Cul de Sac

After a week in the Staniel Cay area and the expensive stop at the Sampson Cay Marina, we were ready to fly the coop. We had been watching the weather waiting for a wind that would take us south. All week the weather man had been saying Thursday would be a good day until we awoke on Wednesday, suddenly, today (2/20) was the best day. It took us several hours to get prepared for the sail and we finally departed at 9:30 with close to 50 miles to go.

Our planned Bahamas adventure included travelling south to George Town, spending some time there and then working our way back north. George Town is a major cruising destination, known as a kid spot and a major provisioning stop, so the plan was to restock with fresh food and allow Anna and Finn to have some play time with someone other than Mom and Dad.

We headed for the cut and exited with four other boats that had all got the same message. We knew one of the boats from our time at Vero Beach and felt comfortable with our company. The wind was a bit lighter than we had anticipated and a little further out of the south. We ended up having to tack to keep sea room and realized fairly early in the day we definitely would not make it before dark, even with strengthening winds. We had three options. Pull in somewhere short of George Town, sail around or hove-too all night, or enter the harbor in the dark. I was definitely voting for the pull in somewhere short of George Town but Bob was afraid we would get stuck there with a forecast of long-term southerly winds. That mental checklist would just never feel complete if we did not make it to George Town. We kept going and pulled into Elizabeth Harbour, George Town late in the evening.  

We now have a great laptop navigation program that allowed us to stay right in the channel and as we pulled around towards town, we were puzzled by a haze of white lights. We both realized about the same time that it was the glow of 500 anchor lights! What an amazing, and slightly strange, sight. We found an anchor spot quite easily, considering the number of boats, and fell asleep, exhausted. We were still quite tired on Thursday morning but determined to do the George Town thing.

A nice voice came on the radio slightly before 8 and told us to listen to channel 72 for the morning radio net. We diligently switched the channel and listened in. The first announcement came on, a nice southerly gentleman talking about soft ball. Suddenly, people started jumping in and making comments, whispering and even making animal sounds. We were puzzled and a little bit shocked; all went downhill when the speaker became aware of the hecklers and called them a bad name. We took it all in stride and when they called for new boats in the harbor to announce themselves; Bob even piped in and mentioned we had two kids looking for playmates. We had a nice call from another kid-boat filling us in on the afternoon fun spots and inviting Anna and Finn to join them at the beach.

We never met our nice radio-caller, but we did meet two very nice families at the beach. Unfortunately we ended up leaving early when our late-night caught up with us. After the overwhelming George Town - Day 1, we spent the next day on the boat, radio off, recovering.

We finally came out of hiding and began to explore the area again, a little more cautiously then on Day 1. We had a great hike, explored some beaches, made it to town for food, water and fuel and even sought out one of the families we met on the beach for an 8-year-old-girl play date aboard SV Chinook from Montana!

The highlight of our trip to George Town was meeting a nice French couple that currently reside in Norway. I had seen the Norwegian flag on their boat and then ran across them at the beach. I approached them and immediately got into a great conversation which we decided to continue that evening over pizza. We quickly learned that much of our planned route has already been done by them and they plan to travel up through Maine in the spring. We hope to meet them there when they pass through and in Trondheim in August after they have returned home. They told the story of our meeting much more eloquently (in French) on their blog. http://lolonnois.blogspot.com/2013/02/vol-de-nuit.html

After five days in George Town, some good playtime under our belts, and a south wind blowing, we headed back north. After three months of heading south, it felt strange to be heading back. The good news is we have about seven weeks until out planned departure and no real specific obligation until April. So we are going to go where the wind blows, let down our hair, and finally relax…at least a little.