Hi everyone!
We finally made our way to Georgetown & caught up with our Aussie friends Sarah, Hamish, & Jack & are really excited about it! We thought we’d never catch them since they left the states so far ahead of us. We’ve been having a blast & have finally got some real provisioning done with some actual vegetables & fresh fruit, so we are feeling good! It’s unbelievably hard to find real produce here! No one can grow it, because the ground is all coral & limestone & has no nutrients in it. It’s all low lying bushes & an occasional palm tree & sparse scraggly pine trees.
Georgetown is a world all in it’s own. It’s the hub for cruisers in the Bahamas. Some cruisers spend the whole season here alone visiting hardly any other islands. There are nets on the radio every morning announcing the events coming up & the activities offered for the day. We were told by a man in the coffee shop in Oriental North Carolina that Georgetown is like day camp for adults & he was correct! You can choose to do yoga on the beach at 9am, church on Sundays, volleyball, bridge games, Texas hold ‘em tournaments, trivial pursuit in the evening, valentines dances,
Races, cocktail hour on the beach, etc…… it’s so funny! I really do feel like I’m at camp! We have never done any of the activities, because we are so busy doing our own things, but every morning when the radio announcements go on you can hear it echo across the harbor like a loud speaker, because every single boat has it on & even if you don’t you can hear it. Everyone keeps their vhf on channel 68 & it’s really busy all day everyday. People here snoop on other people’s conversations & it’s actually really fun to do so sometimes. We have been known to do it to friends. When you call on it, it feels like your phone is being tapped though. You have to be really careful not to offend anyone, because everyone is listening to your conversation.
The whole group of us from Free @ last, Wind-borne, and Nauti Girl hiked across the island yesterday & the guys went on the hunt for some fish with their spears. They didn’t have too much luck, because the reef was relatively empty of good eating fish & the one big grouper they did see was out of season, so they couldn’t spear it. We all had fun though. There was an 8 foot black tip shark in the water with them towards the end. It was right next to Ben, but he was so concentrated on fishing that he never saw it!
We are heading into town again today to work on the internet for an hour or so, I’m writing this up in the Boat right now & we will paste it into the blog when we get over there. They charge for Internet by the hour here in Georgetown, so we are trying to write things up now to make it cheaper. We have tons & tons of photos to put on & will try to do as many as possible this morning!
After we wrote at Staniel Key last week we went to the island just above it called Big Majors Spot. We found Sarabande there again which was awesome & we also found the “wild” pigs of the island & had a blast with those! These pigs know you are going to feed them, so they swim out to your dinghy as you are coming in & open their mouths so you can toss food in! They get so excited & squeal & swim over each other to get closest to your boat! Skippy touched noses with the biggest one! He was so excited about them he was shaking! He wanted out of the boat really really bad, & we had to hold him down the entire time….Thaat’s why he is in all the pig pictures…we were trying to contain him & feed the pigs while keeping the dinghy from floating away, & also take pictures. Pretty hectic, but fun!
We also had a really nice fire on the beach & cooked dinner with Alicia & Brian. Their dog Louis & Skippy got to hang out. Skippy wasn’t really into sharing his prime space in front of the food cooking on the fire though & was a little snappy at poor Louis most of the night though. Louis didn’t seem to mind. He was thrilled to be on land!
Well, we hope to update you again fairly soon. Hope everything is going well at home & we look forward to hearing from you! We still miss you & can’t wait to see you when we get home!

-Kristen, Ben, & Skippy the wild pig hunter