Southern Exumas/Georgetown and Long Island

Where we left off last time

Just dipping under at the Aquarium

After Staniel Cay (the swimming pig place) we sailed to the "Aquarium," aptly named for the colorful and diverse corals and plentiful fish that abound. Along with our friends aboard Nomad we explored this beautiful underwater garden before continuing south to Black Point. Black Point remains our favorite village to date.  Quaint, neat and everyone so friendly and welcoming. Many of the homes have beautiful gardens and both the Baila and Nomad kids were able to attend a class at the local school one day (taught by a strict local policeman!). It was fun to later see those friendly kids around town.   

So many fish!

Anna reclines at the "Aquarium"

School at Black Point

This is Matan (foward left), Yan (forward right) and Brad taking off on a  fun spearfishing trip WAY out onto the banks... the diving was great and we managed to get some lionfish, conch, and lobsters.

Avery and Adi (from Nomad) at the Black Point laundry.. not a bad view for folding clothes, huh? 

Celebrating Amos' 9th birthday on Nomad

Lynn
While at Black Point, we spent many afternoons hanging out on the large beach that emerges at low tide - a perfect place to build sand castles, search for sea stars and sea biscuits, and wade into the shallows.  Adi taught Avery how to do somersaults underwater while her mom Ginny (Virginie) showed me some killer ab exercises.  Here we were also joined by L'Anse aux Fraises - the Isabelle Family with Yan, Marie, Arnold, Rose and Emma - from a small village north of Montreal.  Our own Isabelle was very excited to help look after two-year-old Emma.  

In Blackpoint, we had our first and hopefully last encounter with...BUGS... infesting some food! A few tell-tale moths flew out of one of our large storage cabinets and prompted us to empty the cabinet and blast it with vinegar.  We found just one infested bag of corn puffs - a cereal that I purchased in Nassau because it was reasonably priced (less than $7.99 a box) and hopefully tasted a bit like KIX  (a favorite that it not available here).  Sadly, we had already consumed the other bag of corn puffs and they were not very good.  The kids have since been eating more eggs for breakfast!  BTW, our eggs in the oven lasted for one month!

I also had a bread making lesson from Ginny and have baked a few delicious loaves  - regular wheat and yummy garlic - that did not last long.  We are getting tired of eating everything on wraps or crackers and hope to get into the habit of baking bread a few times a week.  As our supply of sausages is running low, we hope to catch more fish.  We have enjoyed a few lobsters, grouper, lionfish and a Mahi Mahi (courtesy of the Atzitz family).

From Black Point we sailed to Little Farmer's Cay where we celebrated Amos' birthday (nine year old boy on Nomad). Virginie, his mom, sets the bar pretty high for birthdays. A complex scavenger hunt which included the kids swimming out to a float to retrieve a clue and discovering other clues hidden in conch shells was amazing.

George Town, Exumas
Just as we were getting used to isolated anchorages with private beaches and secluded snorkeling, we arrived at George Town which is seated at the bottom of the Exuma island chain. George Town is the fraternity/sorority house of the Bahamas.  Known to be the kid-oriented place, it's been a pilgrimage of sorts as we've made our way down. There is a huge harbor with multiple anchorages. Around three-hundred boats are currently anchored here (the annual George Town Regatta happens this week and people are there in force to party!), but amazingly it's nicely spaced out and we didn't feel crowded. There are a few gathering places with one area in particular ("Chat - N - Chill beach") that is really fun for the kids with rope swings, volleyball, etc.  Most kids do school in the morning after which they congregate in various spots. In addition to meeting up again with our friends on Mariposa, we've been very lucky to meet and island-hop with some other boats as well. The Atzitz family (on Nomad) originally from Switzerland, sailed from southern France two years ago. Both the Isabelle family (seriously) (on L'Anse aux Fraises) and the Bonnot family (on Dorenavent) sailed from Quebec. Despite the language barrier, the kids all get a long so well and interact more like siblings than a bunch of boat kids thrown together. It will be hard to all go separate ways soon. Lynn loves listening to all the French, can understand most of the conversation and helps the kids communicate with each other.  Izzy has decided to study French in middle school.

In George Town we weathered a big cold front.   After anchoring and jumping in to dive the anchor (to check/confirm a good set) I was happy to see the anchor completely buried in the good holding sand.   This provided reassurance that night as we danced around the anchor in 40kt winds!  We were rocking and rolling that night until around one a.m. when the wind shifted- and then we were comfortable and actually got to sleep a bit!

Long Island
No- not Lon Gīland of New York-  instead a much more isolated and tropical version!  We opted to make the short day-sail from the George Town social mayhem out to this gorgeous Bahamian outpost - a farewell trip with Nomad as they will continue on from here to Bonaire and beyond.  We anchored in a beautiful isolated anchorage (just our two families- quite a change from George Town!).  Matan and I went spearfishing just after anchoring in the pristine reefs that border our anchorage.   Pretty fun to emerge from the water with a grouper and 30 minutes later it's grilled and being served with some ice cold Kaliks (Bahamian beer).  In a few days we'll part with Nomad and head back to George Town for another week to let the girls socialize with kids their age.  Once socially sated (or toxic) we'll head back up the Exumas en route to Eleuthera.

Izzy's birthday surprise on Nomad

A most epic scavenger hunt

Izzy's birthday

IZZY'S RANDOM BLURB☺😜😛😚😎🐄💨
HI! FIRST OF ALL DON'T ASK WHY I AM WRITING IN ALL CAPS, I JUST AM. Anyway, when I woke up on my birthday I was SUPER surprised. I expected no presents because I plan to have a half birthday party when we get back home in August. Mom and Avery, but mostly mom, had decorated the salon with our colorful towels so it looked just like a circus tent. I got a couple presents: Dad gave me a jar of pickles (I love pickles); Mom gave me a coupon book with coupons like morning cuddles, breakfast of my choice, a no-school day, skip a chore, and pick a movie; Avery gave me a coloring book; Anna gave me a coupon to visit Anna's Relaxation Station. Oh yeah... I also got a Staniel Cay Swimming Pig t-shirt.  After presents we had chocolate chip pancakes, iced my cake, made cupcakes and headed over to Nomad.  When we got to Nomad, they had made me beautiful presents - a pig to put on my door from Adi and Noa, a pom pom pig from Amos, and a bag of goodies from Arnold, Rose and little little Emma.  As we dinghied back to Baila, I was silently thinking that this was the best birthday ever!!!

Avery
"Mommy picked up a small white spiral shell to bring back to the boat.  I wanted to wash the shell so I got it from her backpack and then I said 'Mom- there is a hermit crab crawling out of your backpack!'  We named him Hermie and put him in a cage.  Dad says we can keep him until he's dead.  He eats our old gone-bad food.  He's kind of small, and he's moving around his home a lot.  He's fast and I'm excited to show him to you all!  I hope he lives until then.  I miss you all, especially Walter! Oh and I lost another tooth, so now I have two teeth out of my mouth, bye-bye"

Anna
I have forgotten what cold feels like. 30-knot-winds make 80 degree weather feel like 50, and when trying to get to boats or the beach, the faux-50 degrees mixed with apparent winds created from us speeding and attempting (but not successfully) to stay dry from stray waves and heavy rain that feels like hail reminds me of winters back home. A perfect example of this would be this morning, when we were accompanying our buddy boats Dawn Treader and Mariposa to the beach, and got (a) soaked on the ride to the beach and (b) rained on by the cold, damage-inflicting-rain (it really hurt!). Because the rain was so cold, Baila and Dawn Treader Walked/swam to the dinghies and Mariposa hiked to a nearby cave to wait for the rain to seize. It was still raining when we got back to Baila, so Izzy decided to take advantage of the fresh water, whipped out all our soaps, conditioners, and shampoos and showered in the cold and painful rain.
  
Brad
We're learning so much from the families with whom we're sailing.  Unlike us, they left home without any definitive return plan.  When they need more money they stop and work. Believe me, it's tempting, and the fodder of daydreams.   But as much as we'd love to continue this journey indefinitely, we're planning to return in August.  We love this year for what it is- a unique chance to spend uninterrupted time with our kids and have an amazing adventure together.  But we now seem to better appreciate our life back home too and look forward to seeing the wonderful friends and family that we have there.  So, for now we live in the moment with these folks and truly admire their lifestyle and priorities.  We would like to do another year at some point and will have to catch up with these good friends wherever they end up!

A few lessons that we've all learned so far: 

• How much we don't need so many damned things. We're surrounded by things at home.  And, perhaps an unfair oversimplification, but it seems like once we get things we think about what we should get next.  We're inundated with this through advertisement, social media and popular culture.   Conversely, for the most part here what you have is what you have.  Initially thinking we'd feel "thing withdrawal,"  it's  actually quite refreshing to not be bogged down in the quagmire of acquiring and maintaining things. First, we can't buy many things here.  No Amazon Prime in the Out Islands.  Second, we're on a very tight budget. Third, there's no room on this boat for any more things! So there you go, not so many things.   And, I of course concede that it's a luxury for me to be able to wax ascetic after spending a year preparing the boat with lots of nice things to make the year easier.  While I'm definitely not first in line to be the next minimalist, it has made me realize how easy it is to be frivolous and impulsive when buying stuff that may not be, and often isn't even necessary.  For sure it will be nice to get back and indulge in some items that have proven difficult to be without, but hopefully it will give us pause and make us more apt to use what we have rather then the 'always-upgrade' mentality.  

• You can't always control the situation, but you can always control how you react to it     As we knew would be the case we've had some challenges along the way:  the weather, the girls' schooling, epic sibling skirmishes, equipment issues etc. And my normal modus operandi is to try and bend the situation to the desired solution. But you can't do that here! You're served what you're served and that's it. Perhaps at age forty three I finally get this.  Turns out that weather clears, girls do school and stop squabbling over whose turn it is to do dishes, and equipment gets fixed.  Things tend to work out and it's even better when you recognize that in real time.   Easy to say, tough to do, and I've managed to include some choice vocabulary lessons in my kids' education this year- usually when I'm sideways and upside down in the bilge!

         
Brad's update March 4, 2017
Appologies.. with such lousy internet connectivity this becomes several posts in one- so this is a few days after all the above stuff.

We're back in George Town.  With another big front coming and Isabelle having developed several days of horrendous abdominal pain, we decided to head back to Georgetown in case she needed any formal evaluation/imaging and also to hunker down for the strong frontal winds.   My favorite: nonspecific severe pediatric abdominal pain in the middle of nowhere!  Normally a very stoic and healthy kid, she was intermittently extremely uncomfortable and miserable (in the ER it would have been an easy "get some labs, give fluids and consider some abdominal imaging") - but luckily in between episodes she looked completely fine and was playing and joking around.  She had no worrisome findings on exam so it was just a matter of watchful waiting and bland diet, etc.   She's now feeling better (sigh of relief) and we now sit in the midst of some strong winds (from both Mother Nature and Isabelle!).   We've got sustained upper 20kt winds with gusts to upper 30's, so we're really swinging around.  But nicely tucked in the lee of Stocking Island.  I'm having a bit of fun with the local VHF "net" (the cruisers here have a very regimented "net" on which I've introduced an alter-ego personality that weighs in at choice times with phenomenally ridiculous questions and statements).   For those of you who know and remember "The Jerky Boys" CD's from the early 1990's, I favor the Saul Rosenberg voice.  The girls have really enjoyed assisting me with this.  It will be hard to leave after gaining a bit of anonymous notoriety.  But like all good things...

The weather
Overall we've been very lucky with the weather.  Sunny, warm, perfect winds.  For the most part.  We've mentioned 'fronts' several times in our posts.  Weather systems from the continental US spin off and affect the Bahamas.  These are cold fronts that trail the big winter low pressure systems that wreak havoc on the US.  Typically this means wind, wind and more wind.  And the confounding problem is that the wind direction changes with frontal passage.  While there's great protection throughout the Exumas from the east, when the wind clocks around and comes from the west this protection is much harder to come by.  We are definitely looking forward to these fronts becoming less frequent and weaker in March.  But, for now we have a 1-2 punch thing going on with several days of very high winds followed by another front.  This keeps up pinned down and hypervigilant.  With winds outside that sound like a passing train, it's going to be a long night of vigilance and frequent anchor checks.  It's part of the experience and we are all becoming much more comfortable with these conditions.  Lynn and I now appreciate how easy it is to cruise on the Chesapeake where good protection is around every turn!

Take care everyone, and hopefully we will be able to update soon!

In the midst of potentially the worst weather of our year we decided it was a great idea to pack up the Baila and Mariposa kids and bring them over to Dawn Treader for an afternoon movie.   Wet.  Very very wet ride.  However, any misgivings of potentially having gone a bit overboard with an oversized dinghy and big engine have been squashed after a few months here.. it is essential.  It's like this:  if you move to the mountains and have to drive everywhere- are you going to get a Mini or an F-350?   Turns out that when it comes to dinghies, size matters. 

Pictures from past few weeks

Noa (Nomad) whacks the piñata at one of the many birthday celebrations

The motley crews of Baila, Nomad and L'anse aux Fraises

Mariposa and Baila folks atop a hill on Stocking Island overlooking Exuma Sound

Exuma Sound

Signs at George Town.. we liked the "Media PA  far away" sign

Marie, Virginie, Claudie and Lynn on a walk.  They asked us (the dads) to watch all ten kids while they went on a quick walk.  No problem, of course.  Go.   After a really really long time, we realized that they had skipped bail and abandoned us and we would remain on that beach with little kids running around screaming for a very long time.  I think in the end they were gone around 45 minutes, but it just seemed longer to us.  The space-time continuum is vastly distorted when a small child screams something at you in toddler french and then runs head first into large waves.  In the end we didn't get much sympathy from the moms

It's hard to tell in this picture, but Avery is in fact crying here as she squats in her "sand heart" (sand castle shaped like a heart).  She was so sad to leave it at the end of the day that she actually started to sob and say it was just "really hard to say good-bye to something so amazing."  So here it is, the picture we promised her that will forever immortalize her beloved sand heart.  

Not crying.  this was the next day, and for some reason she walked away from this one without as much as a backward glance.  Also heart shaped.  Perhaps she'll be a cardiologist.  Or Cupid.  Or sing in a Heart tribute band.  

A very unsafe rope swing at Volleyball Beach (George Town)

This guy came plowing through the anchorage to release some tourists on the beach for about 18 minutes.  And then they packed them up and took off again

Ummmm... so delicious!  

Lynn's bread of awesomeness

Avery having her friends over for painting extravaganza.  The music of Frozen helped break the ice created by the language barrier. 

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This was early one morning with glass-calm water.  The water clarity is breath-taking; all the boats look as if they are hovering over grassy fields

Good idea to look up when your kid jumps onto a random swing set here.. this link was a bit precarious for my liking

This is our version of dinner guests parking in the driveway

Amos likes to climb.  Like, really likes it.  It sure was something to look up and see a nine year old kid climbing our rigging without any harness etc.  

Black Point (photo by Izzy)

Too cute not to include (photo by Izzy)

Lynn and Virginie (photo by Izzy)

Cleaning lobster (photo by Izzy)

Anna's sand castle (our three girls won the "sea creature" category at the George Town Regatta Sand Castle Contest)

Nomad family coming to visit

This is a tidal flat behind our anchorage in Long Island.  At low tide here it's a massive several square mile expanse of sand.  At high tide it's a completely submerged shallow bay.  

Baila crew!

This is a permanently anchored houseboat in that lagoon on Long Island.  The owner is an American who lives here totally off the grid.   I think we found Colonel Kurtz