After two months in the beautiful Bahamas its time to head towards home.
Andante and I have a long trip ahead and, frankly, photography and blogging have not been high on my list of priorities. I will try to keep folks updated on my whereabouts and will share interesting experiences. Eventually.
We departed the Exumas on April 5. Today (April 20) we arrived at Little River Inlet close to the border between South Carolina and North Carolina and roughly the halfway point of the 1500 nm return trip. The weather hasn’t been conducive to long offshore legs but we keep pushing forward everyday regardless.
The legs completed so far have been the following:
Staniel Cay, Exumas to West Bay, New Providence
West Bay, New Providence to North Bimini
North Bimini to Fort Pierce, FL
Fort Pierce, FL to Melbourne, FL
Melbourne, FL to New Smyrna Beach, FL
New Smyrna Beach, FL to St. Augustine, FL
St. Augustine, FL to Fernandina Beach, FL
Fernandina Beach, FL to Charleston, SC
Charleston, SC to Price Creek, SC
Price Creek, SC to Georgetown, SC
Georgetown, SC to Little River Inlet, SC
As always you can check our current position using the link found on the trip page.
Hosting successive guests after six months alone was a blast. It was really fun to share the places I’ve explored, the foods I’ve enjoyed and the endless sunshine. I think both of my guests agreed that any visit to the Bahamas measured in days or weeks is too short. Thanks for coming!
I like being alone with Andante. I like being alone with this girl even more.And als0, dinosaurs.Dinghy hadn’t been this happy in months.A quiet morning with sleepy piggies.Later in the day pig beach isn’t so quiet. On a subsequent visit a couple of ladies from Nassau got up close with a piglet. The big pig wasn’t too happy about it.A crew member from one of the minimegayachts decided to feed the sharks at SCYC. All of them. The nurse sharks climbed all over each other to get at the fish she was offering.We visited Thunderball Grotto when the current was pretty strong. This made it more challenging to swim but kept the tourist boats away. Very cool……especially with a real mermaid!Plenty of time to relax on the beachBut eventually the visits had to end. Fortunately short-term airport parking was convenient.
Over the last couple of months I’ve had the chance to appreciate the similarities between living on a boat and on a small remote island. Life in either environment requires management of a fairly basic set of resources. Food, water, fuel and supplies/parts are key inputs — and all are in limited supply, expensive, and available irregularly and infrequently.
Like some boats, many islands (including Staniel Cay) have their own reverse-osmosis water plant powered by either electricity (locally generated from diesel fuel) or solar power. Andante does not have a water maker so I lug 10 gallons (80 lbs) of water from shore every few days.
Trash and sewage accumulates and generates bugs and smells on both boat and island if not regularly offloaded, buried, burned, or otherwise dealt with. I did not see any evidence of recycling in the central Exumas but did find myself anchored downwind of the dump on several occasions. Based on the number of derelict cars and machinery strewn about the islands I expect the cost of shipping waste off the island is prohibitive.
Visiting boaters deal with these resource issues as best they can knowing they will eventually relocate to somewhere else where food and supplies are plentiful and water is free and poop disappears down a pipe never to be thought of again. But the islanders have to live with these constraints all the time. The friendly laid-back nature and great patience of the out-island Bahamians seems a perfect coping mechanism for the many things they cannot control.
Food and fuel for both boat and island depend on regular mailboat and tanker deliveries. Fuel (especially gasoline) and certain supplies and foods (especially fresh stuff) can quickly become scarce when weather or mechanical difficulties prevent the arrival of the weekly mailboat. Here a mailboat is preparing to offload supplies (including food and liquor but also cars, building materials and propane tanks) at the government dock on Staniel Cay. Always best to shop the day after a mailboat comes!The east-facing Atlantic beaches collect a substantial amount of plastic waste including fishing gear and packing materials from commercial ships. The biggest chunks are often collected (sometimes by visiting cruisers) and piled up for eventual removal. By whom? To where? I don’t know. The small bits most easily ingested by wildlife will persist in the soil for a long time.Osprey nest on White Point partially built from plastic trash.It is very expensive to move heavy equipment to a small island for a building project. And if that piece of equipment fails or becomes obsolete it must be similarly expensive to remove it. Here just off Samson Cay is seems somebody decided this front-end loader was of no further use and would make a nice artificial reef. It is far enough from shore to be certain it didn’t get here under its own power. And it was a really strange thing to come across underwater in an otherwise barren area.On Andante I collect trash and dispose of it ashore when possible. In the Black Point settlement a trailer is provided to boaters by the community for trash drop-off for a small donation. Unfortunately these small islands don’t have the ability to deal with large quantities of trash other than by burying it or burning it. Not sure what happens to on-island sewage. Probably septic tanks. On the boat sewage gets manually pumped overboard when well away from land.
Sail Andante 