What can I say, the Bahamas are amazing.

Since our last post, we have been working our way north from Georgetown, up the Exumas, to New Providence and Eleuthera. We made the lucky catch of finding another young couple heading our direction, so we have had partners in crime. Josh and Shea on Full Moon, are from Whidbey Island, not too far from our roots in Bellingham.

Lee Stocking Island

Our first stop after Georgetown was Lee Stocking Island. The abandoned NOAH Research Center there made the whole island feel like a scene from the tv show Lost. Boats, tractors, houses and labs all just sitting as if someone left them 5 minutes ago. Windows open, doors unlocked, dishes on the counters… All a little strange. We weathered several days of high wind on one of their brand new but abandoned mooring balls, so we had lots of time to explore the island.

“What a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts…”
We also did lots of coconut hunting, and therefore had lots of chances to figure out how to get those suckers open. Eventually we found that a machete did the trick for getting to the coconut water in the young green coconuts, and a hammer and hacksaw worked wonders on revealing the yummy white meat in the brown coconuts.

Now that we are masters of coconut obliteration, we had to find uses for all those coconuts. I have been drinking coconut water, making coconut milk, coconut cream, coconut flour, coconut bread, coconut shell bowls, and I may get around to coconut shell jewelry, but that involves sanding, ick, my boat-life nemesis…


Galliot Cay
We made a one night stop at Galliot Cay, where we snorkeled Galliot Cut in search of conch. Full Moon found a few, but I was too busy looking at coral and fish…

Going to and from Galliot, we had our first experiences traversing the “banks”. The East side of the Exumas are exposed to ocean wind, swell and deep depths. The banks on the west side are protected from the prevailing wind and swell, and are super shallow for miles and miles. It feels quite bizarre to sail for 4 hours and never see a depth over 12 feet. One day, our average depth was about 8 feet… we draw 6 feet, so it wasn’t much clearance or room for error. The first time we did this, I spent all day on the bow oohing and ahhing at everything on the sea floor and taking photos, while Élan spent the whole day frantically watching the depth sounder and worrying his fingernails down to nubs. There are some benefits to not wearing the title of “Captain”!

Little Farmer’s Caye- Population: 52
Shortly after entering the small grocery at Little Farmer’s Caye, we were introduced to the family dynamics of life on a island of only 52 people, where pretty much everyone is related. After a few hours of island gossip, we had a general idea of the who’s who. Although a few cruising boat pass through here every day, the locals seemed excited to have fresh tourists to entertain and be entertained by. Two days at anchor here somehow turned into five, with many hours spent chatting in Altimus’ (“Ali”) Bar, and Tasha’s Grocery store. The boys went fishing and conch diving with Ali, helped him change bilge pumps in his boat, air filters in his tractor, and somehow ended up on sanitation duty: riding around the island (in a re-purposed boat trailer, pushed backwards by an old tractor) picking up garbage from each house on the island- ha, I wish I had photos of that. Us girls chatted with the island ladies, baked bread, learned to fry fish and did lots of beach combing for sea beans.

A Strange New Obsession is Born
I’ll admit it, I have become obsessed with sea beans! A friend introduced me to my first sea bean on Long Island, and ever since, I can’t pass up a seaweed covered beach without doing a quick sea bean hunt. Apparently, sea beans, or “drift seeds” as they are sometimes called, don’t actually come from the sea, they are hard, buoyant, seeds that come from all over the world. They fall into rivers, get carried to oceans, move around with current and wind and wash up on beaches in other places. The most common ones we have found here are “sea hearts” and “hamburger beans”. They polish up really pretty and can be used in jewelry, etc, but most of the fun is in the hunt. Thankfully, I have converted Shea into a sea bean lover too, so even when the boys get tired of beach combing, I still have a sea bean searching partner.

Black Point After all of our socializing on Little Farmers, we enjoyed two quiet days at Black Point on Great Guana Cay. We spent one day beach combing for sea beans and a full day baking on the boat.

Baking Boat-Style: Without an Oven or the Proper Ingredients
By necessity, we get creative with the new ingredients available to us, but more often that not we have to be creative about the lack of ingredients available out here. Lately I have been doing some experimentation… My first two attempts at making yogurt made from powdered milk flopped, but that was before I realized that my 100% milk from Panama was actually mostly soy. Shea has been schooling me at making fresh bread, pitas on the BBQ and stuffed bread rolls from scratch, which I “bake” in my toaster oven. As I write, I am also enjoying my first ever batch of no-bake cookies on the boat… Why it took me a year and a half of living on the boat to think of that one is beyond me. Anyway, Élan (and sometimes Apollo, when the recipes flop) is enjoying my new interest in baking. I’ll include some of my new boat-friendly recipes soon.

Staniel Cay
After we got over the shock of seeing SO many boats, specifically mega-yachts, in Big Major’s anchorage on Staniel Cay (we are still adjusting to the crowds as we inch closer to Florida), we dinghied to Thunderball Grotto. This underwater cave was used in the filming of the movies Splash, Thunderball, and two James Bond movies, and for good reason. The swim-in cave has natural skylights and fish swarm close to us. We enjoyed swimming thought the tunnels and exploring the “rooms” full of grouper, squirrel fish, angel fish, trigger fish, sergeant majors, parrot fish and others.

Staniel Cay is also famous for its wild swimming hogs. We were also greeted by a curious stingray at the same time.

Warderick Wells, Shroud Cay & Highborne Caye
We spent one night on Warderick in the Exumas Land and Sea Park, hiking all over the incredibly rocky island and checking out the ruins of an old plantation. How any one ever grew anything on that island made of rock, I have no idea.

We dinghied through the estuary that almost entirely divides Shroud Cay to a beach with especially bright blue water.

On to the Big City, then Eleuthera Island
We arrived in Nassau a few days before Elan’s childhood friend, Colin and his lovely girlfriend Erin, flew in to meet us. We celebrated my *ugh* 30th Birthday in the city and then headed off the next morning to Eleuthera just before sunrise.

We spent 5 nights in Hatchet Bay, which was once a freshwater lake, that had been cut through to form a perfectly protected harbor. We used this anchorage as a base to explore the whole island.

The guys were excited to try out their new sling spears and managed to catch us dinner on the first try.

We rented scooters to check out the north end of the island. Although the scooters each had less than 400 miles on them, they BOTH managed to break down and leave us stranded. We eventually swapped them for two others, only one of which left us hanging, haha, it’s always an adventure out here. We still managed to run up to The Glass Window, Preacher’s Cave, the cave where religious exiles first landed and held services for 100+ years, and found a beautiful white sand beach on the north side of the island.

After the scooter mishaps, we decided to try our luck at hitch hiking instead, and had much more success. Bahamians are so friendly, and are always willing to offer a ride. This time we went south and explored Cupid’s Cay, James Cistern and Governors Harbor. We found a great shell beach which didn’t exist before Hurricane Sandy created it just a few months ago. I also dragged everyone all over the island in search of a pink sand beach, and finally found a great one on the east side of the island. The color is subtle, but most definitely tinted pink.

On our way to Current Island, we caught an Amberjack and several Barracudas. That night the boys snorkeled and speared while us girls beach combed the deserted beaches.

We were sad to drop Colin and Erin back off in Nassau, their trip went by too fast.

Tomorrow morning we will sail out of Nassau’s busy harbor at day break and head for the Berry Islands. We will make a few stops after that in Bimini then cross the Gulf Stream to Florida within the next week or so. Elan and I are reluctantly admitting that reality beckons us home soon. We are still working out the details of putting Silver Lining on a semi truck for her cross-country ride back to the Pacific Northwest. After that… we still aren’t exactly sure. We’ll see what the future has in store for us!

Until next time,
Ashley & Elan

We made it to the Bahamas, and we absolutely love it here! Here’s the scoop on getting here from Jamaica…

The Windward Passage

After much waiting and deliberation over weather forecasts in Port Antonio, Jamaica, we finally spotted a few days with a reasonable outlook. We hauled anchor and left for the 240 mile, three day and two night passage to the southernmost tip of the Bahamas. A rough patch right in the beginning had me digging for the Dramamine, but after that the seas calmed down and we motor-sailed at a good clip almost the entire way. The wind and sea state were about as great as they ever get in that often dangerous section of water. 

One of the nights was a little squally, but we managed to stay mostly dry. Here is a picture of our radar/GPS, the big green blobs are the squalls, doing their best to pinch us.

We felt like the only boat around for a million miles, except when we were rounding the Eastern tip of Cuba around midnight, when it suddenly felt like we were a sloth crossing a multi-land highway. I saw 4 cruise ships during one 4 hour watch shift, and the big container ships were passing us left and right.
Strangely, we didn’t see any wildlife, not a single dolphin, whale, bird or fish, however, the phosphorescence was spectacular I think I say that about almost every passage, but I really mean it! Instead of a vague greenish glow, it was intense flashes of light, each about a foot across, popping up all over our wake. The stars were also amazingly bright. With zero light pollution and not much else to do, we spend hours hanging out with Orion and Casiopia.

Landfall in the Bahamas; Great Inagua
We finally arrived in Matthew Town on Great Inagua. We anchored in water so unbelievably bright blue. I thought I had seen turquoise waters before, but this is it!

Testing out these Bahamian waters.

The clear water was a good excuse to check out the hull.

Matthew Town is a quiet little village with not a lot going on. On our first dinghy trip to shore, we stumbled upon the town excitement of the week: two bulldozers trying to drag a sunken vessel out of the “yacht basin”. Apparently it was in bad shape when customs seized the boat full of drugs a few months ago, then Hurricane Sandy finished her off.

Sunken wreck being hauled off to her final resting place.

Bad day for someone!

It wasnt the only sunken boat in the basin, apparently this Catalina only went down a few days prior to our visit. Aside from a few local fishing boats, the only other boats in the basin were a trio of wooden sailboats from Haiti. We were fascinated by these boats. Made by hand from wood, tree trunk for a mast, cheap poly line for all the standing and running rigging, rebar for rudder posts and no motor propulsion. How cool is that! We chatted with a few guys repairing their gigantic gaff rig sails by hand (the entire sail inventory was all sewn by hand) and were so impressed by their ingenuity and motivation to build better lives for themselves.

Haitian sailboats.

Hoisting that big ol’ mains’l

Now that his trials and tribulations are over, I have to make a confession about poor Apollo. This little guy deserves some kind of award for best boat doggie ever. Due to strict quarantine laws in Jamaica, no dogs are allowed off their boats. At all. For almost two months. Ugh! What a little trooper though. After the initial battle of the wills (us: “do your business on the bow”, him: “no, the beach is right there”, us: “doesn’t matter, you gotta do it here”, him: “don’t be so lazy, the dirt is so close”, us: “sorry dude”, him: “fine, I’ll hold it”, us: *sigh*) he finally came around and cooperated with Jamaica’s ridiculous rule. He’s no stranger to long stretches on the boat though, so we employed all his best on-board exercise tactics: tug-o-war, fetch up and down the companionway a million times a day, barking at dinghies that come too close to his boat, and, his all-time-favorite: the “dot”, aka a laser pointer. Needless to say, Apollo LOVES the Bahamas, where he can run around and pee on dirt to his heart’s content!

“Keep-away” means lots of indoor exercise!

Sand worshiping! Getting in a good roll before the parents can stop me.

Finally, allowed off the boat!

The anchorage at Matthew Town was a roadstead- an open anchorage with no protection from wind or swell. As we waited for 72 hours for the next weather window, we had the misfortune of having wind holding us at 90 degrees to the swell. Translation: we rocked and rolled all day and all night long. I think this was probably the most drastic roll we have ever experienced. By this point I can sleep through just about anything, but you know its bad when you can’t wait to get onto your next overnight passage so you can finally get some rest!

Our (hopefully) last overnight in a while; Great Inagua to Long Island
We have been looking forward to putting these months of long-distance passage making behind us. Now that we are in the Bahamas, everything is much closer together. The run to Long Island was 150 miles, the last overnight we’ll have to do for a while.  As soon as we pulled up anchor Elan began putting out the fishing lines, and I hadn’t even finished securing the anchor on the bow before he already had a fish on.

Check out those fangs!

We thought this bad boy was a wahoo, a delicious eating fish, but it was way more meat that the two of us could make use of, especially at the beginning of a passage, so we let him go. Since then, we decided he was actually a barracuda, and at that big size they are prone to cigaterra anyway, so it was probably a good decision.

The rest of our passage was uneventful, and we made good time to Clarence Town, Long Island.

Clarence Town, Long Island
As we were preparing to enter the channel into Clarence Town, I was on the bow on coral lookout. I was shocked to see that the water became shallow much sooner than it should have and I began frantically signaling to Elan to turn around. As it turns out, we were still in over 50 feet of water, but the water is so crystal clear that I assumed the bottom was much closer than it really was. We dropped our anchor in 9 ft in the lee of Strachan Cay; what a beautiful anchorage. Low sandy islands, rocky reefs and white sand beaches made up our 360 view. 

The many beaches surrounding this anchorage provided some amazing shell hunting over the next few days. A friend on another boat introduced us to sea beans; they grow in big pods on some sea plant and then wash up on the beach. They feel like hard wood, some are shaped like hearts and some are shaped exactly like a tiny hamburger. Elan’s been shining them up so I can make them into some kind of jewelry.

Sea beans! Heart shaped sea beans and hamburger shaped sea beans.

Umm, I might need a bigger boat!

 

All of my beach combing wears him out!

Our adventures on shore lead us to a cool church, and a tour of town by these goats.

Tour leading goats

Lots of old buildings in ruins… once someone stops caring for them it doesn’t take long for the hurricanes and undergrowth to take over.

Elan says this is what I look like all the time. 🙂

We cant get over how friendly and welcoming everyone in the Bahamas is. You cant walk down a road without people stopping to ask if you need a ride. One day we were picked up on our 30 second walk to a restaurant by a nice couple, expats from Wisconsin, which turned into an all-day adventure hitchhiking around the island to their home, their favorite hangout, their friend’s house. Throw in a little conch salad, rum punches, and some homemade pickled jack, and it was an unexpected but memorable day.

Since catching the barracuda, I have been determined to catch something we can actually eat. We did some fishing from the dinghy, had several bites, but only managed to catch more barracuda, like this little guy.


It seems barracuda are the only big fish that hang out in the areas shallow enough to anchor. In fact, every time I try to swim off, it seems there is a barracuda waiting for me under the boat. I doubt they’d hurt me, but it is a little too unnerving how curious they are, especially because some of them are as tall as I am. I love this clear water, but sometimes I’d rather not be able to see all those beady eyes looking back at me!

We weathered out a several day long blow here, but still enjoyed the relaxing days, fishing, reading, checking out a blue hole, and beach combing. 

Elan found all of these shells for me in about 10 minutes!

Maybe a little over-zealous with the sand rolling…

Calabash Bay, Long Island
We had a nice motor-sail up the west side of Long Island and around the north end to Calabash Bay. Again, it was like anchoring in a swimming pool. I am beginning to think that everyone should learn to anchor in the Bahamas. Clear water, shallow depths, soft sandy bottom, it doesn’t get any easier than that! As our anchor goes down, I can actually see it catch and dig in, and if for whatever reason we are wondering what it is doing, we can just dingy over to it later and look straight down on it. 

The beach at Calabash was breathtaking. Pristine white, powder fine sand, that felt like walking in flour… ok, I don’t know exactly what that would feel like, but its gotta be something like this.

During our 2 night stay in Calabash, we had much to celebrate. Sure, February 14th was Valentines Day, but February 15 marks our 1 year anniversary since officially shoving off the dock in San Diego. I can hardly believe that was 6,500 nautical miles, 8 countries, and all those memories ago. “Time flies when you are having fun,” doesn’t even begin to cover it! We are so blessed to be out here doing what we love, and give thanks every day that we have had the health, circumstances and a little luck to make our dream reality.

All my favorite things in one place! My guy, my dog, my boat, beautiful water, white sandy beach…

Just like diving into a pool!

Blissful Sail to Great Exuma
Our sail from Long Island to George Town on Great Exuma was picture perfect. It was that over-romanticized daydream vision I had of what cruising would be like: sunny skies, turquoise water, full sails up, motor off, 15 knots of wind on the beam, making 5+ knots in the exact direction we wanted to go, only 30 miles from anchor to anchor and a good book in my hand. After a year of cruising, I now know how rare those days actually are!

Right now we are anchored in Elizabeth Harbor outside of George Town. What do I say about George Town? Well, it’s a little town of only a few hundred people that is hosting almost 300 cruising boats at the moment. Crazy! The fact that there is good protection, easy provisioning, free potable water, a small airport, and all only a couple hundred miles from Florida means this is one of those places where cruisers get “stuck”. It’s clear that many folks come planning to stay a few days and end up staying for months. Or years. 

We took advantage of the airport and arranged a spontaneous visit from my cousin Greg. The weather did its best to keep us tied to the boat for the 3 days he was here, but we managed several wet dinghy adventures to town and out to Stocking Island.

Me ‘n’ Greg in the dinghy

Feeding a stingray on Stocking Island.

Never seen one of these puffy starfish in real life before.

High five!

Mmm, cracked conch. Like everything on the menu in the Bahamas, its hammered, battered, fried and delicious!

We explored the trails on Stocking Island and sifted through handfuls of pretty pink shells on the ocean side beach. 

View from the monument on Stocking Island…Lots of boats out there!

The “monument” on top of Stocking Island is actually just a navigational beacon.

Yay cousins!

This guy circled our boat for forever. He must be lonely because he’s the only one we’ve seen in ages…

A nice thing about having so many boats in George Town is that we have hooked up with a great group of YOUNG cruisers. We have no complaints about the fact that most of our sailing friends are of a different generation, but there is also something really nice about hanging out with people our age too. We tend to be in similar situations: we mostly built up older boats ourselves, scrapped together a few bucks for cruising on a budget, and don’t plan on being out here forever- it’s not a permanent retirement, it’s a just retired-for-the-moment plan. I guess we like the fact that meeting other kids in our situation means maybe we aren’t so crazy after all! And we DO get called the “kids” by other cruisers, but I kinda like that too… it could maybe, sorta, possibly be due to the fact that my 30th birthday is lurking right around the corner, but I’m making no confessions!

Anyhow, we’ll be sticking around George Town for another day or two, then making progress northwest up the Exuma chain. Looking forward to short hops, a less crowded anchorage, and hopefully skin diving for conch. 

Take care, and lots of love from us to you!
Ashley, Elan and Apollo