Where is the WOW factor?

Do you ever feel like your life is just idling along? Not too much happening, nothing noteworthy, but you keep seeing the days passing you by. That is where we are. Normally this wouldn't be a problem and we could just scoot on by and start again with no one noticing our downtime. However, due to Facebook and our life being displayed as if you are reading a novel, we have been told that the story is getting stale and the "book has been put aside". We are just as bummed by this as all of you.

After our sail to the Bahamas in May and June, we came home  to our lives that were put on hold. Our jobs were still there, waiting for us to get right back in there and pretend as if nothing had happened. Something had happened. We had changed. Who knew what a 2 month sailing excursion could do to ones state of mind and outlook on life. We had lived in a boat that was so small that you couldn't even pee in private. Materialism became absent. If we wanted to buy something cool along the way, where on earth would we put it that it wouldn't get wet and who was going to see it? Turning off our phones for 2 months was amazing. There were no deadlines. We relied on the wind and we had to be patient and flexible. The demands on the water were different then ones of daily life at home. Bets were made on how long we would last together in a space so small. That was not an issue, but getting back to our real lives was harder than we had ever imagined. Our house was huge. Our bathroom was as big as our living space on our boat. I wore my bikinis every day, never a bra, and now I have a closet full of clothes that I can't even imagine wearing. I wanted to just escape back to the water and have our lives be just Mark and I relying on each other and being thankful to God every morning for the amazing views we got to see.

It has been 5 months now since our amazing trip.  We parked the boat in the driveway, unpacked our belongings and started back with the landlubbers life. We long for the day in summer that we will put New Girl back in the water. It feels like such a distant memory with a bittersweet ending.

Abaco and its Cays

I was trying to find information about some of the cays where we stayed. This link offers short little write ups on almost every place that we stayed. It is a wonderful read. I couldn't have summarized it any better.
Enjoy!

http://www.abacobahamasguide.com/

History of Little Harbor

Leaving Lynyard Cay and heading south, our next stop is Little Harbor. This is the sourthern most point that we will travel in the Abacos to wait for our crossing to Eleuthera. We need winds that have anything but South in it's heading.

We reach Little Harbor and the entrance to the harbor is cliffs and caves on one side and beach and houses on the other. The waves are rolling very high and the depth is shallow. We draw 4 1/2' and are questioning if we will make it in. Not everyone gets to visit this unique little place because of how shallow the entrance is. We need do go in at high tide. The tide differences here is about 2 feet.

We roll in no problem and see a few mooring balls. Not many boats are in the harbor so we decide to anchor.  We head on out by dink to land and start our exploring. The pub here is called Pete's Pub and on the cruisers channel they are know for their rum drink called the blaster that claims "why walk when you can crawl". The pub is open air, not in a building. The ground is sand, the roof is old fabric sails thrown over logs. It is such a Bahamian look and feel. We fall in love with it right away. 

The stairs from the pub lead right out to the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. To the left a ways out there is an old lighthouse that was taken out by a hurricane. It used  to be run by a couple who have long since left. It is now run by solar power. You can make it there by foot to check out the remains. We did just that and collected sea glass and drift wood along the way. 

We met a lady at the pub named Christine with her dog Barney. She is a published author and Barney is her sidekick. She single handedly sails to the Bahamas on a regular basis. After Mark and I have now done this together and see the difficulty in even the general day to day things I have a great appreciation for what she does. Barney is super at keeping her company. He is a yorshire terrier puppy that has so much spunk. He runs up and down the deck saying farewll when you leave. She has rold us there have even been times where he ran straight off the bow... right into the water. Lol! 

The next day we go check out the caves. There are bats galore in them and I surely can't imagine anyone living in there. We didn't stay long but to take pictures. 

We also took a dink ride over into the Bight of Old Robinson. It was very shallow water at low tide and 1-2' at high tide with mangrove swamp land all around us. We had heard there were a few blue holes in here and one that was a memorial to a couple of kids that had drowned with their family. We found that exact one at the end of our journey. There was a plaque with their names on it and a warning to divers to not go too deep. We snorkeled the area. It was pretty neat and lots of fish. But you couldn't stop thinking about the parents that were there that day who lost their kids. 

Overnight we had our anchor problems as some of you have read. This blog post was written by Mark entitled "Anchor terror". I am here to tell you it was just that. I have always gone to bed wearing some kind of clothing for fear that a fire will break out and I will have to run out of the burning building buck naked. There wasn't a fire but I was rushed up in the middle of my sleep and I was certaintly glad that I had "some" clothing on. Watching us whipping by another boat in the dark when we are supposed to be stationary is such a terrifying thing. Mark tells me to grab hold of the other boat and I kid you not that is exactly what I did. I grabbed their railing as I was standing on the bow of our boat , that is how close we were. However our boats momentum was so strong and the rain was coming down so hard that I could not hold on. Eventualy I grabbed the boat hook and lassooed another mooring ball and we were safe for the evening. After the adrenaline rush wore off I was a limp, soaking wet, crying girl standing on the bow of the boat being comforted in her Captain's arms. We made it through alive. The fear that we would crash into someone elses boat or into land and then take on water was just more than I could handle. Praise God for helping us through.

http://www.abacoescape.com/Caves/Caves.html

Let's just chill.

Go, go, go. Explore this, snorkel here, sail there. I want a Shawnae day where we just chill. I know, we are on vacation in the Bahamas, but this hot sun, humidity, exploring, snorkeling, walking about town, it is draining in a way that you wouldn't begin to understand. I eat and eat and eat. My friend Melody from s/v Vacilando said it the other day, your body goes into survival mode. Well, I just hope that my metabolism knows that as well so it keeps burning off the 3 grilled cheese sandwiches I just ate. Not even kidding, and I snack every 2 hours as well. Stupid crazy is what it is.
In addition to massive eating, I am always so tired. I wake up and I am exhausted. We go to bed at 8:30 or 9 because we can't keep our eyes open. When we lay in our separate berths though, I lay awake wondering if the anchor will drag, will the tide go so low that the keel will rest on the bottom, or the winds have changed and we are rocking so hard I should be strapped in (and then again will the anchor hold)?
So, yes, we are sitting here anchored. It is a relatively calm day and I just want to chill. Read a little in the sun, a little blogging and maybe some "house cleaning". Just a day for me.
Lol! Mark doesn't understand just chilling. He is always on the go, so we go and explore the island. When we get back, I try again and he says sadly, "ok, I will go fishing and let you do nothing".
Thank you, my love.

Our pelican friend.

We sailed over to this amazing beach today. We say this everytime we come to a new one, but this was our favorite. From our boat anchored about 150 yards off we see an older couple on a deserted beach. An umbrella is stuck in the sand and there are two occupied chairs beneath it. A cooler is sitting behind them. They are having cold drinks and reading their books. There is not another boat in sight, not even a dinghy. They have been dropped off there to enjoy the day and be picked up later. Oh, what a life. He heads out for a swim in the most beautiful aqua green water with a clear sandy ocean floor at his dangling feet.
We are on our boat anchored and having lunch. A pelican lands in the water beside us. He has come by to say hello. I get a bunch of pictures of him. He seems to like modeling for me.  His beak and wing span are very impressive. Even climbing in to our dink, throwing aboard everything that we need, starting our motor... he is not scared. We have made a friend.
The island is beautiful. One side for swimming w white sandy, sugar soft beach and the other side is that sharp black coral on land that we walk over that faces the Atlantic.  The waves come crashing up and the sound is mesmerising. Heading back to the beach side we find an old foundaton. We question each other how old it might be? Who lived here and what was their story? Did a hurricane wash every shred of evidence away but this?
A small boat comes up to the beach with a couple of local Bahamian boys to pick up the older couple. They pack everything up, join them on board and are gone. The beach is now ours. We walk around collecting shells, taking pictures and we are visited once again by our pelican friend. He follows us around and takes a swim with us. The water is a perfect temperature for this hot sunny day.
The beach is aptly named Pelican Cay.
Making our way to Lynyard Cay Mark caught a mutton snapper. The post that  I had written previously has the delicious recipe for how we cooked up the fish. It ended up a beautiful display on our plates. After dinner we played a game of Scrabble by flashlight hanging off of the boom...and yes, I won.

Heading South Abaco's

We met a couple in Marsh Harbor and were invited aboard the ir beautiful sailboat. They asked about our plans and timeframe. We discussed the weather patterrns andnour passages in that direction. We get the same answer from everyone. Why go anywhere else? You are in the best place that you can be in the Bahamas right now. You are in the beautiful Abacos.
So, after we have made our way furthest south that we can get we realize that we are not leaving the Abacos. The wind continues on from the south and makes it nearly impossible for us to go the 50 miles we need to do with the wind in our nose, no where along the way for refuge and our motor is too small to get us there any faster. We will stay in the Abacos.
After Marsh Harbor we sail on out. We are tired of the city and are ready to move on. We head south down to Tavern Cay. We have a real nice sail, wind is great. We find a pretty spot to anchor. We are close to a house on land and are able to hail up a free wifi connection. Super! It is turning dark. Time for dinner and turn in for the night.
Morning comes and there are signs of a huge storm coming. We have a sail to fix so we pull out the repair tape that our wonderful friend  Cindy Kruse has sent with Rachel for us to use. We clean the sail area to be repaired with alcohol and then apply the tape. We have a hand awl and thread and Mark sews the areas  that need extra reinforcement to be strong. It all worked out well and we are feeling better about having the sail for use.
After the last couple of rains, Mark has taken out the windows one by one and put more sealant behind the windows. We will put them to the test now. Here it comes! He is  headed out to the cockpit with a bar of soap and shampoo to take a shower in it. That's the way it is done here for cruisers.
The rain starts and it is heavy. I move about inside the cabin checking out every little place that we had drips before and arranging bowls beneath. But after a bit I realize that many of the big leaks that we had before, that were drenching our beds, are no longer there. Halleluah! Mark, has showered and has now rigged a system to collect the water so we can use it for dishes, showers and filter for drinking. It is raining so hard and long now. He looks so clean, cool and comfortable. I think it is my turn for a shower. I come out the the cockpit. It is raining so hard and so long that I got to wash with soap, shampoo and condition my long hair. I could have even shaved. There was so much rain coming down.
We ended up collecting 20 gallons of water.
We jump into the dink, freshly showered, packed up for our adventures and motor out. We are on a search for some hiking trails. We have called ahead on channel 16 to Cracker P's to get some information from them. Cracker P's is a local pub here that advertises on the Cruisers net in the morning on channel 68 at 8:15 along with other businesses in the Abacos. They are located next to Lubber's Landing and both are on the island called Lubber's Quarters.
We pull up to their dock and tie off. The place is extremely cute, sitting high off the ground with a beach in front. There is tropical forest behind the building that is crisp and bright green from the fresh rain. We go up to the open air pub and look around. In the back the wife of the couple who owns the place is painting on driftwood. Sailboats, mooring balls, birds all beautiful for the walls and swing seats. She gives us directions for the hike, warning us of mosquitoes and some mud that we will have to go through. No problem, we can handle this. Ha!
We head on in and it is the most beautiful and lush forest you have seen, with a neat little path carved out and trees arched overhead. It is all straight out of a picture book. We went in about a half mile and I have never been swarmed and eaten by mosquitoes like this since Montana when I was a litlle girl. We were swatting and shooing them away and finally we came to the mud. It was more swamp like and I decided we were going no further. I turned around and ran back out of there as fast as I could. We were covered in bites and itching like crazy people.
We hopped back into the dink and motored over to Tahiti Beach. It looked clear of bugs and is said to be one of the most beautiful beaches here.
We saw a stingray, collected sand and shells and walked around a bit watching the waves crash on the back side with the Atlantic. What a beautiful day.
That night we have dinner and blog and facebook a bit. The lights are on in the cabin and we are attracting these flying ant looking nats. They don't bite but they are so numerous. Mark has 12 of them on his screen alone and they are all over the headliner. Eew. I turn out the light, sit far from him and just relax. The bugs here are determining what I will do. If they leave me alone, I am okay with that.
Goodnight all.

The wedding date is June 12th. Pics enclosed

We found the perfect place for the wedding! Hope Town! We were here with Rachel, collected pink sand from the beach, and stood in front of the St. James Methodist Church. It stuck in both of our hearts for the next week and a half and we decided to go back. The minister is also the owner and baker of Vernon's grocery. He is famous for his fresh baked bread and key lime pie.  The sand that Rachel and I collected the week and a half before ironically will be the same sand under our feet as we become one.
Our witnesses are a couple from Pennsylvania that we met on the dock last night. They are super neat, down to earth people and they're happy to share in our event.
This day also happens to be my birthday. So you are all witnesses that we have decided to celebrate our anniversaries on June 11th, the day we apply for our paperwork so that they do not fall on the same date. Need 2 separate days to celebrate both special events.
Here is a sneak peek of what we will be seeing on our day.

Anchor terror!

We have been working our way southward.   We spent a night anchored Lynyard Cay  .  It had awesome beach on the Sea of Abaco side but we could easily walk across to the Atlantic side too.  The winds were 20+ so the waves were pretty spectacular.  We were very happy to be on THIS side of the cay.

That evening we moved into Little Harbor.  Things had gotten quite rolly and rough at this anchorage as the winds increased further and clocked around to the south.   We had to wait until high tide to have enough water to make it in   the harbor entrance shows only 3' at mean low water and we draw about 4 -1/2'. 

We got safely in there without touching the bottom! Phew.   The harbor is very aptly named  "Little" harbor.   Pretty crowded but found a spot to drop the hook (anchor).  The bay had mooring balls that you can use instead of your own anchor...theyre super strong and safe, but they also cost $$$.   

About 3 am I woke up when it started raining in.   It had started to blow and storm and lightning.  I looked out the companion way (door) and saw us careening off another sailboat.  Crap, dang, and SHIT, we are in big big trouble.  Our anchor has dragged or the anchor line broke or something.    In any case, we are adrift in a storm in a crowded anchorage in the middle of the night.   I was sure we'd end up grounding or having the boat thrashed on the rocky cliffs on the West side.   "SHAWNAE WAKE UP NOW!  ALL HANDS ON DECK NOW".   She hustled up into the maelstrom with me.  I got the motor started and the spotlight on.  She got the Gps/depth finder turned on.  It was raining so hard we couldmt see anything.  About then I see another sailboat approaching in the downpour.  "Look-grab their rail so we don't smash them".   Right after that we spotted a mooring ball.  I handed her the boathook and on the second try she grabbed it and tied us secure.  I still had no visual point of reference and could not tell where we were.   But I DID know that we were not aground and were safely secured now.   We crawled down below and closed up the hatches and rode out the rest of the squall down there.   Wow, 5 minutes of intense "stuff" and it was all over.   We both were shaking afterwards with adrenaline.   

In the morning I discovered that we ended up anout 100 feet from we were originally anchored. ..
But I don't know what path we took around and through the harbor to get there.    Fortunately, no real damage to our hoat nor anybody else.  We do, however, only have a cool dark green sctatch/scrape on the hull as a souvenir of our excitement.  

A week in a post?

I have fallen quickly behind to share because of all that we have to do and see here. Rachel came out to visit us for a week. We had bought her a ticket for her graduation present to come and join us. She was flying into Nassau and then we were going to sail down there and pick her up. The winds have not been favorable to do that. They have been right on our nose the whole trip. So, we got her a flight from Nassau to Marsh Harbor in the Abacos. This is the 3rd largest city in the Bahamas. That isnt saying it is huge though. I THINK it has about 1700 residents.
We have done some grocery reprovisioning here, done laundry and filled gas and water. We have also found most of the restaurants here have wifi. We chose Curlytails. Our waiter as he told us, was "get you drunk Joe". Lol! I am guessing that won't be happening here, though we did enjoy our stay and we got a lot posted within a couple of days. Internet is spotty here. They sell two internet services to cruisers like ourselves so that it is available along your passages. Though from word of mouth, those are spotty as well. They are oii bahamas and the other is bahamas wimax. The wimax has a 10 min free trial period. It must know your computer because it only lets you do this once. Darn. We are purchasing a week on wimax for  $35 so that we can skype with Molly and Drew. They have different levels that you can purchase. An hour to a year.
We went to dinner with Rachel at Conchy Joe's which basically means a white guy cooking Bahamian. It is famiky owned and run by them. Food was pretty awesome. I had lobster salad that was amazing. Rachel had cracked conch (deep fried) and Mark had a hamburger. Yep, a hamburger.
We took Rachel the first day snorkeling over mermaid reef. That was an excellent dive. They have mooring balls on the reef. So dinghy out, hook up, and go. We saw so many different kinds of fish here. Wrasse, rainbow parrotfish, 4 eyed angelfish, lionfish, spiny lobster, trunkfish, yellowtail snapper, and many many more. It was a great place.
Then we went to Man-O-War. This is a small boat building community. They design them and make them right there. We got a sneek peek on a few. Very neat. We had lunch on the water here overlooking he harbor at The Dock and Dine. They had deliciously big "meals in a bag". You could choose from different selections of meat and they were piled on top of french fries and then covered with ketchup and hot sauce. Sounds weird but it was tasty!  We walked the town, did a little souvenir shopping, lots of photo taking, and then found a beach. This beach was beautiful. It was called North Beach. We have found that is a common beach name around here. We have been on three North Beaches so far in our travels. We found neat shells, got some excellent photos and watched a golden retriever play in the ocean.
The next day we went over to Hopetown. It is famous for the hand wound lighthouse that works like a grandfather clock that turns with the weights. It is super impressive. We walked up the internal spiral staircase to the top. It was cool seeing all of the working parts. Rachel was the only brave one of us to go outside and take in the 360 degree view. We did the same but from the safety of windows. We spent the afternoon walking around this beautiful town with its gingerbread style of houses and lots of cute little shops. There was pinkish sand on North beach and a great yellow and white church. Perfect for a wedding.
We headed over to Fowl Cay for some snorkeling and diving. Snorkeling for conch on the inside in the Sea of Abaco and on the outside scuba diving off the reef in the Atlantic. We swam and got 4 conch and I made some conch salad. It wasn't very well liked. I was very disappointed. Now I will need to find some Bahamian made and see if I just didn't make it right.
It was a pretty windy day and a bit choppy out there in the Atlantic. I wasn't feeling very comfortable with the idea of going out there. I chose to stay on the island, suntan and read my book. There was a small 12'×12' personal dock on the rocks that I was able to watch Mark and Rae go out. I was the only one on the island. Pretty cool. When they were done with their dive they came back around and picked me up. I guess it was a little nerve wracking out there and Mark threw up before his dive. But they enjoyed their time.
We headed back to Marsh Harbor and stayed the night moored before Rachel's flight out the next dqy. That night sleeping I was awoken by a huge explosiin. I peeked out and saw a huge 45' boat engulfed in flames. It was quite horrific. We prayed that everyone was okay. we heard later that no one was on the boat and some guy decided to hotwire the battery at 2am in hopes of stealing the boat. I guess he got burned pretty badly and was flown out to a clinic. There was nothing left of the boat in the morning but the hull.
In the morning we walked around and grabbed some lunch at the Golden Grouper. Rachel leaves today. We have had a great time with her here. She didn't get the best of weather while she was here but we did send her home with a sunburn from the Bahamas. Life is good,