Author: equinoxgardens@gmail.com

As fate would have it, we are settled into the ‘Captain’s Quarters’ (aka living room/lounge) at our marina here in Stuart and I am tucking into my first 1000 piece puzzle after a two week drought. (Nerd alert- I get it, but I do long for a boat large enough to have a puzzle going to continue my ‘off-season’ hobby!) We spent the day at the pool here, and we went home for dinner only to return for the amenities. Violet is helping me with the puzzle and Lily is knitting while Andy watches a game on the TV in here.. my kind of Sunday.

We left Indiantown on Friday and had a successful Day One on the Okeechobee Waterway, followed by a night at the St. Lucie Lock Campground, just west of the lock itself. They have six slips there alongside the campground, and a boat ramp as well, so Saturday morning proved to be most entertaining and eardrum shattering as the cigarette boats launched one at a time over the course of an hour. At one point the waterway was roiling with little boats, large outboards and noise noise NOISE. I got a hint of the Grinch’s plight, though I didn’t dare steal any of their stuff to show my true feelings. Instead we just watched from the cockpit, dumbfounded as they roared away down the waterway toward Lake Okeechobee, likely scaring any fish and alligators out of their shorts on their way.

We made our way (quietly!) through the Lock and into Stuart, where our favored spot was packed and offered no mooring for us. We moved on to a nearby marina, and the heated pool and now its ‘Captain’s Lounge’ have proven pretty invaluable for a good weekend’s play while we wait for this front to pass.

Lily and I went for a great walk today after having what I would consider the perfect Sunday morning- waking early to rain pounding the boat, only to fall back asleep as cozy as can be, only to wake again 30 minutes later and repeat the cycle. I’ve always said that I was a cat in my former life due in part to my inclination to small cozy spots, but I was clearly a cat who really liked hearing the rainfall as I slept. Plus, free wash down! (Minus: deck fittings that leak in the galley!)

After our exploration of downtown Stuart and the Sunday Green Market, we came back to the boat for round two of pruning the kids in the pool. They swam for almost 5 hours, which seems insane, especially factoring in that they’re still awake after all of that.

Back to the puzzle! It might be a long night.

Indiantown Marina has proven to be a magical realm: we pulled in earlier this week with two children who had perfected the mantra of “I’ll drop my things right where I’m finished with them, thank you very much. In the middle of the hallway? Eh, it won’t bother me.”. A day into our time here, and the second most-asked question I’ve received is “What can I do to help?”. (The number one non-question that ultimately ends in a silent-but-assumed question will of course forever be “I’m hungry..” (What are you going to feed me?))

At first I was so shocked I thought I was on camera, part of the new movie, but as the question persisted I warmed up to the idea of… child labor. SO, so great, child labor. And free! (But I should note that I’m preeetty sure you should only feel that way if it’s involving your own kids.) They have helped wash the boat, inventory the med kit, fold laundry, DO the laundry, put away provisions, make dumpster runs every time I ask without complaint, stow their things and tidy their cabin, and Lily’s assistance on the last major grocery shop today was invaluable. Kids! Not just for feeding anymore!

I’m just hoping that whatever crazy pact they must have made with each other covers at least the next ten years, and doesn’t end with a practical joke played on their parents. Even still, it’d probably be worth it.

 

We’re toying with the idea of leaving the marina tomorrow, though we still have a fairly hefty list to accomplish before we shove off. It would be nice to clear this first ‘obstacle’ and leave the nest. Having the car and the option to make ‘just one more’ run to West Marine or Publix is hard to pull away from, but I’m ready to get into clear water!

Meanwhile, Alex has lent the kids his hover board to use, so while we figure it all out they are slowly ramping up their own excitement levels. (And ramping down number of knee skin cells.)

Time will tell, and if we can get moving early I’ll report on our next locale soon!

Arrival! Launch! Exhaustion!

We arrived at the boatyard at 9am on Monday, and a mere thirty hours after our initial greeting, we splashed down yesterday afternoon.  I’ve  never seen anyone sand and bottom paint a boat as fast as Andy did, which is good, since it left him more time to prep everything while I wafted uselessly between car bins and bags and piles left stored onboard. (I also cleaned a few things.)

The boat was in great shape – as clean as we’ve see it upon return – and both the interior detail (moi) and the exterior cleaning (Andy and sort-of Lily) went swiftly, without any major critter evictions. (One anole was kicked out from under the forward hatch, but he didn’t put up a fight.) We ticked down our to-do list as the days went on: we hoisted the dinghy off of the bow, cleaned it, and put back in its winter ‘garage’ on the davits, cushions were put back together (a task which I greatly underestimated the time and strength, both mental and physical – you’re saints for doing it in year’s past without complaint, Andy and then Steve!), shopping lists were made, systems were checked, shaft zinc replaced, and days’ tasks were laid out. It’s amazing how much easier it is to stick to a job and complete it now that the kids are old enough to make their way around the yard without our constant attention.

With the Ruach kids (and Susanne’s gracious facilitation) the kids had lemonade stands both Monday and Tuesday, so our efforts onboard were even rewarded with lemonade delivery (for the family discount of 50 cents a cup). The kids roam the boatyard like a foursome of scraggly Eloises. They peruse the free table a few times a day for any potential treasures, check in with Jessie and Alex (the yard workers who run the travel lift and move boats) to see about area of assistance and to get the lemonade sales going, pop into the office for popsicles, purchased with their newly pocketed lemonade cash, and generally scamper and skibble around like the band of exploratory latchkey kids that they are. It’s a pretty great scene for everyone involved, if I do say so myself. They’re imaginative (they’ve already started filming their second annual movie), they’re active, reports are that they’re polite (but do I really believe this?!), and they’re back together again. Good stuff.

We’re headed back to Indiantown as I type, after three nights of staying in Stuart while we worked onboard. We only meant to stay two, but we forgot to bug bomb (a necessary evil despite no real visible problems) the boat on Monday night, which meant that it happened last night instead, and today is the day that will have us unpacking the car, finally. (I didn’t want to stow our belongings onboard to have them exposed to the ‘bomb’ before now.) I’m ready to drive around without things packed around my legs!

It also means today is the day that we organize the storage under the berths in order to make them up for sleeping tonight, and if time, getting a jump on provisioning. I’ll enjoy one of my favorite stretches of Floridian driving (the last ten miles north of Indiantown coming from Stuart) to mentally prepare- it’s going to be a long one!

An update from the road:

-Lily swam like the champ she is during her meet yesterday!

-It’s been precipitating since yesterday around 7 (snow last night, though thankfully not sticking to the treated roads), and now plenty of rain here in NC.

-We went down the DelMarVa peninsula to stay as far east as possible last night (SALVio storm navigation in full effect), and the trip over/through the Chesapeake Bridge/Tunnel prompted some interesting research. $200m to build it in 1964- what a bargain for a 17 mile, two-canal span!

-We ate leftover licorice for first breakfast.

-Second breakfast was our traditional Waffle House stop, where I had approximately $8 worth of pecans in my $2 waffle. The server called Andy ‘Honey Buns’, which increased the value of our meal even more.

-Haircuts were planned for all in Stuart, but Violet’s has moved from want to need in short order, after car and bed thrashing sans easily accessible hairbrush brought her resident hair rats home.

-Stuart tonight, Chickadee tomorrow!

After a whirlwind of weeks that included birthdays, holidays, houseguests, mini trips, basketball games, swim meets, piano lessons, art classes and work projects and deadlines, we find ourselves once again crammed in the car heading southbound!

While the temperature reads 8 degrees at the moment, I can’t say that I’m sad to be heading somewhere with a lot more degrees in the near future. While the snow is beautiful and all of us love playing in it, you know what else is nice? Warm sand. And face skin that doesn’t hurt on windy walks. (I will miss my brown walking companion, however. The boat isn’t quite big enough for our Olive, so she’s luxuriating in her winter home with her winter family.)

Andy and I are semi-mute on this first leg, trying to process what we’ve likely forgotten and the subsequent ramifications, and also a slow unfurling of mental lists of tasks left to do both remotely for work, and physically on Chickadee in a few short days. When we’ve cleared the state line and have a bit of distance under our belt I’ll grab a pad and become our scribe, putting ideas to paper to formulate the best plan of attack for our work upon arrival.

This is the first year where Andy didn’t go down ahead of time to do major projects on the boat, and while that had some cost savings for us, it increases the work load and stress level to know that the magic ‘boat put together fairy’ isn’t going to have the dodger up, large items stored and dealt with, the cushions wrangled back into their very complicated slip covers and the general time-consuming drudgery of waking our sleeping girl up.

First stop for us is only a ‘hop’ down the road; we’ll stay in Portland tonight so that Lily can swim in a meet tomorrow morning nearby.  We’ll then pack Torpedo Allen into the car and point our nose to Indiantown. Here’s to hoping we make it to the hotel’s free happy hour in time!

 

Not that I should be complaining about the South Carolinian temperature when our home contingent is still shoveling out from the foot of snow they got two days ago, but walking into a hotel last night in flip flops and shorts and waking up to 36 degrees was a cold slap in the face that we aren’t quite ready for. As we wrenched jeans on for the first time with some mild discomfort, Andy and I got this gem stuck in our heads, so you’re all welcome for that. It sure is a hard transition after wearing skirts with elastic waistbands for two months. Ah well, somehow we’ll survive, but you can now picture the survival soundtrack of the day: “..got my tight paa-aants on!”

We left Indiantown on Tuesday after a whirlwind morning and early afternoon of hauling, putting Chickadee to bed, and packing the car. We’ve honed a lot of our processes, but it’s still a lot of semi-depressing grunt work while trying to keep the kids entertained. Thankfully, they’re pretty good at finding things to do, including creating new vehicles out of the scooters borrowed from Ruach’s car:

After a little weeping on the way out, we drove west to Naples to visit Andy’s sister and her horse Torry, the star of the Naples show in the eyes of the girls. We visited, got some very necessary hair cuts, and had an afternoon ride. Violet’s face was stuck in the best permagrin for her time on Torry; she could barely talk she was so excited to be up there. Lily has had a bit more experience and reacquainted herself with her riding confidence quickly, all the while Torry dutifully plodded around, wishing for dinner. (I was doing much the same.)

As Andy and I are the tortoises to Lily and Violet’s hares for the trip north, our slow northward movement is only tolerable for the girls if we pepper it with excitement. (Lily starts most sentences since we’ve been in the car with “I cannot wait to get to Maine.”.) Plan #1 was a visit to see Winter, the Dolphin Tale-famous dolphin at her home at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. (The movie is about her story of rescue and subsequent rehab after losing her tail to a crab pot line’s tight wrap. Release wasn’t an option since she was so young when she was found, so Clearwater is her forever home.) It was SUCH a great stop; not only does paying an entrance fee to a rescue and rehab center feel much better than that to a zoo or aquarium, but  we really were all a bit starstruck in seeing Winter herself. Who knew? Watching these [often] cheesy movies with the girls does hit the important feels!

The girls also had the opportunity to feed a resident river otter. Who doesn’t want to feed a river otter?! (Hmm..)

We spent the afternoon on Clearwater beach, our last bit of sand for a long while. To ensure that they were maximizing the sand to hair exposure rating, Lily and Violet spent much of their time rolling in it. Lily’s thick curly hair is a natural habitat for full fledged dunes, and one of her favorite past times on the boat (and for the subsequent weeks that follow) is to scratch sand out of her scalp and watch me roll my eyes in disgust. To boost her ‘talent’, one of her friends wrote her a note that ask her to bring some Bahamian sand home, and followed up to point out that she could transport in her hair. Nice toilette, kid.

 

Future plans include a brief stopover in Annapolis, and then a visit with cousins in Baltimore. Slowly we go.

As our tans fade and our layers increase, the end is near. Anxieties from home responsibilities creep in and out with the knowledge that a lot will be piled onto our plates when we walk through the door, but lessened too with the comfort of an easier framework of land-based tasks. Simpler yet less simple all at the same time. The stabilizing mental image I give myself is always a seed; our wonderfully condensed, concentrated form of life onboard is slowly unfurled and subsequently intertwined with the necessary roots and branches that fill out the spaces of our Southwest Harbor lives. One begets the next, and we are thanking our lucky stars to be living in this loop.

It’s been a productive few days of decommissioning, schooling, and maximizing our last minutes in the warm sunshine.

From Peanut Island we steamed north a few miles to North Palm Beach, where we tucked into a marina for our initial days of desalting the boat and its parts. Our considerations for this stopover are heavy on the need for laundry facilities and a pool, so that I can pretend to help by throwing a few things in the wash before I spend the day at said pool entertaining the girls. Last year we found a great place to do so in Stuart, but Irma’s fury wiped out their transient slips, so our pool options were further south this time around.

The North Palm Beach Marina is welcoming, clean, and gives renters rights at the nearby NPB Country Club, complete with an Olympic-sized pool. As it’s just off the waterway, we were also able to dinghy to markets, waterside cafes and to nearby anchorages to look at other boats, one of our favorite past times.

Three nights there and we significantly upped our Palm Beach catalog of knowledge (including finding a great breakfast spot AND a yummy French bakery), saw two movies in a swank cineplex, toodled around a Whole Foods for the first time in ages, and spent some serious hours at the pool. (Andy also soaked lines, sprayed off all bits and pieces that have been salt-saturated for the past two months, and washed and stowed the mainsail. The girls were none-too-pleased to have their boom nest deconstructed, but they swam their sorrows away at the pool.)

After a peaceful day on the waterway (not too many boats and wakes, and we caught all but one bridge opening in time- a miracle!) we anchored in Peck Lake for our last non-boatyard night aboard. From the anchorage  only 100 yards from the eastern shore, the waves crashing sounded like a freight train. The crazy thing is that there wasn’t any wind- it was a residual sea from the intensive northerly storm that our Maine island had just been hit with. We walked the beach, got knocked over by waves, and had our last sand experience of the cruise. (The term ‘sand experience’ likely gives Andy the heebie jeebies, given his sand-on-boat loathing. Plenty was stowed away in our suits and towels despite attempts to clean off, so as our last time this year, we sure ended with a winner!)

Almost to Indiantown, where we’ll unpack the car and unpack the boat so that we can repack the car and repack the boat (maddening good times!) before hauling tomorrow morning. So much to do, and such a wonderful time’s ending to mourn. The nature of the process makes it progressively less sad as we methodically pack the family cozy nest of Chickadee into their summer storage spots, and make the boat less homey and our car more so at the same time. The car means one last long road trip before the kids are released to the friendships they’ve missed, and closing in our our pets and friends and family that we’ve missed. But, the car is still a car and not the boat that gives our family so much, so we’ll take these last few hours on the Okeechobee to enjoy our dear vessel with much gratitude.

After a day’s journey across the banks and an evening and morning spent crossing the Gulf Stream, we dropped anchor here in West Palm yesterday around noon. We sailed for much of the day and evening on the bank, which was a nice respite from the louder option of motor sailing, and when the wind shifted behind us and dropped, we began the motorsail across. The swells were large in the stream, but spaced out enough to be comfortable, and it was pretty uneventful all around. More bracelets were made, plenty of food was eaten, and Violet continued her Harry Potter series movie obsession.

The changes in three years are pretty remarkable. Lily, who originally hated heeling, doesn’t give any boat motion a second thought anymore (even within our first year). Her latest concern has been the actual crossing of the Gulf Stream, not for the factors that Andy and I take into place (jockeying with ships’ courses, current offsets, etc.), but because it’s too deep for her ten year old sensibilities. Having spent so much time sailing in 20 feet or less, the idea of ‘dropping off’ into the thousands is jarring to her. The good news is that she slept for the ‘drop off’, so that too was forgotten. These two little ladies have logged more off-shore hours in the past three years than I had until I was twenty, which is so awesome to me. They’re old hats now, and know the routines as well as we do; it seems to have firmly seeped into their bloodstreams. (This is clear too with their talks of their adulthood and what type of boat they’ll sail and where. (Lily also wants a farm, so I’m curious to see how these two manage one another..) I love these daydreams of theirs; I hope they have a stateroom for their aged parents to visit.)

Upon arrival we checked into customs and then decided to stay put for a night to plan our next steps and to recharge. Nearby Peanut Island was hopping with day-trippers, kayakers and paddlers, and we dinghied in toward the end of its chaos to enjoy the beach and do some people-watching while our brains attempted to acclimate to the culture shock. In the past months our daily outings showcased maybe twenty boats in the course of a day, sometimes fewer if we were somewhere more remote. Here, thousands. Hundreds docked, more moored, anchored, boats whizzing by on the Intercoastal, ships docking at the nearby port, pilot boats silently guiding, cruise ships loading… boats, people, activity, noise, boats,boats, everywhere. Icing on the cake was the funny but sad realization that for weeks we’d been enjoying intense sunsets over the horizon; last night it was over a power plant.

After the sun set Lily learned about halyards, and how, if you tie Puppy to one, you need to continue it down to the deck so that you can retrieve Puppy later. (She then learned about a lassoing technique to force the line down, and one more use of a gaff.) Once this lesson was absorbed, every stuffy on deck was sent to the first spreader to check out the harbor from a higher vantage point. (This whole event is ultimately what happens when you ask a kid to take the Q flag down because you don’t want to leave your cockpit martini and cribbage game after realizing that you forgot to take it down upon your return from Customs.)

After stuffy-flying fun, the girls climbed into the stack pack, an activity which we often poo poo since our particular pack has a thin framing dowel along the top, easily snappable by little clamoring bodies. (It also usually has a top piece that zips in, taking away its ‘fun’ depths for sitting.) We gave them this treat last night, and they were so overjoyed that they immediately began planning living the rest of their lives in the folds of the mainsail. We had to fetch them for dinner, and I’m sure that they would have slept up there as well if we’d allowed. The great news here is that it has become a new bargaining tool for school: a successful, whine-free day (it’s usually me whining for them to focus, if I’m being honest), and they could ride in the pack while we motored down the ditch. (Why didn’t I think of this earlier?!?!)

Our day of Allen shenanigans completed,  it was a swift night’s sleep for this crew, and lovely memories in the bank to keep the ‘return blues’ at bay for just a bit longer.

Whelp, our Bahamian adventure is coming to a close for 2018, and we were able to end it with a great mini-trip to the Berries. We had a slightly swelly but beautiful sail from Nassau to White Cay in the Berry Island chain on Monday, and between dropping anchor at 4:30 and the time the sun set a couple of hours later, we were already well-convinced that we made a good choice.

We dinghied to a beach on nearby Hoffman’s Cay to hike in to view the inland blue hole listed on the chart. We were expecting something maybe 20′ in diameter (like underwater blue holes we’ve seen); in reality it was 150′ across and our viewpoint was high enough on its edging cliff to give us more than a pause of shock. Since it was late in the day and the sun wasn’t directly overhead its ‘blue’ beauty wasn’t truly showcased, we vowed to return the next day for the full effect.

The timing was good for turtle feeding however, and we saw 5 or so milling around, swimming in and out of our line of site in the depths.

On our way back to the boat we parted a large school of eagle rays wih the dinghy’s path, so we stopped to watch them all around the boat, most likely feeding on the goods brought through the small cut between islands.

We were then off to White Cay and its beautiful sand beach for the onset of sunset, which completed our very full day with a gorgeous display.

Yesterday we opted for a reeeallly short school day (sorry, teachers!) to be able to maximize our time there. We packed up early and headed up the west side and around the northern tip of Hoffman’s Cay in the dinghy, where we found a beautiful beach on the ocean side. The swells had calmed, and it was a gorgeous day for flying along in the dinghy while seeing everything below with sharp clarity.

The beach itself was a treasure trove of sea glass, perfectly sized waves for body surfing, and beautiful coral heads just offshore. After a picnic and a serious haul of sea glass, we dinghied back around and paused on the vast expanse of sand bar for a dip in the wide open nothingness but sand and turquoise water. It was a spectacular experience, and the idea that we could practically walk the two miles back to our boat was intense as well.

 

We then made a run down to Chub Cay last night to better position ourselves for shoving westward this morning. The easterly component of the winds last night weren’t forecasted, so we endured our rolliest, most uncomfortable nights’ sleep to date, naturally the night we wanted a decent foundation of zzzs to get us through an overnight run tonight. Wind and Gulf Stream reports have us taking advantage of a window to cross, so we’ll spend the day and part of the night crossing the bank, and we’ll have mostly daylight for crossing the stream before landing in West Palm tomorrow afternoon. Ugh. Our attempts at finding the bright side are going poorly! Lily’s sweet excitement for seeing her people and being back in cold weather may give only slight glimmers of assistance. But… not yet.

It’s been a while since we had bars for any uploading of photos or posts, so hold on to yer hats while I plaster you with a photographic rundown of our last week or so.

Since Staniel we have been to Cambridge Cay, through the incredible Pipe Creek (absolutely stunning trip winding through the islands flanking it), Compass Cay (NOT the most welcoming of places), a beach day on the northern end of Pipe Cay, the southern anchorage of Warderick Wells, Hawksbill Cay, and now we are at Highborne Cay, which is almost the northern tip of the Exumas chain.

We’ve done a lot of snorkeling on this trip, which is such a treat, and so much easier to swallow as an activity now that we’ve honed our pre-snorkel routine (i.e. get wetsuits on before piling massive amounts of gear and all four of us into our overstuffed dinghy). Violet is a crazy diving fish, and is the first one in and the last one out every time, and Lily is gaining confidence that there probably won’t be a shark around every corner. We’re adding more to our mental reef fish catalogs every trip, and my marine biology dorkditude is coming on full strength. What’s known as the Sea Aquarium near Cambridge Cay was insanity- huge schools of fish everywhere we turned, and the diversity in coral was like nothing we’ve seen yet.

The kids’ beach play has morphed a bit every time we go ashore- one day a house, one day a bakery, and most lately, a farm. ‘Crops’ are planted and tours are given, and their imaginative play continues to blow my mind and warm my heart. Goes to show what happens without screens!

Every Exumas Land & Sea Park island has a mini guide map indicating snorkel sites and trails ashore, which often lead to ruins of various settlements. We’ve done a bit of hiking, and while we cower from a potential poisonwood thwack along the overgrown trails, I’ve learned that a) I need a machete, and b)… I just really need a machete. I’d be okay with the flora trying to grab onto me as I walked IF I was 100% that it wouldn’t result in blisters (see Andy’s poisonwood experience from last year for detail), but… I’d feel safer with a machete.

Today we split from Ruach, and we’re all a bit down this morning as we consider the days ahead without them. Our routine together grows fairly tight, especially as the girls are concerned, and their every minute hangs on the next ‘Martin and Maeve’ meet-up, so I imagine that today and tomorrow are going to be a bear.

We DO have distractions though. We’re currently on the lovely Highborne Cay, living it up at their marina for the moment. As it’s a private island, access to it is as a marina guest only (though they have day pass/landing fees as well), but wow, they have rolled out the red carpet. The island is pristine, and has bikes to use, kayaks and paddle boards on every beach for use, a swing in the middle of a swimming lagoon, a well-stocked store, a restaurant, showers, a playground, grill decks on every turn of the marina docks, and Lou, a giant macaw, who doesn’t say too much, but the girls are hooked on finding out what exactly it might be.

Today we’ll head back to Nassau to do a final Bahamian provision, laundry session, etc. Then up to the Berries, and possibly Bimini, on our way back west. The countdown to the end is upon us, really, but to have so much fun on our plate until then is exciting. We’ve never been to the Berries, or Bimini for that matter, and with light winds from the east, we’ll have great weather for long slow sails, or slightly faster motor sails, comfortable either way. We’ll also have more snorkeling on the docket, more island exploration, and a few more games of Uno in there as well, if we’re lucky.

Until then!