BradenandErin

Yes... it was a trip of a lifetime. Yes... it was amazing. BUT... it was not always perfect in paradise. While the majority of the trip was a dream come true, there were the sleepless nights at anchor, engine repairs, travelling through the night, spending the holidays without family... that made us wonder "why are we doing this?". In the end the good outweighed the bad and we are SO happy we did it.

Below are some of our not so favorite memories...

Island

Erin: New Providence Island ( Nassau ). Bimini was our first stop in the Bahamas - the beaches are beautiful, the resorts / marinas are beautiful and we felt very safe walking around this little island. Nassau... not so much. Its dirty. There are tons of people. You have to ring a buzzer at all the stores and restaurants for them to unlock the door. We still had a good time, but I could have done without this stop.

Braden: Nassau is actually on New Providence Island and I agree completely. It is the center of the Bahamas in many ways, but nothing like the out islands.

Excursion

Erin: Our first night trip with a local in his power boat. While Braden got a kick out of it... I was a nervous wreck. It seemed like a good idea when we agreed to go, but when we got to Staniel Cay Yacht Club all I could think about was... "we have to go back". Obviously we made it safely, but I was totally freaked out the entire ride.

Braden: A fishing trip on the ocean side of the Exumas that lasted 4.5+ hours in somewhat uncomfortable seas in a small, center console boat. We caught no fish and generally had very little fun.

Snorkeling location

Erin: All the snorkeling locations were so different, so there really wasn't a bad location - some had lots of fish, some had lots of coral and one was in a cave. The only bad thing ( which applied to all of them ) was the current. It was pretty strong throughout the Bahamas, so we had to plan our snorkeling expeditions around low tide. But even then we could only snorkel for about 15 minutes before the current picked up and we had to get back in the dinghy. We missed a few places I would love to see, so they are on the list for next time - the plane wreck at Norman's Cay, the reef at Warderick Wells and the Sea Aquarium in the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park.

Braden: This one is tough because I liked getting in the water everywhere - but my least favorite was getting in the water at Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale to get the coconut out of the propeller. Nasty, nasty water.

Beach combing location

Erin: Warderick Wells. It was a beautiful place, but no shell collecting allowed. Its part of the Exumas Land & Sea Park, so you can't take anything. 

Braden: Pretty easy on this one, what Erin said - I'm not a huge "beach comber" to begin with, so it wasn't too major for me.

Meal on the boat

Erin: My botched attempt at making a loaf of bread. I had practiced at home with all the same ingredients and utensils I would have on the boat. It turned out fantastic at home. When I made it on the boat the dough didn't rise. It wasn't a big deal... except we really wanted bread... and it took me most of the day to make it just to find out it was no good.

Braden: When I was feeling sick at Warderick Wells, all the meals were my least favorite. I knew I had to keep eating - so I did, but it was tough.

Meal off the boat

Erin: Dinner at Poop Deck. The food wasn't bad, but it was super expensive.

Braden: We went over to Atlantis while we were in Nassau and ate at a burger place there. The burger was awful - like leather - and the fries were soggy and overly greasy. Easily the worst meal.

Marina

Erin: There were good and bad things at every marina, but Nassau Yacht Haven was my least favorite. The wakes could get pretty bad, sometimes there was a wait for a shower and the hot water was hit or miss.

Braden: The theme keeps repeating itself, but the marina in Nassau was probably my least favorite. We went there because of amenities advertised - like power, water and cable TV. Along with laundry, showers and a nice place to eat. Of those things - the water was not good to drink, the cable TV wasn't at all slips, the showers didn't always have hot water and the Poop Deck was overly expensive for food.

Showers

Erin: Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale. The showers were always dirty and there wasn't any hot water for 3 days. After the second day Braden got the marina to give us a hotel room so we could take a hot shower... on Christmas. Honorable Mention: Bimini Big Game Club. The showers were very clean and the water was always hot, but the design was terrible. There were 4 showers in a circle with canvas in between. You could see right into the shower next to you. They were small. My not so favorite part... the lights were on a timed motion sensor so they would always turn off while you were in the middle of a shower.

Braden: See Erin's response - agree on both, although I wasn't as upset with the Big Game Club showers.

Laundry facility

Erin: Dinner Key Marina in Miami. There were only 4 washers and 3 dryers for a marina of 500+ boats. There was always a wait... a looooong wait. One day it took me 4 hours to do 2 loads of laundry. The people doing laundry were very impatient. If you weren't there as soon as your dryer stopped they would take your clean clothes out and put them on a dirty table so they could use the dryer.

Braden: Erin handled the laundry, but at Dinner Key we had to plan our daily activities around laundry and that certainly warrants it being the worst.

Picture

Erin: The plane waiting for us to board at Staniel Cay. It signified the end of our amazing trip.

Braden: The picture of our boat sign on Boo Boo Hill. Not because it is a bad picture, but because I was too ill to climb up the hill with Erin to place the sign and take the picture. I had been up a couple days before our sign had been made, but I was disappointed I couldn't make it up again to see it proudly next to the names of other boats that had come before us. Its not as isolated and remote as it seems - but it sure feels like you've accomplished something when you've crossed a lot of open ocean to be in that place at that moment standing among some truly great voyagers of the ocean.

Quote

Erin: "Welcome home!" While we were happy to see our friends and family, it was really hard to leave the Bahamas and get back to reality.

Braden: On the trip from Bimini to Nassau Erin went down below and looked in the bilge and said... "Uh, there is a lot of water in here and its coming in pretty fast". Honorable Mention: Goes to Erin as well when we were crossing the Gulf Stream in the middle of the night and she said something like... "The screen says there is a boat coming right for us and it looks pretty close". We never did see any boat in front of us, but did end up seeing a dimly lit, large boat pass directly behind us. We later heard from a boat captain that is familiar with the area that Coast Guard ships often patrol the area at night without lights to try and catch the bad guys.

We've been asked by several people what some of our favorite memories are from the trip. Its been difficult, but we came up with the following list...

Island

Erin: Sampson Cay. It was the place we stayed the longest ( 25 days total ), and probably the one we will remember the most. Lots of snorkeling, beaches, shells, new friends ( locals and tourists ) and nearby islands to visit.

Braden: Agree with Erin, close enough to other islands, but good enough on its own to not need to leave often.

Excursion

Erin: Swimming pigs at Big Majors. I loved it so much that we went twice!

Braden: Our first night trip with a local in his power boat. We left the dock at Sampson Cay headed for Staniel Cay Yacht Club - at full throttle, in the dark, with no navigation lights on the boat at all. In addition, there are several sandbars and large rocks above water on the route. We were headed to have dinner and drinks, which meant we had to head back afterward. I was sure Erin was going to pee her pants.

Snorkeling location

Erin: Thunderball Grotto. It was the place I was least excited about going... something about swimming into a cave just isn't my thing. But I'm glad we did it!

Braden: Thunderball Grotto for a few reasons - we had just come up with a dinghy ladder because we were worried we wouldn't be able to get back out of the water - and it worked! Also, the cave was beautiful, the fish were plentiful and there is the movie history as well.

Beach combing location

Erin: Its a tie between Bimini that had tons of sea glass, and Sampson Cay which had tons of sand dollars and large shells.

Braden: For me, it is definitely Bimini - the beach was postcard-esque and it was our first taste of the Bahamas. My favorite place to relax on the beach was under the gazebo at Sampson Cay.

Meal on the boat

Erin: Anything with Johnny's Garlic Spread ( pictured below ). We happened to grab this while we were stocking up at CostCo before we left. The uses are endless... and all of them delicious - garlic bread, meatballs, pasta sauce, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, etc. If you happen to see it... GET IT! It is awesome.

Braden: Any meal that Erin made with garlic bread. I am not sure if it was the garlic spread, butter, Bahamian bread or the boat - but I could never get enough of it. Honorable mention: In the store at Sampson Cay there was a tray of 12 cinnamon rolls that I had set my sights on from day one. There was no way I was going to eat 12 before they went bad ( Erin doesn't like them ) and I knew they'd be expensive. I tried negotiating and bartering with the store manager with no luck. Erin ended up making a batch for me from scratch and I decided to find out how much we saved - the 12 pack was $19.00 - and I know that Erin's were way better.

Meal off the boat

Erin: After a 20+ hour trip from Bimini to Nassau we were exhausted and hungry. When we got to Nassau we checked in at the marina, then tried the restaurant located on site. The restaurant is only open for lunch, and unfortunately it was only 9:30 AM. The lady at the desk recommended Charlie's for breakfast. Down the street, behind the gas station.  We were the only non-Bahamians in the restaurant and the place was packed. We took one of the last tables. The waitress came over and we asked for a menu. No menu. It was "stewfishboilfishstewconch...". We had no clue what she said. Finally we asked what she recommended. We ended up with stew fish, grits and jonnycake. If I wasn't totally exhausted I probably would have suggested we go somewhere else, but it turned out to be the most fantastic, non-traditional breakfast I have ever had. Honorable mention: Pizza at Sampson Cay Club. The thin crust pizza was fantastic, plus you can't beat 2 for 1 Thursdays.

Braden: Our time in the Exumas Land & Sea Park was amazing and worth it all, but after 5 days of eating on the boat and running out of everything "fresh", all I could think about was pizza. We pulled into the Sampson Cay marina and one of their specialties was... pizza! I almost fell out of my chair, but it was then that I knew this was our spot for a while.

Marina

Erin: Dinner Key Marina in Miami. Decent showers and laundry facilities. Located in Coconut Grove. Short walking distance to CocoWalk - shopping, restaurants and movie theater.

Braden: Toss up here - for purely just the marina, I really enjoyed Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale the most because they had floating docks. For non-boaters out there... floating docks are a dream. You just tie the boat up tight against the dock and as the tide goes up and down the dock goes with the boat. Amazing! Honorable mention: Dinner Key Marina in Miami. The marina is run by the city and generally offers very little in the way of services or boating friendly staff - but the sheer volume of boats there requires good showers, good bathrooms, good security, good power, etc.

Showers

Erin: Dinner Key in Miami. The shower stalls were huge, the water pressure was great and there was always hot water.

Braden: Sampson Cay. They started out as the worst showers of all - $4.00 for 8 minutes. The machine that took the tokens did not really work, so we got free, long showers most of the time. The water pressure was good, the shower head was in the ceiling instead of the wall and it never ran out of hot water.

Laundry facility

Erin: Bahia Mar in Ft. Lauderdale. Tons of washers and dryers. All in working order. No wait.

Braden: Erin did laundry, but have to agree here. At Sampson Cay we paid $8.00 to wash and dry a load and inevitably always had wet clothes hanging around the boat to dry ( pictured below ). At Dinner Key, there was always a wait. In Nassau it was dirty, crowded and expensive.

Picture

Erin: One of our Christmas presents this year was a Cannon PowerShot D10 underwater camera. We definitely recommend it. Not only is it waterproof, but it takes amazing pictures. We used it for a lot of the pictures, even if they weren't under water. It is difficult to pick just one favorite out of the 3,500 pictures we took... but I can't believe how cool this one turned out.

Braden: My favorite picture is one of our boat at Warderick Wells.  The picture itself is not an amazing shot - but of all the things I wanted to do on the trip - standing on top of Boo Boo Hill and taking a picture of our boat on the mooring ball with all the different colors of water around the boat was the most important for me.  It pains me to say it, but the best photo has to be one of the underwater shots of the conch or crab that Erin took.

Quote

Erin: "Why does David Copperfield need the internet guy to install internet on his island? He's David Copperfield. He should just go poof… there's internet."

Braden: No contest on this one, in the context of the situation and the parties involved, it was one of the funniest things ever.

2 months and 4 days after we left our marina in Palm Beach Gardens we are finally home. Before the flight we had one last Bahamian meal - cracked conch and Kalik. 

We boarded the 9 seater plane and left Staniel Cay airport right on time.

The plane wasn't full... so Ethel got her own seat.

We flew over all the places we had been on this trip, so we got to see them one more time from the air - Big Majors Spot ( pig beach ), Sampson Cay, Warderick Wells, Normans Cay ( where our boat is currently anchored for the night ), Nassau and Bimini.

And then... Firehouse Subs for dinner on our way home from Ft. Lauderdale.

Last night was our final night in the Bahamas. We're both happy and sad about going home, but we have no doubt that we will be back... probably not soon enough. 

To celebrate our last night we watched the sunset...

We participated in a bar stool balancing contest ( the bartender won )...

Braden also played a game of Reverse Jenga using chairs...

This morning we got up early to watch the people taking our boat back leave the marina. Definitely a weird feeling watching our boat leave without us...

We'll be heading to the "airport" shortly and should get to Ft. Lauderdale around 5:30 PM tonight. We will definitely be stopping by Firehouse Subs on the way home. One of our first pictures from this trip was a picture of Firehouse Subs, so its only fitting to end the trip the same way we started...

Tonight marks the first night we will no longer stay on the boat and it's quite a surreal feeling.  We have the delivery captain coming in the morning to take the boat back to Florida and we're staying two nights on the island before heading back on Wednesday.

It's been a long trip and a short trip all at the same time.  Long in the sense that we've been away from "home" and friends/family for what seems like forever.  But short in the sense that we stayed in each place for probably an average of 1.5 weeks and feel like there are so many places left to go.

Many of the sailboat cruising community always seems to be on the move - going to the next anchorage, moving to the next spot.  And along the way, they hit all the highlights - and many of them come back and get a deeper cut into each area year after year.  We've found that our trip has differed quite a bit.  Part of it was our personal limitations of what we could not live without on the boat (how long can you go without a hot shower?  how long can you go without internet, laundry, water, fuel, etc?).  Many of the larger boats have most, if not all of these amenities close at hand.  We had workarounds and made due when required, but ultimately, pulled into the marina much more often than our fellow sailors.

As a positive by-product of our crusing "style", we found some really great and really deep experiences at the places we stayed.  We really enjoyed immersing ourselves into one spot until we're absolutely done.  And really, at each stop along the way, we reached the absolutely done point in all but one spot.  That spot is where we are now - the central exumas - Sampson Cay, Staniel Cay and surrounding area.

Through good fortune and some persistence, we've had an amazing time here - to the point we've probably made some lifelong friends and will be back via boat or other mode of transport.  It's quite a different place - if you need something and can't find it - it feels like you're on the most remote spot on the planet.  Everything comes via mailboat or private plane.  Yet, we're ~200 miles from the coast of Florida.  Caribbean islands more than 1,000 miles away are more developed with much more to offer in terms of groceries, services, etc.  

It's like the people that know and continue to return here have a secret that no one has cracked.  If you really want to get away from it all - you don't have to go as far as you think.  The population amongst the islands is so sparse and the visitors so loyal that it is common to walk into a bar and people on both sides of you are reconnecting with each other after days or years apart.  Locals and tourists, tourists and tourists, locals and locals - all enjoying stories of years gone by and making plans that will undoubtedly lead to stories for the future.

We've now collected a little bit of each - stories and friends - and will be counting down the days until we walk into Staniel Cay Yacht Club or wander over to Sampson Cay late night and see familiar faces.  To talk about the engineer/spearfisherman/underwater ballerina who can dive down on a coral head and come up with 3 lobsters before a normal person could even get a mask on.  Or the internet guy giving us local resident internet access because you've been at the bar with him so many times it just wouldn't be right any other way.  Or the impromtu concert with guitars, harmonicas, bongo drums and a bag full of instruments for everyone else at the bar to play along.

One of the folks mentioned above repeated the modified quote to me, "the world is not ours, we're just passing through enjoying it."  The funny part is that I would have typed "passing through trying to enjoy it."  But I remembered it clearly because there was no "trying" in the quote - we are all really enjoying it and he wouldn't have said "trying".  There is no try here.  Up and downs are all included.  Life is full of choices with consequences - but really feeling the joy of what is being offered to everyone that lives on our blue sphere is a mesmerizing experience.  

Until next time...I'll leave you with one last story told to us by a local friend:

Celebrities and big name folks like to come here because they can do what they want without being bothered (fact:  Johnny Depp, David Copperfield, Tyler Perry and others own islands around here). 

Bill Gates was visiting and walking along the beach in cut-off jean shorts and had scraggly hair, a local walked by and Gates said to the local, "this is a beautiful area, how much does land go for around here?"  The local looked him over and said, "Way more than you can afford buddy - but it is beautitful."

Today we checked out the second snorkeling location that we found on our scouting adventure last week. This spot didn't have as much coral, sponges or sea fans.... but it had a ton of fish. 

Most of the fish are pretty small, and we always see the same types. On our way back in we stopped at one more spot and it had some different fish, including this one which it the biggest we've seen snorkeling around the island. 

To all our loyal readers... we're sorry we've been MIA the last couple days. We've been busy laying on the beach, so we haven't had much to post. Over the last couple days we also finalized a new plan for getting home.

To get home requires at least 5 days of a lot of work and very little sleep. We don't want to spend the end of our trip exhausted. We want to spend more time doing this...

and this...

So... we decided to hire someone to bring our boat back to Florida. This way we can hang out here for another week, then take a 2 hour flight back to Ft. Lauderdale. We're not sure yet what day we're coming home... and we're trying not to think about it just yet. :)

We had been scouting out some areas around the island for snorkeling. Our scouting method involves Braden driving the dinghy while I stick my head underwater over the front. Its been very effective in locating two snorkeling locations without us having to get in and out of the dinghy. So far we made it to one of the two places. We've been snorkeling in lots of places, and this was some of the best snorkeling we've ever done. 

Yesterday a cold front came though and the wind and waves REALLY picked up. By 10 AM our somewhat empty marina was completely full. They've packed it so full that we can reach out and touch the mega sportfisher boat behind us. This is 1 of 3 boats in their flotilla, which is available for charter for only $200,000 per week.