More From the Regatta
28 February 2015 | Bahamas, George Town
Elizabeth
There's another race today as part of the Cruisers Regatta, around the island (Stocking). That should be exciting with adequate wind and fairly benign sea state. We'll try to watch some of it, maybe from shore or the dinghy.
Meanwhile, we are waiting for an opportunity to head south, hoping we'll get a window mid-week. That's not a given at this point. It's funny how we lived in the same house for 18 years and rarely got itchy feet. We always knew we would leave to go cruising; that was a plan from our first years together, a commitment we made as surely as we committed to our marriage. We knew that life events could have interfered in our dream to sail away, but we were optimistic and almost everything we did and large decisions made were somehow tied to the ultimate goal of leaving. There were a few diversions, but not significantly so. Now when we're in one place for a month, or two or three and get itchy feet, it seems strange. I suspect it has less to do with the place (not always, though) and more to do with a sense that our cruising years aren't infinite. With the interruptions to our cruising plan with two important weddings on the East coast and followed by the decision to repower in Maine last summer, there's this sense that we lost time. Thus our itchy feet. Time to go! But where? Well, we are headed to the ABC's but at this point are not sure how we'll get there. The most likely scenario is to make our way to the southeast Bahamas and stage out of Mayaguana, doing an offshore passage directly to Culebra. From there we'll work our way to St. Maarten for some serious provisioning, maybe some boat work and then figure out the rest. We missed St. Kitts, Nevis and Monserrat during our previous cruising of the West Indies so it's possible we'll try to stop at those islands as we make our way southwest to the ABC's. We might stage out of St. Croix but as of now that's uncertain.
Here's some info from Wikipedia about our next major destination:
"The ABC islands are Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. They are the three western-most islands of the Leeward Antilles in the Caribbean, north of Falcón State, Venezuela. From west to east they are, in order: Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire.
All three islands are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, although they remain outside the European Union. Aruba and Curaçao are autonomous, self-governing constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, while Bonaire is a special municipality of the Netherlands."