What does one do in the Bahama's Part 1 Dec 13th to Dec 29th

Just as in my last post......the holiday greeting is post holiday....as is our internet service here....it must be the Bahamian way!
Guy and I are confident you all had a great xmas day with friends and or family!  just as we did!

Days before xmas day, I soaked my chickpeas , cooked and mashed them up. I then added the necessary ingredient to make hummus. I  filled some Bon Maman jam jars I had been saving and gave them as gifts to our cruising friends nearby.

We were invited to a breakfast hosted by Gary an ex NHL player we had met a week or so earlier at a sundowner cocktail hour gathering at a yacht in the anchorage. We were two of the 50 + guest at the Green Turtle Club Resort Restaurant on Dec 24th.  It was all A La Carte!  How generous of him! Thank you Gary it was so fun!

This is later on ...on Christmas day.  Guy, George and John, a very talented mandolin player , entertained many with their music.....
Earlier on in the cloudy, misty, rainy xmas day, we prepared our pot-luck dish of cuban black beans. By noon, wearing our traditional xmas day t-shirts our kids had given us years ago, we boarded our little wooden dinghy with our beans and Guy's guitar and crossed the little anchorage. It was one of the second times we endured rain since we have been in the Abacos...
Fellow cruisers arrived and put out their dishes.......all 50 + of them....It poured the most when we filled our plates from the several picnic tables filled with our xmas dinner. What a feast it was even in the rain.  The event took place outside behind Brendal's Dive shop! I did not take pics ....as I did not want to get my camera wet! LOL!

The Abacos are in the Northern chain of the Bahamas. As such they get very little rain in the Winter. Strong reinforced SE trade winds but not much rain. Just a few sprinkles without warning. The Summer is a whole other thing. Lots of rain and lighter winds...unless a Hurricane is brewing since Summer time is Hurricane season.

We are in Green Turtle Cay.....

Rarely does a day go by that we don't walk along the shore. Being on a small island, we either walk on the Atlantic side or the Sea of Abaco seaside ....

This is the Atlantic side....the colour is memorizing! The light colour bottom is white sand. The darker lines in the water are reefs. I counted 4 rows of reefs. When the wind is up you can see the white caps breaking on the reefs.

On the negative note, as we walk admiring natures beauty, we find things that have drifted from who knows where....here, Guy pulls up a huge light lens that must have been on some large ship at one time. 

And then there is the PLASTIC.......GRRRRRRR!

It's Saturday, Dec 21st.  We are off to a "Happy Hour" at the Pineapple Club. A short dinghy ride away....near New Plymouth where we later enjoyed  several different congregation's  'Christmas Choir'  performances at St Peter's Anglican Church. It seemed weird to go to a Happy Hour then to a church but hey it worked out great. The congregation invited us to a reception afterwards at the parish hall....Lots of chowder, buns  and sweets....everyone wore a smile!  

Guy and George ....Pre Happy Hour and church....

A sign at the Pineapple's Bar and Grill

The view from the bar!

The sunset!

This is the Abaco Sea side......As beautiful as the ocean.....

This sign is likely for the weddings this beach must  host!

So........the definition of relaxed? 

Reading my book...under a straw umbrella, beside my captain in the pic above.....life is good! LOL!

I walk this beach daily.....it is so peaceful....

Just like the brochures!

Lobster Hunters   getting ready for the hunt!!!

The fearless hunter straps a knife to his leg to ward off the mean and dangerous fish!

Without a wet suit, or gloves, this spearless lobster  hunter puts on his fins!

Finally the mask and snorkel!

There he goes......
They went to the closest reef offshore....after a few minutes of spotting turtles, colourful  fish and plant sea life, Guy noticed a barracuda. 
He describes it as  about the thickness of a leg and a row of mean, sharp teeth. It was very territorial and wanted Guy off it's reef. Just in case Guy did kill anything it stuck right beside him. Then in front of him. Then by his side! The darn thing followed him everywhere. It kept too near for his comfort so after about 20 minutes, he was out of the water....the others were out soon too! No Lobster today!  

Life in the Bahamas is not always perfect....for example....when you are varnishing the teak on the topside and you bend over.....
Guy had been varnishing....happily listening to the music on his ipod. As he was cleaning up, his ipod was no longer attached to the ear plugs. It was in his shirt pocket.  He bent over and SLPASH!  He, "swearingly", scrambled to get his snorkeling gear out of the cockpit lockers, changed into his bathing suit and a few minutes later jumped in to find it at the bottom!  

Here he is beside the boat!.....he found it!   

Not so sure where he is going but here it is....Once back on board, he rinsed it in fresh water, and let it sit in the sun for 24 hours. Then he put it in a jar filled with rice. After three days we were amazed it worked! But as it turned out ....it eventually bit the dust after a few days! 

So here is the captain confident he can turn his luck around with a game of gin with me....

Hummmmm! Hee Hee Hee!  he is still confident!

Just not his day !!!!  He gave me my "Gin" card!

Since then he has been sitting on the side decks with bread and    feeds the fish around us!

We will be going to a New Years Eve party at the Bluff House Resort with fellow cruisers. New Years day we will attend the yearly "JUNKANOO" in New Pymouth.

I will post part 2 of "What does one do in the Bahama's" in 2014.

Happy New Year  and all our best wishes for super health and happiness!  xoxoxoxo  Guy and Louise

From Florida to the Bahamas Nov 25th to Dec 13th....

On Nov 25th, we left Fort Pierce and motor/sailed south in the intercoastal to Stuart Florida where we anchored out for a few nights and then on a mooring ball for the Thanksgiving feast put on by Sunset Marina on the 28th.

It was very well attended. The Marina supplied the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce and buns. Every table had a fresh flower arrangement and linen tablecloths.

The cruisers each brought a side dish or desert

There was plenty for all for sure.....and all delicious....

Here, on a rainy day,  while waiting for our weather window to cross over to the Bahamas, Guy checks his email on the porch of the Sunset Marina house.
  

A good weather window is scheduled to arrive on Dec 3rd....So on Dec 2nd, we leave Stuart and sail/motor 5 hours to Lake Worth  where we will drop anchor for a short night.  Here Guy puts the way points in our chart plotter. Our destination in the Atlantic Ocean and beyond the Gulf Stream is Memory Rock at the Bahama Bank. 

At 4:30 a:m Dec 3rd, (still dark), we pull up anchor and slowly meander our way out to the inlet in company of 3 other sailbaots.  Even though it was a good weather window, the wind had been blowing from the NE for several days and the Ocean was very lumpy.....no breaking waves but some large rollers.....It made the first 6 to 7 hours pretty uncomfortable. These Ginger Candies helped to keep the nausea away.

It's early afternoon ...in the gulf stream....the waves have settled out and the ocean is super calm! We put the sails down as there was not enough wind.

 

As we continued on, we noticed and heard a shuttle to the port side of us. It would have been launched from Port Canaveral.

This photo shows the part of the shuttle that breaks away and drops off into the ocean......Yikes!  At 2100 hrs, (16 hours after leaving Florida) we finally dropped our anchor in 16 ft of calm water on the Bahama Bank. It was very odd not to be near any land for the night.  The sky was as clear as I have ever seen. It was a spectacular starry night. Thw wind was almost nonexistent and no moon. The blanket of stars was too spectacular. The milky was was like a white roadway across the night sky

After a post crossing restful sleep, we lifted anchor at 7:00 am and made our way for another 8 hours to Spanish Cay Marina  to check in. The wind filed in nicely for a comfortable sail.

We had company

This would have been a Bad Day

At 1500 hrs, we raised our yellow quarantine flag and docked at Spanish Cay Marina  to check in with customs and immigration. The captain of the vessel is the only one allowed to leave the boat till our cruising permit is issued and our passports stamped. The fee for us is 300.00 for 90 days. A 35 ft boat or less would be charged 150.00 for 90 days. Once we were cleared, the quarantine flag came down and our Bahamian courtesy flag as in the above pic was raised.

These are the three other boats we traveled with. From the left, s/v Heritage...George and Jackie , us on Miss Ellie,  Dennis and Dorothy on s/v Chances and a single handed sailor Mike on Solstice II. 

Our view from the cockpit on our second night in the Bahamas at Spanish Cay in the Abacos

Needing and wanting to get off the boat and explore, we headed to the beach....a 10 minute walk from the marina.

One of the many beautiful homes built on the water....

Guy has been wanting to "buzz" his hair off for a while now.....
With clippers in hand, I buzzed away.....

The new man.....short hair and no moustache.......

Time to move on....our destination...4 hours sail away....Green Turtle Cay! 

A few sprinkles and a rainbow along the way......

 After waiting outside of the harbor for a few hours till the tide was high enough for us to safely make it in, we dropped our anchor in about 12 ft of water. We are in White Sound Harbour on Green Turtle Cay in the Abacos. 
The other 3 boats we were traveling with all have shallower drafts than us. We entered last. It was bad timing for us because by the time the water was deep enough for us to enter it was way past sundown. We grabbed our searchlight to identify the buoys only to have it go dead in about 5 minutes. Then we were scrambling. We charged it a few days before but the charge obviously did not hold. The importance of a good dependable searchlight was very impressed on us that night. We ran aground entering the harbour but we were on a rising tide and only coming in at very slow idle speed. Was it wise to attempt entering an unfamiliar harbour in the dark? NO! Never again. I learned a very valuable lesson I will not soon repeat. 
NEVER ENTER AN UNFAMIIAR HARBOUR AFTER DARK!!! We were lucky this time. Next time we may not be so lucky.

 

I got up later that night to see a huge spider in the galley. Luckily Guy was up too ! He bravely squished it in the kleenex that I handed him.    Could it be a Brown Recluse? A search on the internet revealed that yes, there are Brown Recluse spiders in the Abacos.

The next morning, we set out  for a visit to the little town of Historic New Plymouth 

Some of the interesting homes in the Abacos

Guy and George walking along the main St of New Plymouth....Most of their vehicles are golf carts. The roads are barely wide enough for a horse and cart. Very old city with many old original buildings.

This is the Beer of the Bahamas

 

We celebrated my birthday on the 10 th of December at The Bluff House restaurant with George and Jackie. The lobster was amazing. Guy had Cracked Couch. Also fantastic!

 

This star fish was really big...in about a foot of water. Not sure where he was going but we hope he makes it back to the reef....

One of two planes we saw on the beach while on a walk in Coco Bay. There are many wealthy land owners here that just fly in and enjoy their places right on the ocean. Even so...many of the places are For Sale. I get the feeling that the 2008-9 economic downturn Stateside plus hurricanes in 2011 and 2012 have hurt the local economy on the Island. I know it is reflected in our price to stay at the Marina. The Marina was very glad we came in to tie up.

Rough volcanic rock lines much of the shore and then a few feet from there will be an amazing white sand beach! Still feels odd to hear Christmas music in the businesses while wearing t-shirts, shorts and sandals. I'm sure I will adjust :)

     Wishing you all the happiest of holidays       from Green Turtle Cay in the Abacos