MAY 28 - JUNE 6 The “Rising Tide Awards”

Crab buyer on the docks, Oxford, MD, with blue crabs



Crab lunch in Oxford, MD with all the fixins'



Kids getting briefed before their trip on a "pirate boat" in Annapolis


AWARDS

Most Memorable: sailing in light air across the clearest water ever, the Bahama Bank east of Bimini, for a day and a half in crystal clear water, seeing only a few boats in the distance and sand, starfish, and small silver fish below us

Best Harbor or Anchorage: Faber Cove near Ft. Pierce Inlet, FL

Best Food: tie for conch salad in George Town, Exumas (all freshly made while you watch) and fish fry in Green Turtle Cay, Abacos, put on by the church youth group

Best Marina: Bohicket Creek Marina, South Carolina

Best Laundromat: free one, for boaters, at Charleston Maritime Center, SC, where we watched preparations for an outdoor wedding while we did the wash

Best Live Music: Bahamian Junkanoo bands, they perform at Christmas and New Years in Nassau, as a parade, and various other times of the year as individual bands (we watched one in George Town, Exumas)

Most Feared Waters: Alligator River entrance at south end of Albermarle Sound, NC

Worst Guidebook: Pavlidis’ “The Exuma Guide”, 2007 edition with numerous references to “this may change after 1999.…”

Best Guide: Explorer Charts (with annotations for groceries, laudromats, fuel, etc.) for the three different areas of the Bahamas

Most Likely to Go Back To: Eastern Shore Maryland to explore some more; but if we “win the lottery” we’d fly to the Exumas to see the annual April “Family Regatta“, the locals’ sailing festival and races that we missed this year

Good Samaritan Award: Brian on GOTTA LIFE who saw us aground, anchored his sailboat and came over with his daughter sounding the surrounding water, in his dinghy, to pull us off in the Matanzas River, near St. Augustine

All-Star Support Team: Mike Powers for keeping Belva and Ken Sr. up to date with our blog, Captain John Campbell for sending engine parts, etc., Steve Ward for phone advice and providing parts, our son Pete for forwarding mail and taking care of our house

On-The-Spot-Help When You Need It Award: Barry and Susan Perkins on SWAN who returned again (and again) to Key Biscayne while our engine was disabled and helped us to move RISING TIDE between anchorage and sea wall as needed

Best Local Business: Sun Electronics (solar panels and related products), Miami

Worst Local Business: West Marine, various locations

Encouragement Award: Frank and Linda Cassidy, veterans of this route (and much further travels) who got us interested in the Bahamas in the first place



May 28 We have just a few places left to visit that are new to us before we retrace our steps through Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We crossed the Chesapeake to Oxford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, in the Choptank River. We also visited St. Michaels, Maryland, which was not far if we stayed in the Choptank, slipped into Broad Creek and then anchored in San Domingo Creek. Both towns are full of older 1700s and 1800s buildings, restaurants, boat yards, and crab fishermen. Oxford is a little smaller, and St. Michaels has a museum on the waterfront with several buildings and quite a few boats in the water and on land that they are exhibiting.

One of the boat yards, in Oxford, has an interesting method of building and repairing wooden boats. They use Kevlar rope instead of frames and it is set in a perpendicular routed groove in the wood planking and fiberglassed over. This yard, Cutts and Case, also has a lot of wooden boats in their yard, and they even have the power boat FOTO on display. It’s the boat the famous photographer Morris Rosenfield used (around the mid 1900s?).

We thoroughly enjoyed the area, and were treated to a lot of bird activity (one swan flew by at the same time each morning just before sunrise -- they make an unusual sound as they fly) and we learned a lot about the oystering and crabbing in the area.

June 2 (Tuesday) Our friend Ann Dacey is coming from West Virginia to join us for our last week of sailing. We positioned ourselves in Annapolis today and plan on completing a few projects while we are here, before she arrives on Saturday. The weather is very warm today, and the wind is light. The forecast is for thunderstorms each afternoon this week and by Thursday it should get cooler.

We are anchored in Back Creek which runs alongside Eastport, which is to Annapolis as Cambridge is to Boston. We can walk across Eastport in about 15 minutes and cross a bridge into Annapolis. Both places are interesting, and Eastport has a good share of funky houses and local restaurants/bars. When we bought RISING TIDE in 2003 it was at a marina in Back Creek.

June 5 Lots of rain today. Nonetheless it is laundry day and we loaded up our dinghy with laundry bags and headed to the main harbor in Annapolis. We’ll bring the clean, dry clothes back in plastic trash bags to keep it dry. The nice thing about doing laundry while cruising is you often get in a good place where you can go have a drink at a pub while the laundry washes, check out some of the shops while it dries, and then since you’re already “in town” you can stay and have dinner out. If there are at least 2 washers and 2 dryers this can be done with a minimum of time actually spent in the laundromat. Since we have still been wearing mostly shorts, tank tops and no shoes, two loads every two weeks just about does it!

We walked quite a bit today, probably 3-4 miles. We used the bus system in Annapolis for part of our traveling, but the traffic was backed up so we found walking was actually faster as the Friday afternoon influx was jamming the roads. A single-hander on a wooden sailboat (PAVITI TERN) from Westport, Mass. joined us in our travels today after we met him in the laundromat.

June 6 We’re getting ready to leave tomorrow for Chesapeake City near the Delaware/Maryland border.

MAY 16 - 28 GETTING CLOSE TO HOME!

Too bad we left before the BBQ at Oriental, but we heard all about how the pigs are raised and the pork is cooked



Our new friend Dave from VAL DE RI cooking out at Welcome Center, Dismal Swamp Canal (Dave and his crew also shared the storm anchorage with us in the lower Alligator River)



Fresh flowers and fresh thoughts, Irvington,VA

May 16 The climate in North Carolina is ahead of Massachusetts so there are good vegetables at the farmer’s markets. We are always looking for fresh food for the boat and got some good vegetables and herbs in Oriental at their Saturday morning market. Then we headed north, figuring we are only 4 days from Virginia. Wrong! The weather brought the whole area a vicious wind and heavy rain, and the wind didn’t let up for 3 days. We had to backtrack from a bridge that couldn’t open due to the high winds and then didn’t open until May 20. We waited it out in a “wilderness” area with no phone coverage, no homes, and not even any boat traffic to watch as a distraction because everyone held up wherever they were until the bridge was working.

May 21 Once we were moving again we made sure we got to Elizabeth City, NC, one of our favorite stops from our trip south. The city offers free docks for 48 hours, a welcoming cocktail party, and a rose for each woman at the party! The city has a compact downtown, right near the docks, and larger stores about 2 miles away, which is doable with a bicycle. I wonder how many other towns anywhere offer as much. Being at the dock fosters the exchange of information between boats and we met some new people there that we will be keeping in touch with.

The next night after Elizabeth City we also had a free dock at the Welcome Center on the Dismal Swamp Canal. The state line for Virginia is just 2 miles from here.

May 25 We headed up the Rappahannock River in Virginia, planning a stop to visit people we met in the Bahamas. It’s a pretty sail to Irvington, although it was 15 miles up the river. The creek in Irvington branches out into about 6 or 7 other creeks and it is interesting to explore. We did this in a dinghy, but there is enough water to go way up with a sailboat. There is little commercial activity, and lots of homes and boats. You can walk to town from one of the marinas, about 2 miles, and there may be another closer way to get there, from a launching ramp in one of the creeks. However, it turned out our friends did not live in this part of Irvington! They are back down the Rappahannock and up another creek. We did get there in another 2 days and stayed at their private dock. We feel that we now know the area well and it is very worthwhile to wander this area’s deep creeks and coves.

May 27 We left our friend’s dock in Indian Creek and headed north once again. We passed the Potomac River. To go up the Potomac from the mouth is 107 miles to Washington DC and you evidently can get up there and stay at a marina or anchor. Sounds like a good side trip for another time. We continued across the state line into Maryland and entered the Patuxent River. We anchored in Solomon’s, another creek system which branches out once inside and has MANY marinas, mostly with sailboats, and not that obtrusive to the creeks and natural areas. Where we are anchored (Back Creek) there is wifi out over the water, compliments of the Holiday Inn, also not that obvious from the water but offering amenities to boaters. We went ashore late our first night here and had drinks and dessert at their bar.

We’re planning some side trips to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a few days in Annapolis before we head out of the Chesapeake area. The weather swings from cool (we ran the cabin heater while waiting for the Alligator River Bridge) to very hot so we want to time our stay to enjoy some summer weather but not get too much heat and buggy conditions. The cruise is winding down!

May 7 - 15 Unexpected Benefits

Scene from Charleston, SC, historic district with settlement around 1680



Typical scene from a tranquil anchorage, this one in SC, with shellfish warning



After our overnight sail from Charleston SC to Southport NC (see sign overhead)


May 7 We made a return visit to Beaufort, SC, today, a quick one as we were allowed an hour at the dock after refueling. It was enough time to walk around, get some fresh bagels for tomorrow’s breakfast and a few items at a kitchen store we had visited last time. We also got a paper, as we still feel out-of-touch with the news since returning from the Bahamas.

The remainder of the week was spent motoring on the ICW in great weather, making our way to Charleston. We met up with former Cohasset residents Julie and Bob Motley there. They live in that area now and have a restaurant right in Charleston, near the marina we stayed in, Charleston Maritime Center. They gave us a short tour of nearby James Is. and Johns Is., we ate at a seafood restaurant and caught up on their news and ours. Another treat in Charleston was getting to bike ride through the historic district streets on Sunday morning, Mother’s Day, before the tourists were up and about.

May 11 After a 22 hour motor-sail from Charleston through rain and close-by thunderstorms that lasted for hours, we arrived in Southport, NC at 8:30 a.m. We cut off several days of the ICW and we escaped the hot weather of South Carolina. Southport is a great place, with a close downtown, interesting historic plaques all around, and a funky mostly-outdoor restaurant called the Provisions Company that has great seafood (Southport also has several other good places to eat). We pigged out there; you never know when you’ll get a good meal again! We watched another thunderstorm approach and bring lots of rain, but the thunder and lightening went another way.

May 13 We had a very bad start to this day. We were anchored in a creek near Topsail Beach, NC, and we had bow and stern anchors out. We had done this to avoid being blown into the shallow edge of the creek, even though it meant that we had the wind pushing us sideways all night. We really had a quiet night, with very little wind, but in the morning the wind doubled in intensity and we still had to get up two anchors and avoid the sides of the creek. It resulted in a fire drill that threatened to go on and on. We’d get up one anchor and then not quite the other before we are aground and had to put out the anchors again and winch ourselves with the anchor lines to get back into deeper water. Then repeat. Eventually some combination of winching and anchoring worked and we got out of there.

This was followed, thankfully, with an uneventful trip to a very wide, deep anchorage that is part of the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune for that night. We have, by the way, seen lots of great wildlife on this stretch, including lots of nesting osprey, dolphins playfully jumping clear out of the water, egrets, and other stately wading birds.

May 15 We have a free dock in Oriental, NC, for the day and night, complements of the town. Our plans from here are to cover the rest of the state in the next week and pass into Virginia over the Dismal Swamp part of the ICW.

So upon reflection, which seems to happen when writing the blog, I am seeing a pattern of surprise benefits from this trip, bubbling to the surface. Ken and I are definitely learning to work as a team, even with rocky patches now and again (see May 13 and read between the lines). We have had wonderful health since leaving Massachusetts, staying outside most of every day and eating very little processed food. We are entertained by the simple things, and haven’t missed the TV shows we used to watch or constant updates on the stock market. We are meeting wonderful, lively people who we hope to continue to see, maybe getting them to visit us back in Massachusetts. We are learning about the stars, the birds, and the fish that inhabit this part of the world. And my favorite, the times we travel with our feet or bicycle wheels, off the boat and getting exercise or supplies for dinner. There are a lot of people who don’t have cars and who we now traveling among when we hit the streets. We smile and nod and consider it interesting being car-less for eight months.

In Charleston we decided to walk the margins of a soccer field and connecting streets to get a substantial load of groceries back to our boat. Oh yeah, we were pushing a shopping cart…..…and passing motorists looked and you could tell by their expressions that they wondered if we were homeless and had our possessions in the cart, or if we had stolen it. (We did return it!) This was Ken’s idea and he wasn’t the least reluctant about it.

Enjoy the warming weather wherever you are!

APRIL 26 - MAY 7 BOOKS & TUNES

Remains of mansion Dungeness, Cumberland Is.



Ken on ocean beach, Cumberland Island



Pirates at the Shrimp Fest, Fernandina Beach

Apr 27 Fernandina Beach, Florida, was our “home” for a week, a surprise since we had just planned to spend 24 hours. Our engine did not start on Monday this week and we needed in the end to send out the starter to have it worked on -- again -- and we borrowed a generator to help keep the batteries charged for the last few days of the week. So one additional week in Florida while the weather continued to be perfect. Tough! Fernandina Beach is a large town, on Amelia Island, with great restaurants and shopping. They also had their biggest celebration of the year while we were there, the Shrimp Fest. By the time we left we were on first name basis with several of the locals and we had a front row seat for the Fest fireworks set off over the river where we had a mooring.

One thing we did this week was squeeze in additional time for reading. We have books we brought from home, some we traded with other cruisers (a favorite in that category is An Embarassment of Mangoes, about Canadian boaters who sail to the Bahamas and beyond), some we get from “take one/leave one” libraries at marinas and laundromats. We got a few new books too, mostly tied in with where we were at the time. A mystery based in Cape Fear, NC is one, and two autobiographies, Pat Conroy’s The River is Wide and the 1930s book Cross Creek based in rural Florida. Our down time on the boat is usually spent watching birds/people/boats with binoculars, or planning and executing “happy hour” or reading -- not necessarily in that order!

Apr 30 We took a side trip by dinghy (3.5 miles each way) to Cumberland Island. The Cumberland Island National Seashore maintains the grounds of an old estate, Dungeness, built in the mid 1880s, and several trails. You can also access miles of beautiful unbuilt ocean beach there.

May 3 This is our first full day in Georgia and the start of several where we will be careful of the shallow ICW here. We need to travel between the slack at the end of low tide and the slack at the end of high tide, before it starts getting low again. We passed the Georgia islands Cumberland Island, Jekyl Island, St. Simons Island, Sapelo Island, St. Catherine’s Island since leaving Fernandina Beach. There is no one on the Georgia ICW right now that we know, and in fact, very few boats traveling our speed and direction at all. The wildlife is the best -- dolphins, alligators, eagles, many birds that we can only guess at identifying, wild horses, sounds of sheep last night on a deserted island next to where we anchored (that we did not investigate!).

When we need extreme down time, at the end of a day spent in the fresh air, navigating shallow rivers and canals, we have our tunes. Our son Justin set up 500+ songs on an ipod for Ken before we left. The music is a combination of bluegrass (my suggestion), sea chanteys, female singers Ken likes, and lots of music Justin listens to and thought we’d like. It’s very eclectic and fun. We have added some Bahamian CDs to our mix of entertainment. KB, Ancient Man, Peanuts Taylor and Trez Hepburn are now brought out when we have enough energy for foot tapping and more energetic moves.

May 6 We crossed into South Carolina today and passed Daufuskie Island and anchored near Hilton Head Island. Last night we spent a night at a marina and after a short walk were in Thunderbolt, a suburb or Savannah. There was a great marine store there and a friendly restaurant, Tubby’s Tank House (don‘t you just love the name)! There have been thunderstorms the past two afternoons, just like in July at home.

OUR NEW ADOPTED STATE: FLORIDA

BONUS PHOTO Ken as Mr. April for the next Swimsuit Edition



Haulover Canal Bridge in background with Ken at helm of RISING TIDE



Famous Travis Co. hardware store in Cocoa Village; trusty folding bike in foreground



Alligator swimming away from us in the Merritt Is. Haulover Canal


APRIL 19 - 26

Apr 19 Vero Beach in mid-coast Florida is a wonderful pit-stop. There are free buses to shopping, it’s a short bike ride to the beach and the boutiques there. The vegetation is lush. And the showers and laundry at the marina are well-maintained and numerous. The next time we’re there I’ll make sure we get to the city Art Museum. There is also a live theater and a huge park. These last 3 places are all within walking distance of the marina.

Apr 21 We got to see Jim (my brother) and Riko today, and catch up on news since we were in Cape Canaveral area last. We got some mail from home, the first since early January. Jim has always said he doesn’t know why everyone isn’t trying to move to Florida, and this visit is proving him right…….

It’s been 12 weeks (almost 3 months!) in Florida counting before and after the Bahamas. We are enjoying the delightful weather -- it’s been sunny, warm, and the winds are light and comfortable since we returned. There is a lot of wildlife near the anchorages and marinas we’ve been at. Ken spotted a few alligators, mostly one at a time, including one slowly and methodically swimming from dock to dock in Cape Canaveral (Merritt Island). Among the birds we’ve seen this time are pink flamingoes. We haven’t seen many insects (which is good). The water is dark and mysterious compared to the Bahamas, but it’s supporting lots of fish and wild “critters”. If it weren’t for the shoaling in parts of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), we’d be very happy! We have been stuck on the bottom several times since we returned two weeks ago.

Apr 26 Northern Florida along the ICW is dotted with small homes -- fishing camps -- and interesting larger homes. Many of them have docks. Looks like a great way of life! We are now at Amelia Island, the last real estate in Florida before we cross to Georgia. We’re back to motoring a lot since we’re in canals much of the time. We hope to get Ken a net and have him try casting it and getting some shrimp in some of the side creeks coming up.

APRIL 13 - APRIL 18 LOOKING BACK

Carol & Dave (SYRINGA)


Jack & Z (KITE)


Jack & Peggy (FREE SPIRIT)


Ken, Mary, and Neil in Treasure Cay

Tom & Susan (BRILLIANT)


Debi & Mike (LOS GATEOWS)


Apr. 13 We made our crossing successfully and spent two days and nights in Ft. Pierce, FL catching up on sleep and visiting Barry and Susan (SWAN) not far from there at Nettles Island.

Apr. 15 We’ve moved to Vero Beach, and maybe it’s seeing Barry and Susan prepare to change gears (Barry has health issues and so they will be putting their boat in a yard here instead of sailing it back to Massachusetts) but it makes me want to reflect on our trip and our preparation for it. Barry and Susan were mentors for us in January and February, answering a lot of our questions about sailing in another country.

Here’s some of what we learned and what we did that may or may not have been reported yet:

We both enjoy seeing all the various types of sail and power boats that spend the winter in the Bahamas. We have a list of 225 boats and owners that were recorded in George Town, Exumas, this winter. This doesn’t include all the other boats we saw in the other areas of the Bahamas. Ken will spend the rest of our trip quizzing me on each boat that we see on our way back that is familiar to him!

No, we didn’t get tired of wearing shorts or bathing suits and going barefoot everyday. I don’t think there was even one day when it rained for more than 15 minutes and this only happened once or twice. Sun and temperatures in the high 70s were a constant. Yes, we did have too much wind but the Bahamians assured us this was an unusual winter.

In most of the Bahamas they don’t have regular water. They have R/O water which is reverse osmosis fresh water created from salt water. It doesn’t taste very good.
The baked goods in the Bahamas are great: baked bread, coconut pastries, meat pastries. Buying bread, cookies or crackers from the U.S. are very expensive (as is almost everything imported from the U.S. so we stocked up before we came).

We can communicate with other boaters we know on VHF radio easily if they are within 10 miles or so. We can communicate with the boater community as a whole each morning on the Cruisers Net, also on VHF, and find out what’s going on for entertainment, what’s expected for weather, and who needs to share a taxi ride to the airport (etc.). It is not easy to call home. It takes coordination of finding a phone booth, getting a phone card from Batelco before the office closes at 5 pm, remembering to get the dinghy gassed up to make the trip to the other side of the large harbor where the phones are, a separate trip since people we are calling are not home before 5 pm.

Sometimes there are no phones, no banks, no supplies, no conch chowder that night even though it is on the menu. Sometimes there are banks but they only open one day a week. Sometimes you have to hitchhike to the auto parts store to see if they might have the part for your boat engine. But through all this Bahamians are super friendly, trying to make you feel at home, very polite and thoughtful when you need assistance.

We didn’t catch much fish to eat but we got offered just-cleaned mahi-mahi from the dock the first week in the Bahamas, ate some grouper speared by a fellow cruiser, ate whole fried grunt and snapper (skin and all) and wished we had more. We saw thousands of fish while snorkeling, and often were greeted by dolphins surfing our bow wave as we neared a harbor after a long sail offshore.

We have been very close up to sharks, at dinghy docks, near fish-cleaning stations, and snorkeling. We got a “lookie-bucket” and could take it out in the dinghy and see the bottom in any type of water, and also check our anchor with it. There were almost no sea birds around during our time in the Bahamas, but Ken fed the Bananaquit (tiny land birds) with sugar on his palm.

The rum in the Bahamas is good and can be mixed with many different fruit juices and mixers. Having two months to try and find our favorite combination was a daunting task, but one we were up to! We recommend finding a beach bar with “rake & scrape” (local) music playing and all the rum drinks will taste great.

It is a challenge to anchor every night in shallow water and get a good night’s sleep. We never did drag our anchor in the Bahamas but one time spent 2 hours “bumping” on the bottom while the tide was low and the waves choppy. We heard bad stories of boats sliding back into other boats and causing damage. The good news is that the bottom is almost always sand and the results of a boat dragging anchor is usually just moving to another sandy area before the anchor catches again.

The Bahamian experiences that we would definitely like to repeat:

--Junkanoo performance

--Snorkeling (we missed going to the “World’s 3rd longest reef”, in Andros, due to wind)

--Peace & Plenty Hotel or St.Francis Resort, both in George Town. Places to have a meal, access wifi, watch the ocean, and feel good peaceful vibes.

--Sailing from the deep (3000+ ft.) teal blue Bahamian waters to the 10-30 ft. crystal clear turquoise banks in a matter of minutes

BAHAMAS REPRISE

Don't tell our dermatologist about our tans!


View of RISING TIDE from the Canadian yacht FREE SPIRIT


"Waterfront Shack in Man 'O War Eastern Harbor, Abacos


This is being sent from Vero Beach FL -- we made it back on Monday 4/13/09.

MARCH 28 - APRIL 12

We are in our final days in the Bahamas. It seems fitting that we should get a chance to find, again, those experiences that we enjoyed the most while we have been here. So to wind up our trip we have been searching out more local bakeries with Bahamian bread, participating in Bahamian music/food/culture events, snorkeling “one last time“, and relocating some boats that we have seen or known while down here.

March 28 We bumped into people we met earlier in Warderick Wells, Peggy and Jack on FREE SPIRIT from Ontario, and our two boats left Nassau early this day bound for northern Eleuthera. We will only be in one spot in Eleuthera, Royal Island, but going there gives us a good jumping off spot for the Abacos, and we get to check off one more island chain that we have visited in the Bahamas. We had plenty of wind for our sail and wonderful weather. The next day was an early departure since we needed to cover 53 miles -- probably a 10-hr. sail -- and it was a wild weather day with high winds, large following seas added to by easterly rollers leftover from last week’s weather. At the end of the sail as we approached the Abacos, we were greeted by about a dozen dolphins, who stayed by our boat for about 3 miles, swimming up and back and riding the ocean swells and our boat’s bow waves!

March 30 We are spending several days in Marsh Harbor in the mid-Abacos as it is the largest town here and has a very protected harbor. We should see some other cruisers here that we know, and we still have FREE SPIRIT to play with and share stories with. We got back in contact with AQUILA, new friends that we shared Christmas Eve with in Florida and then got separated from when Barb got injured and laid-up a few days later.

April 2 We have planned a side-trip to Treasure Cay, not really a separate cay but on the same island that Marsh Harbor is on. Good friends Mary and Neil Rice have invited us to visit them at their second home there. After a 3-hour sail we found a marina, a well-protected small harbor, and a large number of homes and businesses at Treasure Cay. There is also a 3 ½ mile-long pristine beach and free internet in the harbor. What more could you ask for?

It’s so easy to meet people when you’re with vacationing people in the warm climates! Mary and Neil were already booked the first night we arrived so we took advantage of the Pizza Night at the outdoor bar, part of the marina. We became fast friends with a couple we shared a table with (it was crowded). They had just flown in from North Carolina for a long-weekend in their private plane. It’s the kind of place you can bump into people again, so in the semi-darkness the next night returning from dinner with Neil and Mary in their golf cart, we were hailed by our pizza friends, and saw them again in their boat in the harbor.

We were treated royally by the Rices and enjoyed cocktails on their balcony and a delicious dinner out. We got to discuss Marblehead news and people, and catch up on what children and grandchildren are doing.

Treasure Cay was a little more up-scale than what we have seen in other places in the Bahamas, but one morning we got to experience Bahamian small-town entertainment as the primary children from a local school were dressed in costumes from the Wizard of OZ and were parading through the small shopping area and singing songs from the show. There were about 25 students, and they stopped to act out some of the parts.

April 5 There is more strong wind predicted for the upcoming week so during the short lull we sailed to Man ’O War Cay where there is another very well protected harbor. Most of the cays surrounding the Sea of Abaco are short sails from each other and the Sea itself is fairly calm and shallow. Man ‘O War is known for boat-building and furniture-making. A few days later we sailed to Great Guana Cay. We did meet up with BRIAR PATCH and SERENADE, boats we have been looking for.

April 9 This was a perfect day and we headed north from Great Guana Cay, stopping in between cays to snorkel. It was calm, warm, and the reef we stopped at had tons of fish, fan coral, and other types of coral. I saw a shark, a turtle, and a ray as well as the small brightly colored reef fish. Our destination this day was Green Turtle Cay and the next day we enjoyed a Good Friday fried fish lunch there, put on by the youth group of one of the churches. The fish were fried whole and were served with small sweet banana pancakes. Bahamian gospel music was playing on loudspeakers.

April 11 We’re just about to cross back over the Gulf Stream to the Florida shores (this takes three days of sailing through uninhabited cays). We are hailed on the radio by the crew of LOS GATEOWS. By chance, they are sailing up the west side of the island that we are sailing up the east side of (they are just sending a random radio call)! So, one final meeting and rum drinks with “old” friends, Mike and Debbie and girls, at Great Sale Cay. As we compare notes from the past few weeks, we look forward to being back in the U.S………..