Hey, Guess What?!

The good people at Living Aboard Magazine published an article of mine! Their website is on the link list on the right hand side. You'll have to actually buy January-February's issue to read the article, but I'll give you a hint: if you've been keeping up with the storys here, you've read most of what the article is about. Tomorrow, Gourmet! Ok, maybe I'll practice a bit first. And by the way, Phil, thanks for telling me I made a spelling error...but where?

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While trying to figure out how to make this blog more fun, I discovered that I didn't make the comment button very accessible for most of you. Hopefully, this has been corrected, and I would love to hear from you!

Great Guana Cay

The adventure continues! As we cruise these tiny, northern cays, we look for ones that have some settlement on them so we can walk on paths and paved/bare limestone roads. Frequently, we'll anchor off the leeward side, row in and find a walk to the Altantic ocean side. The first picture shows the Atlantic beach, the latter shots depict the much less windy inside beaches. These shots were taken on a very calm day so I could get a clear shot of the bottom. My dingy was riding over two feet of clear water. Can you make out the Hawksbill Turtle in the last shot? Hawksbills are from the family Chelonidae; Green Turtle. Cool, huh? Don't forget, you can click on the photos for a blow-up.

So the days are blissfully getting longer. I tell you, when the sun went down at five o'clock in December, it got pretty depressing! We found out that cruisers have not much else to do than turn in shortly after nightfall and catch up on some sleep. Finding something to do, other than reading, can get to be tedious in the evenings, but with a little increase in daylight hours, it gets easier.

Cruisers have a developed habit of getting together for cocktails, not dinner until you get to know the other better. A few days ago, we sailed up to Allan's Cay, a popular stop for boats just arriving in the Bahamas, and came across 12 other sailboats and 3 trawler-yachts in the roomy harbour area. So when we saw a get-together on the beach at 5 o'clockish, we rowed in for a hello, where are you from, where are you headed? You meet the nicest people! We discovered another wooden boat, a wee schooner, home-built and quite pretty. Met a couple with a 4 month old baby. Most of them have been coming here for years. Decades, even. So it's nice to get info for good stopping spots from the vets, and share the wonder with the newbies.

The US Department of Defence (NASA?) had a radar tracking thingy on Allan's. It is now abandoned, but they left all their roads (bare limestone with some remaining ashphalt) for us to use. Some creative sailors made a "signing tree"; whatever beach-combings you find, you carve your ship's name in it and hang it up on this weathered, old tree. There were old sandals, bikinis, wood scraps (one made into a two-seater swing!) dive-floats and old rope. These days, the junk that washes up on the shore is more plastic than anything: buckets, milk-crates, bread racks, 4" docklines from huge freighters, and, maddeningly, plastic water bottles. Lots and lots of those. Even on what should be the most deserted of shores, (Allan's is unpopulated) there are reminders of "civilization".

We're planning on cruising the Southern Abacoes next, see Hopetown, then start heading back for our crossing to get back to Ontario. We'll be seeing a part of the US that we missed by coming here off-shore: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Savannah and Charleston. Not looking forward to the tight canals of the Intra-Coastal Waterway, so we're getting advice from other sailors that know the inlets so we can travel outside the ICW when possible, on the open Atlantic, for 24-36 hour short hops up the coast.

Jim's brother is getting married on the May long Weekend in Kingston, so we hope to get the boat to where we can leave it safely for a few days (Annapolis?) while we rent a car, attend the Do, then get back to the boat. We might make it back to begin our much-anticipated Ontario cruise. I'm telling you, I'm looking forward to cruising familiar waters and not holding down a full time job. I'll actually have time to enjoy more of my former back-yard, which is lovely in the summer.

Haul-Out.

Up, up and away! The handsome, efficient and tireless crew at Abaco Yacht Services picked Chelonidae up Monday am, and put her back in today, Friday. After a hull inspection, it was my job to scrub the black part. Then Jim sanded it. I dusted and tacked it off. The old bottom paint was the oblating kind: it wears off gradually to inhibit marine growth and toredo worms. When dry, it comes off like chalk dust. Black, top-side-hugging, get-it-in-youreyesearsnosethroat, non-stop chalk dust. In a word...Ew! But! After a wash, shave and haircut, she looks great, once again, see new photo on the title of blog. This new bottom paint is NOT the oblating kind! We will still have to sand it, so what the hell!

Other non-paid staff include these lovely geese. They are fed by Crystal, who administates the operation. The last sound you expect to hear in a busy ship-yard is "Quack-qua-a-ack!", but it made mid-night trips to the loo more interesting!

Our next stop will be back to Marsh Harbour to re-provision, then maybe southward to explore Hopetown and Little Harbour.

Junkanoo at Green Turtle Cay

Junkanoo is what people in the Bahamas do to celebrate the New Year. Jim looked it up and learned that the name pays hommage to (yikes!) an African slave-trader named John Canoe! Whatever it was, it was good, old fashioned family fun! We had a great feed of barbeque, rice & conch and baked macaroni & cheese (Huh? Yes! It's really Bahamian treat!). With a population of maybe 300, we practically knew every one that was there! It was just like attending Hey-Day in Kemptville! Then the Junkanoo Rush (the performers) came down the hill in a whirl of white and blue with flashes of pink and yellow, what a scene! And could these guys press the volume button, or what?!? Even the littlest of boys were shaking the gound with those drum-beats!

After twice around the town (so small!) the Junkanoo headed for the basket-ball court, their version of the Villiage green, and continued to play and dance. According to tradition, there was a scarily-dressed charachter let loose into the crowd to scare all the evil spirits away for the whole year. Alas, he was moving too fast to be captured by either rambunctios lttle boy or the camera! I think it was about then that the "Goombay Smash "(the local tipple) made an appearance, because the highly energized Big Cheese said for all to go around the town again; we cut back to the boat.

We hitched a ride back to our end of the island, and were picked up by a mommy of one of the little girls. This lively sprite told me that she just plain didn't want to go around again!

It was quite fun to be welcomed into the small (TINY!) town crowd for this special event, Green Turtle puts on one of the bigger Junkanoos around.

So Happy New Year, keep the bad spirits away and if you think os us, dump some pineapple and coconut juice into some rum and chase your own spirits away!

Manjack Cay

Bill and Leslie are The Keepers of Manjack Cay, and hosts to all gentle sailfolk that care to anchor there. Fortunately for them, there have been no aggresive invaders. Fortunatley for us, they are there! We sailed from Green Turtle Cay to Manjack Cay and anchored in the bay where they built their home 16 years ago, you can see their palm-lined beach in one of the photograph below. It was such a calm day on the water that we sailed with our cruising chute, and after we anchored, Bill and Leslie came out to say that since the water surface was as smooth as glass, they were going out on their motor-boat to view the creeks in behind their home and would we like to join them? So we piled in and in no time were in the small, shallow creek and could see right through to the bottom without even a ripple from the wind. They showed us some Hawksbill turtles and a lone Eagle Ray what unusual creatures!

We were invited to take some coconuts, our new favourite staple, use their cleared pathways to get to the ocean beach on the other side of the cay, what lovely people! They are photagaphed above, with their solar-powered golf cart and in front of their extensive vegetable garden. The other photos are of other Bahamian locals: curly-tailed lizards and Hibiscus flowers.

Bill brought a visiting freind out to our boat, both of them wooden boat builders. They arrived in visiting Bahamian fashion: at cocktail hour with drinks at the ready! I was just finishing making hummus and fresh , hot pita bread, so it was a perfect arrival! We talked into the evening, yakking endlessly about (what else?) wooden boats! We shared the story of our ocean crossing from Beaufort and were awarded near-hero status for having survived (someday I'll be brave enough the share the real story with you!) and got to know some great people. Getting to know different sorts of sailors is always a rewarding, and handy thing. You learn a lot about which cays are worth visiting, which passes are best left alone and which ones aren't as bad as they are made out to be. And I get to share recipes!

So, Bill, as requested, the recipe for the pita bread in a little lower down on the side-bar. And if Leslie is successful at making sourdough starter, I would like that recipe! (email me at michelle.lambton@gmail.com , thanks! We'll certainly see you agian!

Beach, beach, beach!

Howdya like my Christmas present? At a Christmas eve gathering aboard a Warram Catamaran named Peace (hosted by Annie and Neville), I had chance to admire a conch shell that had its very tip sawn off to make a trumpet of it. I had heard some horns blowing at sunset around the anchorage and was wondering what it might be. Jim told me that the skipper of the boat he helped move from Cornwall to Cape Breton had a conch and blew it at sunset every darned night! Now I thought the owner of this particular conch was a wee bit sauced when he offered me one, and honestly didn't expect him to remember (sorry, Al!) but on Christmas morning, there he was pulling alongside Chelonidae with a red "Santa Sack" in hand. What a lovely gift! So I've been practicing wherever we are a creating a ruckus!
So here's something funny! For the first time ever, one of us forgot to bring the painter (the rope attached to the dingy) up after getting back onto the boat! Ha ha ha ! It started to float out on the tide pretty quickly, meanwhile superJim stripped to the skin (he's always looking for the chance!), dove in and retreived it. What fun!
Many of you had asked what our whole plan was for cruising...you know, when are we coming back? and all that. We're still considering the possibilites, but it looks like we'll be heading back north for the summer. We want to do more coastal-hopping than what we did on our trip down, so planning is underway. But you never know!