Bahamas, USA: I choose adventure

People ask ‘Don’t you get bored’?

People gasp when we say we’ve been in the Bahamas for 6 months.

They scratch their heads and roll their eyes and say things like ‘Really?!’

Last night padding along yet another long white sand beach, we plotted and schemed – could we stay the whole season? – why not head further south in the Bahamas and enjoy a few more months? – what would we do in a hurricane? 

Weather plays a huge role in our lives and the storms of late have certainly kept us on our toes. Lightning, thunder and predictions of tropical storm development all around us.

In the end we resigned ourselves: we will go. America beckons. We will lift our anchor midday and set off across a little section of the Atlantic ocean and leave this expanse of paradise behind us.

By this weekend we’ll have replaced the dodging of jellyfish in the water, with dodging traffic - grocery bags in hand.

We will have the tangible memory of turquoise in our minds as the boats float in a broth of brown and grey…

A sea of turquoise off Little Sale Cay

No more searching tiny towns for the one onion and the last bottle of fresh milk in the fridge. Shopping will no longer be an adventure. Choice will overwhelm and bury us…

Organization and street lights; order and civilization, will take the place of stars in a vast sky, beaches and rocks and the distant sound of soca beating.

It’s a difficult trade off for people who’ve decided to make the sea their home. It’s like deliberately moving from a holiday resort to a concrete jungle.

It’s like choosing the mall over the beach.

But we’ve got landy pleasures planned. We’ll surely munch beignettes on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and comb the streets of tiny towns in Alabama. We’ll feel the breeze in our hair as we fly down a highway in the USA. It will be a rush.

Sure, we’ll have boat repairs and laundry and more lightning storms to endure as well.

But will we ‘get bored’??

I don’t think so.

Paradise compromised - living the dream with a few glitches

I am blinking wildly at my reflection in the mirror.  Doughy red rimmed eyes stare back at me under a mop of salt caked, matted, sweat soaked, unbrushed hair. My skin is at once shiny and dull, like I’d been having far too much fun with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in my sleep.

The reality is far more banal. In the three hours of restless sleep I’ve had, I’ve sweat like an Olympic athlete. The heat. The heavy, cotton wool air of a boat cabin in 35 degree Celcius weather, without a breeze.

This annoys me and I frown. Immediately I’ve scared myself. I look like Eileen Wuornos – famous serial killer. Though I’ve only been killing mosquitos. Hundreds and hundreds of mosquitos. It’s becoming the norm these days. 

By day, sunshine interrupted by billowing, encroaching bursts of darkness then thunder and rain. Between, there are flies. Lord of the Flies in number. We start the culling process with a rolled up paper, but it’s futile really. We are no match for the fly swarms of the Bahamas in August.

Approaching storms

Then come the no-see-ums. The tiny, wretched pin pricks of the insect world that have us jumping like somewhere someone is stabbing at our own personal cursed voodoo dolls all day.

We don’t have sufficient netting/screens to keep the mosquitos away, but even the two we do have are no match for no-see-um stealth.

Suddenly, being rocked to and fro by an alarming side swell on the boat, I realise through my haze why I’m awake. I’m lucky to be supported physically by both sides of the tiny head/washroom. Only a few inches each side of me as I grip the edge of the basin. I splash a bit of water on my face and carefully dart up the three steps to the lounge, Shiloh’s main room, to see what’s going on.

It’s 5 am and our drag alarm has started. JW sprinted up immediately to assess.

It’s dark and the wind is howling and as far as we can assess, we are closer to the rocks behind us. The ripping current in the channel where we’ve anchored is fighting the wind and we are caught at a strange angle with waves slapping at the side and setting us a-wobble.

“I’ll have to stay up and watch” says my brave and stoic captain.

“Ok, call me in 30 minutes and we’ll trade off” I say casually and bound back down the stairs to the stifling comfort of my bed. How times have changed. An incident like this in the past would have signaled my adrenaline and I’d be in high anxiety, action mode. Now I am calculating the number of hours of non-quality sleep I’ve had and will have if I manage to get this 30 extra minutes in…

We’d been up til 1:30 trying to kill all mosquitos that had infiltrated the fortress, and preventing any others from entering. It was a team project – I spraying the two mosquito nets we own with poison and JW fitting them to the hatches with duct tape and a bit of imagination. Our little Black & Decker hand vacuum has become our weapon of choice and life saver in insect attack situations. The morning after finds the semi translucent bulbous middle of the device pocked with tiny blood stains and a twitching mass grave of insect matter. It’s disgusting and I want nothing to to with cleaning the aftermath. Not my job!

Turns out the drag alarm must have been a bit confused by all the currents and rocking and we didn’t have to re-anchor.

JW now snores gently down below, trying to make up for lost sleep. The sun is shining and smiling all around us, oblivious to the struggles of the night.

Outside is paradise. An extensive sand bank is forming, as it does every low tide, the turquoise waters slowly ebbing and parting so the snow white sand can take the spotlight for a few hours at a time. It beckons. Swim swim!

The water here is a vibrant and lively ecosystem as well. Stingrays, numerous sharks, pencilfish and thousands of clear gelatinous jelly fish are everywhere. They swim under us, around us, with us even.

One such gelatinous mass nudged me yesterday as we lounged in the shallow waters. I think I jumped the length of a swimming pool and let out a yelp that was heard throughout the Bahamas. Oops.

I admit - we are loving paradise in a selfish way. We’ve left the comforts of civilization, the sounds of blasting music and the bikini clad crowds of the southern Abacos behind, and we are trying to enjoy the remote beauty of these out islands before heading into the whole new world of the USA.

The bikini girls of Southern Abaco party life

We are right there at the top - at Double Breasted Cay

Our hair is unwashed, we wear the same salty clothes, we are feral, living wild. Alleycat caught us a fresh mutton snapper for supper. There is nothing like it. Out here on our own, eating fish from the sea.

But we miss fresh milk and veggies, and who invited all these bloody creatures to paradise???!!!

Water water everywhere...

  What kind of person would complain about temporary bowel problems when they are sitting in paradise? Crystal clear waters, swimming pool blue, navy patches in the distance, fluffy clouds in the robin’s egg blue sky beyond. Turtles bob up and down past the boat, along with elegant sting rays, smoothly cutting through the water with their black slick cape wings.

 Well yesterday was a write off. There I lay, in a wooden cabin, turquoise bedsheets no substitute for what beckoned through the cabin window. Watching old episodes of House at noon as the sun swapped with tiny rain squalls through the hatch above my head.

I couldn’t move more than a few feet from the head (toilet).

Last night, as JW and I both leapt up and headed to a head each, we figured we better deduce the cause of our suffering.

Boat life involves a lot of conservation and compromise. One of the taken for granted amenities is water. Not the endless ocean around us, but the safe potable kind.

A few bays ago, (well bays and days ago) in a place aptly called Saline Bay, we found a cheap source of water to fill our jugs. Precisely it was free. An abandoned dock had a hose and water pressure. We couldn’t believe our luck. We hauled all our 20 and 25 litre jugs back and forth a few times and replenished our onboard tank.

But then we realised that it was somewhat contaminated. It tasted a bit salty. We decided to use it only for washing bodies, clothes, dishes.

And then days went by, and in the Tobago Cays, an uninhabited paradise that is also a nature reserve, where you must store your rubbish bags onboard and really dig into your stored foods (had you provisioned properly), we forgot the golden water rule.

I was making tea, coffee, boiling noodles and potatoes all in the contaminated water.

And then it all caught up to me. And then JW.

So a day of cream crackers, flat coke, gingerale, teaspoons of honey, plain yogurt (all suggestions courtesy of Google results), and we’re both up and ready once more.

Ready to acknowledge both how fragile we are as humans, and how lucky we are as individuals. Lucky to be experiencing a little patch of this earth that has kept it’s beauty intact. Where flounder fish with both eyes on one side of their bodies, line the white sand, a testament to evolution, and iguanas prowl the little islands, their armour reminiscent of prehistoric ages.

 Where the children today have decided to make floating rafts on the beach with only natural materials, and there is not a television or video game in sight or mind.

I am off to witness turtles with their kaleidoscope shells, snacking on bits of seagrass on the shallow seabed and then gliding swiftly up for air, unbothered by the clunky goggled swimmers around them. 

 I will handwash the laundry and dump our disturbingly accumulating garbage bags another day, in another place.

And I will respect the water in all it’s forms and acknowledge what it does for us every day.

The evolution of a sailor

As I sit sipping my coffee, looking out into the bay, my little tube of lip balm rolls back and forth in a steady rhythm on the table beside me.

It’s 7am. It is a rolly anchorage and we had a bit of a bumpy night. But I slept well.

I’m realising two things – that gone are the nights of lying awake, terrified of the strange noises and constantly worrying about our anchor dragging, sending us out to sea, or into the boat behind us. Secondly, the rise and fall of a swell in the bay doesn’t affect me any longer. I’ve become used to my house pitching up and down, with the horizon peaking through my windows and disappearing just as fast, over and over.

It proves how adaptable the human brain is. There was a day when this movement would have had my tummy gripped in nausea.

Yesterday as we made our way from Union Island to Mayreau, with 21 kn winds on our nose and huge swells rocking Shiloh quite hard, both JW and I realised we’ve overcome seasickness. This journey a month ago would have warranted Gravol or Dramamine or Stugeron.

So many things have changed while they’ve stayed the same. There’s been a paradigm shift within me.

When we made all our plans to leave work, home, land life, I suffered from a deep seated fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what could go wrong, and of my complete inability to face whatever that might be.

But the longer we’ve been at sea, the more great experiences and things that have gone wrong, have made this life all that more believable, manageable, loveable.

A ‘boat boy’ has just motored up to Shiloh. I peek out and a blond blue-eyed rasta man is grinning at me. His big red wooden boat is called ‘Yellow’. He offers me fresh baked baguette. I tell him we’re fine, but thanks and he’s off. I love those moments.

I loved the moment a lot less a few days ago, when we found ourselves motoring forward in a crowded bay, only to hear the one engine fail completely. 

 As we started to drift dangerously back toward an old anchored boat, I flew down the stairs, to the port aft cabin, woke our friend and crew member from her nap, and threw all the bedding out into the hallway so JW could get into the engine compartment underneath and find out what was going on.

Meanwhile we called the friends on our ‘fleet’ (the boats we’ve been traveling with), to let them know what was happening. 

 We enlisted two dinghys to act as the port engine and JW motored forward on the starboard engine while I dropped anchor and we all crossed our fingers, hoping it would set. Once we were securely in place, the team dived down to have a look at our port propeller.

Turns out we had motored right over a dark grey, unmarked fishing rope. It had become completely entangled in the prop as it spun, bringing it to a halt. Hence the engine failing. It had even begun to melt into itself with the heat of the action.

As diving and holding my breath for long periods under water while prying melted rope from a propeller are not yet on my list of skills, I stood above, while members of our fleet spent the couple hours up and down, coming up with chunks of the offending rope.

 This experience was not pleasant. But it was not wracked with the horror it would have been, had we been alone or had we been a month younger at sea. But these things happen.

I’m realising that, just like the rest of life, sailing has it’s ups and downs. Things work out. Things work out much better without the fear and panic.

I now know why boats come so slowly into bays, with crew right on the front tip of the boat, surveying and scrutinizing the water below. I will follow suit.

It’s a learning curve. But now it’s a fun one. Some things will change the more I know, some will stay the same.

Apparently seasoned sailors get their dinghy painters (ropes) caught in their props, and even those who have crossed oceans have been known on occasion, when the winds are high or gusty, to spend sleepless nights, worried about dragging anchor…

Chocolate and rum - touring like a tourist in Grenada

It's been a hectic week - lots of cappuccinos, island tours and beach cafes. Rough rough.

Art Fabrik - a sensory delight and store I wanted to live in. All hand made in house batiks.

This has been a 'get to know Grenada' through the eyes of a tourist week. We visited quaint, delicious little curio and clothing shops.  I tried to take more photos, breathe in the colours, the rich emeralds and shocking fuschias. My senses were sharp, raw.

We finally made it to the organic chocolate factory. The universe willed it to happen and we easily gathered a group of cruisers, hired a driver and a van, and set off on a chocolate/rum road trip.

Our driver Cosmus is 78. He's been driving on the island forever. He is pretty much the only driver who takes the sharp mountain turns at a reasonable speed. He doesn't have a death wish, and we don't either, so it worked out well. It took us two hours of hills and valleys, clouds and sun patches, close calls around bends to arrive, but we made it to the Belmont Estate in one piece.

We pre-empted the whole tour protocol by visiting, buying and eating the treats from the gift shop before taking the tour, but it was worth the sin. Dark chocolate cashew clusters, melted in our mouths, on our fingers, and down our chins as we were called over to learn the process.

Sadly, like most agricultural industry in the Caribbean, the Belmont Estate first ran on the sweat of slavery. The big tree at the entrance was a gathering point, where slaves were called using the huge bell that still sits on the bottom branches. For punishment, slaves were hung from it's branches.

After this eery and unsettling story, we are led into the huge barn to see how the chocolate is made, as it has been for centuries.

Chocolate starts as beans inside the white fruit of these cocoa pods:

The beans are dried for seven days and then are laid out in the sun, where they are trampled on from time to time, to spread and turn them.

Walking on the beans.

The beans begin to lose the smell of fermentation and feet as they dry, and begin to take on the rich smell of chocolate.

Cocoa cocoa everywhere! Beans drying in the sun.

The Belmont Estate is fully certified organic and all product is processed completely in-house, no beans are sold or exported before they become cocoa powder or chocolate.

Some of the cocoa beans, ready to be sent down the road to the chocolate factory.

When the dried beans are cracked open, the little nibs inside can be eaten raw or roasted. The Grenada Chocolate Company makes a bar with the crunchy roasted nibs - it's absolutely amazing.

Needless to say, we bought and munched a few of these.

The Estate has recently stopped tours from visiting the actual chocolate factory, so we couldn't see the beans being roasted and blanded into the paste that makes the rich dark chocolate that I've fallen head over heels in love with. Maybe it's better. I might have wanted to stay forever.

Instead, we bought more chocolate and visited their restaurant on the hill above the estate. We watched the magnificent sky turn in seconds from sunny and hot to windy and grey and then open the taps from above. I was actually chilly for one of the first times since arriving in Grenada.

From Belmont we headed to the oldest, traditional method rum factory in the Western hemisphere - at River Rums.

The wheel that crushes the sugar cane has been in operation since the 1700's and was imported from Scotland (JW loved that little piece of trivia).

Sugar cane being fed up the wheel where the liquid is removed.

The waste material is then used for the fire to boil the rum.

Workers moving the sugar cane waste into wagons to be brought down below.

We were led through ancient stinking rooms, where vats of a brownish red muddy looking liquid is hand spooned along, boiling like a giant witches brew. Spiders and cockroach carcasses lie drunk and dead around the vats. I wondered how it was possible that I loved the end product of this filthy process!

From here, the distillation and purification process began.

The end product, a clear white elixir, was offered to us in tiny quarter ounce cups. I still remember the simultaneous burn internally and shiver on my extremities. We were asked if we'd like to buy a bottle but we all declined. I don't think any of us could have survived a whole shot of that!

We ended the tour with an impromptu visit to a roadside fruit and veggie seller. The place called to us as we drove past, and Cosmus happily stopped for us to snap a few photos and buy some fresh fragrant fruit.

Cosmus and Andrea

We arrived back at the marina exhausted and full of chocolate and bananas. Our eyes dozed from sensory overload. Our noses sensing the familiar water life smells, leaving all the tropical red earth and the pungency of it's fruits behind.

We closed our tourist eyes and rum-lined nerves calmed. We slept well, rocked by the waves and wind of spring time in Grenada.

Boat style... or not

The closest I get to fashion these days is picking through discarded Marie Claire mags at the cruisers book exchange in the marinas. Their pages show exotic locations and safely fake bronzed waifs in flowing sundresses, not a hint of perspiration. I flip through the pages and marvel at a world that’s so far removed from mine.

I have never been much of a fashionista, but even I, have to admit that boat life does not lend itself to high style or anything beyond basic hygiene for that matter.

The last pedicure I had, a distant memory on land. My toenails are now a chipped and scuffed mess of decaying polish and scars from tripping over hatches and off of dinghys. Not to mention the blisters spotted around my feet from hikes...

Shaving is another casualty of the ‘lifestyle’. Whether and when it happens is now dictated by a convergence of all of the following: time, energy, availability of water and razors. It is a rare occurrence.

Make up… ha! Not that I’ve ever been one for much of it, here it just seems frivolous and not on the ‘getting ready routine’. Stops in the head (washroom) on the way out are for confirming the hatches are closed and the pump toilet is set to ‘drain’ instead of ‘fill’.  The mascara and blush are melting slowly in a dollar store case I bought before we arrived. Just the thought of it makes me think salt splash on dinghy, burning eyes, rubbing messy black goo… far from a vision of loveliness.

And that cute summer set of wedge heels with the leather flower in front that I imagined wearing with little summer dresses – well they would probably lead to a broken ankle or a near death experience – now that I know the terrain of life on a boat.  I’ve given them up, dumped in a rough fiberglass ‘cupboard’, replaced by flip flops, crocs and my soleless boat shoes (little beaded foot necklace).

 I am amazed and in awe when we arrive at an evening venue here and some ladies arrive with shiny clean hair, fresh faces and against all odds, smooth clean clothes.

I don’t own an iron (not that we could afford the energy to run one if we did), and the act of washing is a mission in itself. Get all the dirties in a laundry bag, then cover it with a waterproof bag, dinghy to a marina, get tokens, wait through both cycles, roughly fold and haul it all back to the boat without getting wet and salty again. Most of the time our clothes are hanging around the edges of the boat, airing or drying, pinched by pegs and as wrinkled as an elephant’s skin. If we manage to find something semi-clean to throw on then we’re peachy.

Both JW and I have our pseudo-safari retirement holiday floppy hats to avoid the piercing sun, and the last time my hair was clean enough and not knotted or salt caked, was weeks ago when we had marina hot showers. It spends most of it’s time wound up, clipped up or tied up. Away from my hot shoulders and not blowing in the unforgiving wind. 

 We have definitely sacrificed fashion for function. And in a way, I haven’t felt more fresh and alive, and therefore beautiful in ages.

Checklist for the practical cruiser

“Have you got the headlamp?”

“Yes, have you got the VHF radio?”

“Yep. You got the camera?”

“Affirmative. Have you got our waterproof phone?”

“Let me check. Yep. Is the mast light on?”

“Just doing that. Let’s turn the freezer off while we’re gone.”

Ok, and did you close all the windows? Hatches? Bring in the outdoor cushions and our shoes?

“Ok, done. Did you bring a towel in case we get soaked?”

“Got it. Pull up the dinghy, let’s go.”

This is the routine each evening as we head out for one social event or another. I barely remember the days when we would be heading out in a car, not worried about rain or seaspray. Days where you didn’t need a radio in case your dinghy motor doesn’t start and you drift off somewhere… Days where you didn’t need to find a way to save some energy to give the batteries a break…

But those days didn’t allow for massive rainbows and black ominous storms so beautiful you can barely pry yourself away to get the camera out.

Those days didn’t include new adventures, to Nimrod’s roti shop for some local grub and a walk in the hills. But today includes that and I can’t wait. I think I’m salivating. We’re on our way now. Roti post to follow.