Georgetown fun and sun

(Michele) Tuesday, we attended a weather seminar held by Chris Parker. The weather in the Caribbean is CONTROLLED by Chris Parker. He is a one-man national weather service. He is also a sailor and has spent considerable time sailing the Bahamas. We recently became one of the sponsoring vessels, this allows us to email or radio Chris and request a more specific weather report for our area. Who would have ever thought we would be attending an all day workshop discussing high pressure, sunspots, propagation, converging upper air, diverging surface air and a whole lot more. I have experienced a huge learning curve on this trip. It reminds me of the first year I worked for Facing History and Ourselves. I was always bringing home documentaries, teacher study guides and reading material. Now, every night Glenn and I read and study the cruising guides. We read about the history of the island, the entrance into the cove and many other details necessary for navigation.

(Michele) Wednesday morning bright and early I picked up Kim (from Moonrise) in our dinghy and went to yoga on the beach. It was a great Astanga class. I have not practiced yoga for 2 months so you can imagine how badly I needed this class. Practicing on the sand was not as difficult as I thought it might be. After yoga Kim and I met with 4 other women. We are planning to work together on sailing issues. Trish (from Flicka) taught a women's sailing school for 17 years in San Francisco. She was eager to share some of her expertise with other women. The group consists of 3 of us that are pretty new at this. The other women have years of experience. We all named one thing that we wanted to work on. Saturday we will meet on Camelot and learn about engines, that was what Kim was interested in learning about. Maria said she was anxious about docking so later we will assist her with docking Amante. I wanted to work on raising the main sail, so we will come to Crossroads and raise the main. I really like this group, very laid back, yet strong determined woman.

(Glenn) While Michele was doing yoga on the beach I was attending a workshop on making a conch shell horn. There were 30 or so people sawing, chipping and filling on their shells, followed by some pretty sad horn blowing- mine included. I still haven't made the perfect horn, but I know what to do now and I only need to harvest a few conch and try again. One day I will have a clear, haunting horn sound with which to salute the sunset. There are plenty of activities to distract one from working on the boat. There are concerts, dances, arts and craft shows, volleyball, tennis and even contest for decorating hats and flip-flops!

(Michele) Later that day I paddled the kayak back to our cove while Glenn and Don went to town to pick up fresh fish. Boy, I had no idea how difficult it was to paddle the kayak by myself - and I was going downwind. (Glenn did the difficult upwind leg). After paddling back to hamburger beach I attended a luncheon on the beach for ham radio folks. Isn't that cute? Hams met on hamburger beach and guess what we had for lunch? Chris Parker was the guest speaker.

Later that afternoon we hiked to the top of the hill with our friends Don and Kim. The view was amazing! Great hiking trails! We hiked down to the ocean side of the island. There is a small pool on the beach that is fed by the stair-step waterfall. A Greek landscaper couldn't design a better "water feature", -- but this one is all natural. The pool is sand and the waterfall runs every time a large enough wave crashes on the rocks.

We finished the day with day with a yummy dinner on Crossroads with Kim and Don. Dinner included Cuban style black beans and rice, grilled grouper, coconut bread and brownies, oh and how could I forget the rum punch.

extra photos - Warderick Wells

We didn't have room for these earlier. sorry they are from a few islands back. Boo Boo hill on Warderick Wells has an area where cruisers leave a sign of their presence. I carved "Crossroads" in a piece of bamboo and screwed it to another piece of drift wood so we could leave our mark. Great view from up there, well worth the hike.

Bound for Georgetown

Friday we sailed from Little Farmers Key to Lee Stocking Island. Yes, we actually got to sail and not motor. Amazing! We really needed a good sail after all the motoring we’ve done. We were beginning to think we should have bought a trawler or a powerboat. Great sail, beautiful day!

We arrived in Georgetown, Saturday, February 18th after a boisterous sail. We left Lee Stocking Island at 7:00 am after listening to our daily weather report. They were calling for 10 to 15 knots (nice!). As usual, we got out of the cut in a rushing current and the seas were 6 to 8 ft high. It blew 20 knots all day, which would have been great, if it was from the right direction. Of course it was blowing from the Southeast – our course. We managed to motor sail close hauled and maintained 5 knots into lumpy swells all the way to Georgetown. There was lots of ocean spray flying from the bow and the boat was again coated in a salt crusty rime.

Georgetown, is different than I expected, it has 330 sail boats anchored in the harbor. Really cool to see all the mast lights turned on at night. The beaches and the water are spectacular! Most excellent! I was hoping for a little more from the town. The Bahamas in general look rather poverty stricken but the people are really nice. It is a little strange because everything is sooooo expensive yet, the townships look more like they belong in a third world country. We have not eaten at really good restaurant since Key West. Oh yeah, except on Crossroads. On board we have eaten some fine meals. Georgetown doesn’t seem to have great restaurants. It is really a small town with a very big harbor.

Georgetown may be small, but the cruising community is large and strives to provide the social outlets that are missing. Last night we attended a happy hour dinghy draft. There were a couple hundred people on 85 dinghies drifting together across the harbor. Appetizers, stories and plans were swapped freely as the sunset behind Great Exuma island. It was rather like a lazy float down the Spring River in Arkansas.

We turned on the morning radio net for the harbor today. It is sort of a bulletin board, calendar, swap meet and talk show rolled together. There are meetings for ham radio folks (hamsters), yoga, concerts, and seminars on weather and conch shell blowing- something for everyone. All that, and we really need to do laundry, update the website with photos and jump on some boat projects. It is easy to see how people spend weeks here.

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Weather... or Not

Weather … or not 2-13-06

It was a dark and stormy night. That was last night. Tonight is not as dark since there is an almost full moon and the wind has died down to 20 to 25 knots. Crossroads and a dozen other boats in Staniel Key and hundreds more all over the Bahamas are staying put and waiting for weather. To be more specific, we have weather; we are waiting for a weather change.

Our good friend Leigh (Honey) asked about Bahamian winter weather. We didn't know much about it either until recently. Here is how it works. First, there's the radically different meaning to the term "weather". When Dave Brown on channel 5 in Memphis talks about the weather it boils down to two things: temperature and precipitation. The weather reports we listen to and discuss at length with other cruisers never mentions these formerly important features. All we want to know about is wind. Wind rules our lives.

In the Bahamas we get the same cold fronts that pass through the U.S.. Most weaken before they get to us and only shift the wind direction a bit. Sometimes the strong cold fronts give us some rain but only in patches. Mostly, we get wind.

When a cold front is coming, everyone talks about where they plan to hunker down to wait it out. We sit still (except for some rolling and pitching) until the wind finally dies down.

So, what is the weather like in the Bahamas in the winter? Temperature is normally around 75degrees and sunny, until a cold front blows, then it can get down to the 60's. It is mostly windy with an 85% chance that it will be from the wrong direction.

Glenn

The Day that Would Not Let Go....

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The Day That Would Not Let Go!!!!!

We woke up early Tuesday morning with plans to sail to Lee Stocking Island. Everything was going well until we tried to bring up our primary anchor. It did not budge. We tried several times to break it free from the bottom with no luck. A very nice Canadian man named Gary radioed us from his boat and offered to snorkel down on it. Wow! This was such a relief, it was really cold and windy and Glenn and I were not looking forward to getting in the water. Gary clipped a line to the top of our anchor and Glenn was able to pull it up. It had been stuck under a coral rock, and it just needed to be backed out.

We wanted to do something to thank Gary. I asked him if he was an Elvis fan. He replied "yes, since I was 4 years old". I ran down below and dug out 2 Elvis tee shirts from our stash for him and his wife. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you a very important piece to this story. When we pulled up the anchor the straight part was bent into a "c"shape, oh happy day! This was one time I was glad that Glenn brought so many spares. We have 4 other anchors on the boat.

Because we got such a late start, we decided to stop at Little Farmers Cay and get a mooring. We thought picking up a mooring would be a nice treat after the rough morning, yeah right! Ha! As usual the current was very strong. As I was steering up to the mooring ball and Glenn was trying to grab the line with the boat hook, I ran over the ball and it got stuck under our boat. We didn't budge for at least 30 minutes. Glenn put the out board engine on our dinghy and tried to twist Crossroads off the mooring ball. It worked. Some days are great and some day's just plain suck!

Later that evening we dined with several other cruisers at the Ocean Cabin restaurant for a wonderful Valentines dinner. We had broccoli soup, green salad, lobster and baked potato. Glenn also had steak with his lobster. For desert we had the option of carrot cake, chocolate rum cake or cheesecake with pineapple. We were with our friends Don and Kim so tried all of them. The carrot cake did not measure up to my mom's, but the chocolate rum cake and the cheesecake were divine.

We decided to stay one more day on this quaint little island. The seas were very rough and we didn't feel like a rough sail. We spent the morning doing a few projects on the boat and the afternoon reading and hanging out on the beach with our friends Don and Kim. Glenn made a yummy stir-fry for dinner.

Tomorrow we will head for Lee Stocking Island. Lee is the home of the Caribbean Marine Research Center.

Michele

Little Farmer Cay

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We arrived at Little Farmer yesterday after a very rough morning. We set our alarm and woke up early to sail out of Saniel Cay to Lee Stocking Island. T

Staniel Cay

Staniel Cay

We arrived at Staniel Cay Wednesday afternoon. We set two anchors, one toward the raging inbound current the other toward the outgoing. We felt like we were sailing on the Spring River. Glenn and I are glad we have canoed as much as we have as it has really come in handy while reading the waters - the shallows, the rapids, the rocks.

Today we are planning a snorkeling outing with the crew from Moonrise, Dragonfly (from Nashville) and Wasabi. We will go to the famous Thunderball Cave which was the setting for the movies Thunderball and Splash. This evening we will dine overlooking our anchorage at Club Thunderball, for their weekly Friday night barbecue. Tomorrow we will attend an island fundraiser beach party with homemade breads and other delights.

When we get to Georgetown we will upload many beautiful photos. The internet connections on these small islands are too slow to post photo's.

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Warderwick Wells

Warderwick Wells is the headquarters of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. Oh my God! I know, I know, I said that about the last island, but so far this is our favorite. We have a mooring in the south anchorage with only 4 other boats. Today we hiked for 4 hours. The views are amazing. Last night we met with 4 other boats and had happy hour at Pirates Lair. Pirates Lair is a small clearing just a bit inland from the beach near our boat. Pirates used to gather there and do pirate stuff when they were anchored here. They sat or slept on their grass mats in the clearing and unknowingly brought plant seeds from the gulf coast in their mats. There are plants here that grow nowhere else in the Bahamas but are native to the southern U.S. I kinda thought it looked like Gulfport here.

Warderwick Wells is said to be haunted and it is reported that on moonlit nights the sound of a congregation singing hymns can be heard. When the singing ceases a number of voices can be heard calling to one another. There are three shipwrecks off the coast of Warderwick Wells. The one in the vicinity of Boo Boo Hill reportedly was of a ship laden with missionaries.

The landscape on the island is sort of lunar – tropical. It has palm fronds and other tropical vegetation and also coral rock that has worn away to fantastic sculptures. At times on our hike it seemed like we were walking through a “Yes” album cover from the 70’s. We walked over pointy rocks that are shaped like egg crates for assorted sized eggs and had to avoid the larger holes that were seven feed across and fifteen feet deep.

Today we are doing volunteer work, mixing concrete. We are meeting lots of fun people while shoveling sand.

Michele and Glenn

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Hawksbill Cay

We are anchored about 1/2 mile off Hawksbill Cay in the chain of islands that make up the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. Beautiful and relaxing are a weak description for this secluded 3 mile long island. After the night-time chaos of the crowded anchorage at Allan Cay and the private "keep out" vibes at Highborne Cay it is nice to have an island paradise to ourselves. There are no other boats here and the island is uninhabited.

There are ruins of small stone houses and out buildings of the Russell family plantation on shore. People actually scratched out an existence on this remote, rocky island from 1785 to 1830. It would have been a very harsh life. They burned conch shells to make mortar for their homes. We are tired of eating the conch we bought in Nassau three days ago. This island has mountains of conch shells near the burning oven! Assuming they figured out how to eat the almost inedible conch, they must have eaten it three meals a day.

We will dine tonight on leftover chicken casserole (thanks Doris) and sweet potatoes- even with canned chicken it is better than an all conch and fish diet. We are not allowed to fish or take lobster or conch in the park but we haven't been successful-- in feeding ourselves that way yet anyway.

We hope to move Crossroads 10 miles south to a mooring near the park headquarters on Warderick Wells Cay tomorrow or Saturday.

Glenn

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