The last of our days, for this season, in the Jumento’s and Ragged Islands have come to an end. We had a fantastic time there with our friends. But, I’ll bring you up to date with all our activities before we left there.
One day Bruce and I went walking on the beach collecting ‘treasures’ and that evening had Sam the Skull and Bernie from Countess Cosel over for supper. We had a very fun evening and Bernie invited us all over to his boat for supper in a couple of days time. On our anniversary, March 1st (33yrs.), we went to a hot dog BBQ on the beach for one of the boaters - Dave from M/V Dyad (he is the one who organizes the web site “bigdumboat.com” which I spelled wrong for you last time, You’ll have more luck getting onto it now!) His birthday is on the 2nd of March Mum, like yours, but the weather was going to turn bad so his wife organized it for the day before. It was a good time! We all took a side dish of some sort to have with the hot dogs, then we even had birthday cake. Of course there was a little drinking too! We toasted ourselves for our anniversary and also said “Happy Birthday!” to you too Mum and we hope you had as good a time as we did.
The next day we went back around to South Side Bay in preparation for the bad weather coming. Before it rolled in, Bruce and I went exploring the coastline in the dinghy, which we hadn’t done before. There are quite a lot of interesting caves along there – easy to imagine pirate treasure and skeletons guarding it! Bruce did a little fishing along the way and I tried to get some pictures of it all as I rowed along following him. We didn’t get over to Bernie’s for supper that evening as planned because of the rough weather, even though he wasn’t anchored too far away from us. He didn’t mind, as it was sauerkraut and bratwurst for supper and he said that the more times you cook it and heat it up the better it is! It is easier to get into Duncantown from South Side Bay, so in we went the next day. We were very lucky to get a ride in and even a ride out of town, as it is quite a long way to walk. People are very good at giving rides to the cruisers if they see them walking along the road. We tried to use the internet while we were there but it was really pretty useless! Tried again to go to supper with Bernie that evening, but with the wind coming up again it didn’t work out. Next day we headed back around to Hog Cay - at fairly low tide – with Countess Cosel following us. Bernie was afraid we’d go aground and then he’d be there to pull us off. Why he thought that, we really don’t know as his draft is a litle deeper than ours and he usually goes his usual deeper water route. You guessed it! Bernie went aground! We bumped once and tried to radio him to warn him, but he was on the wrong channel. He’d been listening to radio chatter and forgotten to switch back to the hailing channel – so we watched him go hard aground and couldn’t do anything about it!! Luckily it was a rising tide and with a little bit of maneuvering he came off the sandbank quite easily. That evening we, and Sam the Skull finally got to go and have the sauerkraut, bratwurst and potato supper – with chocolate for dessert!! Delicious! We gradually started making our way north, up the Jumento’s in preparation for heading home.
Barbara (Anderson – ‘Sam the Skull) and I went for another long (!) walk on Buena Vista Cay which was only faintly reminiscent to our marathon effort last season on Nurse Cay. I tend to poke about on these walks looking at everything in case I might see something I just can’t do without! Barbara tends to have something in mind and just “keeps on truckin’”! As a result we sometimes lose each other. There I am walking around calling BARBARA…………BARBARA! The goats answer me but Barbara doesn’t hear me and I am left picturing her on the ground somewhere bleeding out! So on I go poking around. Then I hear VALERIE………VALERIE………where are you?! - (In that Glaswegian accent). I don’t know if the goats understand her to answer! Anyway it was a great beach walk/bush climb and we did get palms for our straw work. I really appreciate my new knee on these long walks. All season we have been looking for the old glass ball fishing floats that can sometimes be found on the beaches – we didn’t find a one though!
Mother’s Day (UK) found us all (Sam the Skull, Windrush and Countess Cosell) at Low Water Harbour Cay at the south side of Buena Vista Cay trying to escape the rolly water so that we could be comfortable. Happy Mother’s Day my Mum! That evening we had drinks on our boat and said good-bye to Bernie from the Countess. Assurances were made that we would see him next season. Hugs all around! Early the next morning STS and Windrush left for Flamingo Cay – a great sail with us making 7-8 knots all the way. The next day we did the same thing all the way to Great Exuma and we anchored for the first time ever in Redshanks, near Georgetown. More bad weather and high winds expected and we figured we would be comfortable and safe there for those winds. We found we were near ‘Puddlejumper’ (Bill and Mara) and they were kind enough to invite us over for drinks and supper - bring your own meat for the BBQ – and we all had a very pleasant evening. Just before we went over to Puddlejumper we had a fantastic e-mail from Kirsty to say that Shawn had proposed to her and that of course she had said yes!! (The proposal was on Monday March 11th.) At supper that evening we made the announcement and they were well toasted. The next day STS and Bruce and I went into Georgetown to the liquor store to get a bottle of champagne and do the job right!! Congratulations Kirsty and Shawn! Wonderful news!!
While anchored at Redshanks we did discover the new launderette at Cheeters that has really good internet and we skyped with lots of family while we waited for the laundry to get finished. A great find – we will go there again. Also received the news that our good friends John and Doreen Peters were going to be able to fly from Nassau and stay with us on the boat for the week-end. They arrived on Friday 15th and stayed until yesterday, Monday the 18th. It really was a wonderful week-end and it was a pleasure having them with us. We stayed around Great Exuma as they really weren’t with us enough days to go further afield. We did go to Big D’s for lunch one day though and then to the Chat and Chill on the Sunday for their weekly Sunday Pig Roast – you’d have enjoyed it Dad!! We didn’t only eat and drink though, we also went on dinghy rides, and while John and Bruce walked up the big hill to the monument Doreen and I walked over to the beach and collected shells. On one of our dinghy rides through Redshanks we went under this amazing bridge that just didn’t seem to lead to anywhere! It looked like it belonged in an old English village or something. We did get some pictures of it and they will be attached to this blog. We also saw that ‘Feral Cat’, another PDQ belonging to our friend Rich Tanner who had arrived in Georgetown from the Jumento’s. We dropped by for a visit and to introduce John and Doreen. It was sad to see John and Doreen go – we think they had a good time and we really enjoyed it. They say that they will stay with us longer next time despite having to climb over each other in the middle of the night to get to the bathroom!!
After seeing John and Doreen safely on their way to the airport we lifted the anchor and set sail for Lee Stocking Island and our favourite anchorage at ‘Ray Bay’. (We didn’t manage to get together with John and Barabara to say goodbye before we set sail and were really quite unhappy about that!! I guess we’ll just have to hook up online when we can.) It turns out that this anchorage is also one of Rich’s favourite places to drop the hook, (although he calls it by it’s real name which is unknown to us!). Rich had invited us to come over to Feral Cat for supper that evening, which of course we did, and ate large quantities of his special recipe of chicken and rice with olives, along with large quantities of rum punch and red wine!! The next morning (today) we rather blearily lifted the anchor, said goodbye to Rich and set sail for a new anchorage to us between the Big and Little Darby Cays. Very skinny water into the anchorage –in and out has to be done on a rising tide – but well worth going in there. It was soooo peaceful and no one else could get in there, except for those of us with a very shallow draft. We were all alone…………..and able to steal internet access from Faith Hill and Tim McGraw whose island (!) was just next to us. We figure we will stay here for a couple of days. Thanks Faith and Tim.