January 20, 2009

Long Island, Bahamas
Long Island, most likely our last stop in Bahamas. The last two weeks we hopped from island to island, traversing through Exuma Cays with its many shades and tints of blue water…light blue, sky blue, turquoise, navy, sapphire blue…you name the hue and it’s somewhere here. The crystal clear water, besides making it so easy to observe the rich sea life, allows us to navigate safely around the many shoals and coral heads. Food in Exumas is incredibly expensive, everything arrives by boat and there is no agriculture on these rugged little islands. We didn’t buy red pepper for $8.50 a pound, neither did we treat ourselves to milk for $9.50! (dried milk is nothing to turn the nose up to, and that gives us so much more space in our fridge for other stuff one can obtain on these island, like cabbage, or maybe some carrots!). Small loaf of bread, that tastes more like a cake, sells for $6US! And so, we are proudly reporting, that today, we successfully baked our second loaf of bread! Czech recipe I obtained from Internet was my contribution, while J-P did his part in this process by mixing and all the five minutes of kneading required for a heavenly taste. We will never be without decent bread again! Also our first - converting salt water to drinking water. Our Reverse Osmosis Water Maker is performing as advertised. And so we will never stay dirty for too long again! We are quite self-sufficient now – the sun (solar panels), yeast, flour and some fish – we can survive whatever, wherever! Here on Long Island there is even some agriculture going on - right now it’s a season for papaya, tomato, okra – and all this for pennies! Finally some decent prices! Today, once-a-week ship arrived from Nassau, with all kinds of goodies, so tomorrow, with a crew from “Chenou”, that we sailed here with, we are renting a car and besides admiring beauties of this island, we will hit some food and liquor stores to stock-up on essentials before heading to Cuba. We read in American paper there is food shortage in Cuba (propaganda?) after getting hit by three hurricanes this summer (possibility?) We will let you know.

January 9, 2009

Highborne Cay, Bahamas

Finally, the first fish – just for two, small Amberjack, on the way to Royal Island, and first lobster (2), which I spotted while swimming around Nikan, always with my goggles on, keeping a sharp lookout around me for imagined or maybe real? danger from watching too many adventure movies in the past. Still, it took J-P good half an hour to spear them out of their holes and they made an excellent supper (barbecued) on a New Year’s Day. We couldn’t have had it fresher than that! And just before that we spent hours searching the reef, while all this time they lived their soon too short life just few meters away from us. Next we sailed to Spanish Wells, prosperous island with easy going and friendly locals, almost empty food store after the holidays, with a ship full of provision due sometime soon. We were lucky to meet a friendly local who offered us a lift in her golf cart (which we really didn’t need, one can probably walk around the whole island in an hour!) but with a bucket full of tomatoes from her daughter’s garden and she very generously shared with us, as the ones in the store were half dead. Golf carts and cars create no stop procession on the main street, which we found quite amazing, considering how small the island is. Few days later, after zigzagging for a full day over the sand bank full of coral heads and shallow water on the way to Exuma Cays, we stopped for several days in Allan’s Cay (one of the remaining habitats of iguanas in the Bahamas), just relaxing and fishing every day on surrounding reef with zilch result! Too many boats, it looks here all fished out. There are about six Canadian sailboats here, definitely outnumbering Americans. Only “Voila” we are travelling with is English speaking. Tomorrow we will move to a marina for a day to touch base with civilization (understand Internet!), to update this blog, do some laundry, and to see what provisions we can find. Some fresh fruit would come handy. And! J-P decided to update his culinary skills by baking some bread, unfortunately we couldn’t find any multigrain flour here (oh, why we didn’t shop more on American continent!), only white variety of anything and everything is available here. But more on that next time.

December 24, 2008

Port Lucaya, Grand Bahama Island
December 16, we made our first jump of 40 hours, basically motoring in a calm sea to Palm Beach and the next day perfect conditions found us crossing the Gulf Stream to make our entry to Bahamas in West End Marina, Grand Bahama Island. Our plan to move right away to Eleuthera was interrupted with weather broadcast of cold front (= strong winds) and so we decided to await more pleasant weather in Lucayan Marina. Just as we and the sailboat “Voila” (friends from Quebec spending winter in Bahamas) started to salivate (remember Pavlov’s dogs?), J-P’s first effort at fishing ended in disaster and the nice, fat, colorful Mahi-Mahi escaped at the moment of being pulled on the deck. Oh well, there’ll be many other times….We are spending the Christmas here, as the cold front is followed by SE winds and as we are moving in that direction, we have to wait for the wind to turn around. We wish you all restful and peaceful holidays.

November 10 - December 14, 2008

Beaufort, NC – Fernandina Beach, FL and Toronto
Family emergency kept me in Toronto for five long weeks, meanwhile J-P slowly sailed Nikan to northern Florida to escape unseasonably cold weather all along the eastern sea shore this year. He even had some snow one morning and another day, while rinsing the bow, the water immediately turned to ice. Only layers and layers of clothing kept him reasonably warm. I must have brought him warm temperatures, December 14 was the first t-shirt day for him since a while.

November 1, 2008

Beaufort, NC
Still here, waiting for the right time to hit the sea. There were few very cold days with lots of wind, one night with winds up to 50 knots, everybody keeping watch of their boat as well as the ones in the near proximity. One sailboat beached out during that time and had to wait for the next tide (6 hours) to get back into the water, spending the night at 45 degrees and freezing temperature! The nights continue to be cold, even frost time is announced daily, but days are reasonably warm. We bicycle around the town, or just relax in warm Nikan, our stove working full time. Today we will get some more of the best sausages we ever had, made right here in Beaufort. Food becomes quite important on the boat, since we don’t have to worry about work, deadlines, bills… - we only have to make sure our stomachs are fully satisfied. Getting some goodies is a daily occupation!! But be assured, that I am keeping a sharp look-out on J-P’s waistline (as well as mine) to make sure it stays slim and trim...

October 23, 2008

Annapolis to Beaufort, NC
We anchor at Rhode River, than Solomons Islands with it’s charming Marine Museum, Mill Creek, and than spent three days at marina in Norfolk – laundry, clean-up, gathering supplies and for us a treat – hot shower! Mile 0 of Intercoastal Waterway (some 1 000 miles long) finds us waiting for opening of the first of it’s many bridges at its first opening of the day after the rush hour, exactly at 8:30 a.m. 60 miles a day, starting at sunrise and ending the long days at sunset. We are part of snowbirds parade heading south, motor boats, sailboats; one after each other, the Intercoastal is quite busy at this time of year. We get interrupted by a cold front, hot summer days changed overnight to almost winter, with rain, cold and gale winds of up to 40 knots, but at anchor behind Buck Island, Nikan is safe and warm, stove working and we rest, read, sleep. Nothing to complain about. And than some more of the same schedule, till Beaufort, our last stop before heading to sea - direction Bahamas, if a weather window permits.

October 3, 2008

Annapolis, MD
We explore this charming, little town, calling itself “America’s Sailing Capital”, in full preparation for the nation’s oldest and largest in-water boat show. While on mooring, one dark, early morning J-P jumps in full preparation to confront thieves that are after our dingy – but what he confronts is a dingy full of ducks! You see ducks everywhere, trying to climb on anything dry, having their natural environment taken away by greedy boaters - there isn’t a piece of land within sight that hasn’t been taken over by some marina. The amount of boats around here is quite overwhelming!