Driving To The Beach

Amelia has become very good at driving our dingy (which we have named "Dipity"). Last week she motored us through the Lucaya canals on Grand Bahama Island and out an ocean inlet. Just outside the inlet, we drove to a beautiful white-sand beach where we swam and played in the surf with friends. The dingy is our "car" for getting around and exploring whenever the boat is at anchor or in a marina.

Lucaya has an extensive network of deep-water canals that were dug into the limestone structure of the island to provide inland boat access to resorts and home sites. Several inlets connect the canals to the ocean. While exploring in our dingy, we have been surprised by the amount of vacant land adjacent to these canals. In many places, it appears that these vacant sites once had houses or resorts, which appear to have been damaged and abandoned or destroyed by hurricanes in years past. Given the low utilization rate in the marinas that we have visited, current economics don't appear to justify intensive building (or re-building) efforts on these sites. While we look at these vacant sites, we also see newly-developed single-family-home lots in other island locations for sale at over $1 million dollars per lot (house construction extra). There is clearly something about the local economy that we don't understand.

In the little resort marina where we are currently docked, there is a newly constructed home for sale for $12 million. It has an unusual boathouse design, where the ground floor is a boathouse allowing a Hinckley Picnic Boat (included in the price) to enter and be lifted to the second floor where it can be admired from the living quarters. A separate guesthouse/caretaker's cottage is also included. The home is cute but if we had an extra $12 million to spend (and we don't, having recently spent our last 12 extra large on boat parts), I think we would look for our own island. In doing so, we would follow in the footsteps of local celebrities, including Johnny Depp, who are recent Bahamas island buyers. So, I guess there really are pirates in the Caribbean...

Adventures in Paradise

While we watch the winter weather reports for northern climes, we are enjoying the pleasant Bahamas weather while swimming, snorkeling, reading, eating, sleeping (and a little home schooling), and then getting up the next day to do it all over again. This will probably get old in a few weeks but, for now, it feels great.

We are currently in a pleasant marina in Lucaya, which is on the south side of Grand Bahama Island, and have been taking advantage of our time here in a relatively developed area to restock and recharge. One great advantage of being here has been the opportunity to spend more time with our friends from Wyoming. Their daughter, Harmony, and Amelia have been spending most days together and have also had rotating sleepovers – a nice break for the parents. We’ve had a chance to explore some beautiful beaches here, as well as to kick around town. Our marina is particularly nice, with great lap and kid’s pools, beautiful grounds and a picnic area. There is also a shuttle boat to the Lucaya town center, which has numerous restaurants and bars, a host of small shops and a bandstand which features local music on the weekends. Earlier this week Amelia and Harmony stayed up far too late eating ice cream and dancing to a local beat. Harmony has been a great influence on Amelia, encouraging her to be more serious about her schoolwork and contributing her second-grader’s perspective on everything from kite flying to art.

Last week when we went out to dinner with a couple of families, and the most experienced cruiser there posed an interesting question: “What have you learned on your trip so far?” It was interesting to reflect on this, and I think that by far the most rewarding thing has been getting to know our daughter so well. It has also been an opportunity for Dave and me to connect and cooperate nearly full time. Back in Winchester, with two demanding careers and a full schedule of school and activities for Amelia, it seems that we spent much more time handing off Amelia and moving between planned events than we spent together as a family. Now, for better or worse, we need to engage on issues as small as how we keep our small living space habitable and as large as how we safely manage our passages. While the challenge of living together in such intimate and immediate circumstances isn’t trivial, the benefits are enormous.

I’ve also been experimenting with local cuisine. Earlier this week, we went to a fish market, which had little to offer except conch (pronounced “Konk”), a staple in the local diet. I ordered some, and also received some preparation tips. The women weighing the fish slyly mentioned that conch is especially good “for the man”, referring to its reputation for enhancing virility, and laughed when I then asked for another pound. So far, I’ve experimented with making conch salad (a spicy ceviche) and conch chowder, all with excellent results.

Our plans for later this week are to sail about 60 miles to the southeast to a protected anchorage in the Berry Islands, provided the winds turn to the southwest as predicted. The prevailing winds blow quite strongly from the east or southeast and generate substantial waves in the open areas. As a result, to sail with any degree of comfort to the southeast, we have to wait for weather fronts to pass through causing the winds to turn to the west or north. This only occurs for a day or two out of every ten days and we plan to take advantage of the next weather window to travel southeast to the Berry Islands. Several other boats in this marina are waiting for the same weather conditions and the talk dockside each morning revolves around the latest weather predictions (as well as the usual complaints about boat equipment breakdowns and repairs). There is a popular saying in the boating community that cruising on a sailboat is just “repairing your boat in interesting places.” We have been fortunate in that regard and are pleased to report that, since our six-week delay in Annapolis, we have had very little breakdown and repair experience. We hope that this good fortune continues.

Bahamas Sunrise

Well, finally!

After a long night at sea, the sun appeared slowly over the eastern horizon (I love the 6:00-to-8:00 am watch) and the Bahamas came into view. Once we turned east from Florida’s east coast to cross the Gulf Stream (which runs north at more than three miles per hour between Florida and the Bahamas), we had a great sail on a beam reach with a following sea all the way to West End on Grand Bahama Island. The wisdom of our decision to sail overnight in order to arrive in the Bahamas and enter an unfamiliar port during daylight was reinforced at 3:00 AM the next morning when a sailboat ran up on the rocks and was destroyed while attempting to enter the narrow West End channel to our marina in the dark. Fortunately the crew was able to get ashore but the boat was a total loss.

So we are snug in a beautiful resort marina and waiting out the passage of a cold front (with thunderstorms and 30-knot northerly winds) while enjoying the swimming pool and warm turquoise Bahamian waters. This marina has been recently upgraded as part of the early stages of an ambitious plan to develop a large mixed-use water-oriented community on the West End with grand canals, hotels, homes with boat docks, condominiums, retail, etc. From what we hear, the Bahamas have experienced the beginnings of numerous large-scale developments but are suffering from low occupancies and slow sales due to the US economic downturn and credit issues as well as high fuel costs for the large 50-to-90-foot sport fishing boats that bring free-spending tourists from Florida. A typical refueling for them is 1,500 gallons of diesel fuel while we have burned only 10 gallons since refueling in West Palm Beach. Dave says that we have a responsibility to the local economy to make up the difference by drinking Margaritas (He’s just joking I hope!).

One of the high points of stopping for a few days here has been the opportunity to re-connect with another cruising family from Wyoming on a similar adventure with their two children. We had enjoyed the opportunity to socialize with them at a couple of earlier stops. Their 7-year-old daughter and Amelia have become instant best friends, sharing pool time, snorkeling practice, a sleepover and stories and generally bossing each other around. Dave and I are also really enjoying some fun adult time with a couple with whom we have a lot in common.

The Bahamas has an interesting history. It is an island chain that stretches over 600 miles and includes 1,700 islands and 2,000 cays, many of which are remote and accessible only by private boat. Columbus initially set foot here in 1492, and in less than 25 years the 40,000-strong population of native Lucayans was gone. The islands were then ignored by explorers of many nations in favor of more treasure-rich locations because of its treacherous shoals and reefs, lack of gold, and unfavorable conditions for agriculture. In those days, the islands were so little regarded that, in 1629, King Charles I of England granted the islands to his Attorney General as a throw-away in a package that included the Carolinas. The archipelago became a haven for settlers fleeing religious persecution, pirates and wreckers. In 1718 it became a British Colony and the new governor cleaned things up (in the process establishing the national motto Expulsis Piratis – Restituta Commercia – expel the pirates and restore commerce.) During the next two hundred years, the islands had a boom and bust economy with booms fueled by European wars (privateering), the American Civil War (blockade running), and later prohibition. 1n 1973, the Bahamas became independent from England and the economy today is stable, fueled primarily by tourism and offshore banking.

So, we have been looking at the Bahamas charts and are overwhelmed by the variety of fascinating places that we could visit in this beautiful island chain. It seems that we could easily spend a year rather than the few weeks that we now have to explore. We plan to make some choices while waiting out the current weather front, and look to forward to enjoying the islands before we start the trek north.

Sticky South Florida

Now that we are in sunny southern Florida, time seems to stand still. After moving so fast to get here, we have finally slowed down. One motivation is the fantastic weather and beautiful beaches, the other is exhaustion: When we planned our trip, I don’t think either of us had anticipated the mental and physical toll of spending each night route planning, each day sailing or motoring through unforgiving waters for 10+ hours and then arriving in an unfamiliar port each night. Now, it is time to slow down and smell the bougainvillea.

Earlier this week, we stayed for several days at a mooring in Vero Beach, “Velcro Beach” to in-the-know boaters. Dave had a chance to perform some long-delayed boat maintenance and Amelia and I spent time kicking around the beach, local library and playground. Then, we took a short hop (including some ICW sailing!) to our present destination of Stuart, Florida. We are now on a mooring on the St. Lucie River and exploring Stuart’s many attractions including a jazz festival that starts this weekend.

Places like Vero and Stuart seem to be havens for some of the more hard-bitten cruising types. When we arrived on Wednesday we had a chance to experience the weekly “sunset celebration” at the marina here – a dockside cocktail hour/pot luck where many sea stories were traded. It made us feel pretty green, as many of the couples (and they were all couples, mostly retired), had made an ICW-Bahamas trip a yearly migration. In fact, one sailor was trading stories about his fourth world sailing circumnavigation. I don’t think either plan is in the future for us, but we certainly sponged up their advice.

It has been interesting meeting the many different characters who choose to take a little time out and live on a sailboat, either for an extended vacation or as part of a long-term plan. We were expecting to meet a lot more families. Our late departure, however, seems to have put us behind schedule to meet up with the family cruising culture that everyone told us we would find. We did have a chance to spend a couple of days in Saint Augustine with a terrific family from Wyoming whose daughter is a little older than Amelia. Like us, they were delayed by mechanical issues and rushing south. The girls had a great time together and we plan to connect with them again in West Palm Beach, our next stop.

In addition to human encounters, we’ve had a chance to experience a lot of wildlife. We mentioned the whales we saw earlier, and we continue to see a fantastic array of birds. We encounter dolphins almost daily. In Vero, I had a chance to spend time in close proximity to an entire pod during an early morning kayak ride. And, of course, there are the alligators…