Bahamas to Arizona

5/29/09

Well, here’s the wrap up on our Bahamas trip. We stayed an extra couple of days anchored in White Sound off of Green Turtle Cay due to some really rainy/windy conditions. It was an excellent place to be for that kind of weather and a real plus since we continued to visit with our new friends in their house just off the Sound.

The weather cooperated toward the end of the week and we began our sail north to stage for a crossing to FL on Sunday. The days were filled with sailing/motoring and dodging intermittent thundershowers. We made it back to FL in the Port St. Lucie area late on Sunday, May 24th where we anchored for the night. Monday we headed up to Sebastian and anchored off of Captain Hiram’s and then spent Tuesday and Wednesday getting the boat secured in a dock space there, visiting with David's family and getting all our errands run before leaving early Thursday morning on a flight to David’s home in Jerome, AZ. The sweet babies, Cocoa and Puddinhead, are now with a wonderful Foster Mom in Sebastian for the month of June. We figured it might be better to spare them having to spend the month making the plane trip out to AZ to live in yet another new place – this time with two other cats – only to get back on a plane in just four short weeks. I think they were just pleased to be off the rolling seas for a while! Meanwhile, Carib II will be partying down at Captain Hiram’s while we are away.

We are now in AZ, David is back at work and I have already joined a gym for the month and squeezed in my first workout. Boy did that feel good. I’ve got exercise equipment on the boat but it just isn’t the same as really getting to work the machines, use the treadmill and the elliptical. I’ll look forward to getting some good pictures of the sites in this part of the world and the next installment will be brought to you from the mountains of Arizona.

Marsh Harbour, Hope Town, Man-O-War, Great Guana and Green Turtle Cays

5/17/09

David’s last entry in the Blog makes a hard act to follow, but I guess it is back to the travelogue now. While staying in Marsh Harbor we met up with several boaters who were getting ready for their summer season of taking groups Boy scouts (or Sea scouts, or something of the sort) onboard for a week at a time for 6-8 weeks. It sounds like quite the adventure but I’m not sure it would be the kitties’ idea of a good time. Two of these boat owners had built their boats by themselves and we got to talk to them at length about their boats and share stories. We also met the woman who champions the Wild Horses of Abaco and also runs the Marsh Harbour Buck-a-Book store (or storage shed, as the case may be).

It seems that the boating world here in the Abacos is, at least from what we have seen, much different than what we experienced in the Exumas and Eleuthera. In the southern islands there was quite an abundance of REALLY BIG yachts – the kind that have good size fishing boats travel along behind them for whenever they decide to go for a fishing jaunt. Here in the Abacos we have hardly seen any of the mega-yachts. The waters are populated much more with smaller sailing vessels, many of which are vintage boats not unlike Carib II. It has been very fun meeting other boaters who will stop by in their dinghies just to say hi and to ask about Carib II. One of the guys we met while we were in Little Harbour is an artist who works from his boat there and we got to see some of his work in a gallery in Marsh Harbour.

After leaving Marsh Harbour we did go back to Hope Town just to see the sites. It is such a quaint, quiet, walking town. Very picturesque. This, of course, is where we delighted in sighting Carib III! From there we skipped over to Man-O-War Cay which is just as picturesque but in a different way due to the less ornate style of architecture. There is a wonderful historical museum on this Cay which was great fun because everything on display was just right out in the open – no bars, ropes or barriers to keep you away from the artifacts. Man-O-War Cay is also still quite a place for boatbuilding and we had some great conversations with some of the long-time residents. Another thing I have to mention – the flowering bushes and trees here on every island are absolutely beautiful! I don’t think I have ever seen bougainvillea like this anywhere else.

From Man-O-War we moved on to Great Guana Cay where our friends from Cocoa, Bob and Chris, stay for several months out of the year on their boat, Leap of Faith. It was such a rare treat to get to see them and they even surprised us with a big homemade welcome dinner! Our second night on the island we went with them to the infamous Nippers which was great fun and good food. The next morning Chris tracked us down around breakfast time and presented me with one of their new Sea Glass jewelry designs – a fabulous ankle bracelet! That night they were able to join us for a tour of Carib II and a dinner aboard. It is such a blessing to have good friends and makes me miss those of you I am not seeing now all the more!

Today we left Great Guana Cay and traversed the Whale area but instead of going off shore around the Whale (for those of you who have not traveled this way – it is an area that can be somewhat treacherous and you have to wait for just the right weather, wind and sea conditions) we went through what is known as the Don’t Rock Passage. This is an area where you also have to be very careful about weather conditions when traversing this passage but it is also very shallow. The good news is – we made it with no problems at all and the sweet babies didn’t even get seasick today. Yeah!!! So tonight we are anchored off Green Turtle Cay and we just got back from a short walk around the New Plymouth settlement. Once again – a very picturesque place with beautifully maintained old homes, some of which date back to the late 1700’s. We saw an interesting site here – they are actually using old cannons placed end up in the water next to the shoreline as a place to tie off your boat line. We also came across what appeared to be a “wishing tree” with old floats hanging from it painted with things like “Get Well”, “Thinking of You”, etc. Since it is Sunday the vast majority of the town was boarded up for the day so we will go back in the morning to take tour of the Albert Lowe Museum and the Model Ship Store and Gallery.

5/18/09

Yesterday some guys came up alongside of us in another older boat built in 1934. They traded stories with David and invited us to their house today for hot showers (yippee!), use of a strong internet connection, dinner and drinks. This life is just blowing me away. For those of you who might be interested, the house is one they also rent out when they are not here. It is a beautiful, spacious place with a great pool and barbeque deck overlooking White Sound in Green Turtle Cay. The whole place opens up to the outside and the breeze is just delicious everywhere in the house. Kind-of-like being on the boat!

A Bolt Out Of The Blue

5/13/09 - A message from David

A most wonderful thing happened today. While walking around Hopetown, Lisa and I came to the north end of the island where the footpath ended at the water with a view of the harbor entrance and the bay beyond. Off in the distance I could see an old U.S. Army landing craft approaching, a smallish one about 50 feet long known as a LCM-8.

Remembering my last trip to the Exumas and Staniel Cay 3 years ago when my friend, Flo, told me that the natives needed a freighter because the mailboat was charging exorbitant freight rates and that her people could not afford the materials needed to maintain their homes, I said to Lisa, “That is what we need for our next boat”.

Not that we would ever let go of Carib II, no way, only that it was the correct craft to assist us in following our inspiration to help out the native population in the spirit of the brotherhood of man that we feel so evident here in the Out Islands of the Bahamas.

It would also be the best boat to freight in materials to build our own place when we finally are ready to commit to an island home here in the nearest thing to a paradise that we have found.

As the landing craft rounded the curve in the channel, the stern swung into view and revealed the name painted there upon it,,,, “Carib III”. The powerful shockwave of such a blatant affirmation washing over my consciousness was immediate and continues yet within me, moving me to sweet tears as I write this. I have to take this event as ratification by my Creator of the rightness of such an idea.

As one who has spent his whole life looking for clues about my largest Purpose and sifting my experience for them, it is beyond my ability to imagine being delivered a more powerful message than for me see Carib III written on her stern. It was one of those soul changing moments of God manifested on this plane, jumping up and down and yelling, “Yes!” in my face. It blasts the mind out of thinking that we are anything but a connected piece of an Infinite Perfection that is usually more subtle but will on occasion come out and yell at us about something important. It comes to me as an instruction, that the doing deserves the effort to make it happen.

The Out Island native Bahamians started their existence as slaves newly freed in the 1830’s. They were given their independence and encouraged to settle on the uninhabited islands of the 700 total Bahamian islands, but had very few resources or tools. The hardships continue to this day. In a nation where food costs twice what does in the US and ways to generate money are few, merely living simply is an ever present challenge.

The genuine friendliness of this native population has always impressed me deeply. It comes from an ability to rise above what could be suffering and to live with an appreciation for what they do have. There is a spirit more in evidence here than in any other place I have traveled that accepts me as another fellow human member of the Brotherhood of Man. The usual greeting is a sincere, “Hey, how you doing?”

All real boatmen also show me this higher sense of human conscious evolution too. It manifests as a willingness to help another who is personally unknown to them. The willingness to risk one’s own safety to assist another in imminent peril is a beautiful thing that I first experienced while serving in the US Coast Guard as an engineer on their small boats running search and rescue duty in the late 60’s in Florida’s Gulfstream.

There seems to have to be a scarcity of fellow inhabitants on this planet nearby in order to assist in the manifestation of this spirit of involved concern for an unknown other human. It is a demonstration of the inclusive nature of our earth tribe. Too much exposure to large populations quenches this drive for most.

Gregory Town, Spanish Wells, Little Harbour, Hope Town and Marsh Harbour

5/9/09

Staying an extra couple of days anchored in Annie Bight just off Gregory Town was really great. The Laughing Lizard Café not only had an excellent lunch menu (yumm – a big green veggie laden salad covered with a mound of jerk chicken!) but it also had free internet and lots of interesting local traffic and conversation. It is right across the street from where Lenny Kravits (sp?) has his place. We took that afternoon to walk all around an old family compound that was on the bluff overlooking Annie Bight. The views were quite spectacular from all different areas of this spot and we got some great pictures of the boat in the bight.

At one point during our stay in Annie Bight a guy named Adam and his big dog swam up to the boat to just ask about it, came aboard for a tour (fortunately the dog went ashore because I’m not sure we could have gotten him on the boat) and it turns out he is a former competitive sailor. He is a local native from Nassau and realtor who also happens to work tending Lenny Kravits' organic vegetable farm. He asked if he could hitch a ride with us as far as we were going the next day so he and his French wife came aboard for the sail to Spanish Wells. They were really a great young couple and it was lots of fun to hear all about the local culture, land deals, history, etc. all along the way. During this trip David caught a Barracuda which was much better than the string of Lizard Fish he had caught during previous sailing days. As we came into Spanish Wells Adam gave us the local take on the Spanish Wellsians (always makes my mind go to the Ellen Jamsiens from John Irving’s The World According to Garp just because my brain is weird that way) and it really is quite different from the Bahamian Islands we have visited to date. It almost puts one in mind of a small New England fishing village. Adam and his wife also were very generous in their gift to us of several grocery bags full of freshly picked vegetables, fruit and herbs. What a treat! We found out later that night that Cocoa has thing for dried Coriander. Go figure!

The next day we left Spanish Wells and went to the ocean by way of Gun Point which was really quite beautiful with loads of coconut palms and wide sweeping vistas of both the harbour and the ocean. It was a beautiful day with a light breeze and big, easy, evenly spaced ocean swells. At least the swells seamed OK to me until I went below and found out that they were definitely not OK with the kitties. Poor babies. I really need to get better at determining just when to administer the Dramamine. But, we made it safely to Little Harbour in the Abacos, after a 60 mile run across the open Atlantic, passing along the way the visual spectacle of the “boilers” which is where the big ocean surf runs into a reef just off the coast of the southern part of the Abacos. It looks as though there are just huge bursts of water being spit directly up into the air out of the ocean. We anchored for the night just outside of Little Harbour and then moved this morning into Little Harbour where we picked up a mooring for the day and went ashore for lunch at Pete’s Pub and a tour of the Randolph and Peter Johnston Gallery – beautiful sculpture! We took a little dinghy tour around the harbor and found on the far side away from Pete’s Pub what looks to actually be a cave for sale. Do you suppose that is anything like having swamp land for sale in Florida?

5/11/09

Yesterday we took a quick tour through Hope Town and saw the sites from the Hope Town Lighthouse. It was a beautiful day and the views were spectacular. The lighthouse itself was pretty impressive, as well. Since it was Sunday there was not much open in the town so we are hoping to go back there in the next day or two to take in the galleries, little shops and hopefully, a coffee house before moving on to Man-o-War Cay and Guana Cay.

After Hope Town we came into Marsh Harbour to anchor for the night and today we have done some wandering around town. It is quite different here in that it is like a real town with real shops, grocery stores, hardware stores, etc. I feel as though we have come in from the outback. David and I were just wandering around one of the grocery stores like we had never before seen fresh produce or fresh packaged meat. It is quite amazing what we get used to and take for granted every day in the States. We have met some folks here that spend the summer months taking boy scouts out for a week at a time on their vessels and they have some great stories to tell. The kitties are happy that we are anchored in a calm harbour and right now it is all hands and paws on deck to enjoy the sunny afternoon. It is another fabulous day in paradise!

Eleuthera

5/6/09

Our trip up the Eleuthera coast has been wonderful. We started out anchored off of Powell Point and then made our way to Tarpum Bay on Sunday where we went ashore to see the sites. There is an interesting castle there that we found out was built by a transplanted British (I think) artist of some note. It is abandoned now as the gentleman died a few years ago, but is still quite interesting in a great “artsy” sort of way. There was even a resident goat hanging out in one of the doorways. Supposedly there are several interesting art galleries in Tarpum, but we never found them. Instead we had lunch at a local spot after walking through the town and listening to all of the very loud and boisterous Sunday worship services that were going on on most every street corner. It seemed as though they were each trying to outdo the service next door and the music and sermons made a very interesting soundtrack as we walked among the rundown, overgrown old houses. I’ve never seen so many churches in one small place in all my life.

Next we moved on to Governor’s Harbour where we found a grocery that actually had some fresh – and very expensive – fresh produce. Yeah – fresh salad for both lunch and dinner! We had had fun chit-chatting with the locals in Tarpum Bay but Governor’s Harbour didn’t seem quite as friendly. We were going to stop the next day in Hatchett Bay and maybe take a walk over to Alice Town, but the entrance to Hatchett Bay really was quite narrow and it didn’t seem worth the effort when we got right up to it. So we moved on to Gregory Town to anchor for the night. We pulled into a little spot just north of the entrance to Gregory Town called Annie Bight and are, at this writing having a great time here. On the shore of Annie Bight there are four houses, one of which has the big “goombay” smiley face painted on the roof. There were some folks in this house that came out on the front porch as soon as we came in to wave and take pictures. The next day a guy, Tom-from-Baltimore, swam out to the boat and said that the ladies in the “smiley-face-house” wanted to invite us to a Cinco-de-Mayo” party the next evening. The winds have been cooperating and look to stay the same for the next few days so we decided to stay over an extra day for the party. What a treat! It turns out that three of the four houses are regularly rented out by folks who have been coming here on and off for almost thirty years. The folks who threw the party are on one of their regular “girl-trip-getaways” and some of them run beach-type tourist stores in the Sarasota area. Very, very nice people and the party was full of fun, good food, local folks, and great conversation. One of the women had a diving mask that has a built in video camera and she and Tom-from-Baltimore had been out that day taking videos of the Lion Fish that, we understand, are taking over the local sea environment. They got some incredible shots of these fish and the way they just sit and stare at you as you come toward them. It’s almost as though they are waiting for you to get close enough to be devoured. No fear at all. We are having such a good time here that we have decided to stay on another day. One of the women we met last night has a little lunch place up the road, The Laughing Lizard, where we will go a bit later to check out and, now that we know one of the end houses in Annie Bight is vacant we are going to take a walk along their seashore property into town. Having a great time. Wish all of you reading this could be here with us to share the fun. More later.