05/11/2007, Eva's Cay, Long Island, Bahamas
Thursday, May 10th 2007. Two months on Long Island and having a great time. One of the biggest problems of being here is the lack of easy/cheap internet access along with the fact that when you can get online the connection is so slow making skype phone calls is near impossible. So we truly miss talking to friends and family and we apologize for this.
This morning I tuned into the SSB radio for a weather report and learned about subtropical storm Andrea. Last I had heard a few days ago it was just a developing low pressure, but now has been upgraded and given a name - looks like it's going to be an active hurricane season. Well the good side of that is that it has been wonderful weather here with light winds and calm seas, great for getting out on the water and diving. There has also been a few days of rain which is good for the plants and filling the cisterns, but the mosquitoes have hatched and are thick. The nights are calm with all the screens in and the fans running nonstop to cool the skin after a day in the sun. Thank goodness for fans! This is the first time we have been down here this late in the season and it is a wonderful time as far as settled weather and clear water. We are pretty close to being done working on our property, undercutting the brush and planting trees. Most of the brush we've cut we've left in place with the hopes of it covering the ground to keep more from going up thru it right away and for it to eventually rot and help add to the soil for when we return to build. I know that by that time a lot of our work will look pointless, but hopefully it will give some of the larger tamarind trees some room to expand and grow into larger shade trees. We have also planted about 40 coconuts, transplanted 3 palms, 4 small mango trees, and 2 sapodilla trees. There are literally hundreds of vermilidads all over the property and where we cleared the trails we gathered these along with the orchids and tried to organize them into beds around the coco's and tamarinds. We also collected fish floats off the beach and hung these along the trail so as you walk along it has a true island feel. This is the first piece of land either of us has owned and we are having a great time just making it unique and feel like a part of us. And now with all the rain it seems to have been perfect timing for our work and planting. Well time will only tell and we shall see when we return.
Jeannette and I only have one more day of diving until she is officially certified an Open Water Padi diver and I have completed my refresher course. How cool! I have to commend Jeannette on how well she has done, not only on acing the written tests but for how comfortable and confident she has become in the water. Taking her mask off at 40' and then clearing it was like second nature to her. I have to say I am very proud of her. This experience has also helped in her overall comfort with freediving. About a week ago we took Puff southwest to the channel cays then took the inflatable out towards the nuevitas wall. We spent the day diving and spearfishing in 15-40' gin clear water over a mile offshore. I speared the boats limit of 6 fish for the day, one mutton snapper, 3 hogfish, and 2 grouper all of which were between 5-15 lbs. What a perfect day, words truly cannot even come close to describing to incredible beauty both above and below the water. Both of our freediving skills have improved dramatically since arriving here. To be able to dive on one breath of air and become one with the underwater world, drifting through huge purple sea fans, coral heads the size of a dump truck all the while being surrounded by schools a margate, grunts, angelfish, tangs . . . . simply breathtaking!
I was also fortunate enough to be invited to help my friend Charlie and Junior set some lobster condos. We loaded up Junior's dad's 45' commercial fishing boat with 116 lobster condos and towed 3 skiffs off into the sunset one evening. This was a guy's trip and Jeannette was cool enough to understand the opportunity and wave us farewell on our 2 day, 2 night voyage. The first night out we anchored out in the open banks under light winds and seas. The boat has enough bunks to sleep 12 people in two fully air-conditioned cabins, but I opted to sleep in the wheel house where the light wind and motion of the sea rocked me to sleep. At sunrise the captain and 5 crew awoke and we got underway. By 8am we were in the chosen grounds to start laying the condos. Charlie and Junior got in the whaler (skiff) and began scouting ahead of the big boat while Justin and myself got the condos ready. Every condo had to have a concrete block strapped to the top and be in position for release in the spot Junior had chosen. Once over the side he would freedive down with the condo making sure it was upright and in the spot he had seen. We shuffled, moved, and launched all 116 condos that day. That's a lot of weight including the block, and the fact that each condo was 4'x6' . We finished around 5pm and as the big boat headed toward our anchorage Charlie and I took off in the skiff to spear some dinner. After a grouper, hogfish, mutton and yellowtail snapper along with 2 conch and being chased out of the water by a shark we figured it was good enough for dinner. The shark came only after I had speared a bar jack to have it bit in half by a hungry barracuda and had waited around to recover the spear. That night we all ate good (one of the crew from the D.R. was the designated cook) and slept even better after a long hard days work. The next day was plate glass calm and it was time to play. Everyone loaded into to skiffs and went spearfishing. Charlie and I had already planned on returning home that day so we dove all day and made our way back to Long Island. His 15' whaler is an impressive boat and we covered to 50 miles while freediving and compressor diving all the way back. We had a boatload of fish by noon and ended up just enjoying natures gift the rest of the day. That was definitely a great experience and a chance to dive some truly remote areas.
I am now able to freedive to 65' and am going further each day. Jeannette is also improving and is able to go to 45' or just spend some good quality time in the 20-30' range.
Some days we dive to blue holes here in Salt Pond, one which has an impressive arch at 45' and is a great area to practice and enjoy being in the water.
Well I'm tired of typing and I'm sure I'm leaving some things out but oh-well, I'll have to do it next time. Happy mother's day Mom and Pat, we love you both and hope you have a wonderful mothers day. We miss you all a lot and look forward to catching up with you upon our return. Lots of love to all and Happy Mothers Day Mom and Mom.
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04/24/2007, Long Island, Bahamas
We made landfall on Long Island somewhere around March 12? You lose track of the days sometimes out here and I don't have our logbook handy. We anchored in Joe's Sound on the North end of the island. Beautiful, harrowing entrance channel in about 4 feet of water, 7 feet across - just barely wide and deep enough for us to squeeze through. We made it and holed up for several days to wait out a blow. Very pretty shallow areas, good for gunkholing. We found a blue hole and fished it, standing on the edge with our rods, I caught and released a small Nasseau grouper. Saw a good sized nurse shark cruising the flats and met some nice cruisers. Walked about 2.5 miles to the posh Cape Santa Maria resort for happy hour, we heard they served free conch fritters, and they did! That was fun and the sunset there was amazing. After the wind died down, we headed to "our beach". Last year, we bought some property here and there is a nice anchorage right out in front, we dropped the hook and went ashore to plant some coconuts we'd collected on our land. We didn't want to spend the night there, too exposed, so we went on down to Thompson Bay near Salt Pond and dropped the hook there. It is a great anchorage. Large, but well protected. A beautiful white stone church sits high on a hill overlooking the bay. There is a great beach with no development and a freshwater well along a path to the road where many cruisers do laundry. We use it to fill up our sunshower. There is nice diving close enough to dingy to and a grocery store not far up the road. Since we've been here we've explored three different caves, climbed dilly trees, planted another 29 coconuts on our property, met so many new friends and dove several blue holes. A highlight of our trip this year has been meeting William Trubridge, world record holder free-diver. Will is from New Zealand and he has trained here on Long Island at Dean's Blue Hole for two years now. On April 11th, he dove on a single breath without fins or any other help to 82 meters, that's 264.2 feet! He is 26 years old and a really amazing guy. We were there the day he broke the record. He had diver's and friends here from the UK, New Zealand and Brazil. Brian and I have gotten really interested in free-diving since we've been hanging out with them and learning more about it. Check out William's site verticalblue.net. I can't even tell you how cool it is. We took the vertical blue crew out sailing one day and had a great time. I'm in the process of getting my open water scuba diving certification and Brian is getting recertified, he completed the course when he was 16 yrs old, so he's doing a refresher. We've met some great people here, expats and locals and cruisers and divers. Everything is going great. Charlie the dog is doing well, he has lots of doggie friends here and loves going to Dean's Blue Hole to watch the free-diver's training. Jack the cat is doing okay, we don't spend as much time on the boat while we're here, just coffee and sleeping, but Jack sleep during the day anyway so I don't think it's that bad. We'll be returning to the states soon, don't really know when yet, but it's getting to be that time. Check ya later.
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03/10/2007, Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, Bahamas
Hi Everybody,
We've been meandering through the island of Eluthera and the Exumas for the past few weeks. Eluthera was cool. We had a harrowing experience in Royal Island harbor. A beautiful Hinkley Bermuda 40 almost crashed into us as it dragged anchor during a 40 knot blow. It was heartstopping for me. Actually the captain of the boat was in his dingy working on the outboard and didn't even notice his boat dragging down onto us, until Brian yelled for him. It was clear that the captain, a kid in his twenties, had no idea what was happening. Brian jumped into the dingy and sped toward the Hinckley ramming it just in time and pushing it against the wind and away from Puff. By this time the kid is behind the wheel and cranking the engine. I'm on the deck of Puff hanging onto a shroud to keep my balance on the pitching and swinging deck. I'm watching this 150k boat slide across the surface of the harbor toward the rocks at an alarming speed, I guess the guy wasn't throttling up enough to counteract the wind. By this time, Brian ties our dingy to the Hinckley and leaps aboard taking the wheel and telling the guy what to do to get re-anchored safely. At the same time two other boats dragged anchor and recovered swiftly and they end up motoring around the harbor for hours during the blow trying and retrying to reset their anchor unsuccessfully. They must have been going out of their minds, I know they made the rest of us quite nervous. Anyway, Brian finds out this kid has his dad's boat down here. He has to change to a better anchor and finally they got it set, far away from other boats. In the meantime, I'm freaking out because just a couple weeks earlier our own anchor drug in Marsh Harbor. So, I had Puff's engine cranked and ready to go in case our anchor had any trouble, which thank god we didn't. Sooooo... after that drama, we had some pretty days at Royal. We took the dingy about a 5 miles out to a cool wreck of a metal ship about 170 feet long, almost fully intact, part of it sticks out above the water, and there's really good details of the ship visible, engine, deck, hardware... Brian saw a couple of pretty big bull sharks around there a couple of years ago so we started fishing it with hook and line first and man, Brian pulled in the finest looking cero mackeral you ever saw. After Royal we went to a couple of other harbors on Eluthera, one was Governours Harbor, which we have fond memories of from our first trio down here 6 years ago. They have a great town fish fry street party every Friday and as usual it was a blast. Another was Hatchet Bay, where Brian has access to a really good break he likes to surf there. Hatchet Bay also has access to some really spooky and impressive caves. Pitch black inside, we took flashlights and water and made our way through, I was so scared, I get clausterphobic. There were stalagtites and stalagmites 10 times our size! The air was weird and it was very wet and huge dark caverns all around, it was hard not to get lost. We left Hatchet and made our way to the Exumas, just exploring all the shallow anchorages around that nice little chain of island, saw some spectacular Spotted Eagle Rays flying through the gin clear water, caught some fish, speared some fish and lobster. We're eating well, needless to say. The sights in the Exuma islands are incredible, shallow light colored sand flats, deep blue channels, even some amazing limestone cliffs, the highest being 129 feet. Now we are having a surreal experience. We have docked at this totally posh marina called Emerald Bay. The development has been under construction for 10 years so far, and they expect another 15 or 20 years to completion. The marina opened a little over a year ago and they are letting cruisers in for pennies per foot, sooo cheap you cannot believe! It includes free laundry, internet, hot tub, hot showers,dvds, transportation to shopping, water is cheap, it's very cool. When they get the docks finished you won't be able to spend a couple days here for under a few hundred bucks. Alas, we are only here for a day and a half. Tomorrow. we cast off for Long Island where we will visit our special friends, Charlie and Joyce, and feel right at home. Sorry, no pics this time, connection is too slow. Thanks for your emails and keep writing! Oh, and yes, the tiny speck of a boat in the photo above is us.... all alone in all this beauty.
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