of our four checked items – cardboard boxes with boat parts and supplies – soaked and falling apart, as they had been left in the snow and rain before being loaded onto the plane.

But hey – we’re here! The sun is shining in an unbelievably blue sky, the water is calm, and we’ve dug our way out of the soaked cardboard chaos. Our first minor misadventure occurred as Jeff was filling the tanks with water jugs. The dinghy escaped and was halfway across the bay when we noticed. My captain jumped into the water, right next to a huge sting ray (gorgeous!!) and swam to the boat. With no small effort he managed to climb aboard (we usually use a swim ladder), and hurried back with the escapee 😊.

Now we’re having breakfast, and relaxing into the beauty of this place, before we continue the hard work of rust removal, bottom cleaning, rigging the boat with canvas and sails and organizing the mess below. And two additional challenges – the fridge isn’t keeping our food cold enough, and the septic system has a leak. ☹. It’ll all be sorted soon – and we might even make time for a hike today – all good.

Time to pack up to leave

This will probably be my last post for this trip – time to pack up the boat for our return to Toronto. It feels bittersweet – we hate leaving this beautiful place, but we’re very ready for the return to our family, friends, home and Toronto activities after 13 weeks away! And there’s lots to look forward to apart from that – a family ski trip to Tremblant, including meeting our new great-niece, a wedding in Vancouver, some work with Schulich and of, course, our Summer sojourn in New Brunswick. Tough life ... J.

This past week has been low-key – a wonderful few days in Red Shanks, exploring new places in the Bay with our dinghy, walking on the beach and eating dinner in the cockpit under beautiful sunsets, now that the sun is setting later.

Yesterday was a highlight – we took a trip to explore the Exuma Foundation – set up to research permaculture and educate people about the many species of plant life on the Island. It also has a bee-keeping operation, to which we were introduced, surrounded by busy bees flying in and out of their hive! Our very knowledgeable 16-year-old local guide stood among them – fearless! We tasted the fresh honey from the honeycomb, and bought small jars as souvenirs. We also were offered cold lemongrass tea at the end, and I took some lemongrass back to the boat to make my own – delicious.

The only down side was that both Jeff and I ended the day with a touch of heat stroke from too much sun and no wind to cool us off yesterday. As a result, not much was accomplished towards packing – but today we really start.

So this is “good-bye” for this year – I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts. I’ll look forward to seeing many of you back home in a week.

Gunkholing in the Southern Harbour (written yesterday)

After a day of laundry, filling with water and provisioning, we decided our challenging 5-hour trip on the Bahama Sound last Saturday was enough wild adventure for now.

So we’re giving up on crossing the Sound to the out Islands this year, and instead will be spending our last week before packing up “gunkholing” on this side of the Sound (puttering from bay to bay).

Yesterday, we explored a new place, called Moriah Cay – a gorgeous little unprotected bay about 1.5 hours from George Town. The air and water were still for a change – so we swam off the boat, and dinghied around the Cay, taking pictures of the beautiful deserted beaches and craggy coral shoreline.

But today the wind blew up again, and the sky clouded and threatened a storm. Moriah’s not a good place to be in a rough sea, so we weighed anchor at 9:30 am, and made a dash for Red Shanks – about a half hour away. Not a minute too soon – the rain came down in sheets just after we anchored – very glad to be here. So it was a rainy day at the “cottage” – Jeff did all kinds of small boat projects, and I worked on Schulich stuff, baked brownies and cooked butter parmesan chicken wings for dinner. Jeff said they were the best he’d ever had J.