Month: March 2020

Since our yard times are getting more and more dialed in with each passing year, our enjoyable time allotment for our last few days has grown to allow for a proper festive exit. This year we hustled to button Chickadee up while the girls were entertained with new friends on walks, in pools, exploring mangroves, and rolling in the waves. We adults were also able to spend time with new friends, and had the chance to relax just the littlest bit in an effort to stem the tide of anxiety pouring out of every news outlet.

As a very worthy assist this time around, we stumbled onto/into a rental cottage that made me ache to leave behind this morning. Built in the 50s or 60s and funky with a very Hereshoff feel, its high-glossed Abaco pine on open studs was only one piece of the appeal. We fell asleep listening to the waves crash ‘at our feet’, and I got to sit amidst the casuarinas on the dune deck this morning to watch the sunrise. To really seal the deal, it came with a ‘pet’, and after bonding over our shared love of Tostitos and Doritos, he was christened Wild Bobby and was swiftly added to our menagerie of loved ones.

What a whirlwind to end with. While I can say with complete honesty that a two week quarantine upon arrival home is the greatest gift I can imagine (Heck! Let’s make it three, and let’s enforce it every year!), everything else is just so overwhelming. Data points upon data points, news of dwindling grocery supplies, editorialized shaming for just about every activity mentioned (including travel, so let us have it, world!), the sheer quantity of all of it coming at us from every direction. That cottage on the beach never felt such adoration.

We’re on the ferry to Marsh Harbour now, having just started our northward climb into the unknown. What was brilliantly pointed out to me by Ruach yesterday are the parts we DO know: cruising has prepared us so well for what so many seem to already be struggling with. Spending confined, extended time with your kids? Check. Homeschooling? Check. Making healthy meals together with limited resources? Check. I will say, the toilet paper was never an issue on the boat, so that might be our challenge? Hmm. Still kind of doubt it.

So. A goodbye to our sweet Chickadee:

Thank you for another joyful season, and enjoy your rest. Stay strong for hurricane season, old girl; we know you’re tough, but no more storm ‘kisses’ if you can help it. (A non-profit shop on Hope Town had things stamped “Kissed by Dorian”, to which we chuckled that our poor boat had been not kissed, but instead kicked in the face..)

Once again you gave us a winter of invaluable time with our girls, new adventures, comfortable routines and restorative time away. We miss you dearly and will use the memories and the countdown to 2021 to get us through our most chaotic moments.

Ever grateful,

SALVio

Putting toilet paper needs and the fact that the world seems to have turned on its head and gone completely bananas since we left aside, we are working our last week aboard hard. Though it sounds as though we’ll have plenty of extra family time once home, given the school cancellation, we’re as always, squeezing every last drop of Chickadee goodness into our time here.

After our night in Guana we rounded the Whale very easily with only gentle swells, and had a beatifully lazy sail up to Manjack Cay. Home to only a handful of people, it has a number of great beaches on all sides and a weaving, winding mangrove system in its center, perfect for dinghy exploration.

We’ve paddle boarded, kayaked, visited the ‘stingray beach’, where pre-Dorian a local dive charter would stop and feed the stingrays, now trained to come ‘running’ when they hear an engine. It’s a terrible thing, really, but I will admit to loving the interaction, prescribed or not. Since their ‘food training’ hasn’t been in affect for six months, our dinghy’s hum only called a couple of rays, and they were game to bump into our feet and let the girls run their hands down their smooth backs, even though we were decidedly without fish to offer.

We spent a little time on the ocean beach, where the baby Portugese Man-O-War seem to be more and more often these days. We’ve learned from [admittedly stupid] experimenting that the baby babies haven’t developed their nemaocysts enough to pack any punch. Let’s hope it’s a gradual acquisition for them, as we continue to check larger sizes! (Hey! It’s more exciting than hording tp!)

We’re on to Green Turtle today, to sit on a dock and start the decommissioning process before we haul on Monday. Only as I type am I realizing that last night was our last ‘on the hook’. Ugh. I struggle to not keep rehashing the pain of the ‘lasts’, but… it’s kind of painful. It’s a crazy juxtaposition every year- the list of things I need to do that have to wait until I’m home is growing in a way that is now truly distracting, but sheesh, to turn this page and go so definitively into the other, less-floaty and more-chaotic version of our lives? Add COVID-19 to the mix, and… ROUGH.

As always, the thrill of marina living with the girls is a fun distraction, and they’ll be able to paddle and play in White Sound and at the Green Turtle Club’s pool, so their good spirits will help to keep ours as high as possible.

For now though, as always, food. Saturday breakfast must commence!

Because I begin and end each day of my life, no matter the living arrangements, with my stomach and the planning of things with which to fill it, I thought I’d share some details of our winter food. This year is different than years’ past, since our provisioning was not done at the always-stocked and usually lovely various Publix along the Stuart corridor, but rather very piecemeal in small shops and groceries over the course of a dozen little islands. Because the organizational nerd within likes a good list to work off of, I had developed a full provisioning chart, one that would keep us in dry goods, paper and cleaning supplies, toiletries and snacks for two months, only having to shop for meat and produce as our original supplies dwindled. That meant the good portion of a day spent at the grocery store (and nearby liquor store, lest I forget that important piece!), a small fortune spent, up to four carts filled (that was my max cart-age one year, I believe), and the rest of the day organizing it and stowing it. Our provisioning fits and starts this year mean that we never really stuffed our holds like we’re used to. Even when we find ourselves in larger stores, it’s much harder to stockpile things when we’re schlepping by foot from store to dinghy, etc. (Nothing like four grocery carts to the back of a large vehicle for the assist!) The angst it’s given me to not be stuffed to the gills with stores has put a lot into perspective; this is not food insecurity, this is my own semi-neurotic needs not fulfilled. Either that or it’s me, secretly planning to turn away from shore and to be prepared to keep on going…

Meal planning for our dinners, as I loosely define it here, has a lot to do with what produce we have or find, and which meat is closest to the top in the freezer. We use our pressure cooker a lot; it cuts down on our propane usage (stews in 20 minutes!), and now that I’ve honed timings for various cuts of meats and grains so as not to blast them to death, it’s amazingly simple. Less simple is finding something that we all love to eat, but I’ve never been a nice enough mother to be a short order cook: if the kids don’t like what we’re having, they either express discontent and eat it anyway (Lily), or eat two bites and complain about being hungry, which falls on deaf having-just-made-an-acceptable-meal ears (Violet). One day V will get there I’m sure, but this year in particular has been rough. One day she’ll like something, the next she wouldn’t consider it passing her lips. It’s like a rollercoaster over there in her 9 year old brain/stomach experience. 

This many weeks in, Violet is finally onboard (pun not intended, but pretty on point!) with the majority. She’s either resigned herself to keeping any kind of food in her belly, or has finally gotten just tired enough of all of us saying “Just try it! How do you know if you don’t like it if you’ve never even tasted it?” (I’m sure this phrase has never been uttered by any other parents.)

Not to make it falsely sound like we are having new and rare items every day, I should point out that we generally rotate through about ten or twelve meals, with something new thrown in as often as island-side shops allow for variety, which is never that often. Romaine lettuce is something that you really need to get behind if you’re going to spend any time here- it’s the only lettuce usually available. Always a bag of carrots, sometimes a bunch of broccoli, and rarely, if you get there on a maillboat day, cucumbers, peppers, scallions and apples. In Nassau earlier this winter I bought a box of arugula, and was so happy to have a different green that I stuffed handfuls of it into my face three meals a day to ensure I got as much as possible before it wilted away. The girls were like kids in a candy store to see a grocery store again that had a whole produce section. (As always, cheap thrills for SALVio!)

We’ve collected our own little playbook of Chickadee favorites over the years- a collection of recipes we’ve come up with (rosemary skillet flatbread is our favorite), things that are easy to make that we all enjoy, and most importantly, those made of ingredients that we can actually find. 

Now that I’ve written all of that, I’m hungry, naturally, so it’s time to figure out the next meal! 

After our crazy-costly provisioning in High Bourne Cay (eleven dollars for a bag of romaine, anyone?! I mean, there are three heads in there!), we jumped up to Ship Channel Cay, that much closer for ‘takeoff’ on Wednesday. It was an incredible day of sailing, with 12-15 kts almost behind us, but enough of an angle to sail with great speeds. The sweep of shallow enclosing the area to the west of the island of Eleuthera gave us the feeling of sailing alone in a pristine pool; apart from an area of about 15nm of coral head spotting, it was a a vast expanse of 10-20 feet of turquoise waters over white sand, with no land in sight. Really beautiful. We made great time, and instead of our original plan of ducking into Egg Island to sleep and leave early again, we went a bit further to Spanish Wells, an island new to the girls and not visited by Andy and me since 2003. It was a fun shift from the quiet of the Exumas (there were ice cream cones to be had!), but its eerie, sterile perfection hadn’t changed from my first impression all of those years ago. The people couldn’t have been nicer, and the amenities were all one could want, but it somehow still falls short of my Bahamian island interests. But hey, I’m picky, so there’s that!

Our second leg was a longer crossing, from Spanish Wells to the Abacos, crossing the northeastern part of the tongue of the ocean (safe to say it’d be its epiglottis?). Deeper waters meant the hope of a big catch for dinner (and breakfast, and, and…), but we weren’t so lucky. We were lucky enough to be the audience for a large pod of dolphins, who zoomed back and forth with a few leaps for show, for about 20 minutes. Definitely not bottlenose, and we’re leaning toward spinner dolphins based on their wee statures and zippy shows. Species befuddlement aside it was a treat, and they even came back later in the day for an encore.

We made great time once again, though this time motorsailing since the wind was dead behind us. A little wing-on-wing action, the iron genny, and plenty of food to get us through our sixty-seven miles before we picked up a mooring in Hope town yesterday afternoon.

After a sticky night of southerly breezes and a massive rain storm today that filled our water tanks and every available liquid-holding vessel on board, the winds have finally shifted northerly, and it’s almost an instant relief to have the drying effect of cooler, drier air.

We roamed town today after school, and hunkered below for the rest of the day, but we’ll take advantage of our stationary weekend here to explore the rest of Elbow Cay- more golf carting in our future, I do believe!

The Land & Sea Park does wonders for just about everything other than enough service for a post. It’s unfortunate when we have something really pressing, since the pangs of anxiety about not receiving or sending emails and other communications can keep us up at night (how will Lily get her work done on Google classroom, for one?!), but also wonderful in its forced release of a program that binds us up for so many other months of the year. 

Now that we’re planning on passing ‘through’ Highbourne Cay, with its cell tower and full communication potential, we’ll be back in business, so to speak. We’re stopping for a quick but hopefully fairly comprehensive provision, since we’re taking advantage of the upcoming weather window to make the two longer passages north (Exumas to Spanish Wells, and Spanish Wells to the Abacos) back-to-back tomorrow and the day after. No other major food stores in sight for a while, and our larder is getting bare.

Shortly after we cross, a strong front is coming through that is forecasted to blow for days on end, and if we’re still in the Exumas then we’d swiftly dwindle our options for getting back to the Abacos and to the yard in time for our flights home in a few weeks (sniff). Thus our current itinerary. 

Our last days in the park were heavenly, as we have come to expect, and time with Ruach was fleeting but perfect. It felt like such a gift, since we weren’t even sure we’d make it to the Exumas, not knowing what we’d really find when we arrived at the boat in January. The kids slipped into their recognized game patterns and activities, and added a few more to boot. Particularly sweet were their radio communications this year, necessary since we had no service to more-simply text plans and meeting ideas. Their sophistication levels have increased, and they don’t have to be reminded to make contact and then find another channel to chat on. A sweet little Maeve would call out to Chickadee (or vice versa), and then their adorable interactions from there likely captivated anyone in range to also “Up one?”. 

Ruach also made my entire cruising season by bringing Banagrams, a game which I’m in love with, but doesn’t rise to the level of engaging Andy. Blanket spread on the beach, and kids and adults (less the Banagrams party-pooper) would gather around, ‘peel’ing in the sunshine. And most recently, there has been Monk Monk and his (her?) prep for his/her first sleepover. Violet brought Monk Monk, a stuffed monkey from home, and in one of their many creative/craft sessions, Maeve and V thought that he/she should have a ‘to-go’ bag for the big event. Art class yesterday was for sewing a robe (helps make the ‘monk’ part realized, if I do say so myself), a pillow, a blanket, a tote bag with which to carry all of this, and when Ruach came for a goodbye dinner last night, the girls continued with a pocket on the tote to carry a toothbrush, floss, and I’m not even sure what else. 

Yesterday we sailed on a broad reach with 20+kts true, resulting in great speeds and a very pleasant romp for little Chickadee. Since so many of the Exuma islands have broad sand bars sweeping westerly from them for miles, most days include covering three sides of a rough rectangle- getting out into deeper (all things are relative- ‘deep’ means 12 feet) waters, heading north or south to the anchorage’s closest waypoint, and nosing our way back east into the protection of whichever island we land on. The only real downside is ending a gorgeous day’s sail by hammering into weather, soaking the decks just before I need to plunk my butt down on the bow to set the anchor. (Cue: teaching Lily to set the anchor. Devious but brilliant!!)

In all lately, we have stargazed at night from the cockpit, spent countless hours watching the boats moor in the stiff winds and nearly impossible currents of Warderick’s north anchorage, had the surreal pleasure of watching Jimmy Buffet himself paddle board around the anchorage from his boat two moorings over, met plenty of fellow cruisers in the weekly beach pot luck, taught Violet to play cribbage for the even better pleasure of having a favorite game be a full family affair, and revisited our newly-favorite ‘moonscape’ in the sandbars north of Hawksbill. We are leaving the Exumas in 2020 completely sated. 

“Chickadee, standing by on One-Six.”