heading north

Hey Folks,
We're currently on a mooring ball in Vero Beach after a night at Peck Lake where a sportfish dragged anchor and ended up in the channel!  Tonight we celebrated St. Patrick's Day at the Riverside Cafe a short walk from the marina.  Tomorrow we'll anchor somewhere between Vero Beach and Titusville making our way to Titusville sometime Saturday afternoon.

Motoring up the ICW watching all the crazy boaters [stupidity should be painful] I keep thinking about another sailor's blog where his tag line reads; "Be safe, it's dumb out there...."

CHeeRS!
-m & d

Back in the States!

Hello from the states!!! 

Yup, we made it back to Lake Worth (N. west palm beach) and what a long ride it was crossing the stream.  We knew it would be long, 11 hours, but that does not make it any easier, luckily we had almost perfect weather and waves.  We left Westend settlement at 5:30 in total darkness, and I have to say; it was rather eerie for the first 90 minutes motoring along like I knew where we were going in total darkness….  We’re in the states and all is well, what can I say???

We did have an interesting incident as we approached the east coast of FL, we were boarded by the Coast Guard!!  Yikes!  They wanted to board our vessel for a ‘safety check’ while under way.  I’m beginning to think Mary has some mysterious history she’s been hiding from me all these years…...  Anyway, the boarding was interesting; the mother coast guard ship (with 2, 50 caliber machine guns in the deck) sends a small vessel (a dinghy on steroids) with 4 armed young men to “investigate’ us….. Okay, they are just doing their job and they were very young and professional (I’m surprised Mary didn’t offer them snacks and drinks- you know the mother instinct in her…).  After about 45 minutes of not finding any alien life forms and completing the ‘safety check’ they were gone and we were left struggling to get to the inlet.

Tomorrow we head to Publix for some much needed diet pepsi, hummus, fruit and other misc (did I mention some nice beer with lots of hops?).  After our Publix adventure we’re off to Peck Lake on our ride home. 

As we settled in for the evening (now that the worst was behind us) we reflected on the crossing that was not that bad after all.  Crossing is just one of those things you do to get to experience all that we were lucky enough to do.  Amazing how fast one can forget difficult struggles???

CHeeRS!

-m & d

The Coast Guard "mother ship" and dink on its approach to board us

They guys that did the "safety inspection"

Ya gotta to avoid these suckers!

Our last Bahamas Sunrise over Westend

Great Sale to Mangrove Cay

To say the trip from GSC to Mangrove Cay was a calm ride would be an understatement, though calm is good!  The lack of wind was an exception to most of our travel but the break gave us a chance to look at sea life on the bottom.  Mangrove Cay must have got its name from what is on the island, mangroves!  Our trip ashore to explore was halted when all we could see was mangroves and more mangroves – who wants to blaze a trail through that?  Besides, what kind of nasty insects might we anger?

In the morning it’s onto to West End on Grand Bahamas Island where we’ll take an overpriced slip to make preparations for our jump back to the states on early Tuesday morning.  Our plan is to leave around 5:00ish hoping to make land fall at Lake Worth late Tuesday afternoon.  Then Wed. morning it’s off to Publix to get all the stuff we’ve been craving!!

CHeeRS!

-m & d

The calm leaving Great Sale Cay

Still Calm but so what?

Sunrise at Mangrove

Allans-Pensacola to Great Sale Cay

Hey folks,

We left Green Turtle Cay and the Bluff House Marina Tuesday (3-8) bound for Allans-Pensacola Cay to start staging our crossing the gulf stream on Monday morning!  After an uneventful trip we found a sweet patch of sand to drop the hook and we were set for the night.  FWIW, Allans-Pensacola Cay was at one time two separate cays until a hurricane filled the gap between them.

A plug is needed here for Mary’s culinary creativity working in a small galley, with limited tools and a hodge-podge of ingredients….she has made some of the best dinners anyone could ask for!!  Tonight, she made pizzas that we cooked on the grill, outstanding!! 

Listening to Chris Parker (the weather guy) we learned that squalls were expected at our next destination by late afternoon.  Hearing this I almost choked on my morning cereal, we weighed anchor and make fast tracks for Great Sale Cay (about 35 NM south and west and it’s for sale!  Yup, for $8,000,000 you can have all 370 acres!).  We had plenty of time to get there but along the way you could see clouds building and who wants to set an anchor in the rain???

Great Sale provides the best (and only real) protection in this area of the Abacos and in less than an hour of arriving, we could see the weather guy was going to be right.  Squalls hit and hit us hard!  Everyone got on the VHF radio to make sure everyone was okay and one of the other cruisers reported a top winds speed of 36.5 knots (the most we’ve ever seen while anchored)!  We were rocking like a wild bull in white out conditions caused by the rain.  In about an hour the worst was over and you’d never known a storm like that had blown through.  The next day the winds were constantly in the 18 -22 knots per hour range but after the day before it was nothing to even notice.

Playing the weather game again after learning that Tuesday would be the most benign day for crossing the stream we opted to stay at Great Sale for another day and go for a Tuesday crossing.  On our morning exploration we found misc shells, nothing special so we took the car (dink) for a ride around the shore line.  On this little spin we saw 7 sea turtles in less than 30 minutes, several sea stars and a host of other wildlife.  I’ve seen Finding Nemo several times but it was not until we saw these turtles swimming [away] that we had any idea how fast they could go!

CHeeRS!

-m & d

the unoffical yacht club on Allans

Must have a been a hard day, eh?

What a surprise to see at sunset!!  Anyone know what was launched?

Hopetown

Hey,

We took an early morning ferry from Marsh Harbor to Hopetown to see the settlement and the ‘famous’ lighthouse.  The 20 minute ferry ride turned out to be another one of those unexpected high points of the trip.  From what we can surmise, taking a ferry to work, school or for dinner and drinks is very common place among the island residents. 

Hopetown itself is picturesque with lots of charming houses overlooking the harbor, narrow streets and has some fine dining/drinking establishments.  For us, one day was all we needed to enjoy the island and today’s visit reassured us going to Marsh Harbor was a better choice for us to wait out the wind.  As soon as the ferry landed in Hopetown, we recognized several boats in the harbor; one was owned by some folks we met in Titusville!

Speaking of the wind, it looks like Sunday the winds will lay down enough for us to move onto Great Gauna Cay, home of the famous (??) Nippers beach bar!  From what we’ve been told and read, you’ve got to visit it at least once; we’ll report back our findings soon!

CHeeRS!

-m & d

the 'famous' light as seen from where we had lunch

Is this really a famous light?

All the streets are like this and they allow cars on them!

Green Turtle

We needed Internet access for weather updates and wanted to visit New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay so off we went.  Unable to reach anyone at the 2 places we identified as working into our plan, we went to plan sea and discovered a real jewel! 

We’re at the Bluff House marina where there is a laundry, a restaurant, a pub, and a private beach to name just a few of the details.  There are only 2 other sailboats here and a few large motor boats.  The best thing about this place is not the free wifi, or 100 gallons of free water (we’ve been paying $.50 a gallon for water), but anything you buy at the restaurant is deducted from your dockage bill!!  For us, this meant we had fish sandwiches and a fresh salad for free yesterday (Oh, I also had a kalik for good measure)!

The weather reports are showing favorable conditions for a Sat., Sun. or Monday Gulf Stream crossing so tomorrow (Wed, 3-9) we’ll head to Allans –Pensacola Cay, then on to Great Sale Cay, and then West End (Grand Bahamas) for the trip across the gulf stream.  We may also stop at Mangrove on the way to West End to make our trip to WE easier, we’ll just have to wait and see…..  This will be out last Internet access until West End.

CHeeRS!

-m & d

Looking towards the SEa of Abaco from Bluff House

A narrow [typical] street of New Plymouth

On route to Green Turtle Cay

Great Gauna Cay

Okay, we made it across the Sea of Abaco to Great Gauna Cay in 2 hours (ya it was a tough day) and just in time to grab the last mooring ball.  The mooring field/anchorage kept filling up with boats anchoring between moorings to the tune of 1 new boat ever 7 – 10 minutes.  Watching large boats ‘fish’ for a place to anchor while dodging other boats was nuts!

Enough of watching people hunt for their perfect spot (there were none - we tried also), next adventure was finding the famous Nippers beach bar!  Finding our way to the bar was easy; just follow the swarms of people from the ferry (most everyone we saw already have a libation in hand).  All along the route to Nippers there were all kinds of places to grab your favorite beverages in case you couldn’t wait to get to the beach. 

Yes its true, Nippers turned out to be another one of those one of kind beach bars, where beer (I just had to have a Kalik to fit in) and rum drinks (Nipper Juice) were flowing like there was no tomorrow.  Folks were enjoying their drinks in the pools, in the hammocks over the pools, on the decks and that is not to mention the incredible ocean beach.  Great Gauna has the nicest ocean beach we’ve seen on the trip, miles of sand and beautiful blue water.  Back at the bar…. we were told that during the day (night??) the bar tenders start handing out free rum shots (“fire in the hole” brand), doesn’t take too much imagination to see what this and the notion that its spring break leads to??? Nippers also has a room for the ‘50+ Nippers’, ya got to love the experience.

As we walked back across the island to our dinghy, we bumped into some cruising friends (Mike and Angie from Lady of Lorien) at Grabbers (a beach restaurant with a sunset view overlooking our boat). For the next few hours we caught up with them and talked about plans for crossing back to the states.

CHeeRS!

-m & d

Grabbers!

Nippers!

another view of Nippers!