Happy New Year to everyone! Before I begin backtracking, I thought it would be helpful to mention the following. I was recently reading my blog (to see where I left off!) on my cell phone and realized that all the pictures that had been so perfectly arranged into nice little circles and squares and in a certain order on the computer were all higgledy-piggledy and all over the place! Very annoying (well, for me anyway, when you try to make something look a certain way, but maybe you thought that was just the way it was meant to be!). I discovered that after opening the blog on the phone (or whatever you’re opening it on, for that matter), if I hit the title of the blog at the top of it (not the subject line of the email – the title of the blog within the blog), it relaunches it to the actual WordPress site and, miraculously, things appear the way they should. So please try that now or next time if you want to see what it is supposed to look like. Secondly, as a reminder, if you want to get an automatic email when I post, just go to the bottom right hand corner of the blog and you will see a “Follow Me” button. Hit that, enter your email address, and the next time I post, you will automatically get the email notification.
Anyway, this is my backtracking blog – ugh. I was hopelessly behind in the beginning of December, and then we had too much fun with our visitors – my sister and brother-in-law, Moira and Mike, and then Dick and Kay, who spent Christmas and New Year’s with us. Even before we got to the Bahamas, I hadn’t caught up with my diatribe. And the blog is my best way for record keeping so that I can remember what we did and when. So here we go – back to the ICW!!
First, I thought I’d hit some of the highlights and lowlights of our last portion of the trip down the ICW since I left off last time (mostly because I have some nice pix from then). One of the highlights was anchoring in a place called Minim Creek in South Carolina. We anchored just before dusk quite a distance up the creek (a few other boats had already hogged the spots closer to the ICW channel). But it was worth it – the sunset that evening and sunrise the next morning were just spectacular. And there were birds EVERY-WHERE. Roseate spoonbills, white ibis, great white egrets, snowy egrets, little blue herons, great blue herons, grackles, and probably tons more that I couldn’t get close enough to identify. Taking pictures of the birds was tough in low light, unfortunately, but the sunset and sunrise the next morning were both spectacular.
As you can see from the sunrise picture, we got an early start, only to run aground a few minutes later in soft mud. So we re-anchored and had breakfast while we waited for the tide to come up. I could have slept in!
Once again, we got to visit with our good friends Wayne and Gretchen in Beaufort, SC.
We went for dinner and had these bizarre oyster clusters – you literally buy them by the bucket. There are small ones growing on top of larger ones, layered, so to speak. They were delicious!
While we were in the Beaufort area, Wayne and Gretchen took us to Parris Island. It is an Army base and really interesting. You had to check in with proper documentation before they would let you on the island (felt like I was crossing into Canada!), and there were troops marching around and training everywhere. Well worth a visit if you are down that way. It was a pretty overcast, drizzly day, but we made the most of it. Some weird looking trees, fungus and crabs on that island!!
We had a few minor encounters with the mud bottom of the ICW along the way, but nothing to speak of. Unfortunately, on November 7 in a stretch between Fernandina Beach and St. Augustine, we had what I call the “Bridge Day from Hell” (November 7). Every one of them was a nightmare due to the extremely water levels. Gary got impatient waiting for the water to drop at one bridge and, after waiting for about an hour and half and running aground and re-anchoring during the wait, he decided to make a run for it. The bad part was that the bridge was under construction, and there was netting hanging down below it. Although we would have cleared the bridge without the netting, our wind instruments snagged on the netting and that was the end of them! Cha-ching, cha-ching – add that to the list! So on we went, waiting and scraping under each bridge that day, but no further “injuries” to the boat. The next day, we went outside and avoided a lot of bridges – something you can’t always do because of the weather, so we were lucky to catch a break. Sue took pictures of us clearing one bridge. As close as it looks, that one wasn’t a problem!
We stopped in Fernandina Beach on the way through – sort of an industrial spot, but I like this picture of Gary coming back to shore in the dinghy.
When we got into the north part of Florida, we started looking at the weather forecast for the next week or so. It was a really lousy forecast coming up – a tropical depression that could potentially turn into a hurricane. That meant we had to boogie down the Florida coast to the West Palm area as quickly as possible so that we could cross before the depression became an issue. So we flew through Florida; long days where we arrived at anchorages just before the sun set. Normally, we like to stop to see friends in New Smyrna Beach and Vero Beach, and sometimes we cross the state to see our friends, Stan and Shirley in Homosassa, and visit our bird Nicki (who is doing well, BTW, and is now in an enclosure with four females!). Unfortunately, Mother Nature prevailed so we had to skip all of that.
We knew we needed to do one last big provisioning before we crossed to the Bahamas. Fortunately, our very gracious friends and long-time cruisers, Bill and Linda, live in Jensen Beach, very close to Stuart, and also close to where we planned to depart for the Bahamas.
All three of us were in for a special treat – Linda and Bill invited us to stay overnight in their guest house. They have a beautiful home, complete with pool and hot tub (which was a huge treat since we miss ours from home), and a nice guest house which Hobie really enjoyed!!
They were so accommodating and drove us around to Sam’s Club, the liquor store, the grocery store, the pet store, etc., etc. We bought eight cases of Hobie’s special veterinary cat food – $1.90 a can in the States, $4.25 in the Bahamas! Four cases of wine, three cases of beer (should have bought more of that – the cheapest we have found so far is $53 a case!!), all the things that cost so much more in the islands – beef, paper products, cereal, potato chips – the list is a long one. And cash – you can’t forget to get cash, since banks are few and far between in the Bahamas and the ATM charges are pretty steep. US dollars and Bahamian dollars are on par, which makes life easy. We were also supposed to pick up our new wind instrument there, but the USPS, although they guaranteed delivery to Bill and Linda’s house the day before we left, did not come through. That is a really long, dragged out story that needs to be told over several glasses of wine. Needless to say, Gary was not happy about crossing the Gulf Stream without wind instruments, but we had no choice. Fortunately, we were doing the crossing with Garth and Sue, so they could provide information if needed.
So, after a lot of dashing around, we crossed to the Bahamas on November 13 – our earliest crossing ever. Our crossing wasn’t bad (although we’ve had better!) – it started out kind of yucky at 6:30 am with big waves and breeze out of the south east, where the weather forecast had promised to have winds more out of the south. We all (including Hobie) doubled down on the meclizine, so at least we weren’t seasick, although Hobie was not a happy camper at all. After a while, it leveled out, then got worse again, then it was fine for the last third of the trip as we got closer to shore.
We were very happy to arrive in the Old Bahama Bay Marina at West End on Grand Bahama Island, with our friends Garth and Sue not far behind. The boat needed a good wash down to get all the salt off it – it was coated! We made the mistake of going to the local beach bar for a celebratory Goombay Smash – until we found out they were $11 each! Needless to say, we only had one.
After a wonderful morning swim in the pool and a walk along the beach while we waited for high tide the next day, we were off to Great Sale Cay through the very shallow Indian Cut, but we got through without incident, following our track from last year. As soon as we got to Great Sale, Gary was off to lobster hunt. He came back with two lobsters, which we shared with Garth and Sue. Yum! Welcome back to the Islands!
SECOND SOJOURN 
Happy New Year to you 3 sailors!! Loved the adventure..Tom and I hope we make a trip over to Bahamas in a couple months? After the races of course. Cheers hugs
Sue & Tom xoxo
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This certainly warmed me up!!! Always love your blogs!
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