Preparing to Leave Again

We leave to return to the Bahamas tomorrow. As we prepare to leave again, one of major tasks is prepping a couple of weeks of Echo's dog food.


All of this (along with a bunch of frozen veggies and leftovers from our dinners) has to be prepared and shoved placed into these.


And then Elisha gets to clear out her freezer to make room for the Lion King's meals.

Abaco in February, Part the End

Sunday, March 2: Barefoot Man day! Sunday morning, we had breakfast at Grabbers and then made our way up the hill to Nippers to see Barefoot Man's concert. We started on the beach, where we noticed that the skids that had been stacked for the bonfire later were being dismantled by concert goers who thought they looked like great beach chairs.

Mike's beach chair is a self-constructed "condomolium," a creation of our friend P.J.

The crowd for the Barefoot Man swelled . . .

. . . to the point that we realized, "You know what? We saw the man play last year. Let's go back to Grabbers where we can listen to Steel Daddy and actually get a drink." Even the FedEx guy apparently had the same idea.

So, we never saw Barefoot Man play this year. I think we're over it. But what a great view from Grabbers.

Monday, March 3: We had a nice motor sail back to Marsh Harbour and then cleaned, cleaned, cleaned the boat.

Tuesday, March 4: Back to Raleigh for a few weeks!

Abaco in February, Part 4

Saturday, March 1: On Saturday, a fundraiser was held for Guana Youth Sailing. Everyone joined in to make and sell conch salad and hotdogs,

and sell tee-shirts and hold an auction. Mike got a cool new tee, and we donated to the 50/50 raffle and some games. Their goal was to raise enough money to buy three small sailboats to use to teach the kids on the island how to sail. They ended up raising enough to buy five!


And then the music started again. This is Steel Daddy at Grabbers. I used his music in this video.



Saturdays are also rib nights at Grabbers, and their ribs are excellent!


Here's Mike (and Tony--he's always stealing my chair when I get up from the bar) chilling out with a Sands beer, smelling the ribs on the grill, and listening to some great steel drum music.

Abaco in February, Part 3

Friday, February 29: Fisher Bay fills up with sailboats as the Barefoot Man/Steel Daddy weekend approaches.


Even the local dogs are ready for the surge of visitors to the island. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace has nothing on the changing of the guard at Nippers on Guana Cay.

Abaco in February, Part 2

I forgot to mention in the last post that we finally got to use the ship's surgical kit several times over the first few days in the Abacos this past trip. Mike acquired a large splinter clove from the dinghy dock in his foot on the first day, and I got to play with a scalpel until I was able to fish out the entire piece after Mike took many shots of whiskey a few days.

Here is what Wikipedia says, "Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum, syn. Eugenia aromaticum or Eugenia caryophyllata) are the aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae. Cloves are native to Indonesia and dinghy docks in the Abacos and used as a spice in cuisine all over the world."
"The name derives from French clou, a nail, as the buds vaguely resemble small irregular nails in shape. Cloves are harvested primarily in Zanzibar, Indonesia and Madagascar; it is also grown in Pakistan, India, Mike's right foot, and Sri Lanka."

Moving along . . .

Wednesday, February 27: Wednesday was a wet, chilly day, and even the curlytails were hunkered down for quality time together.

Usually, Wednesday nights are pot-luck nights at Grabbers, but it was cancelled at the last moment due to poor weather. Always clueless the rebels, we scrounged up a couple of avocados, tomatoes, and lime and made guacamole for the bar anyway.


Thursday, February 28: The Art Cafe used to be the breakfast place on Guana, but since it closed this winter, breakfast has been hard to find. Nippers picked up the slack for a while, and then Grabbers announced that it would begin serving breakfast the upcoming weekend. So we ate breakfast at Nippers Tuesday-Thursday. Except that instead of "breakfast" (breaking the fast), Nippers, a major party spot, likes to call it "breakfest" (a festival of breaks?).


You can take an English teacher to Guana Cay, but you can't take Guana Cay . . . um . . . yeah . . . The first day, Mike ordered this:


. . . which ended up being 3/4 of an Eggo waffle (we were told they kept getting caught in the toaster) . . . without the hashbrowns. The subsequent days, we learned to order food that Jerry actually makes, like the omelet . . . and found it much more worthwhile.

Abaco in February, Part 1

We're way overdue for an update now that we're back in easy Internet range.

Friday, February 22, we flew back down to Marsh Harbour (by way of Nashville, of course--one of those 5-airport travel days) and landed and cleared at Treasure Cay for our first time before moving on to Marsh. It's a tiny airstrip, but we needed only half of it for landing. I think we used it all for our takeoff. I immediately engaged in Dominoes with some of the locals, and then we moved into town later for some dinner & dancing. As usual, the cabs stopped running long before the bars closed, so we ended up walking home.

Saturday, February 23, I had a very lazy day just getting used to being warm again and back on the boat. Mike went diving with Kay from Above and Below Abaco over to Fowl Cay. He returned with stories of sharks and such, but without any documentation, who would know . . . ? That night, of course, was Steak Night at the Jib Room and was a lot of fun. We were still exhausted from work and travel and turned in pretty early.

Sunday, February 24, we were supposed to sail to Guana, but we decided to relax another day in Marsh and head over Monday.

Monday, February 25, we had a nice sail over to Guana Cay. We originally planned to go on the hook or grab a mooring for most of the week and then move into the marina, but the weather for the next few days didn't look very nice, so we decided to dock when we arrived. Also because of the forecast, we knew it was unlikely we'd get a lot of sailing time in during the week, so we took the opportunity to have a nice meandering sail over. After visiting everyone at Grabbers, we decided to go ahead and rent a golf cart for the entire week, too, not just for the weekend as we were planning.

Tuesday, February 26 was a little blustery, and then the rain began Tuesday night . . . but not before this fellow, Tim, had a chance to get a little fishing in:






















That evening we ate at Grabbers, where Erin provided us with a lovely candlelit dinner.


Then we visited Easy at Nippers.


And then the sky opened up.