High Seas to Leaf Cay

We left George Town on Wednesday June 1st.  The weather was pretty windy but we never let that stop us before.  As we made it out of the harbor the waves got bigger and bigger and were crashing on us.  It just reminded us of some bad days on the Chesapeake so we kept going.

Soon the waves were over our head (i'd guess 10 feet) and the boat was pitching side to side hard.  We had everything inside tied off good so that was no worries but it still didn't feel good on the boat.  I would steer into the bigs waves slightly to prevent the harsh rocking.  Nomy began to cry as the waves crashed on deck and got us wet.

It started raining and Christine, who was reading her e-reader, got up to put it and our camera inside.  Just then a huge wave smacked us on the side and threw Christine to the lifelines.  The force of the jerk sent her e-reader flying out of her hand and into the deep blue sea.  It was a scary moment as I thought she was going over too, but luckily the netting and life lines kept her in.  Christine was very upset about losing her second e-reader, that we just got, as we both held on through the rest of the huge waves.

We made it back to Normans Cay, where we anchored on the way down, but took a left over to Leaf Cay this time.  After much debate we decided we would go back to George Town to get some more books since the e-reader was gone, have another under water camera shipped through dhl this time, and just hang around our town that we missed already.

The ocean had different plans.  The next day as we headed back to GT the waves were somehow bigger.  The narrow channel to enter the ocean had huge waves breaking right on our bow and the boat was shooting to the moon and then crashing down.  We made it through there but after about 5 miles of motoring the engine slowed and then died.  This wasn't a spot to be working on the engine down below as the boat was still pitching with each monster wave (they looked closer to 15 feet now), so we opened up the genoa (our front sail, our favorite sail) and kept moving along.  We couldn't aim south to George Town though because the wind was in our face so we turned around and headed back to Leaf Cay.

This actually turned out pretty nice.  Since we were now sailing about 6-7 knots with just the genoa up instead of motoring we felt more in tune with the waves.  We crashed into less of them and seemed to drift easily over them with the wind.  The scary part of sailing back through the narrow channel and to our anchorage turned out to be a piece of cake and soon we were spinning the boat into the wind to drop the genny and toss out the anchor where we had started a few hours before.

At anchor I found an oil leak and tightened it up and the engine came back alive.  But now we knew we didn't need that dumb engine. The winds are at our backs now heading north...

Friday we decided to rest and check out the Leaf Cay beach.  Back to island living!

We were greeted by the funny green and pink iguanas.  There were only four as opposed to the tons at Allens Cay and these guys were a little more brave.

They came right up to us and we found some near by fruit to feed them.  Soon they were eating a buffet out of our hands.

The beach itself was nice and we did some exploring to look for sea beans.

We wanted to circumnavigate the island but the winds were strong on the other side and it was raining too.  We cut through and then had to do rock hiking to get back to our boat

We found a small beach with the largest conch garden/graveyard we've ever seen.  These are all conch shells and there was more out of camera

At one point I wanted to walk through the water to get back to our dinghy but I'm glad we didn't because we saw a nurse shark swimming around.

This is the tiniest hermit crab we've found!

It's good to be back with nature

Nomy is more of a hotel cat.

George Town Exumas Bahamas, Virtual Tour

After the last blog with the lack of pictures we realized that we hadn't taken many pictures of this wonderful town we've called home for 6 1/2 weeks.  So here is George Town in Pictures..

Our view of the town from our boat

To get to the dinghy dock we have to go under this narrow bridge that creates a super fast current. Going in is like hitting a booster in Mario Cart, and coming out we go about .0001 mph while waves crash into us.  It's fun every time!

Here's the cruiser parking lot. Its June 1st so most cruisers have left, but the dock used to stay very crowded

Our first spot is the newly founded Bikini Bottom which serves great food, ice cream, and is a local hang out. The owner was very friendly.  From here you can pull the Exuma Market Grocery store internet.

Which means next in line is the grocery store, Exuma Markets.  The mail boat comes on Tuesday so Wednesday is the best day to see the store packed with food.

This lil hut didn't have a name but the guy here sells bbq pork, chicken or ribs with macaroni and corn for $10 and it was the best we found around!  It was so hard to walk by as her was constantly grilling.  That should be illegal advertising because it smelled so good!

This is also where Darren the peanut guy hangs out and you can get a bag of roasted peanuts for $1

Next is the park where we spent many nights.  The school kids come here after school to hang out.

Across the street is Top to Bottom which has a lot of marine stuff and will help you ship stuff in via DHL.  They also have cheap movies on dvd.

Then come Two Turtles which is the other place besides Eddies Edgewater (on the other side of the lake) that the locals hang out.  They have a cool tiki bar and a big movie screen against the building wall to play sports.

Across from Two Turtles is a straw market with lots of home made gifts

Then comes the quaint library.  For $3 per couple you can rent books here and the selection is pretty good.  The only downside is that they are only open Mon-Fri 10-12

We saw this guy with a cage full of land crabs.  They were bulky and green and very creepy looking compared to our Maryland Blue Crabs 

Another great place was Pets Place which offers internet and food and usually had baked goods for us to snack on

A walk down the one way street

Theres our boat from the view on top of that narrow bridge

Down the street the other way from the dinghy dock is J&K which sells computer stuff and some groceries but most importantly frozen juice treats for 30 cents which we loved and got almost everyday on shore

Here is our view of the other side of the harbor, Stocking Island

We have left George Town and are making our way back up the Exumas chain, blog to come.

Good Bye George Town, Heading Back North

Well we have been here in George Town for just over 6 weeks.  We have made this our temporary home and are quite comfortable.  We haven't been too adventurous lately but we are enjoying ourselves.

We still read a lot.  Christine even wrote a 42,000 word book herself and is working on her second book.  I have been practicing the guitar everyday and play Star Craft 2, an online video game at night.

For exercise we have been swimming laps around the boat.  I can't do many but Christine usually does about 25-30 while I lay out on the pink floaty :)

Our nightly routine has been to go to shore and plug in at a picnic table at the local play ground and play online till 2 am.  We our really gonna miss this view.

We finally had our first engine problem in the Bahamas.  In preparation of our departure, I changed our primary fuel filter, secondary fuel filter, oil filter, and both oils.  Of course after this the engine wouldn't start.  I thought it was a battery problem since our batteries are dead.  So we charged up the starter battery with the solar panels and it still wouldn't work.  Luckily while we were at the park another cruiser asked to use our computer and we got to talking about the engine and he offered to come check it out.

He was a cool Frenchmen named Franswa (sorry if its misspelled) aboard French Summer and after an hour of trying we finally got the engine up and running.  In the process we learned how to use the compression levers, ether starting fluid, and to bleed the fuel injectors.  That's the only good thing about a troublesome engine is we always learn something.  It is rarely the same problem twice.

And as a result of this we had our FIRST boat dinner guest!  We invited Franswa over for spaghetti and garlic bread and he brought over a cheese and bread platter that was much better than the main dish.  He has a fridge and water maker so her even brought over cold water!  Yes that is a luxury on Bright Eyes.

We ate and talked into the night and were glad to finally host someone.  It also gave us a reason to clean up the cockpit some which it needed.

Lastly we'ed like to warn anyone against the use of the Bahamas Post Office.  Before we got here in early April my mom sent us an underwater camera via the Post Office.  Some people warned us that it could take 3 months to get here and I didn't believe them.  Well it's been almost 2 months and we can't wait around any longer so hopefully they will return to sender.

We did have success with Christine's e-reader which was sent through DHL to Top to Bottom (a marina store).  It arrived in 5 days.

So we will just buy a disposable underwater camera in Staniel Cay to take Thunderball Grotto pics.

Sorry for the lack of pictures.  We haven't done anything too impressive recently.  Here's a cool cloud we saw :)

 But it is time to finally start heading back north towards the US.  We plan to spend June revisiting the Exumas.  Then we will meet my mom in Eleuthera in July.  Then we will visit the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama Island on our way back to Florida In August.  So there is still plenty of exploring to do and we are going to try to put our kayaks to use more!

Stocking Island has a lot of Beaches

So we finally left George Town...only to hop across the harbor and spend some time at Stocking Island.  

Stocking Island was THE social spot for the last few months but most of the cruisers have headed either north or south after the regatta.  Which leaves it open for us to explore.

When we first came into Elizabeth Harbor we noticed a monument atop of a large hill.  Our quest was to get up there and check out the view.

But first lets relax some more...

We anchored at Monument Beach the closest we've even been to the beach, about a 30 foot swim to shallow water!

Hamburger Beach... Guess what we ordered?

And we added our name to the many cruisers before us.

Next we visited Volleyball Beach to see the famous Chat n Chill

Our home isn't so far away.

We saw a sting ray swimming around the shallow beach.  Someone told us it was actually a manta ray and that people feed it hamburgers.  So I decided now was the time to get over our fear of rays and treaded out there saying "come here big fella"

It swam right up to me and then turned but I was able to pet it a few times.  It was a lot slimier than I thought it would be but still really cool.

We are 00 miles to Paradise the signs says.

Chat n Chill is where a lot of the cruisers would play volleyball but there were no games going on today, just an expensive pig roast

Nala is better at relaxing than we are 

It was now time for the mountain climb.  The first day we got lost through several "paths" and had to turn around and get directions at the Hamburger joint.  Once we knew how to get there it wasn't so bad, about ten minutes of steep hiking.

One portion even had a rope to help you climb up.

But boy was the view from the top worth it!

Our boat is the furthest left closest to the beach.

We don't know the point of this thing but there was a bench that couples carved their names into that got engaged up there.

Next we found another trail that was like a safari and came out onto the other side of the island.

We were rewarded with a beautiful beach

In regards to the last blog our house batteries are officially dead but two of them will at least let us use the inverter through them during the day.  It's kinda funny because we only get power if the sun is direct so as we feel a cloud go over the inverter beeps and we have to turn things off.  But then the suns returns a minute later and we have power again.  We do this routine several times a day if trying to charge the laptops.  

Unrelated since we gave up on the coffee maker awhile ago but Christine now makes coffee by tying a rubber band around a coffee filter over a cup and just slowly pours boiling water in there until she has a cup.  It takes awhile but gets the job done!

Luckily there is enough power somehow to turn on led lights and half powered fans at night.

In other news I finally cut off the goldilocks to Christine's dismay.

Before

After

 but we left a blond tipped rat tail for fun :)

See Christine in the glasses?

We did not have any internet at Stocking Island so after a week we came back to George Town!  We will stay here till the end of May and then really be leaving as we head back north...