We enjoyed Long Island. It’s almost like a throwback to the 50’s; the people would no sooner think of not saying hello to you than not stop to offer you a ride. Here, the Bahamian singsong accent has morphed slightly into a kind of slow-mo dutch lilt; a little easier to understand due in large part to the slower pace of speech. The pace of everything is slower here. One day, while picking up a few groceries in the H&H grocery store in Salt Pond, I was waiting to pay for my groceries. The man in front of me, in conversation with the cashier and another customer, told the story of a young 15-year old boy at the local high school causing a ruckus. He said, “Did you hear about the trouble up at the high school?”. “No, no”, they said, as other customers crowded around. “What happened?” This young boy got angry and threw a chair at the teacher. Everyone had a comment. “You can’t be doing that acting out, no way” and “oh boy, he going to end up at the reform school”. Turned out this man was the island commissioner and that sort of behaviour is so unusual that he took it upon himself to talk to the boy and try to straighten him out. They have very little violence in the schools here and everyone agreed that “That boy be picking up some of that Nassau bad acting”. Nassau is the buggaboo for these out-islanders. It’s a big scary city with lots of crime and unfortunately, it’s where all the young people have to go to either continue their schooling or to get a full time job.

Cape Santa Maria

On top of being a throwback to the 50’s, Long Island also has pretty rudimentary medical services. After returning to Thompson Bay from Cape Santa Maria, I stayed with Strathspey for two nights on my own while Blair took a short 45-minute flight up to Nassau. He’d been suffering from a persistent stomach ache for the last month and after two visits to a very competent doctor on Long Island (she’d trained in a German hospital and is just here for a few years), he decided to fly into a center with all mod cons. Long Island has no facilities for things like x-rays, ultrasounds or even blood work and this doctor had raised the specter of appendicitis so we deemed it prudent to get all those tests done pronto. Blair stayed with good friends of ours in Nassau and the tests ruled out all the obvious culprits so at this point, we’re wondering if he got a touch of ciguatera, a poison carried by reef fish down here or perhaps some sort of lingering food poisoning. Paradise is great unless of course it isn’t great because you’re sick and then all you want is to be home and in familiar surroundings.

Favourite pastime

Staying by myself in Thompson Bay, I realized how much I depend on Blair while cruising this year. Before he left, he explained how to set up the generator to charge our batteries and I said I thought I had a general idea of how to up-anchor by myself if it was necessary. But, the next thing I knew, we’d dinghied ashore, I’d hugged him more than once, he was in a taxi to the airport at Deadman’s Cay and I was standing on the dinghy dock all by my lonesome. Climbing down into the dinghy, I put on my lifejacket, and pulled the outboard starter cord, all the while thinking “Please, please start” and “Jeeez, here I am, all by myself on a boat 4,000 miles from home!”.

But, I wasn’t really all by myself. Our good friends, Bruce and Nancy on Seabird and Jim and Jeannie on Estelle were here in Thompson Bay with me and they weren’t about to go anywhere while I was on Strathspey by myself. I have to say that I get a little teary when I think about how these guys took me under their wings. From dinner on Seabird, to Valentine’s lunch at Max’s Conch Grill and dinghy ride offers here and there, all the way up to Jim and Jeannie saying “Nightie, night Mary” over channel 72 and and monitoring it all night in case I needed them, it was a pretty nice group hug! On Friday morning, Bruce and Nancy picked Blair up at the airport in their rental car. It was a group goodbye also as Seabird headed down to the Jumentos and Estelle headed out to Conception and Cat Island. These are truly good people that we feel a strong bond with after meeting them in October, only four short months ago. Sailing generates a closeness, an immediate closeness, one not found often in our other life. I think the only thing that comes close to it is when you share music with others.

Georgetown stance

Blair missed Valentine’s Day with me but he more than made up for it with the “present” he carried home from Nassau. He returned with a big box of fruit and vegetables; Asparagus! Strawberries! Snowpeas! Who would have thought I could wax lyrical about these things that we take for granted in Ottawa. Yes, our environmental footprint with this kind of off-island food is embarrassingly large (maybe a size 16 even) but to have such wonderful food aboard was a big treat and for today only, we’re going to look the other way. With these purchases, we’re still eating well. Interestingly, in a switch from our Great Lakes cooking style, we rarely use our barbecue on Strathpey. This is partially due to the high winds at anchorage that make for a longer cooking time and as well due to the fact that the barbecue is buried under all the additional paraphernalia we’ve packed aboard Strathspey for this year of cruising. We tend to do a lot more stir-fry dinners, salad plates or broiled fish, mostly because neither of us wants to eat a heavy meal in 30°C weather. We’re finally seeing almost the end of the big Wahoo Blair caught and after the last fillet in the freezer is gone, we’ll be looking to add some Mahi-mahi to our diet. We’ve not yet tasted the Caribbean lobster either; a species without those succulent claws so prized in our northern lobster.

Hunter/Gatherer

One thing that has been hanging over us since we entered the Bahamas was our relatively short visa permit. Strathspey has her own 1-year cruising permit but Blair and I were only granted a 3-month stay. Our short stay was granted only because we cleared customs in Green Turtle Cay where the customs agent did not have the authority to grant a longer stay. She said not to worry and just check in anywhere else and have it extended to whenever we wished. Easier said than done! When we arrived back in Georgetown, after a less than happy docking at the infamous Exuma Docking Services docks, we hurried up to the customs office to do the necessary paperwork before it closed a half hour later for the weekend. At this stage of winter, Georgetown is a crowded anchorage and we planned to only stop overnight, get our visiting permit extended and scoot on up to Lee Stocking Island.

The customs agent was the same woman at the Georgetown airport - the one who’d given me heck for taking Strathspey’s original cruising permit with me rather than a copy. She bluntly turned down our request for an extension. “Come back 3 days to 1 week before your visitor permits expire”. I literally was speechless and I admit I was pretty close to tears. It was not one of our better days down here; after circling for half an hour in front of the Exuma Docking Services, changing fenders and lines from starboard to port side and getting no docking help up against those awful nail-studded pilings. Now this! I think probably the stress and worry of Blair’s visit to Nassau and then the relief that he was on the mend probably made this frustration loom a lot larger than it should have but nonetheless, I was not a happy camper. Blair, who’s pretty good at dealing with bureaucracy, spent some time pleading our case but even after consulting her boss, she was adamant and we left the way we came, with a visiting permit that is a month too short. This means another long sail down to Georgetown at some point in early March which is the last thing we want to do because the boat population here grows by approximately 50 boats per week. So at this point, we’re trying to figure out a way to work this “challenge” out.

Lee Stocking

Sticking to our original plan though, we left Georgetown the next day and had a great sail up to Lee Stocking Island using our most favourite blue gennaker sail. Again, we motored past all the boats in front of the research station there and found our way down to a deserted spot, miles from anyone else. We stayed here for two nights and at one point climbed up to Perry’s Peak. At only 123 feet, it’s the highest point of land in the Exumas. That fact alone points out why even when you’re tucked in behind an island for shelter, these islands are so low that you can still feel the 20 knots of wind blowing across the water. That, in addition to the fact that at most anchorages even when we creep in to six feet of water, the gently shallowing waters sometimes only allow us to get about 300 yards offshore. Most of the time we just hung out and read and swam. Blair’s reading This is Your Brain on Music, an interesting insight into how our brains process music. I finished Wind from the Carolinas by Robert Wilder. It’s a good read for anyone planning a trip to the Bahamas. An older book, written in the mid ’60s, it’s a fictional work that weaves in a history of the loyalists who left the Carolinas after their defeat in the War of Independence and tried to make their future in the Bahamas.

Strathspey at anchor

We’re still enjoying ourselves but here’s where I inject a small bit of truth into what paradise (this life of ours aboard Strathspey) is really like. Well into our eighth month of cruising, each of us has developed our own list of petpeeves but both of us agree that #1 on this list is dinghy travel. Sure, it had sounded pretty cool when we were planning this trip. We’d read all the stories that say that your dinghy is like your family car down here. Well I can tell you in all certainty that its only resemblance to your family car is the fact that you depend on it. But your family car never has you sitting on a hard wooden seat with your garbage, laundry and computer squeezed in behind the gas tank. All that while you bounce from wave top to wave top, trying to avoid the unavoidable salt spray that once it coats you, ensures that the clothes you’re wearing will take ’til next week to dry. We have a 10 foot Zodiac with an inflatable floor, powered by a 8 horsepower motor. It’s a good length for us and with just the two of us aboard, it gets up onto a good fast plane pretty quickly. I think though, that if we were to do this trip again, we’d consider a hard bottomed dinghy that, although heavier, would slice through the waves faster and more smoothly.

Lee Stocking Island

So here it is, the third week of February and we’re definitely noticing the migration patterns of boats is changing. On the SSB radio every morning while listening to weather guy Chris Parker, we hear a distinctly different sort of query. Back in December and early January, most of the boats were requesting weather information for the crossing from the USA to the Bahamas. Now, cruisers want information for traveling further south to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. These are the boats who plan to be down below the hurricane belt before June. We’re noticing too, how much more crowded the anchorages are getting now. Back in January when we made our way down the Exuma Island chain, often we’d be the only boat in an anchorage. The last time we were in Black Point Settlement, there were only eight other boats; compare that with the 22 cruisers we’re sharing the bay with now. Apparently February is a busy month down here as the weather and water gets warmer and fewer cold fronts make it this far south. March is even busier so we’re glad our schedule dictated that we cruised this area early in the season before it got crowded.

We’re meeting friends and family at Staniel Cay over the next three weeks and hope to explore this area and north of Warderick Wells between their visits. Blair and I both agree that now that we’ve stretched our necks all the way down to Long Island, the focus and mood aboard Strathspey seems to be directed in a more northerly direction at this point. We want to work our way back through the Abacos, stopping in at the more northerly islands we missed on the way down. In the past eight months, we’ve traveled over 4000 miles to get here and no matter our feeling that we’ve only just arrived, it’s time to start a bit of the leaving, however gradual.

Georgetown

I arrived back in Georgetown on Thursday night and on Saturday morning, after a quick call to our weather guy Chris Parker, we pulled up our anchor and headed further south. We left Elizabeth Harbour via the southern entrance and followed a dog-leg track south between reefs and small rocky islands out to Exuma Sound. At 10:30 am on Groundhog Day, we officially cruised into the tropics as we crossed the Tropic of Cancer (23° 26′ 22″). Seven hours later, we arrived at Thompson Bay on Long Island. It’s a huge open bay with room to anchor well away from our ten other neighbours; a welcome change from the crowded Georgetown anchorages. We made the trip down here with Jim and Jeannie Lea on Estelle with Jon and Barbara Anderson on Sam the Skull following close behind.

Peace and Plenty Beach

Long Island, even though quite remote, is a relatively prosperous island, obvious in the well-kept houses and yards, the extensive pavement from one end of the island to the other and the newer model trucks and SUVs on the roads. We shared a car with Jim and Jeannie and drove a goodly portion of these roads, stopping at old churches, banana plantations and various other spots that caught our eye. At one of these stops, we were admiring a Bahamian racing sloop up on blocks and a young guy holding a machete appeared from around a clump of bushes. His name was Mark, he was cutting branches to feed his goats and he was the owner of this boat, a Class B Bahamian sloop.

Class A sloop

Mark was keen for us to see his other boat, a Class A sloop just a tad bigger, so we followed his truck down the road a piece. He was so proud and happy to show us his boats, his masts and to explain the rules of Bahamian-style sailing to us. Mark had made the masts himself by laminating strips of wild tamarind found on the island to produce a relatively light, hollow pole. These masts are tall. They tower over the boats; the 22 foot Class B sloop had a 48 foot mast – that’s only five feet less than Strathspey’s and we’re a 35-foot boot. Even more amazing was the huge crew that this small boat carries. To keep the boats level, Mark’s crew of eight young guys scramble back and forth across the deck and onto long flat boards that stretch far out from the midship. The biggest sailing race in the Bahamas is the Family Islands Regatta, held in late April, which draws hundreds of these Bahamian sailing sloops from all over the Bahamas. Mark and his number one crewmate, Cameron, have been the Class A and Class B champions for two years running. They explained some of the racing rules to us and they are definitely different than ours; the number one rule is that you’re not allowed to steal someone else’s wind (a classic ploy that North American sailors often use to edge out their opponents). Also, all the boats start the race in a long line much like a horse race, with their anchors down and their sails furled. Mark’s a confident skipper and he told us to watch for him racing in April - “I’ll be on TV!”

Blue Hole

Taking advantage of our car, we also stopped in at Long Island’s most famous blue hole. At over 600 feet, it’s the deepest blue hole in the world. It’s pretty low key though. A lumpy, potholed limestone road leads to the blue hole, there were no signs advertising it and best of all, no admission to the site. We arrived as the world champion free diver, a New Zealander who spends six months a year here, was doing a practice dive. He can dive, barefoot, make it down 239 feet and rise back up in 3 minutes, 9 seconds! He’s a slim guy, with not an ounce of body fat and has obviously well developed lungs. We got a short tutorial in the diving rules for the championship tournament to be held here in April. The one rule that sticks in my mind is that you can do the dive, make it all the way back to the surface, but if you pass out, you’re disqualified. Bummer!

Coconuts

We drove all the way down to Clarence Town, a harbour on the east side of the island open to the full force of the Atlantic. Blair adapted quite nicely to driving on the wrong side of the road and it was a good day for him to practice as the roads were quiet because it was Sunday. But because it was Sunday, most restaurants were closed so we settled for a bite at the Blue Chip Grill, a dusty place with roosters and goats wandering around. We ordered grouper and conch to share which tasted just a little okay, but not so good that any of us felt like getting the leftovers packaged to take home. After returning the car, we dinghied over to Parrots of the Caribbean, an outdoor bar with satellite TV. That was the place to be for Superbowl and it played to a packed house. Actually, we’re pretty thick when it comes to football so I have to confess that we went mainly for the half time show and then left shortly after.

Clarence Town

When sailing in these out-of-the-way places, the big issue is to not run out of diesel, gasoline or water so we’re keen to make sure all three of these are pointing at full on Strathspey. For some reason, island time dictates that simple errands like getting water take an entire morning. On the other hand, moderately more complex errands like doing a few loads of laundry can take the better part of the day if you factor in having to hustle for change for a $10 bill. So although we left Strathspey around 9am on Monday morning to fill our jerry cans with drinking water, it was well after 11 when we set out to find the trail across Long Island to an excellent beach wide open to the east with huge rollers. Jeannie had given us directions to the trail but it was pretty obvious that we’d missed it when we ended up bushwhacking down a surveyor’s through-cut. Blair, armed with a long stick, got rid of all the spider webs that crisscrossed the trail, most of them with big crab spiders sitting pretty in the middle of them. These spiders look like little blue crabs and apparently have a nasty bite so I was glad after our long walk when we found a wide and well-travelled dirt road leading back to the western side of the island.

Parrots of the Caribbean

Here in Thompson Bay, because there were only about ten boats we thought the odds of finding any other musicians out there were pretty poor. Not so. There were four guitar players anchored here and one night, a crowd gathered at Parrots of the Caribbean for a jam session. This informal beach side bar also boasts a good Laundromat so I multitasked and over the night, was able to wash, dry and fold our laundry.

Anglican Church

Chatting with other cruisers down here, we’re all in agreement that Long Island is a wonderful destination and just a short 7-hour hop down from Georgetown so it’s surprising that more people don’t make it down here. My theory is that although it is a short hop mileage-wise, it’s a stretch mentally to get past Georgetown. For some people, the feeling is that they’ve worked hard to get to Georgetown and feel that it’s time for a break, perhaps to re-energize, regroup and get in the right mindset for the long trip home. It’s a bonus for us though because Long Island has much to offer and we benefit from the smaller crowds down here. The beaches are deserted, the anchorages aren’t crowded and the restaurant service is friendly and outgoing because the waitresses aren’t rushed off their feet; actually in most cases the staff are more than happy to chat you up rather than expect you to order right away.

We took advantage of this and took a ride down to Max’s Conch Bar one day for lunch. This is a small place, bar stools only, with Gary the chef/bartender holding court in the middle, serving drinks and making his most excellent conch salad. The salad is a little spicy, a little sour, made with tomatoes, onions and probably lots of secret ingredients but no matter how much you compliment Gary, all he’ll tell you is that he uses sour oranges in it. But one taste is enough to guarantee that you‘ll return another day.

We hung around Thompson Bay for four nights, enjoying Long Island’s hospitality and rising at 6:30 am every morning to hang on Chris Parker’s every word for any kind of encouragement to head further south to the Jumentos Islands. But Chris’ forecasts continued to predict high winds for that area. The Jumentos are low islands that in high winds have anchorages subject to big swells that wrap around the islands and would do more than make me clutch my stomach. Chris said we had a short calm-weather window this week – not long enough to go to the Jumentos but perhaps enough time to visit Conception Island and Rum Cay, two isolated islands north of Long Island. Day 1 gave us a beautiful sail downwind to Calabash Bay at the northern tip of Long Island. We even had a chance to pull out our asymmetrical gennaker, a sail in the same family as a spinnaker. We love this sail and this was the first time we’d used it since August and the Bras d’Or Lakes.

Orion

While in Calabash Bay, Blair replaced our alternator belt. It’s been 250 hours of engine time since it was last changed and it was starting to shred with minute bits of rubber dusting the engine to give off just enough smoke to make one of us check it every 15 minutes or so for the last hour before we dropped anchor. Calabash Bay has a bit of a swell rolling through it but the beach here is one of the prettiest we’ve seen. We dinghied over to the Cape Santa Maria resort to get our emails that afternoon; a welcome treat as we’ve not had wifi reception since Georgetown although we’re still connected via full-bar cell phone reception (at $4/minute!).

We sailed out of Calabash Bay heading for Rum Cay but our weather forecast from Chris Parker seemed a bit skewed. The wind and waves were much higher than predicted and after rounding the tip of Cape Santa Maria on Long Island, we buried our bow quite a few times in huge waves before we called uncle and returned to anchor at Calabash Bay again. An armada of boats heading from Georgetown to Puerto Rico altered their course at that point to go to Conception Island but we’d heard that the ocean swell there is bad at the best of times and in this sort of weather it would be downright unpleasant.

Beach bar/laundramat

We’ve enjoyed Long Island over the last week or so. The islanders here obviously enjoy the small number of cruisers who make it this far south. They’re always interested in talking to us, without fail they stop and offer rides to us and when we get into their car, the most important thing is the introductions all ‘round. They invariably know the last person we accepted a ride from and in quite a few instances, they’re related. Point in case, travelling from the north end of Long Island at Cape Santa Maria, Rodney Gibson, the local elementary school principal, stopped to pick us up as we walked along the road. After Rodney, Joy and her daughter Erica picked us up; they were islanders who’ve moved to California but were back for a short visit. Erica said Rodney had been her principal. The next day at the Parrots of the Caribbean, our waitress Tamika said “oh Joy is my cousin”. Small world – actually small island.

While off Cape Santa Maria, in another small world sort of moment, we were hailed on the VHF by a fishing boat called Seabean. They’d seen the Canadian flags on Estelle and Strathspey and heard that Strathspey was from Ottawa. Not expecting them to know the area, I said that we actually lived in a small village called Navan. It turns out that these people, John and Marion Peacock and Gayle Houghttby are from Navan as well and are here on holidays for six months. Now, Navan is a pretty small place so we think it was quite a feat to sail past these people way out here in the middle of nowhere.

Right now, we’re back in Thompson Bay with about 25 other boats. Everyone is tucked in here as there are more high winds predicted in the next few days. We’ll wait them out in this anchorage and keep listening to the weather each morning to plan our next destination.

These past two weeks things have been a little back-to-front for us. Usually people fly south in the winter but I flew north to provide some moral support to my youngest. Brooklyn’s gall bladder had gone over to the dark side and once that happens, it seems the best thing is to just take it out. Being the young and fit thing she is, her recovery from surgery is progressing quite nicely. The weather in Ottawa was a definite shock to my system though and I’m afraid that I spent a good deal of my time up there whining about the cold and the snow. I also spent a goodly amount of time visiting and on the phone with all my friends. I realize that this is one of the things I miss most this year - being able to talk to friends and family anytime and for any length of time.

Pre-surgery party

Blair, never one to follow the crowd, has been chaffing at the bit to be done with Georgetown which has been described more than once as “daycamp for adults”. What with the basket weaving, jewelry-making, yoga-on-the-beach and bridge classes, Georgetown is not our typical cruising destination. In spite of how far cruisers have traveled to arrive here, Georgetown, unfairly, is often dubbed “Chicken Harbour”. Many boaters arrive here with full intentions to continue on to the Caribbean but go no further; they’re stymied by either the big waters south of here, boat trouble or they realize that everything they want is right here in Georgetown.

Exuma Docking Services

When I left Blair two weeks ago, Strathspey was well and truly hogtied into her slip. We’d been warned that because of the prevailing winds, the Exumas Docking Services marina was a rock and roll sort of place but we weren’t really expecting it to be as bad as it was. Even in 15-knot winds, the waves banged like a screen door against Strathspey’s stern. It kept Blair awake most nights and then after he’d finally fall asleep, the neighbouring roosters would wake him around 4 am with a chorus of crowing. So, desperate for a good night’s sleep, he left dock and joined the boats anchored at Monument Beach off Stocking Island. There’s a large Canadian contingent in this group of friendly cruisers which also boasts a good number of musicians and Blair and his guitar were warmly welcomed around the beach campfire. After a few days at Monument Beach though, Blair defected to Red Shanks, an anchorage five miles south of Georgetown which provides good protection all ’round and is a short hop over to the marina where he hauled Strathspey out to replace her zinc anodes again.

It is here that we’re a little dumbfounded and more than a little PO’d at the excessive prices in the Bahamas. We can understand and have no problem accepting that there are legitimate reasons that that groceries, gas and diesel are 20-30% higher than in the United States. The fact that none of these goods are produced in the islands makes it a no-brainer that we should expect pay more because of shipping and handling. But we don’t understand why the marina charges are 300% higher; Georgetown Marina charged us $11/foot to haul Strathspey plus $100 for every hour she was in the sling and then an additional $85 per hour for labour. It’s hard not to compare Georgetown Marina’s bill of close to $500 with the $120 we paid for a haulout and four hours in a sling at Solomon’s Island, Maryland. It feels like we are being taken advantage of, it feels unfair and it definitely gives us a bad taste in our mouth for Georgetown marina services.

$120 worth

That said, sitting in one place for two weeks provided a great opportunity for Blair to go over the boat with an eye to corrosion, rust and scuffs. This warm salt water really takes a toll on cruising boats and we’re lucky that Blair is the talented guy he is; able to (and in fact happy to) pamper Strathspey with lots of TLC. In the past two weeks, Blair’s taken all our winches apart and re-greased them. He’s rebuilt our windlass for the third time as well as taken the cockpit windlass control switch apart so it works as advertised. While Strathspey was hauled out, he changed the sacrificial anode and transmission oil. On top of all that, he sanded and refinished all the exterior teak including some scuffs on the toe rails.

The docks down here are hard on toe rails. The standard dock consists of a line of pilings 15 feet apart topped with decking that often is three feet higher than Strathspey’s toe rails because of the tide. It’s frustrating because we can have the nicest docking in the world but have to scramble to move fenders around to cushion the toe rails from the ratty-looking pilings. Ten seconds later, a swell will push us forward and we’ll be struggling to juggle the fenders once again. For our fender boards to be useful while docking, they would have to be more than 15 feet long and then we’d be faced with the issue of where to store them. We’ve been lucky so far and have just had a few scuffs on the teak but it really burns me because I spent so many hours last winter refinishing all that lovely wood.

Before he left the Exuma Docking Services marina, Blair closed his eyes to the ticking water meter and scrubed Strathspey with fresh water and Awlwash, a product that’s recommended for our type of hull. Strathspey’s hull is painted with a navy paint called Awlgrip which gleams when it’s clean but, like any dark surface, it shows all the dirt and in our case all the salt stains. Even a good scrub at dock wasn’t taking that salt rime off and Beverly from Chandelle provided her secret recipe of vinegar and hot water which did the trick; actually not really a secret recipe, just one she found recommended on the Awlgrip website so I thought I’d share it. So, other than the obvious problem of showing salt stains after any rough passage, our dark-hulled boat is doing just fine in these southern waters. One of the myths that we can debunk with great certainty is that dark-hulled boats are too hot in warm climates because they absorb the heat from the sun. We’re just not finding that is the case. Strathspey’s interior always provides a welcome and cool respite from the heat even in 30°C sunshine. Another myth is that cruisers should provision like they’ve booked passage on Noah’s arc when traveling to the Bahamas. Again, not true; we’ve found everything we’ve needed. Granted, it’s a bit more expensive and rather than an entire half-aisle of laundry detergents to chose from, we’ve happily purchased the one brand the store carries. Finally, at this point during our trip, we have yet to use two anchors. We’d heard that two anchors is de rigeur throughout the Bahamas but we’ve still not seen anyone else setting more than one anchor out. One thing that we’d heard that we can definitely confirm is that your dinghy is the family car and the bigger the better so as to keep you dry and ferry you and yours around.

Standard dinghy stance

I went home to Ottawa with one carry on bag and returned to Georgetown with two additional duffle bags filled with an eclectic mix of goodies; books, chocolate, black licorice, curries, maple syrup, a fine selection of newspapers (NY Times, Globe & Mail, Wall Street Journal, Ottawa Citizen) and a bagpipe chanter for our Scottish friend Jon Anderson on Sam the Skull, a PDQ 36 catamaran. These are most of the items we’ve found to be either unavailable or prohibitively expensive down here in the Bahamas.

In the Fort Lauderdale airport, when I checked in for my Georgetown flight, I was asked to produce proof of my Bahamian residency because I didn’t have a return ticket to the USA. I was ready for this because Jim and Jeannie from Estelle had told us that they’d run into the same problem when they’d returned to Marsh Harbour from PEI at Christmas. I’d taken our cruising permit home to Ottawa and was able to produce it for the ticket agent to show that I wasn’t just coming down here with no way to get home. That spared me the purchase of a return ticket to the US and a later cancellation of the ticket once back on Strathspey. When I arrived at customs and immigration in Georgetown airport, I was once again asked for the cruising permit and then scolded quite soundly because I produced the original permit; the original is meant to stay on your boat!

Stocking Island

My flight, via a small Beachcraft, arrived into Georgetown at 7:30 pm and Elizabeth Harbour and it’s anchorages are dark and a good 20 minute dinghy ride from shore. Rather than Blair picking me up and bouncing through high waves and suffering a definite soaking, he organized my pickup all without benefit of a cell phone. Most of the businesses in Georgetown use both telephones and monitor VHF channel 16 so Blair called taxi #30 to pick me up at the airport and arranged for Elvis and his water taxi to ferry me from the government dock out to Strathspey. Luckily, our masthead light has some cool options. We can either go with the standard vanilla setup of a steady bright LED blazing at the top of our mast or for special occasions, we can use the strobe (think 70’s disco ball). Elvis was easily able to home in on Strathspey and weave his way through a myriad of boats (some sporting lights and some as dark as a Quentin Tarantino movie). We heaved all my bags aboard and then settled into a wonderful meal of grilled lemon/chili Wahoo that Blair whipped up - what a guy; not only did he catch dinner, he prepared it too!

Beans from Africa

So although this is the final destination for the majority of boats who travel back to the mainland each spring, we’re hoping to travel just a little further south to the more isolated Jumentos Island chain. As well, we’d like to catch a few more fish (Maui-maui, Snappers, big ones!). We’ve yet to spear any lobster or collect any conch so that’s high on our list too. We want to explore more of these uninhabited islands, have more of those long, lazy sailing days, enjoy good food and conversation with friends as yet unmet and try in a small way to be part of the local scene which for us is a big part of what this trip is all about. As usual, our plans are pretty fluid at this point until we know if the weather will cooperate before we have to do a 180 to start heading north again.