How to spend $50 on lunch

1) Wake up and cook a big breakfast. 
2) Serve a large amount for yourself, and a decent amount for your girlfriend.
3) Wait for the girlfriend to claim she is full, then eat her leftovers... (by this time you should be very full)
4) Wait one hour, your girlfriend will say that she is hungry... Tell the girlfriend to get ready to go out to eat at a bar close to the boat...
5) Wait one hour while the girlfriend gets ready.
6) Get on the dinghy and go to the bar.
7) Wait a few minutes until the server chooses to acknowledge you.
8) Order one item to share among both of you, remember, you are still full from breakfast, and she seems to get full quickly so one item should suffice.
9)  Wait 30 min, then observe as the staff in the bar get into a violent fight which prompts you to cancel your order and leave before you become a witness of something really bad.
10) Walk for an hour to check out some cool things near the bar since you may not visit this area for the rest of the day.
10.5) Think of the grouper you orderd, but cancelled...
11) Dinghy over to the next bar where you already know the service is bad, but food prices are OK.
12) Order two sandwiches and one side, since you are now hungry after the walk and the thought of food.
13) Wait 45min and ask the server why your order hasn't arrived. The server will be back a few minutes later saying that the food will take 5 more minutes... Proceed to cancel this order.
14) Walk to the conch shack and order two conch salads at $10 each.
15) Eat the conch salad and pray that this meager amount of food will make your hunger go away.
16) Wait 30 minutes.
17) Realize that you are now even more hungry than before the conch salad.
18) Dinghy up to the closest restaurant and order two full meals, a soda, and a beer.
19) Wait 30 minutes until the food arrives and then devour the whole thing like there is no tomorrow.
20) Order the check and pay $30.
21) In order to cope with your loss, write up a blog entry about how to spend $50!

Georgetown - cold front

This afternoon, as predicted by all weather forecasting services, the weather turned ugly.  We had moved to a different anchorage a couple of days ago in anticipation of this stuff... However, the wind direction that we expected is not quite what we are experiencing, so we are bouncing a bit, and we have a rocky shore downwind of us.  I do, however, feel comfortable about my 22# danforth with 40" 3/8 chain holding us well.  The wind is not expected to blow too hard for very long, so if this keeps up, we will move to a different spot tomorrow.

Yesterday we came across our friend, Guillermo, a Colombian living in the Bahamas, and he introduced us to Clementina and Francesco.  We invited Clementina and Francesco over to the dinghy drift and had an awesome time.  A dinghy drift is an activity where many dinghies tie up together and simply drift around.  While we did not drift (there was an anchor involved), we did tie up almost 50 dinghies! It seemed that every dinghy brought food to share, and while we didn't do just that, we did bring about 5 gallons of rum punch which made us one of the most popular dinghies in the drift.  Lorena was acting as bartender and it seemed that she was pulling one of Jesus' miracles off, she served what seemed like hundreds of cups (many of those for herself) and we didnt run out of rum punch, in fact, I am enjoying one right now!

Georgetown - mutiny on Seas the Moment

Georgetown is famous in the cruising world as 'chicken harbor', because many sailors chicken out at this point and don't make it any farther, instead, they turn back north, with their dreams shattered, or with some excuse to not do it this season...

I guess I am not immune to this probability as my first mate has recently decided that she will not go any farther with me, she is, however, willing to cruise back to Miami if I'd like.  This has put me in a tough situation, should I find new crew and go forward? Or should I take the easy way out and chicken out at chicken harbor.

I have also decided/realized that going down the the thorny path to the eastern caribbean will be difficult and expensive, so if I do choose to carry on, it will have to be through the windward passage and down to panama, with potential stops at Cuba, Jamaica, Providencia, San Andres, etc.  This route is laden with long passages in the full force of the trades, albeit behind the beam, which should make for some good sailing... The problem with this route though, is that I have not yet grown big enough balls to do this singlehanded, plus, I have no paper charts for this area...

We'll soon see what happens!

Georgetown - still here

I've been having a few electrical issues here in Georgetown that have been keeping me busy the last couple of days.  George from Bonnie Gale has been helping me out with this...

We have also spent plenty of time with Matt and Austin from Kokoi, they are truly living the life!

Check them out at
http://www.goneglobaladventures.com/

Georgetown!

Finally! After nearly six weeks, we have reached 'chicken harbor', will we become yet another statistic and turn back? Will we continue south as planned? Who knows... All we know is that we are here and some serious weather is headed our way.  Last night we anchored off Stocking Island, but this morning we moved into the redshanks anchorages which offer phenomenal protection from wind and seas from all directions.

We have met up with a few buddy boats already, this place is just absolutely packed with sailboats, I think there are about 300 currently in the harbor... They've kind of formed a community of sorts, where goods and services are exchanged over the radio, and activities are planned and broadcast for all to participate.  This kind of reminds me of the movie 'The Beach', just for a different age group (think AARP).

Anyway, we will be here for a few days and we are moving back to Stocking Island once the weather permits...

Exuma Yacht Club

Elizabeth Harbour

Great Guana Cay - Exumas

We spent a couple of nights at Big Majors Spot, next to Staniel Cay.  So far, Staniel Cay is the most picturesque town we've seen... the small town was clean, most houses were brightly painted, and it had beautiful beaches as well as a nice hill with an awesome view.

I caught a lionfish there, and we had it for dinner... tasty! plus, we were helping the environment!  I did manage to lose my spear tip as part of this whole thing... so that wasn't as sweet.

Anyway, we picked up the anchor in the morning on Saturday, and we sailed towards Black Point at Big Guana Cay.  The wind was a bit stronger than expected and we found ourselves sailing on a close reach at 6kts sustained!  I don't know how Lorena manages to make the boat sail so fast!  Some boats that came in that afternoon reported gusts up to 30kts while sailing... I don't think we had that much wind, but I do think we had about 20kts of wind!

Black Point Settlement is also a very interesting place, for the first time in weeks, we actually see regular people with regular families hanging around... some of the other spots are mostly fishing-oriented and you don't see children or elders... This town has a very strategic harbour and it is very cruiser-friendly, it has several places with free internet, it has free water, free garbage disposal, dinghy dock, etc

Yesterday we spent all day on the boat doing nothing!  The wind was howling and we didn't feel like doing much, so we read, slept, ate, read some more, chatted on the phone, etc... it is nice to not do anything once in a while!

We've seen a couple of boats that we had seen before in different harbours, so it is nice to see some familiar faces around...

Hopefully at some point this week, we will be sailing to Cave Cay, and out into Exuma Sound towards Elizabeth Harbour.  This may be the last spot with good internet before Elizabeth Harbor, so we may not post anything for a few days.

On a different note, the GoPro camera stopped working properly at Staniel Cay, so we put it in a bag full of rice and we are going to try it again today... preliminarily, it seems to be working well... so we haven't been able to post any good pics on this blog.

Exumas

After 15 long days we finally left Nassau Harbour.  Nassau is a very nice place, and we had a good time, but we really wanted to move on.  We had a great time with Bill, Regina, and Matt from Meant 2B, and we met some other interesting characters along the way, but we needed go...

On Tuesday, Jan 5, we left Nassau in the morning around 8:30 and we anchored in the lee of Highbourne Cay around 4PM.  It was an awesome sail, at first, we were motorsailing since it was a bit to close to the wind to sail, but after some time, the wind shifted just enough for us to sail close-hauled engineless!  the wind was light, about 11-15 kts, and we were doing about 5+ kts! for some reason not normal to our boat, we were going faster than all the boats in our vicinity (about 4 boats, all of them longer) and we soon left them behind...

Some time after having anchored, Quiet Time anchored next to us, we had met one of the crew in Nassau so we hung out for some drinks on our boat.

Since the weather was holding up, the next morning we decided to weigh anchor and continue south towards Warderick Wells, we picked up a mooring there, and stayed for the night.

The next morning the weather was still cooperating so we decided to leave the mooring and head for Staniel Cay... we motorsailed most of the time given that the wind was on our nose and we needed to make long tacks... anyway, we anchored in Big Majors Spot, fed the pigs, explored the beach, went over to Staniel Cay, rescued a loose dinghy, etc... we might stay in this anchorage for a couple of days...

We also saw Moonshadow, a boat that we met in Key Biscayne, then in Bimini, and now in Big Majors Spot...

A front is expected to come through this weekend and the area around Staniel Cay and Big Majors Spot seems to offer a number of anchorages for the clocking winds, so we will see how long it takes us to check out of this spot...

By the way, the last couple of posts have been written from the boat at anchor while sharing the 3G data connection from my phone (thanks Olga!) with a hotspot application... if/when I get real WIFI, I will add a post with some videos...