Bahamas at last!!!!

 On Monday, June 3rd we crossed the Gulfstream into the Bahamas. We always go into Gun Cay and drop the anchor on our first night. Theres good holding, a pretty beach and a spectacular view. Its a wonderful place to chill out after making the LONG crossing!! No matter how many times I come over, I am still amazed at the clarity of the water. It makes 15 to 20 feet look like a couple of inches. Ray always dives the anchor which I think is just an excuse to get into the water before anyone else. This year, he had Andy to "help" him out!

Angie and I laughed as the two of them swam around like little boys.... :)  Ray found a sea biscuit that was empty of its resident, so I added it to my seashell collection.

 After we cleaned up the boat and Ray and Andy showered off the saltwater, we headed over to the "Hannah B"  for dinner!! Our engine wouldnt start, so Ray rowed us over in the dinghy. What a sight we were!!!  We had an enjoyable evening with our friends, Wes and Terri, then back to the boat for a good nights sleep!!!    
The next day, we pulled up the anchor and headed into one of my favorite towns in the Bahamas, Bimini!! The people are friendly, the dockage is cheap and the peas and rice are to die for!!!!! We usually stay at Weech's however, Bimini Blue Water Marina has RO water and we needed to fill our tanks. The marina is nice and even has a pool!!! We hiked the island and stopped in at a local restaurant on top of the hill called CJ's. Restaurant may be a strong word, but you can get food and drinks and watch them cook it!!

Then you have to go outside and sit at a picnic table. It decided to pour down rain right as we sat down to eat!! We ran up under the roof overhang and waited out the downpour, then took our seats back and chowed down on conch fritters and fries. Ray and Angie ate conch but I'm not a fan of chewy snails unless you batter and deep fry the suckers!!  The view over the Bahama Banks is wonderful. The waves were crashing a little too hard for any swimming though. After we finished our food, we walked along the water and found a freighter that had washed up on the beach. Ray and I saw it back in 2007 and the hull was rusted but still together. This time, the whole top had caved in and sand had almost covered the bottom half.

Time waits for no one or nothing!!  Anytime you leave the USA, culture shock sets in whether a little or a lot. The first thing that I have to get used to is the "hurry up and wait" mentality.  No one is in a hurry to serve, move, go or bring anything!! The internet, if you have it, takes so long to load a page that its really not even worth the effort!! Phones dont work unless you want to help send Verizons CEO's children to Harvard......  Im not complaining, we are on vacation, but it takes time to get used to the island time.... Pretty soon, however, you dont know what time it is, what day it is, or what month it is!! We started eating when we were hungry, sleeping when we were tired and moving when we felt like it!! Not reall;y a bad way to live!  Another thing that the islands do not have is preservatives. I cannot believe how quickly bread molds and crackers go stale. It kind of makes me wary of eating anything when I get back home! My bagels from the states were still "fresh" after three weeks but the Bahamian bread was molding after 8 days!! Irony, we like our food to wait around and our people to hurry up!!! No wonder we all get sick!!!

 A note also on the economic state of Bimini. The little restaurants that are locally owned, struggle even though their food is AMAZING!! The consensus is that  Americans are coming over to the Mega resorts and eating, drinking and playing there. They hardly set foot into the rest of the island. They eat Americanized food and shop in duty free stores. It is such a shame because the island is so beautiful, the people so friendly and the need for tourism so great!! I like the little marinas, the restaurants in the back porch of someone's house and the straw market gifts.

We stayed in Bimini for two days and decided it was time to make the LONG crossing over the banks to the Berry Islands. I dread the crossing because it is long and monotonous. To add to my dismay, the winds picked up to 15 to 20 knots out of the east..... the way we are going.... of course!!!  We decide, well captains Ray and Wes decide and I go along with it cause well, I really dont have a say... that we will start out and drop the anchor in the middle of the banks... without land anywhere.... so there's no land around.... see none, no land, nothing!!! Did I mention this is also the route used by HUGE freighters like the one beached in Bimini who run on autopilot with no one watching out for little 41 foot sailboats anchored out with no land around???? yeah!!!!  Well here we go.... dock lines are off, common sense obviously as well..... hopefully there will be a blog in the future about this crazy trip!! If not, you all know, the rest of the story!!!!!!  

                     

Keys Bound

We were all up early, listening to the Everglades come alive with birds squalling and mosquitoes calling, it was an easy decision to pull the hook and head NuTrix south for the Keys. The weather was actually not so bad or we were just so used to gale force winds and heavy seas that anything less seemed calm?...!! We put on the “island playlist”, cranked the tunes up and jammed to Marley and Buffet across the shallow waters of the Gulf. We couldn’t put out any sails because of the degree of wind so we motored all the way. Ray calls it using the iron jib…..

  Try as we might, we could not catch a fish… SOOOO we had the next best thing… canned chicken. Okay, maybe not the next best thing but when you’ve been on a 41 foot boat with four people for five days, most anything tastes good! A little mayo, some tomato, lettuce,  pepper, chopped onion and voila…. chicken salad on bread! Gourmet, boating style!! I should start my own Food Network show…  The trip down took six hours. When we were approaching Yachtsman’s Channel, which most of the sailing guides warn about, I went up on the bow to watch. I’m not sure whats so scary about it other than its REALLY shallow on either side of the marker, but that’s why they have markers… right???? I guess I also have a very experienced captain because when he came through the first time back in 2007, he did it without a GPS. NuTrix draws 4 and a half and we had no problem. The anchorage on the charts goes by the name of Jewfish Hole? I think it’s named after the fish, which is now called a Goliath grouper. It lies just off the shore of the KOA campground and Seabird Marina. The water is good and the holding is also USUALLY good. After we set the anchor, Wes, on our buddy boat, Hannah B, took us to shore for some ice. Our dinghy engine decided that it did not want to start after being stowed for five days. Our ice was all gone, so off to shore we went, Angie, Terri and myself with our dinghy captain, Wes. We came along side of the cement sea walls of the campgrounds and climbed out with much grace and finesse…..well, no one fell overboard anyway!! As we came around the corner through a grove of palm trees, we were given our first introduction to “island time”…. the ship’s store closed at THREE OCLOCK!!! Seriously??? As we turned to trudge back empty handed, thoughts of hot drinks steamed through our minds but then our disappointment quickly turned to amazement. Low and behold, an ice dispensing machine!! Angie put in her debit card before we read the directions. It would not give her a credit so we had to get 8 bags of ice. SMALL bags of ice that we had to hold under the dispenser when the ice cubes shot out with much force!! Eight bags of ice for 20 bucks!!! Hello “island style”…

 Anyway, we had LOTS of cold drinks!! Back aboard NuTrix, we offered Wes and Terri to join us for burgers on the grill along with my pasta salad. While chowing down, Ray noticed that the Hannah B was a little further behind us than she had previously been. Remember the USUAL good holding!!! She was dragging a little, so Wes and Ray jumped in the dinghy to reset the anchor. Crisis diverted….. sort of….!  Later, after the burgers were consumed, pasta was gone and we were all enjoying a quiet evening, I went below to change our music and straighten up the galley. I heard a weird noise so I yelled to Ray to come and listen. Well when he got below, stairs were pulled off quickly and the engine room door was quickly removed. Our bilge pump was running non-stop but water was still coming into our boat!! This was NOT a good thing… We pumped and pumped but could still not figure out where the water was coming from but we knew it was salty… again… not good! Wes got his pump from Hannah B, but it was too big to fit down into our bilge. “Well at least you won’t sink”, Wes said….. um okay??? I must mention that we had previsioned for two months and when we got into anchorage found out that our front water tanks were empty. They hold 90 gallons of water. This all translated into WAY too much weight in our stern. I know the feeling!! Anyway, our bilge pump line was under water, so every time it tried to empty water out, more water came back in! Wes tacked it up higher, while totally upside down in the back storage compartment! Those Key West boys…..!!! When crisis number 2 was completed, we all just wanted to go to sleep and get to a dock!!

We woke the next morning as the sun was coming over the water. It was so nice to see blue skies that the night before and all of its drama was forgotten. Andy made us all coffee and we sat in the cockpit and planned our journey up to the Postcard Resort and Marina in Islamorada. Ray and I had been there twice before and didn’t really want to go back. In 2010, it was a nasty, over-priced marina with LOTS of… excuse my hoity-toity opinion…. Riffraff!!! They drank and littered and caused an indescribable mess in the marina bathrooms! Unfortunately, there are not many marinas that cater to sailboats that draw over 4 feet, so we were caught between a reef and a shallow place!!  Ray decided that we would give them a try because we heard via the VHF that it had changed hands and they were trying to make it a better family friendly resort. We were so pleased and surprised that they have indeed done just that! It’s still very expensive for a summer-time rate, but we paid it anyway! We also rented a car so that we could do laundry and get some provisions that had run low with our two extra days in the Everglades. Ray and Andy filled the water tanks and then we all went to find the coin laundry. After filling the washers, Angie and I decided to throw fate into the wind and walk down US 1 in search of food and maybe a pedicure. No nail place but we did find a wonderful Greek restaurant with excellent food! We sat down and munched, talked and enjoyed a lazy afternoon. We took Ray and Andy back some food and all sat and watched our laundry tumble dry…. I couldn’t understand the Spanish soaps on TV…?? When all was dried and folded we took a long drive up to Tavenier to the Winn-Dixie… I know, I know… hold your excitement down!! We also hit the Family Dollar looking for a fly swatter. No one in the Keys has a fly swatter??? Though the Keys are not hurting for flys!! We packed that little car until its stern was dragging and headed back to the boat. Bags were unloaded and I don’t even know if we have found all the things we stored? At last it was time for a dinner out! Driving back towards Islamorada we passed the Shrimp Shack and Ray turned around so we could give it a try. It was so worth it! The closed at nine and we got there at 8:45 but they insisted that we come in anyway. The fish was so fresh and so yummy!! It surely did not die in vain and my inability to breath was so worth it too…haha. If you ever get to Islamorada, make sure you put it on a “must eat here” list!

We were supposed to be off the dock by 11:00 because a boat club had rented the marina for a poker run. However, the entrance at mean low water is only four foot and low tide was at noon….soooooooooo… we stayed and had lunch at the tiki bar. To our delight, some Key West friends were on their way up to Miami and stopped in for a drink. We had a really nice afternoon, but the dockmaster kept calling to tell us we needed to GO…. Jeez…. now I think we were considered the riffraff??? We said our good-byes and pulled off the dock toward Rodriquez Key. We had a nice run up the Keys, but again we could not sail with the east wind. The water was still clear and so pretty and soon we came up on our final anchorage in the States. We dropped the hook and ate a dinner of appetizers and sandwiches. Yummm…  Many more sailboats came in and by morning there were about six. It made for a very pretty picture, but I was too worried about the picture on the GPS to think about snapping any with the camera. A HUGE storm was out over the Atlantic and seemed to be stretched all the way over to the Bimini Islands. The weather report stated that the winds would be out of the E to SE and only 5 to 10 knots, but I could see the weather and I’ve been in the middle of 40 knots of calm winds and flat seas more than once on NuTrix! I truly was afraid, but Terri kept telling me to trust our captains and frankly it gets old being the ONLY cautious one aboard, so I figured what the heck… if it was bad and we didn’t die, it would make a great story for some sailing magazine, so off we went. I did take my rescue remedy, pray and text my mom, but by goodness I still went. Anyway, if anything is gonna happen, its gonna happen out there… right???

The 10,000 adventures continue......

On Monday night, after an entire day of beating into the 33 knots of wind and 4 to 6 foot seas, we pointed NuTrix toward the Everglades and Indian Key island. The trip that should have taken 10 hours, stretched into 13!! Darkness is SOOOO different when civilization is far away and the only light are the star and the waning moon. Ray had his eyes glued to the GPS and I was on the bow trying to see anything through the veil of  salty darkness that was all around us! I could just barely make out the islands in the distance by the moon light. All of the sudden, I saw what looked like an enormous tree just off of our port bow. I screamed, "Ray turn, turn, turn!!" He was so calm and asked why.... "We're going to run aground. Oh God theres a tree!" Ray told me to hit it with the spotlight so I grabbed it and shone the light to show him as I braced for the sudden stop!! My tree turned out to be an unlit green "flashing" marker. It obviously had not been maintained in some time!! I had saved us from hitting the marker though so laugh if you will but...... well......
We dropped the hook and had a calm night and even grilled our steaks!! Our friends aboard The Hannah B were not so lucky. Their engine quit working and they had to anchor out in the rolly waves. We all were so anxious to be in the Keys, but that was NOT gonna happen anytime soon!!! The bunks were calling our name, so after a yummy dinner, we all passed out and slept like the dead!

The next morning we had a head wind and could not sail, so we motored down the coast toward Little Shark River. It was an easy day after the 12 plus hour days that we had been getting!! We actually dropped the hook in time to shower. put on music and have a cockpit happy hour! Bob Marley gave the perfect backdrop for the sunset and the great company. I looked up and spotted a sailboat coming in from the south. It couldnt be Wes and Terri because they were coming from the north. I got on the VHF and hailed them. We chatted about where they were coming from and what kind of boat they had. They thought that Angie and I were on the sailboat by ourselves..... HAHA... When we explained that we were with our husbands, they still agreed to come for dinner!! The sailing life is quite fun! Bob and David came over just as Wes and Terri were dropping anchor. We all assembled in the cockpit of NuTrix. Andy and I whipped up a dinner of pork chops, yellow rice and black beans. There were NO left overs...... :)  Turns out Bob and David were from Pine Island and returning from the Bahamas. We all had a interesting night visiting with strangers who quickly turned into friends. After cleaning up and waving good-by, we all crashed for the night with thoughts of the Keys sailing in our dreams.

No such luck..... The weather the next morning was just as bad as it had been all week!!! Strong winds, big seas.....thunderstorms! Sooooo we decided to go down to the Middle Cape of Cape Sable and anchor for the night before going on to the Keys. We hugged the shores which gave us some relief from the roll and the wind. We made it by 1:30 and spent the day reading to the sound of pouring rain all around us. I finished two of my 15 books, we made snacks, played "shut the box" an addictive dice game, and napped on and off. We made piccadilla for dinner and tried to watch "Captain Ron" but we all fell asleep before it was finished. The next day would be our jump to the Keys! Our Bahamas adventure had been a crazy time of wind, waves and wonderful memories...... what would the next chapter bring??? We could only imagine as the waves and the rocking of the boat took our conscience into oblivion.....