Back in the Bahamas

To be precise, we've been back on Second Chance 42 for a week now. An interesting week, as it started out with us being dead tired all the time and wondering why we're here. Jet lag and change in climate/environment? By now we truly have arrived, though. A nice surprise upon arrival was to see Distant Shores II on our way to Hurricane Hole 3, where we had parked Second Chance 42 for the summer. We really enjoyed getting back together with Sheryl and Paul. And except for us, there was barely a boat in Elizabeth Harbour. How peaceful and what a difference to the months coming up!
Yesterday, we started our trip to Ft. Lauderdale. We have to get back there to have some warranty work done on the boat. At the same time, it will give us the opportunity to properly provision the boat and buy all those things we (think we) need to make life on board even more enjoyable.
A cold front is going through this area right now, and it's very windy. Rolf and I got to test our team work yesterday when going right into the bad weather. It worked well, even though I was a little bit rusty. Guess that changed quickly.
Over night, we stayed behind Leaf Cay. Such a dark, dark night, with no stars, no settlements or other boats around us. Very different! Different is also that the weather takes on such a huge importance on the boat. Back home, who cares whether it's rainy or windy or whatever. On the boat, it's one of the most important aspects as it determines whether you are comfortable and safe.
Today, we are headed for Little Farmer's Cay, weather permitting, and hoping that Ty's Sunset Bar & Grill ist open, which is unlikely as today is a Sunday. But hope is a good thing.

April 2 - 4, 2014 Arriving Home

April 2
Gotta share another interestingly named place with you: Wamsutter, doesn't sound native-origin to me, so who came up with a name like that? By the way, I let you in on a secret: Bliss, Paradise (Valley) and Eden are all located in Idaho...
Lots of driving today, after sitting in a traffic jam for two hours because a truck got out of control on the very icy road just after Rawlin. Conditions got better almost right after that and really good once we got to the Snake River.
April 3
We stopped for sightseeing one last time today, in Baker City, OR, for the Oregon Trail Interpretive Centre. We have been following the Oregon Trail pretty much since Independence. Or should I say the Interstate did....!? The Center was phenomenal! For the first time ever, I felt I didn't have enough time in a museum setting and wished I could have red all their displays. They made it that interesting! They asked the visitor questions, among others, such as: if you are a blacksmith, would you take your tools on the journey? Answer is no, because your tools would weigh 1000 lbs, for which you would need a second wagon; apart from the cost, who would drive it? Many more such questions that really got you involved. Lots of diary excerpts, too. Some reminded me of living on a boat ;-), reference being the bread baking, the laundry and general cleaning... ;-) We will sure be back and can only recommend visiting the centre to everybody. We even saw some original wagon ruts - from over 150 years ago! The Oregon Trail started in the 1840s just South of Kansas City in Independence. It took those guys up to 6 months to make it into Oregon with 1 in 10 people dying on the trail. About 300.000 people made the attempt in a 10 year time frame (of course the emigration didn't stop after ten years, it went on for decades). All because of some political scheme that promised people the land of milk and honey (not true) and free farm land (true)- so that the area would be populated to take it away from the British...Emigrants also wanted to escape the Cholera on the East Coast (many brought it with them, though) and later the Civil War.
We are back in spring, by the way. Lawns are a lush green and leaves are sprouting. It's a beautiful, sunny day.  The air is so fresh, clean and not too crisp. I love it. Can't wait to get that at home. Can't wait to get back to Beautiful British Columbia!
April 4
The area around Bellevue must have been the furthest along into spring of all the places we've seen on our trip back. We are on the 1pm ferry, enjoying the Pacific Buffet. Another 1 1/2 hrs and we'll be home. It feels so good to be back. It's again a beautiful day. The ferry is going by the beautiful sceneries of the Gulf Islands. It's during moments like these that I ask myself, why did we ever leave? Well, it's great to go away, but it's always as least as great to come home.

Mar 30 - Apr 1, 2014

Mar 30 - You know what it's like when you come to a place you've never been before and you instantly like it - or not?! When we drove through Salt Lake City, UT, on the way South, I instantly liked it. Birmingham, AL, also seemed a especially nice place to live. Well, Memphis, TN, was the opposite. At least the part we saw I didn't like at all. Elvis Presley Blvd., of all places, was one of the worst commercial roads we've seen on this trip, with one cheap, greasy, chain restaurant besides the next. And this is where Graceland is located. I can only belief the area looked much different when Elvis was still alive. Graceland was named after the prior owner's aunt, Grace. Elvis bought it at age 22 for just over 100,000$. It looks nice from the outside. To appreciate the inside, you must like the seventies. It was certainly interesting, to say the least, with some weird concepts such as the mirror encased stair to the basement, the jungle room, the blue and yellow entertainment room. It seemed to be a place for family and company, so I hope Elvis was happy there.

The same day, I also visited Laura Ingalls Wilder's home in Mansfield, MO. Very different place, and more to my liking. Mostly homemade furniture, very low counter tops because Almanzo and Laura were both smaller than me, it started out with one room and then added rooms whenever they could afford it. This was the place where Laura wrote her famous "Little House" books and it felt special to see her desk.

Mar 31 only consisted of driving, and it wasn't nice driving. It had gotten really cold over night and the wind was blowing with up to 40knots - on the open prairies! The motor home swayed right and left all the time and we had to go much slower than usual. It got down to -8 degrees Celsius that night and we were grateful for the heater. Our winter clothes have since been unpacked.

April 1 - This morning, we visited Buffalo Bill's farm in North Platte, NE, but it was closed for the season. There was a little bit of snow on the ground; nice house telling from the outside. Pretty interesting guy, too! Started his career at age 11 as an ox-team driver and was the youngest Pony Express rider at age 14. He did lots more...

After that, we visited the world's largest rail yard, the Union Pacific's Bailey Yard, also located in North Platte. We enjoyed an overview from the Golden Spike Tower. One piece of information I thought was interesting was that, starting in the 1850s, orphans were brought from New York to the west with the so called "orphan trains", to be placed with farmers. Apparently, diseases, poverty and neglect had brought those children to the street where a minister realized the problem and created this solution. Guess you can see that I wasn't really interested in the rail yard, though it was an incredible sight.

One more tidbit from the road: in Sidney, NE, we got served Marshmallow Sauce for the sweet potato fries. Those Americans come up with ideas... ;-). I have to admit, though, that I quite liked the fried pickles we got in Alabama. Hit and miss, I guess.
Also, we've driven through or past some interestingly named places, such as Egypt, Amazonia, Pocahontas, Peculiar, Humansville, Hamburg or Oshtosh (not in that order). I liked "Bliss" the best, but that was on the way South.

Today, on April 1, we are headed towards Rock Springs, WY. Home is getting closer, but it's still more than 2000km away.
....
New comment hours later: at least that's what I thought at the time of writing, that we were going to Rock Springs. Well, not today. Got into a snow storm at Hanna, town of Elk Mountain. But around Rawlin, it got even worse. We decided to call it a day and booked a room in the Hampton Inn. Special treat, this is just so not the weather for sleeping in a motor home! So that's where we are now, hoping it'll be better again tomorrow, so that we can continue home.

Heading Home - March 26-29, 2014, km 1,719

Ft. Lauderdale - Orlando, Florida - Albany, Georgia - Birmingham, Alabama - Mississippi - Memphis, Tennessee.

It's been an interesting few days on the road, driving from Florida through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee, coming from a perpetual summer to a beautiful spring and back into winter. Daffodils, witches hazel and Japanese cherry were all in bloom before we got to Mississippi. You didn't notice right away that more and more of the deciduous green trees, such as the beautiful Banyan trees, were exchanged with spring-sprouting trees until it got really obvious in Georgia and even more so in Northern Alabama. Here in Memphis now, the lawns are still winter-brown and the air feels frosty.

Expressed in produce, we drove from Orange country through Pecan territory into Peanut Land. Haven't figured out what Alabama is growing yet....pine nuts, maybe...  The citrus trees were in full bloom, which smelled lovely. The pecan trees were wearing their winter coat and the peanut bushes were non-existent, the bare fields still waiting for the new plants. Guess not much growing in MS and TN yet.

You could also say we drove from Florida through Germany and New England States to Memphis, rural Georgia reminding us so much of the area I grew up in and
Northern Alabama being so very Non-Alabamian - for a Non-Alabamian. Never having been to the New England States, it's still on my bucket list, my comparison might be quite wrong, I'm just trying to get impressions across. Can't say much about MS or TN, didn't spent enough time yet.

On our way, we've been to the Kennedy Space Centre, the Epcot Centre and you might wanna guess what we are going to do in Memphis... While it was interesting to see the well-used space shuttle Atlantis, the huge Saturn V rocket as well as launch pad 37B, test-driving a Tesla was more exciting (even with Rolf driving); more computer-power, too, I guess. Epcot was entertaining, it better be, for over 200$ in entrance fees for two people (excluding the 16$ parking fee). In the end, though, it was less informative than we had hoped; really just a different approach to the Disney rides. The only thing that really touched me was the 18min 360degree movie highlighting Canada. I'm ready for home... But man, now I know why it's called Disneyworld! The area with the countless amusement parks is incredibly huge!

We turned into Walmartians again. US State Parks close at 5pm when we are still pounding the road and we couldn't care less for the glorified parking lots they call RV Parks. Nothing compares to the BC Provoncial Campgrounds, we are spoiled. So these days, we are driving from "Walmart near Epcot" to "Walmart near Graceland" to whichever Walmart comes next. At this point, we have about 4,100 km left to go.

The only thing we are unhappy about is the fact that we were unable to get a good prepaid data and phone plan. Spending hours with AT&T as well as t-mobile left me without the ability to use "Rolf's hotspot" most of the time and no way of calling anywhere without costing an arm and a leg. Hence, my blogging and emailing is reduced to the times we can find public wifi - with the speed that goes with that, or rather lack of....therefore, next to no pictures on the blog at this time...

After our sightseeing tomorrow (did you guess what? Hey, I pretty much gave it away! ;-)...), we will most likely head towards Springfield MO.

Back in the US

Just a quick update letting you know that we are back in the US. We will spend a few more days in Florida before heading North again. Second Chance 42 is - hopefully - safely stored in Hurricane Hole 3 on Stocking Island. Gosh, it's quite an adjustment being back in "populated country": We probably spent more money the last two days than we spent during a month in The Bahamas. The night sky is too bright, we have trouble sleeping. Could somebody please switch off the train whistles during the night?! It rains a lot here (sunshine country???). And it feels as if the motorhome could fit into one pontoon of Second Chance 42, Rolf and I are constantly "dancing" to get around each other...

I'll be writing a little bit more about any potential sightseeing we will do during our drive home. Next stop from here will be Cape Canaveral. Stay tuned...

Stalked by a Barracuda

You all probably know by now that I have a lot of respect for sharks, rays and barracudas. Most recently, I had been overwhelmed by the number and size of sharks that had "welcomed" us in the Marina at Rum Cay. (Not a place worth going by the way. While Rum Cay must be ideal for fishing, snorkelling and diving, the abandoned marina is just what you would expect from an abandoned marine, with tons of no-seems on top of it.)

One of the 10+ big sharks that were circling around our boat
in the Rum Cay Marine.

Most of the time, my respect for those creatures is keeping me from swimming, which is a real pity in such beautiful waters, and I’m not happy about it. Having stayed at Hog Cay, Long Island, Bahamas for quite a few days now without seeing any of the above, I felt save to enjoy a swim and even started some little exercise regime including swimming and walking in the water. That might have come to an abrupt end yesterday. High Intensity Exercise is supposed to be really good for you, right? Well, I did some of that, quite involuntarily, three times! 

First, I swam from the boat to the shore when a fast approaching small motorboat came in sight. Rolf made gestures to them at the bow, pointing out I was in the water, while I started my first High Intensity Exercise trying to get into shallower water quickly. I’m not a good swimmer and very, very slow, so that exhausted me quite a bit. They did see me thanks to Rolf, so I was in no immediate danger. I had been aware of this risk, but dismissed it as slim so far, but might take the kayak to get to the beach next time.

Next, I did my little routine swimming along the beach when I “ran” into a big fish. It surprised me so much, and I obviously scared him, too, that I immediately turned to swim to the shore while he turned the other way. That was my second High Intensity Exercise that morning. 

Doing some stretching on the beach afterwards, I could not believe my eyes when I saw that fish right in front of me in less than a foot of water, looking right at me. I had a hunch that it was a barracuda, which was later confirmed when Rolf checked the internet. That barracuda stayed with me and kept looking at me while I walked along the shore in the opposite direction of the boat. When I went in to shoo him away, he always returned quickly. I will never know whether he thought of me as pray or whether he was hoping my “hunt” would mean leftovers for him. Barracudas attacking people is quite rare, but not unheard of. Usually, it happens in murky water, though, or when people wear something shiny, like jewelry, which was not the case here. Anyway, at some point, he disappeared further down the beach, so I walked back to where I would have to cover the shortest distance to the boat swimming. I didn’t believe Rolf would hear me if I shouted for him to be picked up with the dinghy. I also felt slightly embarrassed to be that concerned. Hence with, my third High Intensity Exercise started. My legs felt like pudding when I got back to the boat. While feeling quite uncomfortable during that swim, I didn’t see the barracuda – until I was safely back on the boat! He swam around the boat for more than an hour afterwards and we got quite a good look at him. I can only assume it was the same guy. They can swim as fast as 40km/hour, while I’m slow as a snail in comparison. What an ugly, mean-looking fish! And big! Almost a meter long (3 feet)! Whenever Rolf splashed the water a little bit with his foot, he would shoot towards it like a dart. Rolf thought we should catch it to get rid of it, but because you can’t eat them due to the risk of ciguatera poisoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera), we didn’t. In the end, I felt sorry for that guy as obviously his hunt had not been very successful. Regardless, I’m not going into the water today. Gotta built up my sense of safety again first…

That was him, my "High Intensity Exercise Trainer",
not a small guy, almost a meter long. 

With a mean, ugly face...

...and really ugly teeth... (picture courtesy
www.tarponfisher.com/fishing-for-barracuda-in-key-west)

Going Grocery Shopping

We are still pretty well covered when it comes to food, especially now that we are slowly but surely coming to the end of our stay in The Bahamas, but we were running low on fresh items and knew a little grocery store was within reach, so we decided to “go shopping”. That’s quite a different process from home. You get into the dinghy, bringing your radio, putting on sunglasses and hat, storing your money in a watertight bag. Then you get going. Let the following pictures show you:

You leave your home in the beautiful bay
(Hog Cay, Long Island, Bahamas).

You make sure you don't run aground in the shallow
water by standing and looking way ahead of you.

You follow the signs to the grocery store...
just kidding, that sign marked the deeper channel
through the shallow water.

You arrive at the dock.

You try to get rid of your garbage at the same time -
looking like a weird version of Santa in the process.

You get excited about the empty Chiquita boxes in front
of the store, because it means that you will be able to
buy yellow instead of black bananas today.

You are stunned that you find bottles of "Murray & Lanman
Florida Water Cologne", which is produced by your friend's aunt
in New York.

You feel like a hero coming home, having accomplished
a major thing that day.

And this is what you got home with. I had never seen
chicken breast in a can. It's actually quite good. The
Banana Marshmallow Pie not so much... Bananas
were really looking good. Ah, and beer is important, too.

And that's the track of our 15km round trip.

The Ragged Islands

We are back in George Town after visiting the Ragged Islands, which are a group of little, mostly uninhabited Bahamian islands to the South of the Exumas. My friend Lynda from Campbell River was on board with us and we travelled together with Glynn and Peter, who were on their monohull Aqua Viva.

What a great time we had! Weather was perfect, maybe a little choppy and windy to begin with, but it was still okay. I really enjoyed the remoteness of the Ragged Islands. We went to Water Cay, Flamingo Cay, Buenavista Cay, Johnson Cay and Ragged Island. Once arrived in Ragged Island, we said “so long” to Glynn and Peter, as they were headed for Cuba, which would only take them a day’s ride from here.

I really enjoyed Water Cay, because of the big waves on the other side of the island on both sides of the big rock. Magnificent view! It was also good for beachcombing. We were told we would find “hamburgers” on the beaches of the Ragged Island, but I didn’t really know what to expect, other than that those “burgers” would be round and dark colored. Guess what, those were sand dollars that hadn’t been bleached by the sun yet! “Hamburgers”…yeah…;-) We found many fat ones, different from the ones living in BC, which are flat. Peter cleaned a Mackerel in that bay, which we all enjoyed for dinner. The discarded fish parts attracted a huge shark, so no swimming for us in that bay!

Water Cay: Second Chance 42 and Aqua Viva

Waves at Water Cay

The next nice bay, “Two Palm Beach” on Flamingo Cay, needs a name change to “One Palm Beach” as the second one must have been blown over in a Hurricane at some point. The remaining one carried two ripe coconuts, but we had no way of getting to them. Unfortunately, they also didn’t drop, I would have loved to eat a fresh coconut! Again, a beautiful bay for two boats, more beachcombing, dinghy exploration into a little cave and past coral fans popping out of the water’s surface at low tide. Got some good views of a shark again, so as before, no swimming…

Flamingo Cay - we were not the only beachcombers...

Flamingo Cay - cave

Flamingo Cay - shark

Flamingo Cay - coral fans

Flamingo Cay - One Palm Beach

One of the most beautiful bays was Johnson Cay. Oh my, a paradise image. Paradise coming with garbage on the West side of the island, though. It’s amazing what is washed up ashore, many flip flops, colanders, shoes any size and tons of plastic, ropes and bottles. But the bay we stayed in was pristine, water temperature was perfect and Lynda and I enjoyed a good swim with no sharks in sight, or just simply sitting on the beach. It was here that Glynn told me I should be wearing a hat with a wide rim, otherwise I would look like a raisin when I get older…Nah, she didn’t say that last part, but I got the message ;-) I only had baseball caps, though. Well, and an old, unfixable pair of shorts that I had already thrown into the garbage. With Lynda being a great seamstress, I fished those shorts out of the garbage again and we – well, mostly Lynda – transformed it into a hat for me. I think the outcome is amazing! And a great way to reduce garbage…

My garbage shorts...

...turn hat (flowery fabric from inside pockets)

Lynda in action

Johnson Cay

Johnson Cay - washed up garbage

A big highlight in a different way was Ragged Island. Not worth going for the beach/ bay, but there’s actually a town on that island: Duncan Town, which should rather be called a village. Rolf had to refill on coke, so we had to find the grocery store. He and we three ladies took the dinghy ashore at the airstrip. You really can’t call it airport! From there we had to walk into “town”, which was about 2km. Once arrived at the first few houses, we passed three elderly ladies, two in Golf carts and one weaving straw the traditional way in front of her house. Very friendly, we exchanged some words and jokes. Next we passed two guys building lobster traps from metal mesh. Each lobster trap can catch up to 20+ lobsters as we found out! We had been trying to spearfish for Lobster, but didn’t see a single one. Next we passed the police station, that’s a story in itself:

Earlier that day, we had seen a helicopter circling above the island, then land on the beach (given away by a huge sand cloud). Rolf and Lynda heard them talking on the radio, saying things like: “Watch out, he’s gonna run!” Once we had anchored, we saw two planes leave from the airstrip. We made fun of that, claiming those must have been the two monthly flights from here, knowing that the island was barely inhabited. Well, passing the police station, we saw policemen in camouflage with automatic rifles in front of the building while the porch was crowded with a group of black guys. As we later found out, the police had caught a refugee boat from Haiti with 60+ Haitians on board. 2/3 of them had already been flown out with the earlier two planes, the rest followed on a plane the next day. When we later talked to Kevalli House Bob, he said that this happens about 2 – 3 time a year, the stories around those escape attempts always being very sad.

After the police station, we looked for the grocery store. Those are rarely easy to find on those islands, given that the locals know where they are and thus they don’t require proper signage. We found it after more talking to the locals, Rolf got his coke (there wasn’t much else we would have needed from the sparely stocked store), while we three ladies admired the conch that was hanging on a laundry line to dry and talked to the young guy who was cutting up Lobster. Lobster caught by the locals is shipped to Nassau from here. The local women usually get the lobster heads, boil them and then also ship the cooked meat to Nassau.

Meantime, it was getting dark. We were so busy exploring, we didn’t mind the time, but we still had to get back to the dinghy and then back to the boat! Once we passed the three ladies with the two golf carts again, Rolf jokingly asked them whether this was the bus station. Made them cackle J. So they offered to drive us to the dinghy, how nice! All three ladies joined us and it felt like a little outing, the ladies chatting and showing us all the areas that had belonged to their grandfather (they were all sisters, even two twins!), but was taken away from him without reimbursement. Once arrived at the airstrip, we said a merry goodbye. But we were not home yet! Tide had gone out further and it was quite an act to get the dinghy to float. The sand was so soft, we sank deeply into it while trying to get the dinghy into deeper water. Must have been quite a sight! That night, we said “so long” to Aqua Viva. They left with our request for Cuban Rum, Coffee and Vanilla Beans, but we don’t know when we will see them again.

Ragged Island "bus tours"

Conch shells

Drying Conch

It was time to return to George Town so that Lynda wouldn’t miss her flight. On the way back, we stopped at Nurse Cay, besides Johnson Cay the most beautiful bay we stayed at, just for us, it was so small. Snorkeling was good here, the rocks with the fish being very close to the beach and in very shallow water. Lynda and I had a lot of fun watching the fish and collecting sand dollars.

Nurse Cay - sand dollar 

Nurse Cay - under water

Now we are back in George Town, Lynda has left and we just had one of the roughest nights in the Bahamas so far. Lightning started at 11pm with heavy rain starting around 2:30 am. How do I know? Because I barely slept. Our bucket collected 8 litres of rain water that night. What a nice boat wash (even though I had already washed the salt water off the boat two days earlier, but hey, it’s really clean now). Bob and company will be coming over for dinner tonight and, weather permitting, Rolf and I will move to some remote spot again tomorrow.

So long for now.