What is next?

What is next? We ask ourselves this question ALL THE TIME. And the answer usually requires an accurate forecast and a few back-up plans, but we're talking about here is the BIG "what is next." 

When we started cruising full-time we knew it was only a matter of time until the younger crew mutinied. As we coast into the second half of this school year it's time to start figuring out what the next year will bring. We've already decided to bring the boat back to the U.S. in the spring and welcome our daughter back from France. We then have some work to do on the boat and some guests from France to host! Then what? I am at the "end of tour" point I'm used to...2+ years of doing the same thing was a luxury in my old line of work so I am programmed to expect a "next." Our original plan of cruising and travel was adjusted by COVID, and that's still a factor. The kids will both be in high school next year, so that's a factor. We have family, friends...those are factors.

We asked the kids for their input and they have unanimously chosen "normal" high school. Their second choice was a year of air/land travel. Me? I am not ready to leave the boat, but I'm simultaneously ready for something else or some more purpose. Frank? He'd be happy with an off-grid cabin in the woods!

So what's next? Give us your thoughts!

Chatting it over with one of my girlfriends.

~Jo, 1st Mate

Galliot Cay--A Little Gem!

New stop! Weather was in our favor this year, allowing us to make a stop at Galliot Cay. Even though it's right by a cut, there is a little anchorage here that is mostly out of the current. We shared this cute spot with one other boat for the night and it was lovely!

We decided the water was a little too cool for the crew's snorkeling comfort, so instead we took a nice dinghy ride around the cays at that cut, hiked up the hill on Galliot Cay (it's uninhabited), and ran out to the Ribbon Sandbar at low tide. It was a really sweet spot with a very nice beach on Galliot Cay!

Dinghy ride around the anchorage.

Lots of fun at the beautiful Ribbon Sandbar!

Hiking around Galliot Cay and a nice sunset from the boat!

This stop also gave us a chance to really monitor the tides. There aren't a bunch of tide stations so you have to use a blend of offset from Nassau and the next nearest tide station. This gets important for two reasons here...1--going through a cut when the wind and tide are running in opposite directions leads to a dangerous "rage" of steep, short-period waves, and 2--we have a deep draft for parts of the Bahamas and sometimes need high tide to get past certain points. We decided to try to go "bankside" from Galliot to Rudder Cut, using a full-moon tide to get us past skinny points on Musha Cay, but as we passed the inlet it looked ok out in the sound (wind and tide were both coming onto the bank) so we exited for the 4nm run. It was lumpy with 3-5' seas at 4sec period, but we had plenty of water under the keel! Maybe next time, Musha...maybe next time.

~Jo, 1st Mate

Black Point 3.0

We're back! Third time here, third version of the Black Point experience! You can relive our first two experiences at Black Point Settlement--A Perfect Mix of Quiet and Activity and Black Point 2.0.

This time weather kept us here for over a week, bouncing between the main anchorage and Little Bay to the south of the point a few times. There were very few boats for most of our time there, but we did manage to enjoy the usual treats--easy laundry with a view, easy trash, Scorpio's rum punch, Lorraine's good eats, Lorraine's mom's delicious bread, Dashamon's good eats, Aderly's grocery (fresh romaine and eggs!!!), and smiling faces. But we had a few standout experiences!

$36 in groceries, drinks at Scorpio's, and the best laundry view I've found as a cruiser.

While enjoying a few rum punches at Scorpio's a local noted that we had the same handheld VHF radio he had and asked if we could charge his. We took his radio, gave him a boat card, and a few days later (after a big blow) Jason swung by the boat to retrieve his radio and thanked us. It's so easy to just help each other down here!

Happy to help a neighbor!

We also had a nice walk/trash pick-up at the blow hole on a windy day, got to see lots of rainbows as rain squalls came through, collected a few nice conch, met up with friends for some successful lobster hunting, and hunkered down for a strong front passage with three of our friend boats. We only had one day where Trent got to hang out with other kids, but he had fun and it was nice to reconnect with the parents, too! 

A walk, a blow hole, collecting trash, and...rainbows!

Frank and Trent found conch!

I did well on our snorkeling/spearing outing with S/V Traveler and S/V Tangent!

Navigation note: we knew that we would have strong west winds as the front passed and there are very few places that actually have westerly protection in the Exuma Cays. Rather than crowd into one of those few places with several other boats, we opted to stay somewhere with very good holding and plenty of room to spread out. Black Point also allowed us to easily go "around the corner" to Little Bay for some more protection as winds went north of west. We had a few hours of strong winds and waves rolling in, but we held well and had plenty of sea room.

Lehe Paine, Tangent, Traveler, and Makae before the storm.

We also celebrated a big birthday for our Captain! Because a front came through on the night before/early morning of his birthday he got to stretch his festivities over two days as spoiled him with food and relaxation as much as we could!

HBD, Skipper!

Surf & Turf! We also made him a NC breakfast and lobster rolls on homemade buns.

Trent made the rum cake!

We are southbound again! If you are keeping track and are familiar with this area you may be wondering, "Did they stop in Staniel Cay?" Not this year! We decided that Black Point had what we needed and was what we were all feeling like right now. 

I took a long walk on the east side of Great Guana Cay to watch waves.

~Jo, 1st Mate

Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park Revisited

We lucked into good weather for a slow roll through the Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park (ECLSP) this year and it was such a treat! We revisited old favorites, stopped at two new spots, and met some new cruiser friends. The ECLSP was established in 1958 and covers 112,640 acres of land and sea in the central Exumas. It is managed by the Bahamas National Trust (basically their National Park Service) and is patrolled by park wardens and Royal Bahamian Defense Force officers. The park is a no-take zone and as such boasts some pretty phenomenal marine life. The park does charge nominal fees for mooring or anchoring within the boundaries, but for our vessel it's not much--$30 for a mooring or $20 to anchor. You may be wondering why we would ever take a mooring then! Well, in some spots there just isn't any anchoring space or anchoring allowed so moorings are the only option. Moorings are also used in areas where the bottom ecology is fragile and anchoring would damage the environment. So if there are moorings, we use them as we feel it's a relatively small price to pay. Fees can be paid online (IF you can get cell signal!), by cash via pay boxes on various cays, or via cash to the Warden who comes around via boat. The park doesn't have fuel, water, trash service, or stores (except for the small gift shop at the headquarters on Warderick Wells Cay), so spending time there requires one to be self-sufficient and well-provisioned. But it does have an extensive network of trails on several cays, pristine beaches, and glorious reefs! Our journey this year took us to...

Shroud Cay

A dinghy ride through a mangrove creek, accompanied by turtles and baby nurse sharks, lands you at a powdery soft beach on the eastern shore. We grabbed a mooring just outside of a little lagoon that doesn't get many visitors (making it one of my favorite spots there!). The north entrance to the creek is pretty deep and large yacht tenders can get in (and set up their music and tents, unfortunately), but the southern path out is so shallow that high tide is helpful! There is also a southern mangrove path on the island that doesn't allow motorized vessels...it's on my "to do" list for a future visit!

Shroud Cay is a fabulous place to enjoy those "Exuma Blues!"

Hawksbill Cay

This was a new stop for us this year! We tried to edge our way into the northern moorings, but needed about another foot of water to make it work so we hit the southern moorings instead. Reviews noted uncomfortable surge there, but conditions were good and we had a very cozy night! We were also the only ones there until late in the afternoon. We took a dinghy ride to a northern cove and hiked up to the Russell Ruins, home to Loyalist settlers in 1785. From there we hiked out the eastern beach. While it was littered with plastic trash as it is a remote windward beach, it was beautiful. Trent and I swam while Frank explored the shoreline and found us a great piece of driftwood for our boat sign (more on that at the next stop!). On the way back to the boat we tucked into a mangrove lagoon right by our mooring. It was beautiful! And the entrance framed our boat perfectly. Conditions were so nice that I swam from the lagoon back out to the boat. While several tour boats stopped at the beaches near the mooring fields, it wasn't crazy and they were all gone well before sunset. Really, really enjoyed this new stop!

Hawksbill Cay was so beautiful and peaceful!

Warderick Wells Cay (ECLSP Headquarters)

While at Hawksbill we spoke to the Warden who told us all the Warderick Wells moorings were booked up until after the new year. We still headed that way on New Year's Eve and radioed the office to try our luck and we were lucky! Not only was one available, but several were and we were assigned the only mooring we've ever been on there, good 'ole number 8! As we entered there was tons of people traffic in the narrow channel! Paddleboarders, swimmers, snorkelers...it's a very tight channel with strong current so it was a little exciting for a few minutes, but we finally made it to our mooring and tied up with ease. Almost immediately I swam over to the shore because it is so close at low tide! We spent two nights here which allowed us to meet several new cruiser friends, reconnect with a crew we had met briefly in Great Harbour Cay, celebrate NYE on the beach with friends (and tons of biting bugs!), go snorkeling a few times, and take a few hikes around the island. We were the first folks to hike Boo Boo Hill in 2022 and left our new boat sign there, then I managed to get Frank to hike up to watch the sun rise the next day. It's really a great spot to enjoy the land and the sea!

Warderick Wells Cay is always a hit with our crew. So much to do and it's inevitable that you'll meet other cruisers in the mooring field! We loved ringing in the new year with new friends!

Hog Cay/Pirate's Lair

This was another new stop for us and it very quickly went towards the top of our "favorite places in ECLSP" and "favorite places in the Bahamas" lists. With four moorings on the southeast end of Warderwick Wells between WW and Hog Cay, the Pirate's Lair is by design peaceful. It can also be a bear to get into if conditions aren't right. While it is well protected, the current rips through so wind, swell, and current direction all need to be considered when making the approach. Knowing there are limited moorings we went there with time to execute a backup plan if it was full. Lucky for us, it was completely empty as we entered and I immediately felt like I was in "Treasure Island!" We grabbed a mooring, only to realize it was the "big boat (>100')" mooring, so we cast off and moved in further. A little later we were joined by friends on S/V Echo. It was just the two of us for a night, just us and M/Y Magical Days for another night, and on the final night, we were alone. There are seemingly endless trails (thick with poison wood!) on the south end of Warderick Wells Cay that you can easily get to with a one-minute dinghy ride that will take you to numerous beaches, the Pirate's Lair, and plantation ruins if you really are up for a long hike. And you can hike the spine of Hog Cay, too...check out Active Captain for a fun bit of treasure while you're here! There is a small yet beautiful reef right along the shore of WW and just outside of that is a fantastic field of stromatolites (we only have one crew member that is always in awe of stromatolites, but that's ok!). Because of the stromatolites you really can't anchor in this area--if it's full, move along! I didn't want to leave...everything about this place just worked for me. I could swim at slack tide, hike and hit the beach, see my reef fishy friends, and ogle stromatolites to my heart's content. I really hope the weather cooperates the next time we are passing through!

Pirate's Lair was AMAZING! Can't wait to return!

Cambridge Cay

This was an old favorite for us from our first year of cruising. From the moorings at Cambridge Cay you can do a little hiking and hit Rocky Dundas, the Sea Aquarium, a sunken plane, Tom's Elkhorn Garden, and Rachel's Bubblebath via dinghy. The elk horn coral were in pretty rough shape compared to our last visit, and we skipped the bubblebath because conditions were so calm it wouldn't have been "bubbling," but otherwise enjoyed revisiting some spots. The vibe was different this year...there was some generator/noise drama between two boats...but we still like it here. I think after the serenity of Pirate's Lair it was tough to compete! We also reconnected with some boats we'd met along the way and had some friends over for dinner as their stove was awaiting parts and I was happy to cook up a huge vat of curry for some fellow vegetarians! They spoiled us with gifts and wine in return, but the real treat was sharing the time and stories with them. It's one of the best parts of this lifestyle!

We love the snorkeling sites around Cambridge Cay (and the cell connectivity to catch up on weather reports!).

While there are still more sites we want to get to in the park someday, we decided to move along and continue our journey south. It was definitely our best visit to the park yet!

Trail and site maps are still available at the headquarters on Warderick Wells Cay.

For videos from our time in ECLSP head over to my Instagram account, @mariner99.

~Jo, 1st Mate

Let's talk CONCH

We have mentioned it before and talked about hunting for conch, but what the heck is it and how do we eat it? 

The conch we are after in the Bahamas are Queen Conch, "Stombus gigas," a species of edible sea snail with beautiful shells. We tend to find them near seagrass beds in pretty shallow water (less than 20') on the banks. We aren't looking for pretty pink shells out there, but rather shells with a bit of growth on them. But what is the most important thing we are looking for? Shells with a well-formed flaring lip are the only ones that are legal for harvest as these are "mature" conch. It doesn't necessarily matter if the shell is big as long as the lip is well-formed with a clear flare. That may sound a little vague, but once you start looking at a lot of conch it gets pretty easy to decide if a conch is adolescent or mature. Conch have been overfished in recent years so we are also very conscious about only collecting what we will eat right now--we don't collect a ton and freeze them. 

A mature Queen Conch

Getting them is as easy as picking them up! No special gear needed! In face, it's actually illegal to get the conch using SCUBA gear. Getting them out of the shell is the slightly harder part, but with practice it gets easier. Frank is actually pretty darn fast with extracting them and cleaning them now and happily shows fellow cruisers how it's done. The tools--a rock hammer/hammer/hatchet, a butter knife, and a sharp knife. The hammer (claw end if it's a regular hammer) is used to make a hole between the 2nd and 3rd row of spires from the top of the shell. Then you slide the butter knife into the hole, scraping down the inner wall of the shell to separate the muscle from the shell. After that, you just grab the conch's foot and yank it out! Ok, there's a bit of suction to overcome so it's not quite that easy, but it's not too hard! Then you use the sharp knife to take off the head, guts, foot...anything that's not white meat. And ta-da, you're ready to eat conch!

Collecting conch on a shallow skin dive.

Cleaning the conch! The boys have the extraction process well in hand. The bottom pic is the conch bodies before they are cleaned.

But how does one eat conch? The most popular preparations for our crew are conch fritters, conch salad, and cracked conch. I haven't made conch fritters, but that's just because I'm not a huge fan of deep frying anything so I save those for when we are out to eat on one of the islands. But I do make conch salad and cracked conch!

Conch salad is basically conch ceviche. Our dear friend Ronnie Brown, owner of Brown's Garden on Great Harbour Cay, was happy to share his preparation with us! The basic conch salad is conch, salt, white onion, green bell pepper, tomatoes, sour orange, lime, and a bit of goat pepper for some heat. Basically the conch and veggies get diced, it all gets salted and juiced, and after a minute or two your lunch is ready! It's bright, tasty, and healthy! Sometimes we don't have all the ingredients and have to go with something a little simpler, like scorch conch. Scorch conch is prepared with bigger pieces of conch (so the end result is a little chewier), onion, citrus juice, salt, and goat pepper if you're feeling spicy (go for it!). Simple and delicious!

Simple ingredients make a delightful salad! When we don't have goat pepper on hand, I use a few shakes of a Bahamian hot sauce (made with goat peppers) to spice it up.

Our youngest crew member isn't a huge conch salad fan so I'll also make cracked conch every now and then. Cracked conch is basically fried conch. The meat is tenderized a lot with a meat mallet, then breaded and fried. I use an egg dredge and a panko breading seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then just pan fry for a few minutes. I like to serve it with a dipping sauce of some sort (horseradish, mayo, ketchup, black pepper is good), too.

Tenderized conch gets dredged in egg and bread crumbs before getting fried to a golden brown.

So that's a little about one of our favorite Bahamian foods...hope you consider giving it a try!

~Jo, 1st Mate