Kristen here,

  So here we are in the Exuma Cays land and sea park. 

   We are at Shroud Cay at the moment. We are having a good time just taking it easy & making our way south. We got in contact with a few of our cruising friends in the last few days & hope to be meeting up with two of them very shortly. We are anchored next to our identical twin & its funny looking out over the anchorage & seeing what appears to be our boat, but with a white dodger rather than our green one. Pretty cool though. We are also anchored next to the very same Seawind 1160 catamaran that we have been pining over since we went on it at the Miami boat show last year. The owners (who we met at the show) saw us ogling their boat with binoculars as we passed it in an anchorage two days ago & called out to us as we dinghyed by yesterday. Small world. 

    We went through a really cool river that is just barely deep enough to maneuver through in some parts yesterday as well. It cuts through the entire island & winds around cutting through the awesome mangroves & coral. We saw lots of fish & even a small shark! We felt like we were on the Amazon or something. We came out on the other side of the island, beached the dink & went off in search of  “camp driftwood” which was said to be “something that you had to see to believe!” We searched high & low & came across the remains of what we believe was the camp. Not really very exciting…. Nothing exciting to see really….. We think it was cleaned up & disbanded recently. Pretty area though. 

   We are going to do a dive today. (I hope we don’t see any more sharks)  I have a serious fear of large fish… For some reason I still like to dive though. Ben bought me a dive knife so I will feel better, even though I’m sure I won’t need it. 

    I really doubt that I will be in the water at all during our stop at the next island on our list: Warderick wells. I’m so excited to see it, but in the guidebook we have it says that there are a few “residents” that we should be aware of, along with a 5’nurse shark making it’s home at the anchorage there is a huge barracuda named Bubba who circles boats looking for food & likes to follow swimmers around looking for a snack occasionally “gnashing his teeth” at people! (I’d also like to mention that the former caretaker of the next island down is said to have bled to death from a barracuda bite!!!) Also residing at the island are “Boo Boo” & “The harbormaster” two lemon sharks. “Keep an eye out for them” it says. “They are magnificent & great to take pictures of…but by all means stay out of the water if in doubt” Ummm, I certainly will. 

    So, the last time we updated you we were in Nassau. We headed out a day or two later after walking around town & heading over to check out Atlantis. Which is by far the coolest (& most expensive) hotel I’ve ever seen. We tied up at the dock & walked around the “village” which was full of quaint little shops, a Starbucks (which charged a dollar more per drink than the one in Nassau), & upscale Boutiques such as Cartier & Louis Vuitton. 

After finding our way through the large casino, we found our way through the maze of lush tropical plants, waterfalls, and wooden bridges to the aquarium. I loved the aquarium!!! We walked through the “underwater Mayan temple” with floor to ceiling windows showing us large sting rays, eagle rays, groupers, lion fish, lobsters, jellyfish, etc….We came out in the end near some impressive fountains with huge rolling marbles & headed up the stairs to some more expensive shops & wound through the maze to find ourselves outside again in another garden like setting under the “bridge suite” Very cool. 

  No one was swimming & the slides were empty, because it was really cold & windy, but it was still really cool! If we can get our camera to download onto the computer we will post pictures. The usb ports are working rather poorly right now. I’m afraid the laptop is heading downhill…. Ben did do a wonderful job installing a new keyboard though, so now we can type without the aid of a stick to poke into the holes that were once keys. I for one am elated!!!

   Life is really pretty good right now. We are finally starting to wind down. The last few days are the first since buying the boat that we have taken time off not to work on it all day. We are enjoying just being on it & sailing it island to island looking for the next cool thing to check out. Life has also gotten a little simpler & a lot cheaper since we have been catching our own food & gotten out of the cities & towns here! In Nassau groceries alone could break us! Small box of pop tarts $6.00, Milk $6.00, Ice $6.00 per bag, apples $1.20 each, small mushy potatoes $.75 each, bag of coffee $13.00, case of beer $50.00! It’s insane!! We came out of the grocery store with a head of cabbage, eggs, boxed milk, and tang! (The cheapest things I could get my hands on!) We went to the bar to use the internet while we were updating the blog last time, got a little distracted by the football game on TV, & without thinking ordered one appetizer to share & a couple drinks & came out with an $80.00 tab!!! We are really glad to be out of there & catching free food! We need to make up for spending all that money! We are putting ourselves on a pretty strict budget from here on out. (at least in the Bahamas anyway) Our friends Jan & Rich are way smarter than us. They sailed to Mexico & skipped the Bahamas, and therefore avoid the money trap! Very tempting!! I think the funniest part of Nassau was the local’s reaction to Skippy. Pretty much everyone was afraid of him, and had no idea what he was, but Ben did get an interesting offer to set him up with a nice female dog companion. We politely declined the offer.

   We are in a park right now though, so officially we are not allowed to fish for anything, so we will have to sail outside the park to get some when weather conditions are right. Skippy has picked up an interesting new hobby. Conch hunting!! Yes, conch. The big pink & yellow shells that make excellent horns and good fritters. We were wading in the water a few days ago at an island that I forgot to mention earlier that was really cool. There were tons of conch shells all over in the water. We were walking around about waist deep trying to find legal sized ones to keep & we were picking them up inspecting them, then placing them back in the water when Skippy decided to join in. He waded out, picked one up, brought it back to shore, and then started a little pile where he sat down & proceeded to chew on one to get the large snail inside!!! So funny!!! We didn’t let him actually chew through the shells to eat them, but he was well on his way to accomplishing that goal. Now when he spots a shell in the water he wades out & barks at it. Strange dog we have!

    He was also having a great time trying to intimidate the large iguanas that also inhabit this island. There are hundreds of them & over the years of tourists & cruisers feeding them they come out of the bushes at you & chase you down expecting food. Ben & I actually got chased up & down the beach by a particularly large specimen who was really feisty!! Ben had his sweater out in front of us like a bullfighter trying to distract it & block us from it, since we read that they do occasionally bite people & we were not into being those people! It was nice to have Skippy with us at this island, because all the iguanas except a really, really huge one who he had a stand off with were afraid of him, so they stayed away for the most part. They were fun to see though. It was especially funny to watch other cruisers arriving at the island for the first time & go running away from the bushes after the iguanas they were trying to take a picture of would suddenly take a leap towards them hoping for some food. Lots of squealing, running, & surprised looks! Good fun! 

    Well, I am going to go suit up for my dive now. Ben is getting antsy! Hope to hear from you all soon. We miss you!! Thanks again for reading & keeping up on us! We do miss you all & are thinking of everyone back home on the mainland a lot! 

Love,

Kristen, Ben & Skippy the great Conch, lizard, and Iguana hunter.

We also caught two tasty fish we are calling stripe on the way to the Exumas…  

We have also had steady 15 knot Easterly to North-easterly winds and sailing has been a dream!!! Nice broad reaches through turquoise waters…

Ben

It’s been a few days since we wrote the last entry above, but we haven’t had Internet access yet, so we will just keep this one running & add onto it until we can post it all at once. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one by the time it gets on the Internet. We are having more troubles with our computer (big surprise) it turns out the usb ports are pretty much shot & our Internet antenna is not connecting to it like it should be. We aren’t really sure what to do about it, but we can’t really get any contact with the outside world until we get this fixed. There really aren’t many options though. We are in the middle of nowhere after all. We will just keep adding to this blog until we can post it & try to keep you updated when we can.

    Anyhoo…

   We are still in the Exuma Land & Sea Park & by crazy coincidence literally nearly collided with our friends Brian & Alicia on Sarabande!! We were sailing outside the park trying to get some fish & our paths crossed just in front of each other. It was pretty cool & we got some pictures of each other sailing, so when we swap those pics we will post them for you! We all headed in to Warderick Wells. It’s the park’s headquarters & supposed to be a really cool place to check out. I’m looking forward to spending some time with our friends from the boat yard in Oriental. They have already been in the Bahamas for two months, because they made the jump out way up in North Carolina. 

   I think we may go check out a sunken ship today that is the same model as theirs, so that’s pretty sweet. I heard there is a nurse shark living in it, but luckily it is said to be slow & harmless. It’s those pesky lemon sharks & Bubba that we need to watch out for. I can’t believe I’m considering getting in the water here. I remember stating in the last blog that I would never consider it… Oh the power of peer pressure. 

   Thanks for being patient & not giving up on our blog just yet. 

  We will keep you as updated as possible.

     We may have some friends coming out to join us soon, which would be awesome!!! We are looking forward to seeing people from home again!!

Ok, so this may be the last entry for a while…. Our computer went online for a few minutes today & we got a few e-mails out, however it is no longer working, so we may be out of luck from here on out….. I will keep up on writing the blog on Microsoft word just in case I can hop on a computer every once in a while & download it. It’s looking like our computer is on it’s way out the door & we have no way to fix it. We will keep up on the spots though, so check in on that & check the blog to see if we have gotten online every once & a while. 

  I am downloading this on our zip drive & taking it over to Sarabande’s computer to download it there & put it online. They have been really amazing & let us hijack their computer for the day so we could make calls to service reps etc… to try & come up with some solutions to our issues. 

   We still miss you all & hope you are doing well back home. We will try our best to keep in touch. 

-Kristen

oh, P.S. 

  We did go dive down & check out the sunken ship in the North anchorage & we did not see any sharks luckily. It's weird, because it is the same boat as Brian & Alicia's. They took some pictures of it. It was really cool. I feel brave today..