sailing – Page 17

Slow Time

January 30, 2013 | 2 Comments

Yesterday we had an amazing experience with John and Wendy from Windermere since they offered to take us to their favorite snorkeling and shelling sites near Staniel Cay. I am a reluctant snorkeler, so Wendy’s encouragement was absolutely wonderful!

Bob took videos….

Here’s some of my loot!

And an assortment of other beauties. The top far right is a small conch. I wish I had photographed the inside which is a deep coral. The ones in the middle and bottom that are long and narrow with bands of coral are called “sunrise tellins.” I have quite a few more that I did not photograph yet, including a large conch which I hope will become our sunset bugle. My favorite shells are almost too tiny to see and are bright green! They are called “emerald nerites.” I hope I find more along the way.

This is today. I’m using skype to call our younger son Chris! Don’t I look happy? We had to scream in order to barely hear each other.

I’m sitting outside Lorraine’s internet cafe on Black Point Cay.

A Lovely Day in Cocoa

December 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment

I continue to marvel at how lovely the Christmas season can be in the tropics! Bob and I took a walk together through the more historic residential area of Cocoa, the major style being bungalow from the early 20th century…..my favorite!

Nice modern addition to this classic bungalow, although I do wonder how hot that glass enclosure gets in the summer!

There were also quite a few more traditional looking Spanish inspired houses. Most of these houses had historic plaques.

Palm trees and Christmas decorations….it does work!

I wonder if this lovely shade of blue was chosen to match the flowering vine on their arbor.

Christmas with orange trees, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and lots of little lizards skittering across our path wherever we walked!

I capped off the day by visiting Knit and Stitch again to sit with the other knitters and work on my Ann Jacket. What a lovely spot! On top of being in a community of knitters, I learned that one of the women who works in the shop, Barbara, is an avid weaver and reps Schacht products for the store. One of the other shop women, Ann, seems to have done some weaving herself, so I felt that I had found some wonderful connections here. Thank you!

As if this wasn’t enough of a perfect day, we spent the evening on board Meltemi (a Catalina 42′) with Jeff and Susan, while they taught us a popular Bahamian cruisers’ domino game called “Mexican Train.” (I shudder at how un-PC this name is!) I never knew there are dominoes with 12 spots on them! I was terrible at understanding all the little dots on these tiles!

Today we are headed to Melbourne….not Australia. Before this trip I didn’t know there was a Melbourne in Florida. It seems that wherever the English went they used place names from home. Makes for a very confusing world!

Day 86, December 5: Cocoa to Melbourne

Holiday Lights

November 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment

We are in St. Augustine, Florida now, right as the holiday lights have been turned on throughout the city. Now I have to admit it’s beginning to feel a lot like…

It turns out that National Geographic made a list of the 10 best places in the world to see holiday lights, and St. Augustine is on the list. It’s in great company with beautiful places like Vienna, Brussels, Madrid, Kobe, Gothenburg (Sweden). In fact there are only two locations in the US on the list, and the other is not New York!

So, I feel lucky to be here. We walked the beautiful streets for a while last night and are looking forward to some great sight seeing today. The Flagler Museum supposedly has more Tiffany glass than any other building in the US. I’m looking forward to seeing that!

Tonight we plan to have dinner at a little French restaurant called Bistro de Leon.

What a difference a little sunshine can make. I’m looking forward to exploring this beautiful city, the oldest settled city in the US (founded in 1565, in fact). Generations of city planners have worked hard to keep the charm of the original Spanish settlement, and it’s lovely!

Beach Combing on Black Friday

November 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment

I couldn’t help thinking about all the folks who got up in the predawn today to hit the malls and start their Christmas shopping. Black Friday has become quite the American tradition to kick off the holiday season….and not a good one.

It doesn’t seem like it’s time to hang the wreath and put candles in the window down here. We left St. Marys for a short motor over to Cumberland Island which has the National Seashore. To get to the ocean-side beach we walked through a forest of live oak, Spanish moss, and palmetto that could have been Middle Earth.

After getting out of the forest you walk a bit further on a boardwalk above the dunes to get to the ocean.

The forest transitions into beach along the way…

And then there are miles of silky pearl colored sand to walk along, and millions of shells rolling to and fro in the surf. I picked up a lot of shells. The whelks and clams are so different from what I see in New England! I even found a lovely angel wing….although only one. I’m imagining a Christmas wreath made from these shells, a wreath covered in Spanish moss and shells.

We had heard that Cumberland Island is known for fossilized shark teeth. They come out of the river when the channel for the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) is dredged. The dredged debris is dumped in large quantities in a certain area on the island. Bob was on a mission for a shark tooth! He even found a sieve to help him in his search.

He was hoping to find one a little bigger these!…although he could wear these as earrings. I keep wondering if he’ll pierce his ear/s now that he’s a full time sailor.

Another exciting sight on Cumberland Island are wild horses. We saw a mare and two foals along our walk. They are pretty used to people so they are easy to photograph. They don’t let you get close enough to touch though!

And as if a fantasy forest of live oak and palmettos, inhabited by wild horses, and a
17-mile long beach isn’t enough, the final highlight of Cumberland Island is the ruins of a Gilded Age house that was the winter retreat of the Carnegie family.

This was the first day in about a month that we enjoyed clear skies and warm sun, so we stayed ashore almost all day to soak up as much as we could!

We were back on board in time for sunset and a lovely dinner with new friends who spent the day with us at the seashore.

It hardly felt like opening day of the Christmas shopping season…

A Sailor’s Thanksgiving

November 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Like American ex-pats the world over, sailors also get together to celebrate our Thanksgiving tradition.

St. Marys, Georgia, is well known for bringing sailors together for a Thanksgiving festival. The local Riverview Hotel opens its dining room to hundreds of cruisers, and locals volunteer to roast enough turkeys and hams to feed this army of transients.

Hotel owners Jerry and Gayla Brandon started our morning off with a bang by mixing up a large cooler of Bloody Marys while Charlie Jacobs delivered them by dinghy to every boat in the harbor! I’ve never had a drink at 8.30 am, but I do highly recommend it!

The sailors arrive at the hotel from late morning through noon bearing all the side dishes and desserts. Three long tables are set up in the hotel lobby to hold all the platters of food.

It almost felt like family, and it was a wonderful gathering. Everyone was a bit homesick for loved ones, but we were a rag tag family to each other… and that was okay!

Missing my family and friends quite a bit this weekend….but I’m also thankful for the generosity of St. Marys’ community and the newly made connections to very friendly cruisers.

I did wear my sleeve-less “Ann Jacket.” And at the end of the day I picked up stitches and started the first sleeve.