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