ozweaver – Page 56

A Month Aboard

March 3, 2014 | Leave a Comment

As I write this Bob is ashore doing our laundry…..yes, it’s almost unbelievable, but I promise….it’s true. How lucky is that? We are in Black Point Settlement on Great Guana, where you can get a haircut and do your laundry and have conch fritters, all at the same place that overlooks the little bay where all the boats are anchored. I am suffering from a cold, the last person onboard to get it….just when I thought I had missed the nasty little germ. So I get to stay aboard and take a nap. Oh well.

This is where you sit to get your haircut while your laundry is going inside

After Chris left last week we had big plans to sail up to Compass Cay and spend a day or two shelling. On the morning we wanted to depart our anchor would not come up. While we were wondering what was wrong a large power boat arrived and anchored right next to us…..very close, which worried me because I had a bad feeling we’d get tangled with them undoing our anchor problems. The short version is that after trying to get the anchor up from different angles, Bob put on his shortie suit and free dived down about 25 feet to take a look. I have to add that he was in the throes of his own cold then so I know this was not his first choice of how to remedy our situation. He discovered that the anchor was caught on a limestone ledge. A second dive allowed him to tie a rope around the anchor (he was intending to pull it out by tying the rope to the dinghy and driving forward), but then, while he was down there, he thought he might as well see if he could just free it by lifting it with his hands. That worked….so when he hit the surface he let me know that the anchor was free.

In the fast moving currents, it didn’t take long for us to start skimming our way over to that big powerboat. So there you go! I was onboard alone at the wheel, Bob was in the water quickly getting left behind as he struggled into the dinghy and got the dinghy anchor up. I’m headed toward a 70-foot luxurious powerboat, and I’m dragging along a 65 lb. Bruce anchor as I go. Well, it was a lot of excitement, and I’m happy to report that there was no loss of life, or any other irreparable damage. Whew!

But all the yanking on the Bruce anchor before Bob went down to look a look, did cause some damage…. that long shank on the anchor used to be straight!

So instead of heading out, we motored a short distance to some nearby moorings and picked up one. Then Bob spent a couple of hours undoing our damaged Bruce and replacing it with a gargantuan Fortress that we keep onboard as a spare. By the end of that, with his cold raging, he was too tired to think of going anywhere….and that was fine with me too. I can only handle so much excitement in one day.

So, when we did finally tear ourselves away from Staniel Cay, we headed south to an idyllic spot that doesn’t seem to attract many visitors. Lucky us! We were the only boat at Bitter Guana, and it is quite a spot. I hope it continues to be unpopular! We were alone with a stunning white beach, a large limestone outcropping, and about 16 wild iguanas. The winds have been pretty calm, after a week or so of too much!

Speaking of wind: I have a love/hate relationship with it. Yes, a good breeze is just what you need when the temps get in the upper 80s F…. but far too often it just blows too hard down here. At anchor the boats roll from side to side and buck up and down (at the same time) and it’s about as challenging as being underway in rough conditions. It’s no fun. And the sound…. There comes a point when I’d give anything to turn down the volume. I just want some quiet. So wind is often the thing that is most challenging. Anyway…..just had to whine a bit about wind.

We’ve done a little shell collecting and illegal iguana feeding, and I’ve been suffering through my cold. Last night’s sunset gave us another green flash! That makes four so far! Last year we only saw it once!

Here’s what you miss when you sleep in due to being in a Nyquil-induced fog. It turns out there are lots of tropical long tails nesting on Bitter Guana along with the iguanas! They fly out in formation first thing in the morning and return at dusk. Sorry I slept in….

And about my projects: things are not as good as I’d first thought. In fact, I’m wondering if I am going to end up starting every single one of them over. I guess that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I do have the one Oktoberfest sock. And I have these two newly finished embroidery projects. They hardly count though, because each one only needed a few areas of work to be finished. I think both these little cross stitch projects have been languishing in a bag for about a decade …. And now they are finished!

I am on the fence about the tapestry. It has too much black space, meaning the space between the spools. That might work out for being at the top of the piece, but it seems to me that the spools on the bottom of a shelf are the ones that are the most crowded and perhaps even squashed into less round shapes. They are bearing the weight of all the other spools. I realize I could turn the piece upside down when it’s finished, but I’m also not happy with my first two spool colors, which are in the lower left so they would be upper right if I turned it upside down. I love to blend colors on the bobbin, but now that I’ve done a bit of work on this piece, I think what’s called for is unabashedly blazen, full saturation color. It’s a very graphic piece, lots of circles and circles within circles, and I think the shapes are quite happy shapes….so it needs happy colors. I’m not crestfallen about undoing the weaving….I’m just sad that there is so little time when the waters are calm enough to work. It’s a shame to spend a perfect, calm day un-weaving rather than weaving. Oh well.

When all else fails, I bake!

Under Way

February 27, 2014 | Leave a Comment

Our winter in the Bahamas is well under way, and even our first guest, our younger son, Chris, has come and gone already. Bob and I were thrilled to see him right on the heels of his trip to Thailand. He showed us wonderful photos and videos and told us so many great tales. He met people from all over the world, mostly young people who are taking off even more time than he is.

We used our week together to show Chris some of our favorite cays in the Exumas, which naturally included Allen Cay with the wild iguanas, the Land and Sea Park at Warderick Wells, and Big Major’s Spot where the wild pigs swim out to you to beg as you dinghy in to shore. This year there are baby pigs, and they are adorable! The big pink Mama pig swam out to us and three little piglets waded into the water and cried for her to return!

The lovely beach at Hawk’s Bill Cay

Pandora at anchor in Warderick Wells….

We visited one new spot with Chris called Hawk’s Bill Cay. It is a less visited place with beautiful white beaches. We ended the week at Staniel Cay where Chris could get a flight back to Nassau. Chris and Bob snorkeled into Thunderball Grotto together, and then we had a farewell dinner at Staniel Cay Yacht Club. It was a lovely time, all in all.

We walked to the little airstrip on Staniel last year, but this was the first time we actually saw the flight procedure! The gate is an outdoor gazebo, and there is a woman who shows up about a half hour before take off to check people in for the flight on her clip board. That is the extent of security. The plane lands and she puts the passengers on board according to weight (using her judgment! No one had to ‘fess up!), while the pilot stores everyone’s baggage in the nose of the plane. Then all the onlookers are shooed off the rough limestone airstrip and the plane departs. We miss Chris terribly now. Hope we can get enough bandwidth at some point to skype with both Rob and Chris.

We’ve had quite a bit of excitement on this trip. We’ve seen big sharks at every cay we’ve visited. Last year we didn’t see sharks until we got south of Georgetown. Chris got some great footage of a big nurse shark right at Pandora’s stern. While nurse sharks are harmless, we have also seen some large lemon sharks this year. It makes us take stock pretty carefully before going for a swim!

Somehow a little gecko got on board with us for several days. He was living in the main head (nauticalese for bathroom). I’m certain we each took showers for days without knowing he was there, but once we did come face to face, he was traumatized by us, and I was terrified of him! Bob and Chris were tempted to let him stay. Bob seemed to think he could live off fruit flies! Luckily for me, he is now ashore in the Land and Sea Park, and I hope he is happier there!

Yesterday a US Coast Guard rescue helicopter showed up right in our little anchorage off of Staniel Cay. It did some fancy maneuvers for almost an hour around dusk. It was amazing to watch! We imagined the pilot to be about 24 years old, and he could hover that big beast in a tight spot right off our port. He lowered the helicopter until it was right over the water, throwing up a wide circle of spray. I’d love to know what they were doing and why they came to Staniel Cay.

There have been other excitements as well. A Canadian couple we met last year got into some trouble in Cuban waters last week. They ran aground on a reef off the northern coast of Cuba and were stuck pounding on this reef for over 24 hours before Cuban authorities came to help them. Luckily they were in contact with other boats and the US Coast Guard (who could not help them at that location). All ended well, but it must have been such a traumatic experience. This morning we heard that the Bahamian Coast Guard (BASRA) has discovered there are foreign boats that have not properly checked in to the Bahamas, so they are now conducting ‘board and search’ missions on random boats in harbors. We have all the proper documentation, but I sure hope we don’t get boarded!

It’s been a good couple of weeks for getting some other things under way as well. I will write about that shortly. I am paricularly happy to have had a couple of calm days to get my tapestry loom warped and even start weaving! I’m having a lot of fun with those circles! I thought I could do some weaving today, but we have strong westerly winds that are kicking up quite a rukus in this harbor. I think we will head out shortly for a short sail to Cambridge Cay and a calmer anchorage. Farewell Staniel!

We are in the Bahamas!

February 11, 2014 | 2 Comments

It was a long night making the crossing to the Bahamas. I’m very thankful that it was a LOT easier than last year, but there were still a couple of hours of boisterous wind and waves that I could have skipped. This is the dawn that greeted us after we’d been sailing on the banks for several hours.

This year we cleared in on a small cay in the Berries called Chub Cay. It doesn’t look at all like the Exumas, being much more lush….rather like the Abacos. Here is the little church at the main cross roads on the island.

And here is Pandora sitting at anchor while we visited the Chub Cay Club. Even on a second visit to these waters, I am stunned by how beautiful it is.

The water all around us is full of sea life: red starfish, ramoras, barricuda, sharks!….even little puffer fish. Here is a shark that was checking us out….I think he knew that Bob wanted to clean the hull of Pandora, and maybe he thought he might get lucky and snag a couple fingers or toes if he waited… (and there is nothing to get a sense of scale in this photo, so I’ll tell you this shark is about 8 feet long).

When Bob did clean the hull (and I stood on deck keeping watch for the sharks, with a big screw driver in my hand, ready to bang on the hull to give Bob a warning to get out of the water!), all the fish hung out all around him. The ramora stayed right by his side, and we’re thinking he was enjoying the little bits of stuff that Bob was scraping off the hull.

The second night we were here we saw the green flash!… and then there have been wonderful sunrises, sunsets, and even a rainbow and a water funnel.

Today we left the Berries and sailed for Nassau where we will meet Christopher in just a couple more days. While we wait I think I might take a look at the shops in Atlantis…. now there’s a thought! We are anchored right off some docks with a pretty restaurant called Luciano’s. Dinner there last night was quite memorable! We ate on the terrace, shown here, overlooking Atlantis across the harbor.

And I’m celebrating that I finished the first Oktoberfest sock! Go me! I know the photo is too dark. Sigh….it was getting late in the day. I am happy with the pattern. The barley stalks remind me of bubbles, and I love the frothy finish at the top! ….the color is quite reminiscent of a Blue Moon! I might not see one of those ’til I get home in May…

One More Thing…

February 11, 2014 | 1 Comment

This is the sun that set on my father’s remains on his first evening traveling the Gulf Stream.

May all the dolphins, turtles, and sailfish, and all the creatures of the warm Gulf Stream sing you home….

A Very Strange Post

February 6, 2014 | 3 Comments

This might be the strangest entry I’ll ever post here. Perhaps too much information….but there you go. I made a brief post almost three years ago that my father died very unexpectedly. He chose to be cremated, and he asked that his remains be released at sea. When he talked to me about this, long before it was on anyone’s mind that it could possibly become a reality, he suggested Long Island Sound. He sailed there most of his short time as a sailor. But during that short time when sailing was so important to him I knew that he longed for bigger and warmer waters.

At one point he and my mother bought property on the West coast of Florida, hoping to settle there and keep their boat there. That never came to pass. And at the time he passed away, he had no idea that Bob and I also had big plans to sail farther than our standard stomping grounds, from the Chesapeake to Maine. My father was never interested in Maine. He was a southern boy all the way through, and he never got used to living in the northeast.

So, over the past 2 1/2 years that he has resided on a shelf in my house….(I know, please don’t judge me!)…I have had an underlying knowledge that he would love to be set free in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. His remains could travel the world in a way he’d always dreamed of doing in life.

My father and I always had issues, and I’m disappointed that we never could find a common ground while he lived. At least in this I think I can make him happy. My biggest regret is that my sister and my kids, who all loved him, cannot be with us to experience the moment. I have told them all my best guess as to when I’ll be doing this…. it’s hard to be exact, even in the 21st century, when the plans involve sailing! At the specified time this afternoon they will send positive energy out for their dad and granddad and say prayers. It’s long overdue, and he deserves this.

“Parable of Immortality”

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight . . . that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .
” Here she comes! “

— Henry Van Dyke

Author name: ozweaver