JOURNEY IS ENDING SOON

I am sitting here in our salon drinking a glass of wine and viewing the Exumas through Doug and Vicki's eyes. We viewed the Exumas through Ben, wife, Sam and friends Jalyn and Tyler when we began our journey in Feb. Now we see the Exumas through Doug and Vicki at the very end of our journey. How time flies but not too fast that we do indeed see how beautiful everything God created with these blue waters. We ventured where we never dreamed we would when we were dreaming 20 years ago. We are blessed to have a catamaran to share our experiences with others. We had four weeks of guests and we are so happy to have them see everything through new eyes everytime.

We are sitting once again at the Atlantis Marina. We thought this would be a great end to our journey. Share this amazing aquarium with Doug and Vicki and go out for a nice dinner tonight. There is so much to see and do here. A great ending to our journey. We will venture to Chub Cay, Bimini and Florida to fly home for Easter.... this is the plan, but weather dictates to us, not a calendar.

We enjoyed Doug and Vicki's visit with seeing everything on the return. Norman's Cay must be our favourite as we did collect sand dollars again. (My mother from Vancouver Island visiting us in Ottawa in April wants some... as any daughter would do, I collected extra). The Boo Boo Hill at the Exuma Land and Sea Park is awesome and got some great pictures.

We are lighter in the water as the scotch, gin, vodka and wine is at a minimum and of course all the canned goods are disappearing. Mind you, the 9 cases of beer are down to a six-pack!!! We provisioned well and I hope I remembered where I did “hide” everything! We ate well the whole time we were here... and I did sure enjoy writing this blog. This is a diary of sorts, but I do know I had to make it PG 14 rating as many do read it now, Americans and Canadians and Germans too! I hope everyone got my sense of humour??

I will use the internet again as we travel to Florida BUT it may not happen until we actually get there. We will keep our catamaran in Stuart, FL, for April and May. We will then travel down end of May to Stuart to move our boat to St. Augustine, FL. This is where we keep it for the summer for hurricane season. It comes out of the water “on the hard”. We “summerize” it so we can leave it and come back in the Fall to work on it again. Mold is always an issue down here so we are investing in a solution to keep mold at bay, so who knows, keep you posted.

At Hawksbill Cay, just another sunny day

 

Shell collecting at Norman's Cay's beaches

Wednesday we had a 80 foot yacht anchor right beside us (literally) here at Rose Island, outside of Nassau. This yacht had about 20 .. 20 year olds and crew members. These younguns were sea dooing, boarding, etc. all around us. Anyone who knows Paul would know this is not a good idea. The poor German sailboat in front of this yacht must have been nervous. Paul called the yacht on the radio when they were “leaving” as they were so close we were nervous! Bigger does not necessarily mean better Captains. Paul has many stories, so if going out for lunch... make it a long one hahahahahah!

The man-made lagoon, Rose Island

Later on Wednesday we motored over to the lagoon. This man-made lagoon was created for the Sheraton Hotel years ago. They wanted to build a huge multi-million dollar resort, but times got hard. So the lagoon and a few excellent docks are in place but no resort. There is one house with a house sitter and two “watch dogs”. The house sitter came along to the dock we docked at. We explained the weather was very windy and we wanted to tie to this dock overnight. We gave him a $20 bill and petted the dogs. I called one Marmaduke as he was huge. We traveled into Nassau this morning and got some more fuel for our journey to Florida.

Vicki and I in our own whirlpool! With cocktail in hand, of course.

My friend the Marmaduke dog at the lagoon, Rose Island

Boat Quote:

On the subject of drinking very old, stale beer found in the bottom of the boat's ice box: “I choose to drink good beer. BUT I refuse to drink no beer!!!!