Sitting here (here and home, at the moment, is just off Big Majors Beach, a wee bit North of Staniel Cay) watching the dissipating dark grey clouds of night and starting to feel the heat of the day as the morning sun rises, sipping on a coffee, and agreeing wholeheartedly with Dave as he came up the companionway and commented,
"What a Glorious Day, Babe".
Indeed.
So lucky and thankful to here. Babe !
I had to look at the calendar day and date this morning as I know that quite some time, and distance, has elapsed since our last post, back at Normans Cay. A definite (involuntary?) escape had us disconnected from not only The Collective but our cell phone was flashing "NO SERVICE".
(Oh, and it's February ? What happened to January ?)
A few days of "The Jitters" followed, which shows just how addictive the constant stream of social media can be. The thought that, gasp, we might be "missing" something. Anything! And, perish the thought, what IF something happened and someone was trying to reach us ?
But anyhow, the jitters were quite quickly and easily offset by the hike to Boo Boo Hill, just atop Warderick Wells National Park, where cruisers have been going to for years, no decades... and leaving behind some "natural" memento of their visit.
Usually a piece of driftwood or a conch shell inscribed with their names, or their boat name and the year, some so faded there is nothing left to discern but the scratch marks etched in wood that might have one day long ago, read something.
One of the handmade signs on the island advertise "Take only Memories. Leave behind only Footprints". We should all treat Mother Earth this way!
And what followed these long morning hikes ? Snorkelling by the reefs in the afternoon. Clear turquoise (and warm) waters that had you jumping into them with happy abandon, swimming over to the reef to witness the many schools of very bright and colourful reef fish hiding from the two giant intruders casting a shadow over their underwater home, seeing a baby ray glide its way along the bottom (awww, how cute) and then quickly jumping back in a scared flutter of finned feet as Dave barely misses the momma 8 foot ray that silently appeared from behind the reef in search of her little one. That was a YIKES moment !
We stayed for enough days to meet most of the fellow boaters that were moored in the narrow strip of deep blue on that large expanse of almost visible sand,
some we have crossed paths with before, and some were new to us, in both cases, all of them we are hoping to meet down the road again. Meet and greets held by the gazebo that cast a shadow on the structure of the whale on the beach (that sadly died from eating too much plastic), or having sundowners over an unorganized and impromptu get together on our boat, that had us feasting on nachos and chili and peach pie (calories in = calories out?), however, not one HUTIA (a relative of the Canadian Groundhog perhaps?) was seen, although there are rumors that the Island is overpopulated by them, as evidenced by the mountains of hutia poop on "Hutia Highway" (one of the walking trails), that has you scampering and climbing over limestone rocks and trying to keep away from the Poisonwood trees.
I read somewhere that the Gumbo Limbo sap is the only remedy to the itchy welts of Poisonwood, however, have not laid eyes on anything that resembles a Gumbo Limbo, and of course, being disconnected from The Oracle, one cannot easily Google any wisdom or knowledge and has to rely solely on any information others can provide. And sadly, Jen at the office had no idea what I was talking about.
And what of the jitters from the disconnect to the Collective ? We paid $15 for 100 mb of data, which had runout in an impressive short amount of time that it took us to download our email and glance at the news headlines, and ascertain that, thankfully nothing dreadful had happened while we were "away" and no one had missed us too much ! So why worry ? Man !
But there was an email from our kids saying they missed us "terribly", which is always nice to read, but makes the heart-ache a tad much? Followed by the great news that my daughter is coming to visit, how fantastique !! Mon !
And then, as is always the case, weather was coming and it was a decision of stay where we were for more days of serious wind, or move now before and go someplace new... So we opted to move on down to Big Majors, where we joined the many other boats already there, and anchored ourselves snugly by the beach of pigs.
Ah, the Beach of Pigs ... another milestone for us, as Dave and I remember reading blogs, over the snowy winter months years ago, of other cruisers living on the waterways of this cruising lifestyle, and posting pictures of their adventures, as they fed the pigs ! We enviously just couldn't wait to be "doin' the same!" and here we were, today, "doin' the same"... Ah, sigh. Dreams, can and do, come true.
A few tears of joy where shed behind the camera lens, as Dave threw the cabbage we had bought back in Vero Beach and imported into the Bahamas all those weeks ago, along some bread ends into the water. The very large spotted pigs heard the engine and ran (yes, ran !) out of the woods, across the beach and splashed into the water, and swam towards us. Man !
Just before the onset of the impressive blow, we re-anchored facing North, and got to work on some "boat jobs". I re-stitched the leather on one of the wheels, as the thread was coming undone, waxed the floors, oiled the teak, made some cinnamon buns and tried a new bread recipe, offered up by MAJIKS. Dave installed a toggle switch for The Wirie, so we can keep the fans on without burning out the Internet, organized his tool chest and went hunting with the boys from MAJIKS and Blue Moose, but sadly, came home empty-handed.
And so today is Sunday, and the only reason we know that is the VHF is happily booming in Bahamian lingo "today be SuperBowl Sunday mon, come on down to Staniel Cay for Happy Hour, and the kick-off, and feast on the Superbowl Buffet and part-ay!
... MAN !"