Thursday June 14, In the USA

We are sitting here in Southport, NC on John and Linda's boat, Too Much Fun, having a glass of fine wine with two people we met a half hour ago.  Such is the life of the cruiser.  We have traveled about 600 miles since my last entry, braving the open Atlantic from the Abacos for four days in seven foot seas keeping our watch schedules around the clock.  I  once again encountered the Mal de Mer and quickly became the cook that didn't cook until I could hold down Dramamine on the third day.  Mandate is sea worthy but not sea kindly; she rolls and dips and dives her way through the swells.  On the third night, just after evading a thunderstorm, our steering jammed.  Thank goodness we knew the mechanism well and just set to work some 200 miles offshore  by jury rigging a hoist off the boom to pull up the shaft and re-positioning it.  The whole job took about an hour. 

We landed in Charleston SC and spent two days at a Mega dock with 100+ foot yachts.  We sailed to Georgetown SC and spent two days there and visited Bob's friends, Doc and Nancy.  We borrowed their second around town car and it broke down on a highway where we spent the rest of the evening waiting for a tow truck.  After all the time worrying about the boat, we wind up breaking down in a car !!  We also missed our chance to spend the evening with Jackie and Steve on Corazon, as you may remember from our two stops in Eleuthera and our stay in Marsh Harbor.     

Our next stop was a quiet night settled in  behind an island among cypress trees off the Intracoastal Waterway in the beautiful Waccamaw River.   We then motored to Calabash NC and stopped in to see my daughter's father in law, Ken at his summer home.  Ken encouraged us to take him out for a sail the next day, which we did, and had a lot of fun the next morning on the ICW.  We gave Ken the helm, ran aground and demonstrated how to kedge off in 10 minutes time. 

And so we are here tonight in Southport off Cape Fear poised for departure at 7:30am, one hour before high tide that we will ride as it comes in to Wrightsville Beach.  We will drop off Bob at Wilmington NC Airport to take  his flight back to home.   Rob and I will proceed toward Deltaville VA to put Mandate on the hard for a couple of months. 

Wednesday May 30 the trip home

Bob Hansen has arrived to help us crew and we are ready to depart Marsh Harbor.  The weather has thrown a monkey wrench in our plans, so our revision is to visit the out-islands, the cays along the top of the Bahamas and wait until the trough coming up from the Yucatan Penninsula passes through so that we aren't caught when we are out in the Gulf Stream in heavy squalls.   That is the latest; we are preparing the boat for departure tomorrow.  Gotta go.  Many boats have left the harbor including our old (2 months!)friends on Canard Azul, Jeannie and Tom who I mentioned earlier as our neighbors in Georgetown...we partied  here a couple of times here. 

Anyway, life is great and we hope for a good passage..   

Thursday May 24  Abacos

We decided to make a run for it last Friday from Governor's Harbor and we went straight to Royal Island, a deserted but safe harbored island near the top of Eleuthera.  We hooked our anchor on what appeared to be the gunwhale of an ancient ship and tied a tripline to make sure it would untangle in the early morning.  When we left at 5am the seas were flat with confused winds 5-8 knots, so we had to motor sail again, making harbor some 10 hours later in Little Harbor, Abacos.  By the time we made the cut into the harbor, seas had built to 4 feet and the wind was from the east at 15-20 knots--in the last two hours of passage.  We screamed into our anchorage, quite "out there" behind Lynyard Cay in wild winds and seas for two days.  I did a lot of watercolors, we listened to music and read to pass the time; the weather not even condusive to swimming which we normally do at least once every day.  The good thing about a lot of wind is that we have a lot of electricity through the wind generator. 

On the third day, we braved the seas and made a 15 mile passage to Marsh Harbor, Abacos,  where we are now and are awaiting a nice day to play in the water.  When we get the chance, we will snorkel the 3rd largest barrier reef in the world off of Fowl Cay, a tiny island just a few miles north of here. 

The weather continues to worsen with no let up until Monday.  Right now we are doing boat chores and taking walks and meeting new cruiser friends on their boats as we dinghy to shore and get involved in conversations along the way.  We met Rick and Audrey on Naked Lady, Mark on his Irwin 34..forgot the name, and we hung out with Tom on his boat, Essential Part, a unique 65 foot twin diesel steel motor boat that he built in two years.  He is from Kingston NY and owned/operated a foreign auto garage there since the 70's.  This is the largest single owner boat I have ever been in and has actual living room furniture in a split level, two story spaced saloon.  We had been seeing his school bus yellow boat on three different instances (looks kind of like a ferry boat), down the ICW and now here, so we had to introduce ourselves. 

Bob Hansen will be here next Wednesday to help crew with us on our Gulf Stream passage.  We will have no stops once we leave this harbor until we make landfall in the US. 

This just in...do do doo do do....  a couple (Clyde and Sue) from Missouri who just flew in here to take a month in their summer home at Guana Cay just invited us raggamuffins to their home!!   They left us with their name and number.  We may ferry over (too shallow for Mandate) and take them up on it.   

So it goes..    

Thursday May 17  Traveling north

With only 20 minutes I will be brief with this entry; I am unable to download the writings I labored over of the last week's adventures.  Consequently I will bring you up to speed in these few minutes.  We left Georgetown last week in a great southeasterly breeze 5-10 knots and encountered a squall around midday for only 5-10 minutes.  After the storm, the wind clocked around to our nose and we were forced to motor to reach our destination.  We reached Black Point Friday night and took off in the morning reaching Cambridge Cay, a new destination for us that was absolutely pristine and beautiful.  We took advantage of the short hop so that we could spend the rest of the day snorkeling and hiking.  A mega yacht pulled in to the moorings in the evening and spoiled our night by pulling out their jet skis and staying up till 4AM playing cards--Americans are quiet annoying!! 

We reached the island of Eluthera, a new destination for us, by motor sailing for 50 miles making for a long day, but with the autopilot on, we managed to get a lot of reading done so it was OK.  Pulling in to Rock Sound Harbor on the south west coast of the island we explored the town and had a fish dinner.  We met a couple in a catamaran who planned on traveling the same route as us.  In the morning we pulled out for Governors Harbor, just 20 miles north on Eleuthera.  We have been here since due to horrible weather predictions from Chris Parker on the SSB--tropical depression threats to the north and south.  He advised to stay put for a while.  Corizon, the catamaran, decided to jump out and go to the next port in spite of the forecast and have been stuck up there awaiting better weather. 

We may leave today--squalls and high seas abound but it is in scattered areas all over the Bahamas, other wise there are zero to light winds from everywhere.  A more dire forecast is predicted for Sunday, so we are splitting now to make headway before that comes in--the prediction is for a possible tropical depression forming in Puerto Rico. 

We have lots of miles to go before the USA and we are grabbing what we can when we can.  This town has been great, I hate to leave it..the restored library is a wonderful place to hang out and we invited folks from shore for dinner on the boat last night.  We also met Colin and Victor on Pacific High, a motor cat that pulled in a couple of days ago and they confirmed that the seas are terrible.  We went to dinner with them and shared some good times.

I will install the real writings of this time period when the website will allow me to do so, along with updating the photos.  We will make passage to Alicetown Eleuthera, then to Current Cut, and up to Royal Cay.  From Royal we will make passage to the Abacos.  Total miles to Royal are about 50.  Passage to the Abacos is tricky with both the exit cut from Royal and the entrance cut into Abacos; both are dealing with reefs and strong currents. 

Once in the Abacos we anticipate that after a week of taking in the sounds and sights, we will get back on track toward home.  We called an experienced sailor friend to accompany from the Abacos back across the Gulf Stream.  He will meet us in Marsh Harbor and we will depart for USA, making as many as three consecutive 24 hour runs possibly riding the Gulf Stream currents into South/North Carolina ports.  That's all for now..

May 4 Friday:  Joan-e’s visit and Family Regatta (4/26—4/29)

We have been in GTown for close to a month and our friend, Joan Langan was here with us visiting from her home in Hawaii.  We have hiked, snorkeled, sailed, fished, danced, visited, partied, drank, cooked, ate, debated, laughed, sang, watched movies, read, washed clothes, babied sun burns, and stepped all over each other in this tiny space.  We gave her a good dose of life on this boat and in this town..

To celebrate her arrival,  we co-sponsored (announced on the net) a pot luck on Hamburger Beach and wound up with 40 people each bringing  truly unique and yummy dishes, the party was a wild success we must admit.

Joan-e arrived with the start of the Bahamian Family Regatta, a four day sail racing series/extravaganza of three classes of Bahamian fishing boats.  “Fishing boats” is merely a style of boat since these boats are pretty slick, and strictly for racing.  There were about twenty five in each class, and there are about eight to fourteen crew in each boat ranging from 14 feet to twenty eight feet in length—in other words small boats and a lot of crew because the sloop rigged sails are huge and must be counter-balanced by two outrigger boards that slide to starboard or port with four crew sitting on each board.   Given that description I wish to add that winds were high, at 15-20 knots, so it made for a very  exciting series of races, with a few capsizes—no big deal since the bay is 12 feet at the course’s deepest, so masts stick up out of the water from sunken boats to later be retrieved  by rescue vessels.  Celebrating the four days consists of lots of music booming from Regatta Point, maybe 50 temporary shacks, each serving such Bahamian delights as curry chicken, conch salad, conch fritters, steamed  mutton or oxtail, peas and rice, plantains, and a full stock of liquor.  Women try to outdo each other with outrageous hairdos and outfits.  The events ended with a parade that turned out to be watching a fantastic band parade back and forth in a small park, wild and fun.  Later, (it was also Rob’s birthday) I claimed credit for arranging the fireworks display along with all the rest of the festivities of the day.  

We decided to leave the harbor for a day sail and to position ourselves for a snorkel at the south end of Stocking Island, (we were anchored 8 miles at the north end of the Island).  The light winds were against us so we motor/sailed  ½ way up and trolled a fishing line off of a hand reel with a lure and piece of chicken attached to a hook.  We caught a 13” Chub fish –really cute with big brown scared eyes, and we killed him with douses of rum to the gills.  The meat was terrific, we steamed it in foil on the grill with key lime, herbs, scallions and butter.  Our first fish!!  I guess I need to get over the guilt of catching it though….

Yesterday we rented a car to take Joan-e back to the airport and to do a tour of the island with our friends, Joe and Becky who live on a 1979 Pearson 424, Half Moon.  We traveled the one road that loops around from Williams Town, south to Barra Terre, north past dense tropical foliage, an occasional resort, the skeletons of homes either ravaged by hurricanes or never completed.  That is a phenomenon in all the Bahamian islands we have visited—it seems that land must be secured by having a structure placed upon it.  Since there is little money to build a complete structure, many are begun but are not finished.  We paid a visit to Leon, an elderly gentleman I sat next to in the grandstand during the start of one of the races.  Leon was a racer in the old days and he now comes down from Barra Terre for the regatta each year. He has a place on the water with a fishing boat out front, overlooking the Glass Cut Cay we sailed into over a month ago on our way down to G-town.  As with many Bahamians, he has a bar in a shack at the roadside: his is named “Me and You”.  Like Roland the farmer on Long Island, he was a migrant farm worker in the states, mostly oranges in Florida and sometimes picking peaches in Oregon, and upstate New York. 

The harbor is emptying out rather quickly now, we are down to eighty boats from the 239 count we first heard across the Cruisers Net; many boats are leaving for Luperon in the Dominican Republic, and a few are leaving for the States. There is a contingent of cruisers who just stay on the islands escaping the summer heat of Florida and other states, the Bahamas have a wonderful combination of dry air and temperatures ranging in the 70’s to low 80’s with a constant breeze of 10+ knot winds, with five to ten minute rain squalls every 5 days or so.    

As with all long stops, we tend to fall in love with the place as we begin to accept the quirks of living there.  In the Bahamas there is no shortage of quirks.  The computer shack is down—an occurrence that happens about 50% of the time.  JK’s Place is typical Bahamian open air shack with a counter and two shelves of groceries on one wall with the opposite wall a shelf and plug strip, and three folding chairs, and a long line of cruisers who are waiting for a chance to connect into the Net We got e-word that our friends Bill and Laura, Second Wind, Erika and Tom, Manana, and Alan and George Chanticleer, all arrived safely in Luperon and they plan to land-tour the DR together.   

April 18-20:   Long Island getaway

We sailed to Long Island, about thirty miles south of G-town and out of the Exumas.  Boat buddying with Moonshadow (Pam and Rob) in light winds we reached Thompson Bay at the island’s north west side in about 7 hours.  There we met Laurie and Marion, two Canadian cruisers in a 35 foot pilot house steel boat, Wiwaxy.  We walked to the nearest establishment, a bar operated by a woman named Triphina who invited us to come back for the happy hour in two days, on Friday, so we promised. 

We rented a car for an island trip the next day and met Roland, an elderly man who not only gave us a tour of his farm and armloads of fruits, vegetables and sponges all for 16 dollars, he sang us a song he wrote about life—a beautiful song too, and he was teary when we left.  Later, we found caves on the island and did some exploring off a beach.  The caves and underground grottos were beautiful with trees growing out of overhead openings, a spectacular sight. 

Friday we went back to Tryphinas place, and it turns out that she made a delicious seven course dinner for just us cruisers!!  Thank goodness we did not blow that off!! 

The sail back to Georgetown was great—on the starboard quarter about 10 to 15 knots, putting us at a speed through the water around 6-7 knots.   We overtook Wiwaxy who started out an hour before.  The south entrance back into G-town harbor was in 6 foot seas among a circuitous path of reefs, a little unnerving but exciting. 

April 16, Monday:   Georgetown

What a lovely place!  Our day consists of swimming, snorkeling, hiking, and working on boat projects.  In the evenings we have been invited for happy hour or dinner somewhere or we have hosted a happy hour or dinner.  Quite the exhaustive schedule with hardly any time to update this site. Email and Web connections are difficult here; we purchased a service (that worked some time) for when we are anchored near the town, but we now find that anchoring a mile across the bay is a quieter place to reside.  I may send this as a Microsoft Word attachment if I can’t manipulate the site.

Bill and Laura departed for their down island journey last Wednesday morning after a big send-off party hosted by cruisers Jeff and Pam aboard the trawler Annie M.  After checking out Georgetown’s grocery, hardware, and water sources, we headed over to Stocking Island near several hiking trail entrances and the monument on the big hill.  There are many beautiful little beaches.  Nearby is a  bar called the Chat n Chill, where you just chat and chill because the service is so poor and the food is worse.  Volleyball beach, lots of picnic benches under shade trees are gathering places. The resident cruisers have a network on Channel 72 VHF in the morning to assist one another on boat projects and announce activities: watercolor, poker, trivial pursuit, mixers, etc. 

We went to a mixer on Hamburger Beach and met Pam and Rob on Moon Shadow.  Our refrigerator broke down over night, forcing us to have a party to consume the fish the next night. We invited Ericka and Tom on Manana, Pam and Rob invited George and Alan on Chanticleer.  We had a great time.  The next night we dined with Tom and Jean on Canard Azul, the boat anchored next to us.  They plan to do a trans-Atlantic to Portugal in May.  Manana will leave with Chanticleer tomorrow for their common Dominican Republic destinations.  And so it goes.  Our thought is to head for home about the 30^th to come all the way back so that we can cruise Maine and Nova Scotia.  Timing is everything here; we would have to get home by beginning of June to do all that, so we may defer to the leave the boat south plan by necessity.    

April 7, Saturday: Georgetown, Galliut Cut, Glass Cut, Black Point, Staniels Cay

We have made it to our final destination, Georgetown Exumas and are living to talk about it.  The Exuma weather has been pleasantly cool and windy for the onshore community, for us cruisers it has been a challenge for departures especially into the Atlantic because of high seas. But first to catch up from Warderick Wells..

We departed the beautiful Exuma National Park Cay of Warderick Wells after waiting for a weather window of less than 20 knots of wind from the southeast, which would put us hard into the wind to our next destinations.  After three days, we found the opportunity for a perfect sail on our port quarter, 15-20kn, and turned into Compass Cay around 12:00.  We dropped sails and took a circuitous route to avoid numerous shoals and coral banks: one spot we plowed through about 100 feet of 2.8 feet of water using full steam to keep going (incidentally we spoke with a long time cruiser yesterday who said he doesn’t bother to paint the bottom of his keel because it gets constantly scraped from having to navigate shallow waters; ours is down to the quick again).  Ultimately we decided that Compass was not the place to be since the only water deep enough  to set anchor was in the channel or be forced to take a dock at $2.00-a-foot in the marina. 

So we moved on to Staniels Cay, a small crossroads town with one bar, an air strip, some guest cottages, two sparsely stocked “grocery” stores the size of a small living room, a post office that never opened and a large fuel and water dock with large stingrays and sharks lurking below waiting for chum from t eh local fishermen.  We spent a couple of days there and rented a golf cart to drive around the island, discovering what appeared to be a mondo-development in the making that will no doubt change the simplicity of it all.  Later we encountered cruisers, Jillian and Sandy from way back in November at Daytona Beach and had cocktails with them on their Island Packet, Lost Horizon.  At that event we met another couple, Mary and Paul who have sailed the area several times and who SCUBA at night amongst sharks and Moree eels—fascinating to listen to their stories.  We also snorkeled the Thunderball Caves (where the James Bond film was made) and saw a variety of fish and nice fan coral.

Then on to Black Point Cay, another outpost consisting of a post office, two restaurants, a laundramat, and the Garden of Eden.  Willie, the Garden’s owner gave us a tour of his driftwood collections and plants for about an hour, quite a unique fellow and experience; pictures will be on the site when I am able to download them.  Later we dinghyed over to a boat, Manana, in the harbor that we saw in Marathon FL, Warderick Wells, and now at Black Point; we figured we ought to introduce ourselves since we have been parallel cruisers since January.  They are a delightful couple in a wooden boat, Tom and Ericka.  We seem to be simpatico in life style: the way we eat, and think about the world, so we have stayed in touch and plan to snorkel, hike and hang out until they take off toward Cuba.  A dimension they have added to our adventure is to get us to use our fishing poles; they have been living on freshly caught Mahi-mahi, grouper, snapper, and other varieties all along their Bahamian passages. 

From Black Point to Galliut Cut.  After a perfect day of sailing and then swimming once anchored, we had a rocky anchorage with currents running under Mandate’s bottom at Galliut overnight and prepared to go out into the ocean the following morning if the seas looked OK.  Knowing that the seas would lay down on Wednesday, we picked Tuesday to make a 50 mile passage—not a good decision, it was quite rough and got worse as the day went on.  At one point the boat bounced off a wave so hard I flew up in the air and landed on the edge of our dining table winding up with a contusion just below my left knee.  I spent the next two hours with frozen chicken on the wound that helped to bring down the swelling.  At 3:00 we pulled into Glass Cay through a risky cut in the rocks, but landing in safe waters for the night, about 15 miles north of our Georgetown goal.  The reward we got was an anchorage all to ourselves, surrounded by pristine and secluded beaches.  We took a picnic into one of the beaches to swim and play for the rest of the day; it was quite special in spite of the beginning of the day.     

The next day we arrived in Georgetown bay, our end goal for the trip.  After all the trials and tribulations of the past six months since Albany, we found the landing rather anticlimactic and a little sad since Laura and Bill on Second Wind are departing in a few days for the Dominican Republic, the Lesser Antilles and south. 

We will remain here for another three weeks. Our friend, Joan, will stay on Mandate with us for a week for Family Regatta where the Bahamian fishing boats race, Lateen rigged boats from 13 to 28 feet with outrigger boards start the race from anchor to finish.  The larger boat classes seem to have nine crew, including one “token white” from the cruising community.

We will start back home around the 30^th of April if the weather allows and will poke our way back through more tiny secluded islands enjoying the beauty of the Bahamas as we make our way home west and north.

We decided to hike and swim every day we can in this large and beautiful harbor. Yesterday we hiked and swam with Erika from Manana in the tumbling waves of a deserted beach on the ocean side of an island in this huge bay that is about six miles long and is loaded with many beaches and coves.   We swam in a cove and hiked over the rugged limestone rocks overlooking the ocean and bay.  We took the dinghy to a marina to look into possibly storing Mandate there when we head home for summer. We are entertaining thoughts of leaving Mandate south this summer so we can more easily continue our journey when we return from up north.     

March 26, Monday:  Exuma Land and Sea Park:  Warderick Wells

We have been moored here for two days enjoying the cay hiking paths and snorkeling on some fantastic reef life.  When we arrived on Saturday night there was pot luck on the beach; there we encountered Donna and Jim on Ragtime, friends of our good buddies Sandy and Mack on  Knotty Buoys in Marathon FL.  We also ran into Pat and Dick Peebles, the couple who gave us a lift to the local rental car place as we prepared to come home for the December holidays from our Vero Beach slip.  

Here we were fortunate to have a mooring adjacent to the Swiss solar powered vessel, Sun 21 that has been in the news of late having made a passage across the Atlantic on 42 solar panels  alone.  We snorkeled with one of her crew members, Yves, and had a tour of the boat.  Sun 21 took off a half hour ago from here and will eventually make her way to NYC culminating in a press conference at the UN with Mayor Bloomberg and Al Gore.  For more information on their exploits, link to www.transatlantic21.ch. 

Last night we saw a great video that we want to recommend to all called “Winged Migration”; this is an Academy Award nomination for 2002, but since we are not movie savvy and are just catching up with our fancy MP3 player, we thought we’d pass the information along. 

Bill and Rob are talking of sailing to Georgetown on Wednesday or Thursday; some 70 miles from here.  Personally I am in favor of stopping part way at another island in this excellent park that consists of 10 major cays surrounded by countless smaller islands.      

March 23^rd Friday:    Nassau to Highborne Cay

A beautiful passage to Nassau under perfect skies and winds 10-15Kn.  We were literally dragged by three men into a slip at low tide to check in to Immigration.  We stayed three days during high winds and rain and partied hard with boaters Tony and Nancy on Remedy, along with new people we met on the dock.  The second day was in recovery from all of that.  Then Rob’s back went out as he culminated this past five month’s worth of heavy lifting and straining: anchoring, getting fuel and water by the five gallon loads, engine maintenance, etc.   He saw a Chiropractor in town three times for treatment and is now in a precarious state. 

Nassau is a beautiful city but holds the ills of all cities: poverty abounds in some sections and it looks as though the Bahamian government is struggling with keeping garbage from piling up on her streets in the poorer neighborhoods.  Very sad.  We went to an old fort on probably the city’s highest spot to overlook the harbor—not well kept.  On our way back I took a path  in the woods and encountered three naked children washing clothes in a five gallon jug with a scrub brush and hanging them up on a line; a very third world scene. 

So we ventured on to the Exuma Island chain and are now at Highborne Cay; that passage being OK except for a squall, very high winds and the virtually unprotected anchorage; a sailor’s dilemma.  To our surprise, Remedy appeared over the horizon just before dusk, so we chatted for a while on the VHF.  They just left for Norman Cay presently. 

We will spend today here and do a snorkel then we will move on to Shroud Cay in the morning. It is very beautiful and the water is so clear you can see for miles through it.   

March 17^th, Saturday:  So we made it to the Bahamas!! 

We have been through some fun in the past two days.  On Thursday night, we crossed the Gulf Stream in a very messy, choppy and confused passage after a full day of sailing to Rodriguez Key from our safe harbor in Marathon FL.  Starting out that same night at 10 PM after a 1 ½ hour nap, we wound up blessing King Neptune eight times between us during the passage. 

Pulling into Gun Cay cut at 9:00AM Friday, we anchored behind Cat Cay for a full day/night’s rest.  Waking at 6AM, we made another raucous passage of 70 miles across the Bahamian Banks, pitching and yawing all day in 5-20 knot winds, riding the face of some enormous waves that shot Miss Mandate to reach heights of 10 knots through the water. That may not sound fast to you but an average cruising sailboat is going fast at 6 to 7 knots.

Tonight we are tucked in behind Chub Cay and Frazier’s Hog Cay at anchor and we just got a call on our VHF radio from a boat anchored just around the corner.  Their names, Tony and Nancy from Colchester VT on their vessel, Remedy.  We met them just an hour before departing Boot Key Harbor in Marathon.  They sailed on Lake Champlain for years.  Tis a small world.

The Bahamas so far are stark with incredibly clear waters; you can easily see bottom at 15 foot depths.  I haven’t seen the bird life we saw in FL, but we have been here only 24 hours and most of that on the run.  We did see a strange brown bird while racing down the Tongue of the Ocean.  It looked like it belonged in New England in the rafters of a barn.  Perhaps he is a New England transplant like us and Tony and Nancy. 

March 14^th   Happy Birthday Melanie and Valerie and to Rachel and Luke

We’re leaving Boot Key Harbor tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM for the Bahamas if the winds change to the south/southwest.  The NOAA forecast currently tells us that will happen, we will check in the morning to see if it still holds. 

After 1 ½ months here we have made a lot of cruising friends and leave them with a “farewell see you soon out there somewhere”.  To name a few, thanks to Rick on Della Rose who checked in with us every day, spent lots of time helping us install and fix things on the boat; to Frank on Morning Light  who helped us with technical and  electrical systems.  To Clyde and Jan on Sandpiper who entertained and informed us; to Sandy and Mack on Knotty Buoys who “overserved” us and kept us laughing with their Canadian and British humor.  To Steve and Ruthie on Windwalker for dinner and movies.  To Bill on Kittywake, Ben and Uncle Dave on Empress, Billy and Kate on Sahalla, the 2 Mikes, our neighbors on Tryst and Scat, to Patty and Ted on Ibis, to Hank on Blue and to Captain Marty on The Other Woman.    

We will miss the Cruisers Net in the morning, the fight for space on the dinghy docks, the showers and the washing machines, and our mile hikes to the local grocery store, Home Depot, and the 3 mile hikes to Radio Shack.  We will miss music and fun at Burdines and the Dockside Restaurants, and many, many days and evenings of perfect weather with incredible sunrises and sunsets heralded by the moaning of Conch Shells. 

March 4^th   Happy Birthday Mom

A proud grandpa Rob is back with pictures of Fiona and the family all celebrating her arrival.  We are tying up loose ends on Mandate before setting off to the Bahamas within the week.  Riggers came out to inspect the chain plates and deemed Mandate OK for the Bahaman passage.

Rob is currently working on the fuel tank foreign object dilemma.  Our new wind generator which claimed “it only takes two hours to install” took 3 days, but without any real glitches. We are very grateful to anchorage neighbors, Rick and Frank for helping us with the work; good friendships formed make it difficult for departures.  Frank, from Holland will be on his way to Cuba this week; Rick, a Canadian will leave for the Chesapeake about a month after we go—already people are making plans to go north! 

Two nights ago we had cocktails with Ted and Patty on their catamaran, Ibis.  They have been cruising for 25 years, 13 on this very unique boat that Ted constructed from plywood/epoxy.  I love its simple, functional and clean interior.  They have a composting head that they empty every 4 weeks as a box of rich garden soil.   Last night we partied with Billy and Kate, two 30-year olds who went into partnership on a 50 foot steel hull ketch built in the 60s. The boat is from Mass and they recently acquired it from the DEC after it was on the hard for 15 years after being impounded for drug smuggling.  She’s an interesting motor sailor that needs a lot of tender loving care. 

We have two thoughts about where to go next since our boat insurance will not cover hurricane regions from June 1 to November 30.  We can get north of Norfolk VA or we can go to South America. In any case, we will fly home during the summer for a while.  To sail up to home would be like undoing the 3months it took to get here so we most likely will not do that this year.  We are told there are safe and relatively cheap marinas where we can keep Mandate until we return wherever we decide to stay.         

February 24^th  Alone on the boat

Our month here at Boot Key is nearing an end.  We just purchased a wind generator and it will be installed by friends here in the harbor along with Rob.  Rob is in Albany welcoming his new grand daughter Fiona in to the world this week and visiting family. 

I am here in Marathon FL sitting for Mandate, who I must say has been perfect.  Friends in the harbor are stopping in to keep me amused: I have been hiking and biking with Jan, had Laura, Bill and Rick for drinks and dinner, Laura and I went to the beach around the corner with Dave, Rick, and Bill.  I have been sushi-ing with Jan and had a nice talk with her friend, Clyde today about the profession of Social Work.  I have been working on touch-up painting and sewing side curtains for our canvas work. 

When do we take off?  Once we get our chain plates and diesel tank inspected; we had an unfortunate mishap that resulted in a foreign object residing in the tank.  The fear is that the engine now runs the risk of shutting off at the most unfortunate moment.  A rigger gave us a scare about the safety of our 1966 chain plates—the tangs on deck that hold our shrouds, the wires that hold up our mast.  We have been puzzled about how to resolve this issue for some time and would like the assurance that all is safe with our rigging. 

Our little community constantly changes around here; people some and go.  There was a Morgan 41 charter boat that anchored next to me last night captained by a man who was a dead ringer for my brother John.   The guests woke us all up at 2:30 whooping and a-hollering after returning from the local bar, no doubt.  A couple of nights ago some loud and very drunken boat guests were wandering about in a dinghy searching for the boat they left an hour before.  They became stuck in the sea grass beds behind Mandate, revving the poor 4 horse power motor through the mud until it died.   I helped by calling the Coast Guard.  Last Sunday we had gale force winds that uprooted several boats from their anchorages and sent them careening toward anchored boats.  Rob, Rick, Bill and two other dinghies redirected the escapees away from victimized boats. It was quite the day.  Life is not dull in the harbor. 

Every night I am privileged to a sunset over mangroves teeming with gaggles of white heron. I awake to songs of shore birds early each morning.

February 3, 2007 

Happy birthday brother Bill; 49?  You are such a kid!!

Steve and Ruthie will be coming for dinner tonight.  He has been living on his Hans Christian for six winters and has never left the dock.  We are encouraging him to get out in the water and visit us around the corner about ½ mile in Boot Key Harbor where we are now anchored for a spell of probably 2-3 weeks.  There is quite a culture out here of yachties who cruise everything from 22 foot boats to 50 foot boats.  Every morning there is a Cruisers Net on VHF channel 26 and boats swap names, information, ask questions, do a buy, sell, trade: “Treasures from the Bilge” and do a trivia thing.  We dinghy into the city marina for water, showers, a walk to stores on Highway 1, to do laundry, go out to bars and hear live music, etc.

We met a couple who ran a little clinic on Bahaman passages and they are from Albany NY and own a 26 foot boat (the size of our Lake George boat Edna Mae).  They trailer the boat down from Albany and plunk it in and cross over to the Islands---what an idea!! They have done this 5 times now.  They of course know a slew of people we know from Small-bany including our good pal Joan who plans to stay with us on the boat in the Bahamas this April.  Two nights ago we had drinks on Mandate and yucked it up with Mack and Sandy, social workers from Canada who share similar opinions of the world.  We continue to have great dinners with boat buddies Bill and Laura as well.  Laura makes the best apple pie I have ever tasted.   

So once we got used to slowing down to life at anchor, it took a couple of anxious days, we are finding it rather delightful.  The water is warm and clean here—very strict FL environmental rules, thank goodness, Jeb is the smarter brother. 

I forgot to talk about the sensation that Mandate created in the Marathon Boat Yard last week   We were on-the-hard in a prominent spot and received many, many comments from passers by about how darn beautiful her lines are.  One day a man sat and sketched her for a watercolor. 

We plan to head south 10 miles to a cove that is a favorite for snorkeling; most likely we will do this on Wednesday or Thursday with Bill and Laura.  A person at the city marina just informed me that a woman was attacked by a shark there and lost her arm…guess we will have to stay close to the boat and leave the first aid book and the sewing kit out...  David I will try to put it on right side up, (inside joke).