Author: equinoxgardens@gmail.com

My mom and dad have been at the yard fixing Chickadee a lot so Lily and I have been home alone mostly on our ipads or eating. I am making a movie on iMovie, it is about us in the Bahamas.

Yesterday and the day before a little chick and her mom have been coming on our porch and they are here right now!!!

We went down to the beach yesterday and we were swimming all day!!!

The chick and her mom are making me soooooo annoyed because they peep sooooooooooooooooooo loud!!!!!!!!

THE BUGS ARE KILLING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I miss the snow sooo much but I kind of like the thought that it’s winter, and we’re warm.

MOM NOTE: The chicken and her charge are actually INSIDE the house now, so we’re wrangling them back out. My guess is that our predecessors fed them goodies.

We’re off to move our things, and take up residence in another place for a few days, while Chickadee is still a work zone and uninhabitable. The place we’re headed is a hurricane house in that it was damaged in the storm, but the price is right, and who needs floors and walls?!

Back aboard in cleaning mode. I spent the day moving gear to uncover spaces, cleaning said spaces, cleaning gear, and then often moving the gear back into its original spot to keep things as organized as possible. Everything that can go outside was ejected into the cockpit to start clearing things out, and after about six hours of some serious scrubbing, the teensiest bit of headway was made.

We also excavated the lockers on the inside of our hull damage to assess and plan for the repair, and by the time we had spent necessary time sussing out our battery purchase and shipping (cheaper to fly them over, remarkably), it was too late to start grinding fiberglass.

No new surprises found, which is good, and I spent a lot time unpacking holds to clean and reorganize. There were three major spots where water pooled while the boat was on its side, and unfortunately one of them was our tool storage. LOTS of rusty clean-up, but in the end, it’s cleaner than it was when we left it! Also, I’m going to gel-coat the locker while I have it all open, so BAM! Even better than better. The one trick is the fact that sans batteries we are without water. I worked in the rusty, gunky still water of the low spots with bleach and other cleaners until the need to wash my hands was too overwhelming, and then I’d head to the yard bathrooms, wash up, and start the cycle again.

The girls entertained themselves for most of the day, and then we did a quick island tour in the afternoon, to try and source a new spot to stay. With the power situation on the boat still in a holding pattern of no-go, the idea of moving aboard tomorrow will be tough to say the least, and the expensive rental we’re in now is unsustainable for long-term. The drive opened our eyes to more Green Turtle destruction, and yet the growth on the casuarinas, the sea grapes that didn’t seem to be affected at all, and the buzz of rebuilding activity was encouraging.

Today the girls are running on the beach with the kite, and I’m giving them a break from the boat yard while Andy heads out to start grinding inside the boat. (Not a great place to be, so a good excuse to bag out for a bit!) We’ll walk over later so I can pick up where I left off. Onward!

A 3:40am hotel-wide alarm yesterday really gave us a jump start on our planned-for 4:15am wake up. Rather than sit and listen to the repeating loop of the alarm’s ‘keep calm and wait for us to figure it out’ message blaring from all of the speakers in our room, we packed up and left. In an effort to use the elevator before they potentially shut it down (too many bags for too many stairs!), we hauled out with our cart piled high with gear, scaring a few of our neighbors who had their heads stuck into the hallway searching for answers. They seemed to have thought that we’d gotten an evacuation notice that had passed them over. “We have a flight!” I told a few who looked truly panicked. And the kicker? Our wing of the hotel was actually smoky, so… hopefully that all worked itself out. The nice alarm bot lady surely had a plan. 

Despite our very early arrival to the airport and the high winds making for some snappy landings, our travel day was a success. Tears welled in our eyes as we descended on Marsh Harbour- nothing green, and the landscape a barren expanse of casuarina tree trunks all around. Driving toward ‘town’ (I’m not sure it can be called that anymore), it went from sad to horrifying. Massive buildings chewed apart leaving twisted metal hanging from rafters, scraps of metal, wood and glass everywhere, cars and boats upside down in alien places, and then blank spaces where bulldozing had cleared away remains. Our driver pointed out one of the shanty towns that was devastated, and indeed it was- completely gone. Not a house left, and they were working to clear away the last of the rubble, since that was where most of the human remains were found, and the hope was to find answers on those still missing.

After that short drive I walked into the bright lights of Maxwell’s simply stunned to find people laughing and connecting and carrying on, as we all tend to do in supermarkets. They’re putting one foot in front of the other day by day, and while I suppose I’d have been doing the same in their position, I was still so shocked from the drive in, that their normalcy overwhelmed me even more. I realized then and there that I’d best harden my resolve for a few weeks of emotional turbulence. 

Ferrying into Green Turtle showed a different story from the first glimpse: green! The mangroves are all still denuded, but there were some palm fronds intact, some shrubs bouncing back, and simply a lot less damage. It surely doesn’t look like the Green Turtle we once knew – buildings are gone, homes are damaged, construction is underway in some capacity or another just about everywhere… it’s not a great scene. However it feels hopeful here, and this tight-knit community seems to be banded together even more than ever. We also saw Samaritan’s Purse workers, Water Mission volunteers, and construction workers who are coming to the islands in droves to donate their time; inch by inch. 

And… Chickadee. We threw our bags into our rental and raced to the yard before it closed. The ups! The downs! Starting so soon! First of all, we were glad that the pictures that were shared by others were pretty complete in their assessment; no major surprises. (A minor surprise was our ganked bow pulpit that’ll need some work..) Down below was a junked-up mess since everything had taken a spill on the fall, and then slid back around on the upright, but no mildew, and nothing too crazy (it looks better than it did in Indiantown, strangely enough!). One issue is that our batteries are completely dead, and likely gonzo. We were hoping to coax them along for this year (we’ve needed to replace them, but the shipping situation is a bit rough), but it looks like we’ll need to make that a priority. Living aboard (the plan was to move aboard after our three day rental) will be tricky without water. Not impossible though! We’ll see how motivated we get by the rental prices ashore.

More ups and downs of travel and the usual adjustments we individually need to make each time we shift worlds. Moods from exhaustion, change, the unknowns, and the excitement of adventure have us all banging together as we work out the kinks. As usual, my own comfort comes from making spaces as cozy, clean and homey as possible, so despite the grumps at the dinner table last night, just making a meal and organizing our bags and space is clearing a path.

We’ve breakfasted and tidied, the girls have done the wee-est bit of schooling, we’ve separated bags to slowly filter things back aboard, and we’re now off for a day of cleaning below and grinding fiberglass. ‘Yay!’

It was chilly today (high 50s with a stiff breeze), and the sum total of our cold-weather layers were put to the test as we briskly walked from one activity to another. Eight hours of this, interrupted for the rides, food and the entertainment of a major theme park left us exhausted, full, happy, and finally warm as we tucked back into the hotel. (It’s amazing how quickly we forgot the actual pain of the single digits and readjust our acclimation to that of cold-weather weenies.)

I’ll spare you the details of the day, save for sharing one of my favorite ride’s (Simpson’s, of course) takeaway: Marge: “We’re gonna die [on this ride]!” Homer: “Oh Marge, they wouldn’t kill you in an amusement park while you still have a dime in your pocket!” I laughed all the way to my $6 churro, I tell you!

We have an early start tomorrow to make our way to Marsh Harbour, and the girls have spent some time today talking about what they think it’s going to feel like as we’re flying in. Some trees, no trees? State of the homes, the hotels? And Chickadee! We’ll see her… which is exciting and nerve-racking all at once. Reunion photos imminent.

The goal was simple but the implementation was not: fit everything needed for the four of us to live for two months in as few bags as possible for our planes, shuttles, taxis and golf cart rides to the boat. Clothing, schooling, entertainment (can’t live without at least four thousand Playmobil components), toiletries and personal items sold at a premium in the Bahamas all had to go. Add to that the most important things for this year: boat repair parts and supplies. “We can do it in four bags!” we said. Which swiftly turned to five, and we then found ourselves in the days prior to the big exit swapping items from one bag to another (forty pound limit for each) every time we added something new, like we were playing the shell game over and over but with a bathroom scale for added fun. 
 
To no one’s surprise, we hauled ourselves to the ticket counter with not four, not five, but six giant bags. Total weight of all six? 239.5 pounds. Andy and I high-fived in glee at our Tetris packing prowess, and the gentleman who helped us said that he was surprised we didn’t take a picture of our fine work. And to think, we had a half pound to spare spread among the six- that’s another 39 Playmobil people! (Meanwhile, it’s anyone’s guess as to what is in what bag, and I envision a lot of slow-blinking as we plan the ‘great unpack’.)

 
It’s nice to finally be on the plane with our very-set amount of things, and the innocently gleeful assumption that we’ve remembered to do everything that we were supposed to do. Every year I forget about the “Last-Minute List”, which is the attempt to see and spend meaningful time with all of our loved ones at exactly the last minute possible. Last meals together before we go, last romps in the snow with friends, last hikes with the dog before she goes to her winter home, and for me, one last chance to do all of the ‘pre-trip’ chores that I’ve been procrastinating for three months. (Refer to bags under my eyes for a testament of last night’s 1am finish. I finally sewed the new V-berth bottom sheet that’s been staring at me from the packing pile for weeks. (Had to shave off those unused corners to save on weight! Kidding- they’re a bear to have to tuck into the bunk, so I get all fancy and customize them.))
 
We’re so lucky to have so many dear friends and family members nearby; our problem is a good one to have.

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We’re now tucked into Phase 1 of the southerly reach: Universal Studios. A Christmas gift to the girls so that we can play en route, we taxied and shuffled those six bags (plus our maxed-out carry ons) through the winding and lengthy expanses of our hotel, where we now crash before tomorrow’s adventure. Which bag has the clothes?!

 

As we quietly ease into 2020 and make our ‘to Chickadee’ piles larger with each passing day, the trip anticipation builds and the mental shift of being aboard starts to seep into our psyches. This year the anticipation is multi-layered with the fact that we’ll be heading to the Abacos post-Dorian, and are about to witness the damage and destruction of homes, habitats, villages and favored Bahamian spots that mean so much to us and our experience.

Hurricane Dorian sat over the Abacos in early September for days on end, hammering the islands with sustained winds of 180 mph, making it the deadliest and most destructive event in the Bahamas on record. By now you’ve surely seen images of the devastation, and the country is of course still reeling from overwhelming loss, not to mention the logistical difficulties of rebuilding homes, communities and any sense of security they once had. Marsh Harbour, our ‘hub’ for groceries, supplies of any nautical nature, propane, hardware, etc., is simply gone. (One notable and thankful exception is Maxwell’s, the largest grocery store in the area. We heard that its roof was damaged, but they made it a priority and the store was opened a month or so later.) Flying into Marsh and getting a ride to the ferry terminal is something that we’re mentally preparing to be gut-wrenching and shocking, despite the photos we’ve seen. A completely different landscape.

Chickadee was stored on Green Turtle Cay, and its proximity to the largest swath of the storm resulted in unprecedented damage for the island, but based on photos and reports, it suffered a much lesser degree of total loss and inhabitability. Which is the good news, all things being relative. Our first viewing of the boat was from a series of aerial shots taken of the entire yard, and it was indeed shocking. (One such photo below.) Boats strewn, knocked over, tangles of rigs… I had a hard day taking that in, especially with such sporadic follow-up of information specific to our boats (how could anyone offer it, anyway?! They were trying to simply survive the aftermath..). I wept for the people, I anthropomorphized our boat (even more deeply than usual!) felt anguish for what she’d been through, and I outright sobbed thinking of the girls’ artwork and our years of making Chickadee a home, all down below in a salty wet mess.

It’s very easy to put it all into perspective now, recognizing of course that we have warm dry beds to sleep in, running water and food on our table, but the thought of our time aboard ending in this way was a lot to process for me. It’s no secret that we work so hard for the ten months that we’re home with our eyes on the prize for the two aboard, but the grief at the thought of it ending was a wake-up call about how much it actually means to me.

It was then that the resolve to come up with a plan kicked in. We heard reports of the yard coming back to life; employees were safe, equipment was sorted and boats were being righted in a steady and systematic way. We are part of an online group for AYS (Abaco Yacht Service) boat owners that the yard was kind enough to update as each set of boats went up. Other boat owners were also gracious enough to share photos of their recon trips, which always included a list of requested shots.

In this way, coupled with a local acquaintance’s photos and assessment, we were able to unfold a plan. Chickadee had fallen down, but she’s getting back up again!

More on our detailed plans and progress to follow.

 

 

• 

660:  Nautical miles traveled.

38: Number of beaches seen. (Some had multiple visits, so there were more than 38 beach days!)

2: Rainy days.

81: Gallons of rainwater collected.

1: Hammerhead shark sighting.

17: Islands visited.

4:30pm:  Chickadee’s “shark-thirty”. No kids in the water after this time.

3: Number of times Lily brushed her hair.

8: Skillet flatbreads in a recipe.

7 mins. 30 secs: Time it took to consume 8 flatbreads.

19: Pools swam in (some multiple times).

1:  Fish caught. (Our mahi, which fed us for days and days.)

Too many to count: New friends met, and boy do they count!

1840: Estimated number of feet of anchor chain I hauled*

*Andy would like to point out that he offered to help most times, but I                      really did prefer to do it, since it was the only form of exercise I could count   on!

31: Mainers visited with.

0: Times the anchor dragged or was needed to be reset!

34:  Books read between the four of us. (Not counting the twenty little readers that Violet also plowed through!)

138: Engine hours.

9 & 18: Cornrows and shingles plaited (in Georgetown and Hope Town).

10 months: Until next year! Let the countdown begin!

 

It turns out, hauling the boat in clear Bahamian waters is harder than hauling her out of the muck of the Okeechobee waterway. It’s as if Chickadee was screaming ‘Wait! There’s more cruising to do here! See?? There’s a ray under my bow!’. Or possibly that was just us, standing next to the travelift, completely glum.

The upsides are plentiful, however. The yard is immaculate and the people are wonderful. After hauling and doting on us for a few minutes we met all of the crew, and all of the named pieces of machinery in the yard. My kind of place! (And, nice to meet you, Flossy the Forklift!)

We squeezed every last bit of fun out of the last few days on Green Turtle. We returned to a marina that we’d been to previously, and Andy and I got a lot of decommissioning accomplished while the girls dove into their vast catalog of imaginative games, played mostly under the docks and on the paddle board and kayaks. They jumped, they swam, they tied a million lines together in a complicated network that only made sense to the two of them, and they entertained the marina’s retirees with the sound of children laughing, a fact that was reported to us no fewer than ten times. Nice to know, since their revelry could have been absorbed in another, less-welcoming way. The marina also had a pool, and to negate the previous post’s joy of a pool switching to fresh water, Leeward Yacht Club’s pool went the other way, and is now salt, which is kind of a bummer. Lily had meticulously rinsed all of our snorkel gear for stowing, and then brought their masks and fins to play with in the pool, only to find she made more work for herself. Eh, well, can’t have it all!

Another day of putting the boat together (we’re on a serious fast track this year, and did the majority of our work in a day yesterday), and we’ll head out tomorrow. Back to the tundra of the north, which we’ve tried very hard not to visualize lest we start second-guessing major life choices about our primary geography. Let’s hope that spring starts next week!

 

Since we are now on our timing countdown, we’re hopping from one island to the next to get as much in in these last few precious days.

From Marsh Harbour we headed to Man of War, where we sat on a gracious friends’ dock for two nights as home base for our explorations (mainly in search of the ice cream shop) and activities. Though packed with boats, Man of War’s wee south harbor is crystal clear and was a great source of entertainment in the form of snorkeling, swimming, paddling, kayaking, and simply sitting on the dock or the rail of their deck to watch the sea life. Always something to stare at, but the turtles, rays, snappers and sergeant majors were certainly cozy there.

We met up with new friends (complete with kids!) as well, and overall enjoyed our MOW time immensely and had a hard time peeling ourselves away. Meals gathered, snorkels taken, a yoga class overlooking the Sea of Abaco, laundry washed and snapped dry on a sunny line (what a treat that was!), beach time, walks, the calm of space for some decent work brain to accomplish some things, and of course, daily doses of ice cream.

From Man of War we went to Hope Town, where we scored a mooring in the inner harbor, though I must admit I’m partial to anchoring outside in the clearer water. Andy adores the mooring field for its harbor activity viewing, and for the nostalgic purposes of remembering his time on a boat there eighteen years ago. He was alone, and the social framework of the cruisers of Hope Town swept him up in a tight hug for which he was immensely grateful. The gratitude flows, since I’m now getting to reap the benefits of those relationships now shared. It’s always good to give the place a ‘Howdy-do!’.

After a short morning walk ashore, we left Hope Town and made our way to Guana, where we spent the day watching the girls play on the paddle board and kayak off of a beach with a restaurant and a fresh-water pool. The latter was the biggest treat of the day- two years ago it would have been filed in my as-of-now handwritten ‘Public Access Pools of the Bahamas’ reference guide as salty, and therefore would not count as a shower for the girls. But alas! New pool, new system, fresh water! It’s the little things. (And, don’t read this Mom, their hair is… totally clean.)

We met new friends while desalinating in aforementioned pool, and walked to see MDI friends here as well. You don’t seem to have to go far in the Abacos to find good people to spend time with!

Tomorrow, we’ll cross the Whale Passage and pull into Black Sound for our last sailing trip of the year. Since we’re trying to organize ourselves for the work flurry that is to come, and it consists of a number of overwhelming lists, we’ll take solace in our last sail. Until then!

Marsh Harbour tonight is so strange in its silence. With so many boats (we’re fairly squished in in this anchorage) and restaurants skirting the harbor itself, you’d think that there would be something, but with the wind nonexistent, and our neighbors as tucked in as we are (no dinghies zipping back and forth), all I can hear is the occasional car on the road in the distance. (And, now the grey water pumping out of a giant catamaran nearby. Those folks are no doubt luxuriating in their 100 sq ft shower or something else catamaran-y like that. Bowling a few frames? Kicking back in the movie theatre? Can you tell I’m spatially jealous? I have zero interest in owning one; I just love to imagine their inhabitants in what always looks like excessively-abundant accommodations. )

‘Anchorage updates’ aside… we left Harbour Island on Saturday morning just after sunrise, and had a great day on the water. Not a lot of wind, and zero bites on the line (bummer), but clear skies, the bluest of blue water, a massive dolphin sighting (at first we thought it was a small whale), and a lot of eating and reading accomplished. We then anchored off of Lynard Cay (Skynard nowhere to be found) next to another kid boat, which we ended up paddling and dinghying ashore to spend the afternoon with.  I can’t stress it enough- kid boating makes for easy connections!

Yesterday we woke up in our delightful Abaconian digs, and after breakfast headed up to Sandy Cay, where we dinghied to a snorkel site that had been a favorite two years ago. It did not disappoint. I don’t remember the massive amounts of coral there before, because we were so taken with the eagle rays gliding by, along with sharks and turtles aplenty.  This time, however, we flopped off the dinghy into a technicolored wave of corals. Branching, mounding, fans, staghorn, elkhorn, feathery, different types of brain corals… blues, greens, purples, yellows, it was incredible. Giant clusters and pristine sandy wells between made for ideal viewing for the contrast of the various fishes gliding by (biological side note: Lily has expressed her distaste for the rule of ‘fish’ (same species) versus ‘fishes’ (different species) when talking about multiple animals. (I then expressed my distaste for her not wanting to follow the rules. She… didn’t care.)). After having recently read a book about octopuses (not octopi, as I quickly learned, another rule set I’m bent on following), I was on the hunt for clues and dens, so did a bit of free-diving to search, but had no luck. (I know one was in there, somewhere!) We did see a number of parrotfishes (different species!), angelfish, wrasse, and I had a few yellowtail snapper that were oh-so-curious and on my case. They swam just below my fingers for the majority of my time in the water, and I would dive, they would follow… back up, and there they’d be, looking and waiting. (It kind of felt like I was being interviewed. “Are You My Mother?” (Not even close.))

After our snorkel adventure we weighed anchor and headed here to Marsh Harbour, for better positioning for getting a few errands accomplished today. Since this is the last stop at a ‘major hub’ before tucking into the boatyard for the summer, we wanted to do some research about services, and stock up on supplies for closing this old gal up in just over a week. Gah. That’s too soon. Don’t even want to think about it yet.

While I schooled this morning (there was a snow day at home, but did we tell the girls? Of course not!), Andy filled propane, went to the market, found a place to potentially purchase new house batteries next year (bummer, as ours are only two years old), and went to fix a phone. The end game was an afternoon at the pool at a nearby marina and resort, and we swam, ate and played our way through the afternoon. Resort pool bonus: showers. Even typing that sounds so posh. Though we have a fine shower aboard the boat, and we use it, the idea of letting water run without mentally calculating how many gallons you’re using IS pretty posh. We have plenty of water storage, but Andy and I are both pretty miserly when it comes to usage, as if we’re always preparing for a couple of weeks in the Dry Tortugas. The game of ‘Who Uses Less Water When Washing the Dishes’ is one we’ll have to actually calculate one of these days, though I’m pretty sure I know who the winner is (ahem, ahem). We clean and rinse with our salt-water pump, and then only use fresh water for the final ‘rinse the salt off’ rinse. (And, who needs ALL of the salt rinsed off, anyway?! Kidding! (Says the clear winner.))

Since I am now thinking about it… the countdown begins to releasing our kids back to the wilds of friends, too many activities, and the hubbub of land-life. Just getting to spend all day with them every day is such a gift, and then woosh! They’ll be off on sleds, or bikes (though really sounds like sleds these days), or tucked into their rooms with friends in a blink.

It helps that the daily duties here are far less engrossing- at home there are times when I welcome their positive engagements as a way to ease the parent guilt that I feel while doing chores and not interacting with them. On the boat I certainly keep my personal reading time high on the priority list, but I’m much quicker (and simply more able) to sit and play a game of Uno, or to help with a craft project, or help with a sandcastle, and it feels so good to be able to slow the heck down and engage, every dang day of the week. For so much of the year, we’re so ramped up and consumed by the industry of our season that the idea of having days on end filled with all four family members in situ is an impossibility. Chickadee for the wintertime win!

We’re squeezing in every last moment of this trip, already aware that our Bahamian haul-out has bought us more time cruising this year. (This time last year we were heading up the waterway, watching our swim ladder rungs disappear in the ever-browning waters…) We have a few islands to ‘hit’ before we land in Green Turtle, with a few friends ashore in a couple of harbors to catch up with, and a bit of snorkeling and exploration thrown in in between.

(Also, probably an Uno game or two for good measure.)