Days like these...

If there is no breeze, not a breath of wind on a sun-baked Exuma day, is there any air at all?

The wall gadget that survived our lightning strike tells me it’s 35 celcius. The digital man is smiling, stiffly standing in sunglasses, a t-shirt and shorts. He thinks it’s safe to assume it’s gonna be a hot one out there. But I know this already. Sweat trickles down my back. My front. Well all around really. And then I just step outside into this world. The stillness and the beauty overcome me.

Is it not all a turquoise mirage created by a fabulous artist with perfectionist tendencies? The innumerable blues along the water, the slightly too imaginative cloud formations. It all points to a world in a frame, not to be disturbed by the reckless movements of the human animal.

Indeed, on days like these, with no one else to share the beauty, to verify its existence or ours within it, I need to pinch myself.

Yes, our boat is still crippled after the lightning strike of lottery winning odds. We are well on our way back to fix it all up. The journey toward Nassau first to hopefully replace the main electronics, and then either straight back to the US or slowly, to replace the rest.

But thoughts like this have no place here. Insurance coverage? Groceries? Document printing, scanning and e-mailing? What? Does not compute.

Paddle boarding along with an outgoing tide, through the glorious silence of the mangroves – yes! Swimming through the mouth of the river with the rushing tide out into the ocean – yes again. Baby lemon sharks come to see us as well, no problem. 

This is Shroud Cay, northern Exumas. We’ve been here before. So has every expat from Nassau on a Saturday afternoon, appearing in droves as they do, in a whir of manmade noise and engine power. Beers at the ready, picnic baskets, children shrieking. But never mind. We need someone to pinch us. This place really is. We can sneak away to random secret beaches by dinghy, our footsteps breaking the crust on pristine white sand. 

And at night when the sun has burned out, a fiery orange at the horizon, and completed it’s nightly performance of pinks and purples, we can see the haze of light from Nassau. 30 miles away, 30 million lifetimes away. And gone are the power boats, back to the dirty streets and air conditioned houses, and we are here alone.

The season is winding down. The cruisers are heading north, back to Florida, to the Carolinas, some all the way to Canada for the summer. Leaving a paradise that we cling to for a few last days. Responsibilities, practicalities loom over there where the haze of light beckons. Here only heat, and colour, and showering with sharks.

A few weeks ago, in the aftermath of our strike I was talking to a fellow cruiser in George Town about it – he raised his eyebrows at our luck and asked me “Have you ever thought of buying an RV?” with a smirk. Got to admit, people might think we’d be safer.

But safety doesn’t get you here. It doesn’t take you to places like these:

View from one of our hikes

The bubbly pool - north end of Compass Cay

Exploring with the dinghy around the south of Warderick Wells

View of our boats from Hog Island

An impending storm

The ocean mouth from north end of Hawksbill Cay

Hello from Hawksbill!

 And so it's all got me thinking. Pondering. Appreciating the choices, all the choices, that have brought us to where we are today. Lightning strikes and all. Though this is a corny, common cliche saying, it just fits so well:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Glorious silence, neon toys and canned food - The Exuma reality

I’m squinting at the tiny mangrove roots, marveling that they push up through the mushy white sand. Sun bakes my dry corn-husk hair and exposed limbs. The tide is rapidly flowing out through rivers to the sea, leaving our dinghy exposed on the ever growing beach. We are like castaways. Salt caked and leather brown. Our small bottle of water is empty. 

JW and I sit in silence in the sand on this uninhabited island in the Exumas. Tiny resilient seeds and crispy dry leaves whisper as they tumble along the sand, at home in this harsh environment. The only other sounds are far off airplanes and distant speed boats. They try to encroach, to remind us that this reality is small and confined. But it’s ours. And it is wild and it’s free.

It could be a Saturday or a Tuesday. Shiloh is anchored out in the unprotected bay, a huge ocean swell slapping her from side to side. We’ve escaped to the shore for some peace from the incessant rolling. 

We’ve been in the Exumas for 6 weeks. We left the last town two weeks ago. The last ‘proper’ grocery store about 4 weeks ago. We’ve run out of beers and cokes and snacks. Same with eggs and bread. Haven’t seen a fresh vegetable in a while. We are in the land of the scarce.

The Bahamas Telecom network forgot about the northern Exumas as well. But we’ve managed to devise a makeshift system for getting an Internet signal once every few days. Our iphone is double wrapped in ziplock bags, then tied to a keychain float and hoisted up the mast. If we are lucky it finds weak reception and we scramble to answer emails, check in on facebook. Say hello to the real world. And then we sink back into the salty, sun soaked world of islands we love so much.

This is the land of shifting sand that creates works of art daily. Swirls of electric turquoise, emerald green, soft teal, creamy beige. And if you can hike to any vantage point above, the rewards are awe and amazement and a humbling so profound. It floors me daily. This is natural beauty unmatched. White tropic birds with their long ribbon tails swirl above, turning blue over the water with the reflection of the sea, and back to white over land. 

Each island offers something unique – hikes to ancient ruins, bubbling pools to play in between the ocean and rocks.

Earlier today we took kayaks and the SUP and paddled a dense and still mangrove river out to the ocean on an outgoing tide.  

Some days the silence is broken – pierced by the wild whirling jet skis of the mega yacht crowd. From any shoreline you might see, anchored out in the deeper waters, a colossal white or silver multi-million dollar, crew-run floating funhouse for the rich. In this place where nature is king and money is useless, it is a jarring sight. And the huge tenders with their massive outboard engines cut through the waters with disregard, shuttling the privileged owners and guests to-and-fro. Some take over a beach with elaborate umbrella systems, blankets, baskets, neon pink and green beach toys that bob around at the water’s edge, claiming their territory. 

Today it is a convoy of power boats, here to break the silence. Down from Nassau for the weekend; kids, beers, bright toys. The breathtaking beach at the end of the mangrove river is overtaken by bikinis and bellies and exuberant chatter. The decibel level is too high for us. We haven’t been in a crowd forever it seems.

They are friendly enough, one guy in a Blue Jays baseball cap sipping a Labatt Blue he’s brought all the way from Canada. “It’s snowing back home!” he tells me, as his little pink two year old, clad in full body sun-shade armour and a wide brimmed hat that covers his whole face, plays happily in the sand. I can barely hear him. My mind does not compute. Snow? Holiday makers with Canadian beer? It seems absurd. I thought we were castaways in our own little world. I think I wished it so.

But this world, free and wild as it is, must be shared. It must come to an end even for us. One day soon our canned goods will run out too. We will need to make a bank transfer or talk on a phone. My backpack/purse will have to be transformed from a sandy vessel for water, sea shells and sun block, to wallets and cell phones. The real world will call to us and we will have to answer.

But for now intense sun. Salt. Sand. Silence.

Turquoise is a state of mind

The silence is golden. Well it’s pure turquoise actually, pierced only by the tiny far off songs of birds. The boat is still. The air is still. It’s Saturday morning in an unnamed bay on the lee shore of Eleuthera. Shiloh’s anchor is perched and dug in only slightly on a huge undersea rock. For now it’s holding and all is calm.

Yesterday we arrived here and familiarized ourselves with the unyielding inhospitable coral dotted shale that poses as soft sand. In squalls we tried and tried to drop anchor but found it only bounced and dragged along the surface. At the end of our patience the anchor suddenly held. Hard. I dived the clear cool water to confirm it was in. Barely. We prayed for low winds.

We’ve got that. Sweat trickles down my temples. It’s 9 am.

Last night we navigated the rocky unwelcoming shore, leaping up on green slime,  pants wet, shoes thrown ashore, while the boys tried to keep the dinghy from being chewed by the rocks from below. Then they tied it out and waded in. A cruiser’s arrival to the party.

Up the hill at the Buttonwood Reserve, we met the wedding party and the blow up doll from the previous night’s stag. Given our own box of wine and red solo cups, started the night off right.

Music, languages from around the world. Noise. After a golf cart ride across the private undeveloped lands and a visit to the ocean side we arrived back and joined the school bus. Lots more noise.

As we danced in the streets and digested chicken and rice (welcome back to the islands!), I pondered what it meant to be here. From Miami it’s been a two week journey. Ten hour sailing days broken by days of engine repair and frustration, grocery shopping, laundry and a bit of rest. It’s typical. Makes a quick flight sound like a piece of cake. 

Engine repairs in exotic places

Chub Cay Club - a stop en route

The exotic places...

Finding a beer at a local bar - Chub Cay

But this is not a ‘trip’. Not in that ‘get-away-or-to-an-event’ kind of way.

Last night we were explaining our ‘lifestyle’ to some American landlubbers holidaying at the fish fry. They were very curious and animated and said they’d love to do the same ‘one day’. Then as they left us they said “Enjoy your trip!”. Oh well. It’s difficult to find a point of reference. What we do is odd. It doesn’t fit in a box. It doesn’t follow the prescribed life of work - get paid – get a well deserved holiday – go back to work. We’ve been out here three years now. When will our ‘trip’ become something else?

It’s true that it’s very difficult to make plans. This wedding has been a destination, a deadline looming for weeks and because the weather is our master and commander, we are helpless in a way land lubbers couldn’t possibly understand. We are now less than 200 miles from Miami but it has taken two full weeks and with that life experiences, good and bad.

But we are back in the Bahamas. And that means turquoise. And that makes me happy.

Current Cut - pushing against 5 knots of current through a narrow cut -and THIS view

Did I mention turquoise?

Tomorrow we will be at a barefoot wedding on the beach. We will sleep on clear water and count the coral heads below us under the full moon. We might wake to gale force winds and have to reanchor in the dark, in rain, after arriving back from an all day party. These things are sobering and at all times possible. But mornings like this make it all worthwhile.

The silence is golden. No city sounds, no rush to be anywhere. No slush and sleet and soul sucking cold. As the sweat trickles down my spine. Turquoise. YES.

A serenade to the beauty, the decay, the vastness and the diversity that is the Bahamas

A cacophony of birds serenades, and the warm sun pokes at my shoulder through the cabin hatch, waking me to yet another magnificent Bahamas scene.

Shiloh sits, eerily still in mirrored glass water, if there wasn’t a depth meter to say otherwise, I’d be convinced we’re on terra firma. We’re surrounded by pine trees and the smell of a campfire. I feel as though we’ve been transported to a Canadian lake, only if I dip just one toe in this luke warm water, I’ll know different.

This is Port Lucaya, an unplanned stop for us, and yet another one of Bahamas surprises. Highly developed with many marinas, duty free shops, cruise chips and their thousands of pasty pink skinned, camera happy passengers. It's a change, and like Nassau, a hub of human activity among a largely uninhabited set of semi-tropical isles.

The landscapes are changing, the birds are different. We have moved north. For us, this is the end of the Bahamas. Our last stop before hitting the gulf stream and Florida’s east coast. I can’t believe it really. Two months ago we arrived in sweltering Mayaguana at the southern most end of the Bahamas, to a desolate little settlement. Since then we have visited thousands of worlds within themselves. So many unique little gems with indescribably blue waters, turquoise reflecting on the clouds above. A few with tiny, friendly populations, but many, many with none. Places that feed your soul. 

It’s been a whirlwind tour of opposites. Of islands grouped together by colonial conquest. Places that are beautiful or troubled in their own right. Islands in the ocean, like us. 

From weeks of no shops, no internet, no other human contact in the Exumas, to huge supermarkets and bustling casinos. We’ve been screaming down adrenaline gushing water slides in the opulence of Atlantis resort. 

The Bahamas can’t be described. Many have tried. It’s beautiful, it’s amazing. Some of the islands belie secrets of an opulent past, where the rich made their playgrounds. In their place now, are decaying, crumbling buildings, nature quickly reclaiming their territory. Norman island, the former private fortress of infamous cocaine dealer Carlos Lehder is one of them. It really happened and wasn’t just a scene in Johnny Depp’s movie Blow. And we were there, crunching through the dead leaves that line the floors of the old rooms, imagining the parties and the killings. 

And there are so many ‘almost developments’ – places where visions and dreams were half built – marinas, hotels, huge mansions – all left for dead. Investment lost, lives changed forever. As a transient on the sea sailing past, we can only imagine the stories that surround each place.

And the next day, surrounded only by warm blue waters and sting rays and turtles and white sand beaches -you pinch yourself and wonder whether all the rest was an illusion.

This is the ‘off season’ better known as the hurricane season where the cautious leave this part of the world, holiday cottages, condos and boats all locked up and stored away for the dangerous season, while summer awaits back home in the US or Canada. It means we’ve had so much of these places to ourselves. The only boats in an anchorage, the only ones swimming in a blue hole, the only patrons at a rare bar/restaurant up the chain. It’s been our own paradise and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the hustle and bustle of tourist season at all.

Face to face with an 80 pound grumpy faced grouper in a natural aquarium,  swimming along with a graceful sting ray, sand combing with ancient dragon-esque iguanas, catching a flourescent, majestic dorado for supper setting up a ‘braai’ on our own island for the night, watching the flaming sun sink down into the ocean on another night in paradise…. These are the memories I’ll carry away from the Bahamas. A magical and largely unspoiled place. A place of dreams and a glimpse of times gone by. 

But it’s time now for even us stragglers to head out of the hurricane zone, leaving behind the grumpy groupers, the lobsters and parrot fish. The turquoise clouds to build up with weather fronts, for mother nature to rip through this chain of paradise for another season… 

We’ll sail out of Port Lucaya, with her blocks of closed up condos, and bid farewell for now to an enigma. The wonderful Bahamas. And off to a whole new adventure – America by sea!

Seven Days at Sea

In households around the western world, eggs were painted in pastels and hidden, cheap chocolate animals in foil were unwrapped and stuffed into the mouths of babes, and the great bunny’s name was evoked. In churches globally, the sermons were doled out, same as last year and the year before…  the institution of Easter was being observed.

Yet we missed it. We were on this planet in an entirely different realm for the past week. Land and society and all it’s rules and celebrations, comforts and conveniences were a distant memory. Left on a shore as we pulled out of the bay for our longest ocean passage to date.

Day 1: Between the squalls that pile up in the sky in so many shades of black and grey and cobalt, there are the other colours. We are between sky and ocean, and the colours are everything. Periwinkle, robin’s egg blue, muted royal blue, true turquoise, ice mint, and indigo sea below. Sunset splashes the sky with peach and fuschia and finally a rich purple before dipping us all into complete darkness.

Day 2: I’ve watched the sunrise on an indigo abyss. Our crew is getting into the groove of a moving home, sleeping, sitting watch, sleeping, sitting watch… our huge rainbow spinnaker is all puffed up, proudly pulling us along. It’s midday and we’re all awake and taking it in. The ocean lies around us, undulating and powerful, and then it happened. Three sets of eyes behold the beauty of a whale, breaching. Her massive body completely airborne. A mammoth ballet. It was a secret viewing, one of nature’s gifts. My heart sang. Sailing is amazing and this is why. 

Day 4: I’m bracing myself aboard, the thrashing seas lifting and dropping Shiloh, though her chain and anchor somehow manage to keep us in one place, against the 30 knot gale that has blown incessantly since we arrived at the first sight of land, this tiny desolate mound of rock and sand, two days ago. I pick at the crusty weeping salt scars that cover the boat and squint over at the little island, so close yet so far away. My legs long to walk, to stretch, to feel that warm sand but we cannot get into the dinghy in the waves, and ashore the surf is building and crashing violently. No chance. Haven’t been able to cook in days, each step aboard is an exercise in balance and strategic grabbing of walls and surfaces… yet still, I am bruised. It’s been rough. It’s still rough. We settle down to watch a movie as the ferocious elements bash us from all angles…

Day 5: Trudging through deep soft sand, my legs ache and burn and it’s a sweet pain. Awoke in the morning to a glass surface. Mother nature’s anger is gone and in it’s place a breathtaking beauty and an invitation to the beach.

Our flotilla, like insects in a jar in the grubby hands of a curious child, we’d been plucked up and tossed around for days, falling about each other in a tiny container, and then we were dumped out on land. We scattered. Running, kicking, exploring our new surroundings and spreading out. Bliss.

We walked most of the island that day. Dodging little cacti, picking up shells, kicking up the sad signs of civilization – plastic bottles and single shoes, washed ashore, leaving their stories with far off people. We climbed the hill and listened to the fish eagle’s sermon atop his broken lighthouse perch. 

Day 7: We are in a 65 mile wide shallow swimming pool. It is flat and as clear as the air, with a turquoise hue. We sailed the deep channel across to tiny Fish Cay at the edge of the main Caicos bank of the Turks & Caicos. After one night we decided to set off into the middle of the shallows and drop anchor. The closest land is at least 20 miles away but the water below us, no deeper than the deep end of a suburban pool. It glistens and shines under the sun. And we are awoken by dolphins. This is as close as our world can get to perfection. Beauty. The smile becomes internal. You glow. You haven’t seen other people or a building or a wifi signal for a week. And it doesn’t matter. It is nothing. 

And we begin the last leg of this passage – we head toward relative civilization, toward immigration formalities and stores and restaurants and bars and other people. To the Internet. But not before we soak in these last few hours on the bow of the boat. Legs swinging over the edge, sun on our shoulders, Shiloh’s hulls cutting through the serenity. Orange starfish dotting the vast sandy bottom, sting ray, nurse shark, all greeting us on this surreal trip.

With extreme caution we use the age old method of eyeball navigation through the coral bommies and patches of reef, and make our way into Southside Marina anchorage. Our depth metre reads zero and we are practically aground it’s so shallow. But now we must turn to earthly concerns. This part of the journey is over.

On shore, the immigration and customs officers are called and the flotilla crews are buried in ipads and laptops. We complete check-in around a picnic table in the gazebo and bid farewell to the officers, who’ve recommended tomorrow’s fish fry and a visit to Boogaloo’s while we’re here. In the evening there is a cruiser potluck and so it begins - the overly friendly interaction characteristic of sailors who know the other side, the world out there with no one else. No passports or paperwork, no crowded malls or Google references. A world of wind and waves, a world without Easter.