4/24/19

The colors of the waters in the Bahamas are so vibrant!  Here’s a picture taken on Man-O-War Cay in the Bahamas, Jerry and Jerry looking out to sea.

Man-O-War is yet another picture perfect Bahamian settlement.  

 

This is the street we walked down to arrive at the beach.  You can see the brilliant water in the distance.

The streets are just the right width for the main mode of transportation – golf carts!

Another stop in the Abacos was a place called Buckaneer Bay.  This is an area where we took the dinghy into a series of cuts between rocks and mangroves at high tide.   So many sea turtles!  We also found what is referred to as a blue hole.  We noticed an area where the water was dark blue and went to check it out.  The water goes from 3 feet to really deep!  It’s like looking into a cave underwater.

Exploring the mangrove creeks at Buckaneer Bay at high tide.

We saw one of the biggest sea turtles we’ve ever seen!  Maybe 6 feet long!  I have a link for a video to see the sea turtle here:  https://youtu.be/arzto5ev9ro

Marsh Harbor is the settlement we stop at to buy groceries.  The harbor is always full of boats anchored, ferries coming in and out, and it is shallow.  Moorings, the charter company, has a fleet of boats at Marsh Harbor if you’d like to rent a sailboat and sail the Abacos.  We’ve been sailing everywhere –that means hauling the sail up before hauling anchor, sailing to a destination, and anchoring, all without starting the motor.  Here’s what our path looked like as we tacked back and forth on the mainsail into Marsh Harbor between all of the anchored boats to the sound of applause from a few admirers.  No one sails into Marsh Harbor!

This is our GPS screen.  The black and white line is our path to where we anchored.

It’s always sad to leave the beautiful water, people, and places in the Bahamas when we head north.  Oh yeah, we hate the leave the tropical weather too!  

Here’s a link for a video of dolphins swimming off the bow as we sail on the banks in the Abacos:  https://youtu.be/GO-Yqo7eb6U

But we have a graduation and a wedding to attend at beginning of June so we sailed back to the states in two hops with Donna and Jerry on Bluejacket.  The first was from Double-Breasted Cay in the northernmost Abacos to Fernandina Beach, FL.  A northeast wind going to south was perfect for the 48 hour sail.  We felt like we were in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie when we spotted this off in the distance…..

A tall ship flying 18 sails!  But no Jolly Roger flying.   It turned out to be a Spanish Navy training ship I believe.  We heard them on the VHF radio.  Do you recognize the ship?  Donna and Jerry also heard the Swedish Navy on a tall ship training vessel out on the ocean that night.

We stayed at Fernandina Beach, FL long enough to check in with customs & immigration, have some lunch and ice cream ashore with Donna and Jerry of Bluejacket, visit with friends Chris, Amy, and Andrew, and ride out the cold front that came through.  52 knots of wind was the peak as it came through with heavy rain and tornado watches.  It made for a choppy anchorage when the wind opposed the current.   

The next morning, Saturday, we were off again for our second hop to Beaufort, NC.  We left the anchorage with very little wind.  That didn’t last long!  As forecast we enjoyed 30 knots of SW and W wind breezing up the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina.  That made for a fast passage and semi-comfortable as the large waves were behind us pushing us along.  We had a warbler land in the cockpit and stay aboard for a while.  Entertaining!  

Here is a video of the bird on the steering wheel.  The autopilot is hard at work as you can see:  https://youtu.be/R-rNmgmf1wg

Here's a video Jerry took on this passage:  https://youtu.be/yU_ExbnuDwo

As we approached the Beaufort Inlet the winds dropped down to 10 knots.  Just over 48 hours from Fernandina.

A Coast Guard ship was in the channel working on the markers.

We are currently tied to the town dock in Oriental, NC.  See if you can find us on the towndock.net harbor cam today (we’ll be leaving tomorrow - Thursday).  We’re all the way to left near a big red shrimp boat.

That’s all for now!  We’ll be heading to Donna and Jerry's place about 10 miles from here, then to Norfolk via the intracoastal waterway, on to the ocean back to NY to see Marianne at Sandy Hook, and then up the Hudson River and Erie Canal.  Keep in touch!

Karen and Jerry

4/5/19

If you’ve checked our SPOT you’ll see that we’ve moved north and are now in the Abacos; the northern island chain in the Bahamas.

We sailed from Hog Cay in the Jumentos to Georgetown to Black Point in the Exumas where we stopped for a quick visit with our friends Doug and Jean who live in the sandcastle.  Yes, you’ve seen pictures in the past.  It looks just like a sandcastle!  We brought Jean some potatoes from Georgetown and she gave us a bag of goodies from her garden – peppers and cherry tomatoes.  Yum!

We had a slow sail from the Exumas to Eleuthera.  Little wind and we didn’t want to start the motor.  Took us forever to go about 40 miles.  But what a way to end the day – coming in to Rock Sound with clear water and a full moon and music blaring.

The moon just coming up over the settlement of Rock Sound.

The moon is up…..the sails are up.

Here is a link to a movie looking at the bottom through the clear turquoise water coming into Rock Sound…..  https://youtu.be/xHX7AcD5n1s

And another link for a movie sailing into Rock Sound, Eleuthera with the full moon….. https://youtu.be/dHD2m2zyXv8

 

The next leg heading north was a great day for sailing with easterly winds all the way to Spanish Wells 60 miles away.  No motor needed for a fast sail.  Spanish Wells is a pretty settlement – all the houses are neatly kept.  No trash on the sides of the road.  And lots of colorful flowers.  Loyalists settled this area and continue to be a hard working community with pride in  their accomplishments.  This has always been a fishing village – though the tourist trade is luring some of the fishermen to new endeavors.

An example of a home at Spanish Wells.

Donna and Jerry rented a golf cart and we spent the day on an island tour.  Actually 3 islands make up the area connected by a bridge.  The island group is about 4 miles long and ½ mile wide.  Easy ground to cover in the golf cart.

A  view from a park on the north side of the island.

A view of Persephone and Bluejacket at anchor from a stop on our golf cart tour.

The students are gathered outside at picnic tables in the morning at the school on Spanish Wells.

A stop at the block factory.  No blocks being made today – chance of rain would ruin fresh made blocks.

 A Haitian settlement outside of town.  Many of the Bahama islands have Haitians who escaped their homelands in search of a better life.  Here in the Bahamas they find a way to make a living working jobs the Bahamians choose not to do.

We stopped at a place in town called Buddhas for lunch.  They have 2 African gray parrots that we all took turns trying to coax into saying something.  An occasionl squawk or whistle is what we got.

And Buddhas had signs all over the place with words of “wisdom”.  Our waitress had hand painted 106 signs a week ago.

And one more stop on the golf cart tour – a place called Tight Spot.  Donna and Jerry know the people who built the place and they’re now selling.  They’re off sailing the South Pacific islands in the sailboat the guy built.

Tight Spot (I included the real estate sign just in case you’re interested).

The view from Tight Spot looking south.

 

 

Pinders Grocery Store in the background with our dinghy and my Klondike bar.  Yes!  I had ice cream!  And it was only 9:30 in the morning.  We can't keep ice cream on the boat but it's nice to have a treat when we have the opportunity!

When the wind warranted, we hauled anchor and moved to a small island called Meeks Patch.  The locals may tell you that that’s where to go if you want to swim with pigs.  For a fee.  We would tell you Meeks Patch is the place to get coconuts!  After discovering the place last year we were anxious to go back for more.  Part of the island (away from the pigs) is loaded with coconut trees and coconuts on the ground.  We spent the morning gathering and processing coconuts.

It takes a lot of work (it was windy and rainy that day) to shuck the husk off the coconut and get the nut inside.  Here are a few of our coconut nuts ready to be cracked open and grated.

Jerry cooked some of the grated coconut on the stove for hours with water and sugar in order to make coconut bread.  Here it is all ready to be rolled up….

Rolled up and ready to put in the pan.

Coconut bread fresh from the oven!

So now we are in the Abacos walking the beaches and thinking of continuing our journey north in the next couple weeks.  The 19^th of April has a full moon – great for a passage to North Carolina.  We hope the weather cooperates somewhere around that time.  We love to sail with a full moon!