Preparing to Leave the Bahamas - January 3rd and 4th

          I need to play some catch-up and post what we’ve been doing for the last few weeks. We left Georgetown, Bahamas and realized we had stayed there way too long. Georgetown provide the Gualby Nation with free reverse osmosis water, a well stocked pantry and freezer, a handful of new friends that we would love to meet up with again sometime, a belly-full of conch fritters from Pet’s Place, a very cool junkanoo parade, a dozen or so clean Bahamian longboard waves, 2-3 episodes of Franzia poisoning (I‘ve said it before: it‘s real), and a dookie-load of unsolicited advice from grey hairs pseudo-sailing around the harbor. If that last one sounds negative then I’m coming across clearly. However we did meet a couple of old salts whose advice we found very helpful and pertinent to our style of sailing. That’s right......…..STYLE.
          Anywho, that dose of “North American retirement motor your sailboat around all the time and try to tell the younger sailors how to behave in Elizabeth Harbor sailing Culture” had the Tortilla Flotilla jonesing for some isolation again. We aptly found it in the Jumentos and Ragged Islands. We left around 8am on the Wednesday before New Years, I think, and motored into 15 knot winds till we could turn a little more west, cross through Hog Cay cut at the south end of the Exumas, and make our way toward Water Cay in the Jumentos. Ted got held up at Hog Cay cut due to his fat-ass draft and had to wait for high tide. We left him there and kept moving since his motoring ability easily makes up for any time lost in shallow areas. We got to Water Cay around 5pm, anchored and climbed to the top of the island (maybe 60 feet) to see if we could see Ted coming, and sure enough he was on the horizon. He promptly showed up about an hour later. I’m not sure what his top speed is while motoring but it seems whenever we leave him in shallow areas waiting for tide, he is always only an hour behind us. No matter how long we leave him for.
 



views from the war canoe




looking forward, poised for battle




Bryan with a good-en



         Next day, we got up early, threw the spears in the war canoe and headed to the hunting grounds. I’m still on a mission to catch a lobster bigger than Ted’s monster, so I ate my wheaties, put on my game face, and switched “on”. Bryan and I did find some 1-2 pounders under a rusty hulk, but the real bonus was this high spot of reef about a half mile from the island to the west, where the hogfish where swarming. So after getting my share of them we called it a day and headed back to the boats. Meg was starting to get a little pissed at this point because I kept leaving her in possibly “sharky” waters by herself as I scurried off after hogfish. She says my blood thirst and my ongoing spear fishing rivalry with Ted makes me an unsafe “buddy” in the water. We had heard there where lots of sharks in this area, and the first spot we hunted was a little unnerving: First we saw a dive bag laying on the reef, than another 25 yards further on there was a yellow dive glove, then another 30 yards was a shredded pair of board shorts. I bet whoever these belonged to didn’t get eaten by a shark, but it did make the dive a little creepy. So I guess I could have been a little more sympathetic to Meghan’s cause. I must admit I don’t enjoy the “buddy system”, but she is my wife so I guess I should try harder to oblige. 

Hogfish Bounty, required to calm Meg back down

          After returning to the boats we decided the wind was too perfect to stay another night so we upped anchor and sailed another 12 miles south to Flamingo Cay. This island was fairly interesting, had a rusty shipwreck on the beach, as well as what had to be a refugee raft washed up on the beach. Not sure how long it had been there, but it was clearly made by hand, with hand carved timbers as ribs, rough hewn planking, and clothing stuffed into the seams between the planks to slow the influx of water. It had a giant tree trunk for a mast and was held together by pieces of metal hammered into the planks to act as nails. There were clothes and backpacks everywhere washed up on the beach, but no refugees around. Seeing this thing made us all feel a little weird. Once we got over that we did some diving and dinghy exploration, which revealed a cave on the southwest side that was big enough to dinghy into.

dinghy cave

We found a couple of conchs, which were turned into conch salad, and then took a nap to prepare for new years eve. We rung in the new year with some beers we saved from Georgetown, fried hogfish and lobster, and a bon fire made from loose refugee raft planks. Gotta call out the Romo’s for going to bed early (perhaps their seniority makes them prone to falling asleep at 8pm) but they got a late night dinghy drive-by streaking for being lame.
          Next day we mostly layed around recovering. I was personally feeling a little unusual, maybe emotional is how a girl would describe it, and spent a lot of time thinking about New Years past with family and friends. I hope everyone back home is refreshed and starting new with new attitudes and eagerness toward 2011. Best regards to the Seller’s, the Gorhams, the Harpers, the Prevatts, the Faucheux’s (spelling?) and everyone who helped us make this trip possible. I hope everyone at LKMC is still plugging along and keeping up with the blog, maybe even making plans to visit. We miss you guys. Regards to the Drygas family, hope the polar plunge was painful and cleansing, as usual. Mike D and the Grobelny’s, and all the boys back home. Stop being bitches and at least leave me some blog comments or send an email. 



cruising into Duncan Town


         After recovering we woke up early and headed south to Ragged Island, which pretty much took all day. There is no good anchorage close to town, Duncan Town, the southern most settlement in the ragged chain. This place was surreal. We dinghied through a long and narrow mangrove channel about 2 miles into town hoping for one last weather check before moving on and making our way towards Mexico. The place has about 10 - 12 buildings, and seemed like hardly any people. I would guess maybe 30. Walking down the one street it felt like a ghost town run by animals. At one point we were in front of the police station and there was a dog lying in the street, a goat standing on a hill next to it, a peacock, a dozen chickens and a pig, all in one frame. The pig kind of waddles toward the dog, which looked just like Penny, except had lots of dread locks and only one eye, and starts to sniff the dog, probably checking to see if it was dead and ready for eating. As Meghan was digging in the back pack for the camera the dog jumps up and grabs the pig by the ear in a full on pig vs. dog raucus. The melee that ensued had us all stopped in our tracks. Chickens were scattering, the pig was screaming, the dog was sounding as if it wasn‘t gonna stop until it had torn the pig‘s ear off, and all the sudden everything went silent again, the dog went back to its spot and layed down, the pig wandered off sniffing the ground for scraps, the chickens kept pecking the ground, and we all just stood there in awe, with nobody around but us. Meghan said she had her hand on the camera but couldn’t move to get it out of the back pack and get off a shot. But hopefully you can get a mental picture. We did meet two drunk Bahamians, one with a bad case of the hiccups, drunk driving a golf cart around the one street. I had immediate respect because I too love to drive golf carts drunk. They were very friendly but made it clear that this town didn’t have much to offer. He did say there was a bar, and if we wanted beer or conch fritters to let him know so he could go wake up the lady who lived there and put beers in the fridge. We politely declined and headed back to the boats.

          

One last Bahamian dinner



          We moved the boats to Coco Bay on the south side of Little Ragged Island, got in one last lobster and conch hunting session, and went to bed early preparing for a midnight departure.  We are currently making our way to Mexico, which is quite a haul, so we’ll probably be off the radar for a little while. We would like to thank the Bahamas for helping us cut our teeth at sailing, being very generous with its underwater bounty, and for overall being extra friendly with us travelers. Hope all our friends and family from key West, Jacksonville, and Fort Pierce all know we love them and are always thinking about them. We hope everyone has a wonderful beginning to the new year. Respect and Love to all,
Conor and Meg

Penny on hood ornament duty



And trying to be serious and resisting the love

pull the main scum bag

is it all the way up yet?

Nope, keep winching

and.......cleat it off, lock it up