Nassau

Well, here we are in Nassau with my lovely niece, her husband Alan and their 3 children, Jacob, Noah (birthday boy) and baby Ashton. I got Amy Beth into the Bahamian shopping mode, by taking the baby stroller with us to grocery shop. People did stare and wonder where the babies were!!! We took them out for a boat ride and Jacob became my certified First Mate. Everyone did fine on the ride, no sea sickness! Jacob even helped preparing hard boiled eggs. While we were cruising I asked him what he was thinking abour and his reply was, "My dad needs a boat" Looks like Alan and Amy Beth need to invest in a boat and then they can call it, "My Three Sons."

My Marley Mon needed to get a hair cut, so after lunch at Senor Frogs, we headed over to locals barber shop. Clay wanted to be sure and come out looking like Densel Washington, and his baber told him he would need to use black paint for that!!

After leaving Nassau, we headed further south and anchored in Allen's Cay. What a lovely spot that was. There is a picture of our backyard view. The next day we continued on to Sampson Cay and Staniel Cay. The water here is just breath taking. You can swim with the Nurse Sharks, a tame Baracuda, and go into Thunderball Cave and feed the fish. Thunderball Cay is where they filmed the James Bond movie, "Thunderball" and "Spash" starring Tom Hanks and Darryl Hanna. After a full day of snorkling we docked and the Staniel Cay Marina for a lovely dinner of the fresh catch of the day.

The sunsets are still beautiful and plentiful and the waters have been fairly smooth for cruising. As my favorite saying goes, a rough day cruising is better than a good day at work!!!.

Stay tuned, more to come from George Town.

Well some of my pictures are not coming thru, but I'll try again later.
Life is Good, cruising is better!!!!

Leaving Marsh Harbour

We left Marsh Harbour May 14, saying goodbye to our new friends, Ken & Cathy, sorry I didn't get a picture of Teri & John. We plan on seeing then on our return trip. While cruising, we stopped at Fowl Cay to do some snorkeling. The fish were plentiful and very friendly. We anchored out in Little Harbour to get a good nights rest before crossing over the North East Providence Channel (Atlantic) to Spanish Wells. It was "alittle" bumpy and rough just going out the cut with 6-8 ft. waves. As we got further out the seas flattened out and made for a nice cruise. Shadow will tell you a different story, but she's a cruiser and made it okay. Once we got to Spanish Wells, we called for a pilot to take us thru the Devil's Backbone to Harbour Island on the town of Dunmore famous for their pink sands. His name is Jock and his pilot service is called the Bandit. He gave us quite abit of history on our way over. The reason it is best to have a pilot is the waters are tricky and the reefs are plentiful and not always marked on the charts. He says he makes the trip 5-8 times a day and never gets bored. His history is quite interesting. His ancestors came over from England in 1638. Their ship wrecked just outside Devil's Backbone (which is how it got it's name) and all but 1 survived. They swam ashore and lived in a cave for a year (Preachers Cave) before really getting settled. Life was really rough hard for them in many ways, as you can imagine! The ships name was William. The way his service works is like this, he comes out to your boat, ties up his boat to ours and drives us over. Once we get there he gets back into his little boat and goes back over to his home on Spanish Wells. The trip only takes close to 45 min. And yes, he does charge you for his services, but besides his service we get a history lesson and homemade bread!!! (Tell me one taxi service stateside that gives you homemade bread!!!!) Dunmore is famous for their pink sand beaches. The island itself is really to spread out to site see by foot, so we had to take a taxi to get to the beach. It really is lovely. We only stayed the night due to some problem with the generator that we need to get looked at. Back at Spanish Wells we had some guys come on board and check out the generator. After all the horrible scenarios that could be wrong with it, we were very relieved to find out a wire had broken!!! That was fixed and we will be heading towards Nassau. My niece and her family will be vacationing at the Atlantis. Can't wait to see them all!!!!
Hope ya'll are enjoying the blogspot as much as I enjoying sharing our trip with pictures. Let me hear from ya, as this is our general email to all our friends!!
Life is Good, cruising is better! Until later...
Rita-Kay, Clay and Shadow

Moving On!!

Clay and I have been in the Abacos for nearly 2 months now and we are ready to head further south to the Exums and Eluthras. We have been very blessed here in the Abacos, meeting new people (cruisers and locals) and developing lasting friendships.
The pictures in yesterdays blog show you how we do our grocery shopping, sail boat races, ranging in ages 7-70, and the Seventh-day Adventist church in Marsh Harbour and of course the beautiful sunsets we get to witness each evening.
For shopping, we get in our dinghy and go to the designated dinghy dock, tie up, walk to the store, buy our groceries in the modern store, load up the backpack, walk back to the dinghy and go back to our boat. Living this life is wonderful because of the daily exercise we get.
The sail boat races are so much fun to watch, from little kids to grandparents. They have the groups set up according to your level of sailing. For the beginners (young and old) there is usually a parent, spouse or someone close in their dinghy to root them on and close by in case something goes wrong. Fortunately, nothing serious happened and the races finished without a hitch.
We have run into alot of Texans lately, some we know and some we don't. Pamela and Raymond were here on their boat from Fort Worth TX. We had met them 6 years ago on our last visit here. She and I graduated from HS the same year, from a different HS. Pamela graduated from Paschal, the same one Clay graduated from and he knew her older sisters and her family lived just around the corner from Clay. Another surprise visit was from one of Clay's old college frat brother, Steve Murrin, aka Cowboy. Clay had not seen him close to 10 years and low and behold they run into each other in the Bahamas. Clay and I were just sitting on the boat anchored out in Man-O-War, when all of a sudden this dinghy pulls up along side our boat and begin to holler something about TX! Clay recognized Steve right away and the partying and visiting began.
Another interesting note is have you ever wondered how these Marina get their fuel for the boats? Look closely at the picture with the gas truck. The truck is put on a barge and it goes from Marina to Marina pumping fuel without leaving the barge. We were at Sea Spray when this barge came in. Sea Spray is an out of the way Cay, tucked way back off the Sea of Abacos, with a very narrow and winding entrance and low tide. It kicked up alot of sand, but didn't run aground (touch bottom).
I guess that's about it from the Abacos. Check back in a couple of weeks. I hope to catch you up with more tales and photos from the Exumas. Until later...
The Happy Cruisers

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!!!

Pictures Finally!

Pictures around the Bahamas

Let's see, we left Marsh Harbour and went over to Hope Town and stayed on a Mooring there for 3 days and walked the town over. We climbed our 220 steps (round trip) in the famous Hope Town Lighthouse. If my pictures post, you'll see the different views of the town, Abaco Seas and the Atlantic Ocean. Hope Town is a quaint little town, that has been cleaned up and painted. The natives there are so friendly and welcome you with open arms. We had to go by and see if Vernon was still alive at his bakery and he is, still ornary as ever. Vernon has been operating his bakery close to 50 years. He bakes the best homemade coconut pie and coconut bread along with a variety of other breads and pies. Captain Jack's is still going strong with music and dancing to the wee hours of the morning and great food.

After Hope Town, we took off for Little Harbour which is further down south. It's only a 3 1/2 hour trip, but Clay and I broke it up so we could anchor out in Lubbers Cay. There we took the dinghy over to the beach just to relax and read, then over to Cracker Pete's for lunch. The only way to get there is by dinghy. The food is delicious too. It was Thursday, so the Master's would be on TV, which they had one, so, natually I asked them if they would turn it on so we could watch. Once again, we heard 'sure, no problem mon'. I love the Abacos!!! On Friday, we cruised on down to Little Harbour. This is where it gets real interesting! First, I need_ to tell you Little Harbour lives up to it's name, "Little", it's about this big /_/. That night we had dinner at the only restarant, outside on the sandy beach. We met up with some fellow cruises we met at West End, well, Walt, the captain, was from Fort Worth, Texas and graduated from a local rival highschool. We all talked about familiar areas and events. Then another couple from GA joined us. The wife was from England, but had lived in Arlington, TX from the 70's-90's, same time as Clay had his practice for 30 years. We came back to Marsh Harbour the next day and watched the rest of the Masters. We are in the Conch Inn Marina waiting for the winds to die down. They have been blowing up to 35 mph. Last night we had a wonderful time dinning and dancing at the Abaco Beach and Resort Marina. Browntip was there doing his Rake-N-Shake. Browntip is a real guy that has been around forever. He plays a rake, which is a popular instrument over here. It was good to see him again. I printed the picture I had of him in 2002, and gave it to him. You would have thought I had given him 100.00. He wanted us to be sure and go over to the resort so I could take more pictures of him. I might become his PR gal!!! Anyway, we had a hoot.
All is well on the waters, Life is Good! Until later...
The Happy Cruisers!!!!

Marsh Harbour. Another day in paradise!

We are now in Marsh Harbour. It is as beautiful as we remember from 6 years ago, but it has grown. I'm having a problem downloading pictures today, so, I'll just catch you up and try again on the pictures. We met up with our friends, Mike and Marta on "Pachis". We met them in West End and they left before we did. Anyway, that's what fun about cruising because you meet such fun and wonderful cruisers and while you are island hopping you are sure to run into them again. It's been alittle cloudy which doesn't make for a pretty day to snorkle, but we will be here long enough for that to change. For all our other cruising friends that have been here before, I'll let you know the additions. A new dinghy dock was added closer to the grocery store. Mangoes has been updated, but our Rake-N-Shake guy, Browntip, still plays there and other locations as well. We will be able to hear him tonight at the Jib Room at Marsh Harbour Marina. The conch vendor is still at his same location and the conch is as good as ever. Ken, I've been having the conch burger and a few for you too!!!. Sue, Clay still likes the hamburger!! Since we have been here the new attraction is the Conch Pearl. They have now discovered them while cleaning the conch, and they are beautiful and not cheap!!! It's like one in every 10,000 conch have a pearl. Some lucky ones have discovered one in their conch salads. So I am eating alot of salads too!!! The pearls have been around clear back to 1839, but no one really paid that much attention to them until the daughter-in-law of Queen Victoria became partial to the pearl. Since she was a trend setter, the pearls became part of the Edwardian Style. That's your lesson for the day.
I'll try again on the pictures so stay tuned, until later...we are still
The Happy Cruisers!!