April 2012


April 2012 – Bahamas

Through our travels, we have been amazed by how small the cruising community is which makes it a very small world.  Well, we experienced another fun coincidence in Georgetown.  We had always heard that Georgetown was full of cruising kids so our crew was eager to get there and meet some new friends since we hadn’t really cruised with any families since crossing the Atlantic.  So after our last night of quiet, we anchored right in the middle of the herd at Volleyball Beach and immediately dinghied into the action.  As soon we hit the beach, the kids ran off to play and I started to meet the other Moms.  As always with cruisers everyone was excited to meet a new family with kids and we all started talking about “Where we’ve been and where we are going”.  One mom right away said that our kids and boat named seemed familiar to her.  But since they had just left the US and started their adventure and we were finishing ours, we couldn’t find a connection.  Then Ashlyne excitedly put 2 and 2 together and realized the she and her husband, Ross, had followed our website for years and had even emailed us for home schooling advice.  Wow, how fun to find a “fan”.  We quickly became good friends with them and their son Kyler on the boat “Good Trade” and spent many nights talking about our trip and learning about their plans.

We had to say good bye to Fred in Georgetown as he flew home to FL.  We were so happy that he made the spontaneous decision to join us, although it was definitely a difficult visit without Margot.  We all felt her absence but were glad that we could provide a diversion for Fred during these very hard first months. 

As we waited for our next guests to arrive, we spent the next week enjoying Georgetown.  This unique place is also known as “Chicken Bay” because so many people from the East Coast of the US get this far and never go any further  which is why so many boats spend the whole season here.  This cruising community has become almost its own “town” on the water with volleyball tournaments, weekly poker games, beach church service, and almost any activity that you could want to do.  In one sense, it’s a fun little place but in another sense it’s sad because it definitely seems as though many dreams have ended here.  At the church service that we attended, someone announced that we had recently arrived after sailing around the world.  We actually received a standing ovation and after the service many, many older cruisers came up to us with congratulations and expressed that they had always wanted to do what we did but were now too old.  But what a beautiful place to retire!!!!

Our next guests, the Witte family, arrived into Georgetown.  We were so excited to have Scott, Melissa, and 18 month old Olivia from New Orleans meet up with us.  Scott, a great friend of ours from Purdue, has been one of those people that we could count on through our entire adventure.  Every time we got to a new country and had a new phone number, one of the first people to call was Scott.  As a Marine reserve, he was a huge source of information and support during our frightening days in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden so we wanted to make sure that their visit was fun, relaxing, and memorable. 

With our new friends, Good Trade, we quickly left the herd in Georgetown and started our exploration of the beautiful Exumas.  The Exumas is a group of 365 small islands and islets, many uninhabited, that spread N/NW from Great Exuma toward Nassau.  These islands hold some of the most beautiful water and best fishing grounds in the world.  We were determined to see as much of it as we could.  Good Trade had already been down the chain and with their great diving and spear fishing skills, they were perfect guides for us.  We stayed in beautiful anchorages throughout the Exumas and ate like kings with fresh fish, lobster, and crab.  We walked the empty beaches and found sand dollars, conch, and even fed the giant iguanas.  We finalized the Witte vacation at Staniel Cay, with 80 full time residents, it is one of the more popular islands in the Exumas.  With the wild swimming pigs, James Bond grotto, secluded beach, nurse shark lagoon, and abundant sea life, it was the perfect place to round out their stay.  Thanks to Scott, Melissa, and beautiful little Olivia (our youngest guest) for making the trip to join us.