Not quite news

Contrary to popular rumor, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I’ve just fallen off the wagon. And, yes, thanks for all those wonderful comments how I run possibly the worst blog known to mankind. As my good friend, Paul, once told me, place blame immediately. The responsibility for the blog has been assigned to our oldest. If you think he’s been lacking, send your comments to him, not me. I’m busy trying to keep this boat on an even keel. It’s tough work with this motley crew.

So where do I begin. Since you last left us we had just won the CYO Cross Country championship…no, that’s too far back. Let’s pick it up at Christmas. Pulled into Georgetown just in time for the holidays. Did some in harbor caroling with the elves off GottaLife. A great time was had by all, but the best Xmas was had by AnnMarie. If you don’t believe in Santa, just ask her about her owl ring.

From there we jumped into the new year, playing on the beach with the kids off GottaLife, Nina, 3 @ Sea, and More Cowbell (I’m not making up that last name, that’s really the name of their boat. They‘re from Houston which kind of explains it.) In the meantime, Brian (of GottaLife, hereafter called Big Brian, not to be confused with Barnacle Brian, the red headed whirling dervish) and I worked on getting various systems up and running on Rio Dulce. Seems we’ve been doing this for twenty years. Oh that’s right, we have. In fact Big Brian still has the tee shirts he wore when he worked on Avalon. Only this time I won’t let him anywhere near our heat exchangers. There wasn’t much we could do on the broken prop, but we changed out alternators and got the watermaker working. It’s always nice to wake up to batteries that aren’t so weak they couldn’t power a flashlight.

The second miracle of the trip (see AnnMarie’s Xmas for #1) happened one Sunday in the middle of January when another Catana showed up in the harbor. We stopped by to introduce ourselves and after a few minutes of chatting, Marianne asked if they happened to have any spare propellers. “Why as a matter of fact, we’ve got two.” Once again your favorite luck bucket hit the mother load. After a bit of wheeling and dealing, I had the new prop on the port sail drive later that day. We were back to being fully functional. Now it was time to do some exploring.

We decided we’d head off to Long Island. Instead of heading to the northern anchorages, scene of one of our more adventurous cruises with the Kornicks, we went to the center of the island. It’s not like we discovered the lost paradise as there were twenty five boats already in the harbor. But it was very cool. There’s an American couple who have built a small resort and bar, the Long Island Breeze, who couldn’t have been friendlier to cruisers. We showed up with a contingent of kids, running around, jumping into their pool, and tying up their wifi. We hadn’t had this much fun since Emerald Bay closed. GottaLife, 3 @ Sea, and we rented a couple cars to explore the entire ninety miles of the island. It’s much different than the rest of the Bahamas as you could tell people were genuinely happy to see you. The highlight of the ride was our stop at the blue hole. This hole drops down over six hundred feet and it’s about twenty feet off the beach. The hole is halfway surrounded by cliffs, so after diving down as deep as you can, then you can jump off the cliffs into it. Check us out on YouTube under “From the Pilothouse.” We finished off our Long Island experience with a Tropic of Cancer party aboard 3 @ Sea. Man, those trawler folks can party.

It was time to get back to Georgetown to hide from the third cold front of the season. Usually when we talk about cold fronts, it’s mostly about the wind. This year it’s been mostly about the cold. Marianne is wearing more fleece than she did in South Carolina. The fronts haven’t been packing the punch as previous years so we miss the all the emergency calls about anchor dragging. The boat count was growing in anticipation of the Cruisers Regatta. There were over two hundred boats in the harbor so when anchors start dragging it’s wildly entertaining to listen to the radio. Think pinball with twenty ton boats. All semblance of civility is gone in about two seconds. We were looking forward to good forty knot breeze, only to be disappointed when it barely topped thirty. Kinda takes the fun out of it when you don’t hear those anguished cries at midnight screaming about crossed anchor chains and bowsprits through the rigging.

We spent another week in Georgetown as the kids never seem to tire of it. We even got a chance to sail Nina out of the harbor. Nina is a 75 foot wood schooner built in 1920 with no depth sounder or instruments. She’s won nearly every classic boat race ever held. They were headed for Jamaica and then to Panama. I’m not ready to give up catamarans but it was very cool to be at the helm of such a beauty.

Also in the harbor was another Catana. We had heard rumors of this boat coming from Houston, so when Kaya arrived we raced over to meet her. You’d think Milano Myst would have been enough Houston for one man to take, now I’ve got More Cowbell and Kaya to contend with. Charlie, off Kaya, is a four time Olympian in Tornadoes. It’s like a Hobie 16 on steroids. Charlie and Liz heard I was here so they hustled down to get some sailing tips from me. Actually he came aboard and during the walk around almost fell through the trampoline. (you could have tied those knots a little tighter, Paul!) Oh well, another excuse for cocktails.

The weather took a turn for the better so we decided this would be our chance to get over to Conception Island. With detailed planning we departed about three minutes after making the decision to go. Foolishly, two boats, Priority and Zola decided to follow us. We also brought along the lads off Sand Piper. Mark and Brendan, new college graduates, are Big Brian’s nephews who have helped their grandparents bring the boat to the Bahamas. Halfway there, the fleet decided that my preflight planning left a lot to be desired. It looked like our four hour trip would be more like eight and we’d make landfall sometime that night. I told them to quit their whining and keep on trucking. It would have helped if they didn’t stop every fifteen minutes to pull in another dorado. In the meantime, we caught a lot of sea grass. We got in just in time to catch sunset, so thankfully we didn’t miss happy hour. ( I guess my planning wasn’t that bad after all.) Priority and Zola were ready to go spearing the next day, so off we went in our trusty dinghies. The water was nice and calm but we came up with goose eggs in our first spot. The next spot was far better as we were at least pulling in some fish. Then the newlyweds off Zola jumped in and after about thirty minutes had twenty pounds of lobster. Of the five bugs they hauled in, one was the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen. It was so big, it threw off the spear and Duane had to crawl in upside down and wrestle it out of the hole and up to his boat. Not something I would recommend to the faint of heart.

The next day we did sling shots. Imagine you tie a line off the end of one halyard. Then you tie the other end of the line to end of you dinghy. One person holds onto the halyard connection while the dingy takes off perpendicular to the boat at full throttle. If done correctly, the person gets launched up to height of the spreaders and then falls into the water. Brady, unfortunately, did not do it correctly. Imagine a back flop off the ten meter board while suffering rope burns in the process. Oh well, those young un’s heal fast. From there, we did a dinghy drift up the mangrove creek. Picture three dinghies tied together plus Priority had somehow managed to rig up a beach umbrella. The kids were in the water drifting alongside when a helicopter swooped down to within fifteen feet. I don’t know who was more surprised. Only in the Bahamas.

We headed back to Long Island after that. There were some caves we needed to visit. They are right off the beach in the anchorage. Lots of bats and creepy crawlers, right up Marianne’s alley. Her reward for letting us play in the mud was burgers on the deck of the Breeze. Good food and a glorious sunset. It don’t get no better. After that we headed back to Gtown to drop the boys off to their grandparents and get ready for the first day of grouper season. It was also time to start preparing for AnnMarie’s birthday party. This year she would be celebrating it with Sam off More Cowbell, same date, same year.

Grouper season opened and I won’t tell you who got the only Nassau that day. I will give you a clue. He was the oldest diver out there. It fed eleven of us, another hugely successful fish fry on Rio Dulce. With not much to do for the next few days while waiting for the b-day bash, we broke out the wakeboards, knee boards, tubes and anything else we could drag through the anchorage. Boy, I bet our neighbors loved us. Three dinghies racing around kicking up lots of wakes. Now, the first thing the kids want when we get back is a wakeboard. Well, at least it gets their minds off of a Wii.

AnnMarie’s big day finally arrived and it was non stop action. Water balloon toss, tug of war, water relay races, and lacrosse (and Marianne mocked me for bringing the sticks.) Cakes and candles were cleared and then it was time to fire up the bonfire. Thank god there was enough rum to calm my nerves from such an exciting day.

Just as we wrapped up all the festivities, it was time to kick off the Cruiser’s Regatta. Big Brian and Sheryl were the chairmen of the Kid’s day. Nothing like trying to control fifty small cruisers and town kids. It was only topped by the fleet pass in review. Seems someone misjudged the depth of the channel for the committee boat. This wasn’t a problem for the first few cats that passed by. But when the fifty foot monohull came to a screeching stop, it looked like the Keystone Cops. The boat aground goes into full reverse, the boat behind him makes a huge swing to starboard, the boat behind him keeps coming. Man, this looked like it was going to be more fun than a late night anchor dragging. After watching the first guy do a pirouette while nearly slamming into the freighter right next to it, things got straightened out.

Our days in G-town were winding down. We were already late getting up to meet our friends, the Sutherlands, in Spanish Wells. Priority decided they would show everyone how to make coconut shell jewelry. This was not some simple sand paper and shell productions. Scott and Gail came to the beach with generator, grinder, drill, files, sanding discs, and last but not least, espresso maker. I’m sure you’re wondering why you need an espresso maker to make jewelry. This is tough work and you develop a mean thirst. So here we are in the Bahamas sipping down lattes while perfecting our arts and crafts. It sounded like a bonfire was needed to complete the day. We closed the night as the embers lost their glow.

After two more Regatta days we pulled up anchor and headed north with hope to meet 3 @ Sea who had left two weeks earlier. It was tough leaving GottaLife as we’d been tied at the hip for the last two and half months. Priority and Zola challenged us to a fishing tournament. They jumped out to quick lead with two dorados, but we came on strong pulling in a fifty inch monster and a forty inch winner. Now we’ve got enough fish to last the next few weeks. We caught 3 @ Sea the next day in Norman’s Cay. Barnacle and I took their captain out for his first spearing experience. We dove the cut at Norman’s with a good three know current running. What a way to learn how to spear. My last words to him were “don’t let go of the dinghy or we’ll all die.” Even the great white hunter couldn’t get a shot off in that current. We returned empty handed but at least we saw some really big grouper. I’m not sure that’s much of a consolation. As we were pulling up to the back of Rio Dulce, another small outboard was coming toward us. I looked at Brian and David and said I thought that looked like Mike Sutherland. We were still sixty miles from his house so the whole scene wasn’t computing. Mike pulls up alongside with three of his clan. Seems they’re on a camping trip to the Exumas and his daughter recognized our boat. We agreed to meet up the next day at Allen’s Cay. It was a great excuse to party aboard the proud Rio Dulce with drinks aboard 3 @ Sea. As Marianne likes to say, it was another fish fry to celebrate. 3 @ Sea is heading south to Chile and points west and we were heading north to Eluethera. We wished each other fair winds the next morning and off we headed for Spanish Wells.

Now we start a new phase of our time in the Bahamas. Eluethera is less traveled and much quieter than the Exumas. We’re hoping to see some of the family boats we left in Gtown as they work their way north. In the meantime, we’ll spend a few weeks hanging with our friends here in Spanish Wells before we head over to Harbour Island.