Feb Point- choppers always checking- they know when you are sleeping, they know when you are … oh they know too much!

Ever since we bid farewell to Slacker, our musical selections are limited to our iTunes songs (extensive but not enough) and whatever local Bahamian FM radio stations we can pick up. Slacker doubled the price of using and updating offline stations shortly after we left Florida, plus the required station updating used a bit of data, so we decided to dump it and figure something out when we got back in April.

Picking up a Bahamian station is fairly easy here in George Town or when we were around Marsh Harbour, and probably near Nassau, but not exactly everywhere.

So early on in GT, while tucked in behind Crab Cay we had on 98.3 KISS FM.  A happy beat song caught my ear when I heard the words, “…come from U.S. and Canada”, followed by “SE winds blowin’ down Elizabeth Harbour”.  I mean it’s about Exumas with an obvious focus on George Town area. Using Shazam and then YouTube we figured out the name and artist (Basil Smith, “Exuma Sweet Like Dat” ) but it wasn’t until the day before leaving Elizabeth Harbour that we learned of a possible place in town that sold CDs. Ah, another challenge to acquire music. Click HERE to listen to my new fave. The recorded via iPhones ones on Youtube were awful, but Russ found a website that used the song in a slideshow. You will enjoy the photos too. 🙂

Reading gets a great deal of attention and is Russ’s favorite downtime interest. Paddle boarding might win out but it’s limited to ideal conditions, and day time!

Heading for a dead end behind Crab Cay

So now I’ll tell you how we came to read an excellent book written by Libby Brown; don’t know who she is do you? Hang on then.  Hint: it’s more likely to interest those who have visited the Bahamas.

We are regulars at the George Town library which is staffed by volunteers, most of them cruisers. The rectangular building sits next to the school and across from the straw market; a short walk down from Exuma Market.

A fellow cruiser was there looking for a certain recommended non-fiction book. Not being familiar with the layout, she needed help but she knew it was on the shelf. Turns out the book, “Making Waves” by Libby Brown was one I’d heard of from our friends at TOTW last year but never stuck in my memory to find it.  Nancy said that after she read it, she’d make sure I got it next. Well, not much time passed before I heard from her (always nice to make a new friend in George Town), with a rave review; both she and her husband loved it. Russ called first dibs because I’d just started another book and as of this writing I am 2/3 through it. When done I’ll end the suspense, but for now, just know that I plan to buy our own copy (this one is falling apart and we must return it next winter).

Avocados- I’m not (nor is Russ) an adventurous new/unknown/exotic foods person. But a different type of avocado isn’t all that daring, so I went for it. Staring at empty bins in Exuma Market one day, a local chef (he wore his chef outfit) suggested I try the local, grown on Andros, avocado. I did, it was very good although not quite the full flavor of a Hass.

Hass on left, Green Skinned from Andros on Right

Conch Chowder- back in Ortolan days after we’d had our conch cleaning lesson on the rocky ledge standing in shallow water (remember that?) and took home several conch all sliced and pounded thin, I found a good recipe in a cookbook given as a farewell gift when I left work. Goombay Conch Chowder- with an ingredient list to scare even a landlubber. Most are items you’d have on hand though, so in addition to the conch, I only had to buy a couple of ingredients. I prepared it a few times, then stopped.

As you may recall, in George Town if you want to buy fish, lobster tails or

Conch Chowder with sausage, bacon, celery, pots,carrots…

conch, you go to Tranee’s Salon. Conch is almost always available (frozen) but weather conditions need to be right for lobster or fish and with so many windy days (see, it’s not just me) conch held court day after day. So what’s a galley-slave to do? Buy the darn conch and make the chowder! I like it because it allows me to use celery; that food item I always have either too much of and it goes bad, or I simply don’t have.

Huge swells roll in from the bad nor’easter- all that way! No beach showed at high tide!

By now (end of March) I’ve lost track of all the Nor’easters but there was one whopper that pushed large waves/swells down into the Bahamas. For 4-5 days the waves were significant enough to make entering and exiting even the best of cuts, more than a bit dicey and not for the faint of heart. The relatively gentle breezes were a shame to waste. And those brave souls who were “out there” had more than the usual swell to contend with, more unpleasant at anchor than underway.

My first Boho leather wrap bead bracelet

Jewelry making days were in ample supply and I had hours to practice new techniques and research designs. In mid-Feb the (almost) annual Boaters Booty Beach Benefit took place on …. Yes! Chat n Chill Beach, aka Volleyball Beach. 🙂  On, again you may have already guessed, a too windy day for us to go across the harbour. The proceeds would benefit a local organization that helped disadvantaged young children in various ways. Cruisers made and donated items for a Chinese raffle, arts and crafts and baked goods sale. Used clothing, books and DVDs had a sale table too, resulting in nearly $2,000- the cruiser who organized the BBBB (which could also stand for Best Blue Boat Buddy but doesn’t) reported on the next morning’s Net and you could hear the joy in her voice. We did good.

In the process I learned of a woman who turned out to be an amazingly talented beader/craftsperson and she agreed to meet up and help me with a bracelet that I couldn’t finish thanks to lousy instructions. You can bet I’d be picking her brain plenty. As of today we are still working on meeting up; but that’s the cruising life. Weather, plans, timing all serve to bring us together as well as keep us apart. Fingers crossed for next season; by then I may even be a tiny bit more proficient.

Some define cruising as doing boat repairs in exotic places. I’d like to expand on that to include basic boat maintenance, bottom cleaning, oh and how about cooking, cleaning, laundry ! ,paddling (kayak, SUP) and ever-changing scenery with the possibility of new neighbors every night. Thought I’d end with this so you don’t conclude that we just lounge about staring at the beautiful waters filled with turtles, rays, pretty fish, or walk the pretty white beaches every day….. I wish.

Low tide bottom cleaning at Rolle Cay. Russ stands in 4.5ft of water- much easier this way

The task pictured below must be done in perfectly calm waters. If the space above the waterline gets wet, the acid wash won’t work, so you need dry, dry. Sometimes he does this at a floating dock, or using the dinghy, but the SUP was an excellent platform for the job.

Everything must do double duty – Russ uses SUP to acid wash clean our waterline

About to exit Lake Victoria- Max wasted no time in devouring the pizza we saved for him

Our first opportunity to reconnect with George Town friends was Melanie’s birthday. Does two years in a row constitute a tradition? Yes, if you are a cruiser me thinks. Cort likes Grand Isle (Palapa Grill) and we all like it too. So off we went in his “new” car, getting the low down about the car on the way up. Five squeezed into the gray Impreza with right hand side steering wheel. Max had to fend for himself but we brought him leftover pizza!

The Queen’s Dock at Cort’s Place and the SUP Dude

By some miracle we were able to move over to anchor off Cort’s Place at Monument Beach and Max had caught fish with some local Bahamian friends he fishes with on occasion. I baked brownies (always a crowd pleaser, especially when Cort’s Place has no oven!). If you haven’t gotten word yet- Ghiradelli Triple Fudge Brownie Mix is the one to buy! and we enjoyed a great evening of stories (you should have seen the shocked faces when we told our Bristol Liquor Store tale), Q&A (Cort loves to ask us about our plans, etc) and catching up on life since last March.

The Before photo of Max’s grilled fresh catch of TODAY

Fresh caught that day and prepared entirely by the fisherman himself; does it get any better?

The chef with his masterpiece. Sliced, seasoned and grilled potatoes are wrapped up on the white tiles

Now you know why we are all happy!

Since most days were too windy to dinghy down to TOTW we accepted an invite to bring the big boat in for the night. Thoroughly enjoyed getting re-acquainted with the walking trails, lovely beaches and since the tide was low, we walked one section in the shallows, looking for sand dollars to place in the rock crevices.

Dinner was delicious: I provided the pork tenderloin that Melanie marinated and Paul grilled. She made homemade bread and the yummiest mashed sweet potatoes ever; and then Melanie outdid herself with lemon squares baked using lemons from the tree in their grove.

Those who know me well, know that I am not a fan of baked fruit desserts. This dessert could lay claim to perfection; the lemon not tart nor cloying sweet and the crumb crust (not graham, not pastry) paired with the lemon filling like a parrot on a peg-leg pirate’s shoulder. I reluctantly declined a second piece (cuz everyone else did).

Top of the World visit

And then there was an ARG meeting. Silly cruisers want to be clever: Alcohol Research Group. In other words, a beach party: bring what you want to drink and an appetizer to share. We finally got to meet a new sister PDQ34, Float Her. Just John this time as his wife Janice had flown back home to Canada for a few weeks.  We got to know John better over lunch a few days later at Lumina Point where the service, food and drinks rated an A.

I saw another cruiser’s posting on FB, calling the party an ART meeting- Team instead of Group- but hey that works too, only ARG sounds better doesn’t it?

ARG on Honeymoon Beach

Then, the moment we’d been waiting for… our BBB, Traveling Soul arrived. Yes, they were two days behind their intended day thanks to a very rough “we need to turn back” Exuma Sound, but their very brief stay miraculously coincided with days of hardly any wind. Such days being in very short supply this winter. And days of low humidity too, so that was a blessing.

TS as captured by TS, with Lumina Pt in background

Hugs all around and sniffy kisses with Spot. Hospitality is always abundant with Mike and Ann and this time included a surprise beverage designed to make Russ happy; and he was!–surprised and happy with Ann’s homemade ginger beer to which we added Gosling’s Bermuda Black Rum that I had to sneak over, as we always have it in stock. She and I enjoyed vodka and tonics made with her homemade tonic. The homemade tonic and ginger beer are far less sick-y sweet and to me, while fizzy, not as burpy. Yummy libations!

Sadly, TS was off to Cat Island which sits east about 50 miles and is famous for The Hermitage (click to see photos from our visit there). If only TS was a power cat and not a Jefferson 52, then you’d have a cat with a cat on Cat. 🙂

We missed Apollo II, Barefeet and Soulstice. One didn’t cruise this winter (but they will next season we hope!), another didn’t cross over (too windy?) and another didn’t come down to George Town.

Around March 7 we looked ahead to see a window for leaving the harbor we’d called home for six weeks. Happily we’d also be able to anchor with the big boats and have a farewell get together with Cort and Max. The day we moved over to the Monument Beach anchorage was the Regatta in-harbor race which we managed not to interfere with. 🙂

Some pre-race fun maneuvers- Endangered Species, Triad and ? Committee Boat on the right

Our dinner invite to Cort turned into a counter invite to the house as Walt and Lee (Cort’s friends and former co-owners of sail cat Celise/Spirit) were in the harbor on m/v Linda Lee. Wow and what a feast!  New friends of Linda Lee, s/v MoJo (Molly and Joe) who are also huge fisher people and a youthful under 30 years old!, came along and we feasted as never before. Russ eating Tuna Poke- gasp! -only like this.

M/V Linda Lee with Walt & Lee aboard anchoring- several dinghies remain that belong to racing boats- hard to judge proper position

And yes, those two new Adirondack chairs came in handy.

Caught, prepared and sauteed by Max

Feast of Friends at Cort’s Place- Fresh Conch Salad (by Walt) and fresh caught grouper fingers (Joe)

One day while anchored in The Litter Box (just before we headed over to Monument for the last time), we had several special visitors, namely larger turtles than the ones we’d seen only ½ mile away behind Rolle Cay. The older and wiser one came up by our stern enough times so I was able to get a good shot. In case you are keeping track, I’m making good on that promise.

Looking for nibbles on the hull, or directions to the East Australian Current. At February Point

We think he/she was looking for nibbles just below the waterline, as they often do on the sides of docks where the fuzzy stuff grows. Don’t you love this photo? Lacking an underwater camera and the desire of one of us to even be IN the water, a great shot like this is a rare event.