These events took place in March 2019
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A little background here:
I was always a goody-goody kid. Followed the rules, saved my money, did my homework, didn’t call off work unless I was sick. I get it from my parents. They are, in general, extremely responsible adults.
So their reaction was no surprise, in 2015, when I told them we’d done something irresponsible like make an offer on a boat. I had sent a picture of it first, so they knew how big and how theoretically expensive it was. Their reaction was, “Well, for your sake, I hope your offer isn’t accepted!” and “You know the best two days of a boat owner’s life are the day the buy it and the day they sell it!” That probably sounds worse in writing than it did over the phone – they were nice about it; they just were very obviously shocked and concerned.
Given that initial reaction, you might imagine my hesitation to tell them that Paul wasn’t joking that time my dad asked him why we bought a bought, and he responded with “to go to the Bahamas, and maybe through the Caribbean and the Panama canal.” We’d picked a departure date less than a year away, and I hadn’t told my parents yet.
“You HAVE to tell them,” Paul demanded one weekend as I headed over to my parents’ house to watch the Steelers game.
Time was running out before the game began. 20 minutes to go. “I have something to tell you,” I blurted out.
My mom had so many worries instantly spring up after I told them we’d be leaving for the Bahamas in 10 or so months that she had to walk out of the room, either to calm herself down to keep from hearing any more about it. My older brother researched the trip and how many people do it every year to show my mom this was something a lot of people do very safely, but I’m not sure how much that helped.
A year and a half later, after we’d proven we could get to the Bahamas and back with boat and body all intact, my dad started talking about coming to visit, and even sleeping on the boat a few nights. “Stay on the boat…??” my mom uttered, eyes wide.
I didn’t know if the visit was really going to work out, so when my parents booked the plane tickets from the US to Long Island, I was THRILLED (like multiple-occasions-of-spontaneous-tears-of-joy-muttering-“I’m just so excited”-type of thrilled).
We had to be strategic about their visit though. This being a totally new experience for them (they’d been on board for a ride only once, for less than an hour, under motor), combined with the fact that we wouldn’t be staying at marinas (i.e. no showers!), we weren’t sure how much they’d want to stay on the boat. This meant finding an island with an anchorage easily accessible to hotels or vacation homes, and not much island hopping, since we couldn’t guarantee that the weather would allow us to sail to their reservation on time. Not to mention, on some of these remote islands, your accommodations (assuming you want “American standards”) can easily cost you $200-400 a night, (and of course there are always places to spend more). And without a fast boat to take us island hopping, how much would my parents get to see?
When we decided to head Long Island, we recognized this might be the perfect opportunity for my parents to join. It was the turnaround point, so we’d be taking them to places we’d already researched. Plus these were bigger islands with multiple towns so we’d have plenty to explore even though we wouldn’t be moving the boat a lot. With about 40 miles between Long Island and Exuma, they were guaranteed a “real” sailing experience, but it would be shallow enough to see the bottom most of the way, so it didn’t seem so intimidating.
When we got to Long Island, we had a week until my parents arrived, so we set off around the island to find things to do and places to stay.
Thompson Bay is a sweet location. There is a secluded beach bar (with accommodations) called Tiny’s on the north side of the bay, and one family owns several businesses along the water and has built a public dock on their property, which leads you right to a grocery store, bar, and car rental ($60 or 70 a day for car rental, in cash, but when you rent the second time and they trust you, you get the option to pay upon return! I thought this was funny.) You need the car as the mile is 80 miles long with a paved “highway” but otherwise a lot of crappy roads. It’s best to have the car for at least 2 days so you can spend one day to the north and another day to the south. My parents were appreciative of us researching places to stay ahead of time, since some of the coolest sounding ones would have involved driving down the pothole-riddled dirt road 20 minutes each way every day.
My advice for Long Island is head to Santa Maria resort first (during happy hour for the free conch fritters). The manager at the restaurant there (Canadian guy) is full of tips for exploring some off-the-charts places on the island, and we didn’t get to hit all of them because we didn’t chat with him early enough!
We did have fun exploring, both by land and by water. In addition to checking out Thompson Bay and Dean’s Blue Hole (see previous blog post), we did a lot of driving around the island. We hung out in the waves of the Love Pools.
We snorkeled the Coral Gardens – an area that, had it not been hit by Hurricane Joaquin (2015), would’ve had some of the most impressive coral structures we’d seen. Unfortunately it showed almost no signs of recovery and Paul said it was the most depressing snorkeling he’d ever done.
I went to morning yoga, hosted by some of the American home-owners, but I regretted it as the no-see-ums were vicious (this is why we live on a boat, far away from the land-lubber bugs!)
We tried to get to the Columbus statue, but they are building a development in that area and the road was all torn out. We tried to walk the rest of the way but it was near sunset and the malicious mosquitoes sent us sprinting back to the car.
We spent a day watching kids sailing dinghy races and stayed through lunch and dinner, buying many hamburgers and hotdogs at their fundraiser (real ground beef – what a treat!).
(I don’t remember if we’d mentioned before, but at this point in time, Paul was under the impression that he wasn’t going to get work assignments for the upcoming summer. This news had been a gray cloud following him around, but when we were in Long Island, he got a call that their was potential work in Poland. Spoiler alert: Poland didn’t pan out but work in the US did. I mention this because, since I’m writing this 2 years later, the Poland call seems to be the catalyst for something else Paul has been scheming up! More to come on that in a future post.)
Finally the day came when my parents were to arrive! That afternoon we stood outside the tiny airport and watched them land in a surprisingly not-so-small plane.
After they checked into their AirBnB, we took them to Thompson Bay Club – it was a great introduction to your typical Bahamaian restaurant. Semi run down building, where we ordered food at the bar, on a tiny slip of paper where you circled the meal you wanted (Ok, maybe it was unusual to have a menu – often they just ask “chicken, fish or conch?”). Then we sat in a little dining room in the back, full of ex-pats who rotate restaurants based on the happy hour specials. Overall, we were pleased with most of our dishes.
Fortunately, my parents seem to be a magnet for good food. After eating so many mediocre, overpriced meals, we found a lot of good or great meals with my parents around:
Chez Pierre, a French restaurant, which also has beach front cottages which you can rent at a pretty reasonable price considering the food is included (if you like a no frills vacation).
The marina in Clarence Town, lobster pizza and happy hour at Santa Marina, Tiny’s the beach bar that also has adorable cottages;
…and even back at Georgetown, at Peace and Plenty, Blu, and Splash. (The only place we failed them was cracked [fried] conch, which was chewy and not tender when they got it.)
We had a beach day at Dean’s Blue Hole, where we found out my dad’s mustache is not suitable for mask wearing and snorkeling.
We saw beautiful churches and sharks in Clarence Town.
We went shopping at Judee’s Creations, which is part unique craft shop and part museum, showing the ‘old way of life’ with artifacts she kept from her family. Judee is the sweetest lady so we bought some teas and souvenirs.
We hiked to the Shrimp Hole, which is quite literally a hole in the rock full of tiny red shrimp.
One of the highlights of Long Island was the Hamilton Cave tour, with Leonard Cartwright as our guide. The cave has been in his family since 1849. He grew up playing hide and seek in the caves, and he has hunkered down in them, with many other people from the community, for protection during hurricanes. There are crabs living in the caves and it was fun to spot them in the holes.
The true highlight of the cave tour was after my mom commented that one rock formation looked like “a fat lady’s bottom,” Leonard exclaimed “Oh, we’ve got a fun group today!” He then gave us the inside scoop on the formations that he and his friends identified when they were kids, including “big willy” and “small willy!”
The original plan for departing Long Island was to get my parents on the boat the day before setting sail, so they’d have a night to get settled in. However, we checked the forecast, and if we wanted to sail, we had to leave that day since there was no wind predicted for the next several days. Thankfully, the owner at Tiny’s was nice enough to allow us use to their wonderful dinghy dock to load up my parents and their luggage (since there were no cottage guests that morning). Otherwise it would have been a struggle on the steep ladder of the public dock. The morning was overcast and the water had a bit of a chop, so the short dinghy ride was a bit of an adventure and my dad said it made him feel like he was a contestant on the show Survivor!
We had good wind and started sailing straight out of Thompson Bay. Like every time we have guests on the boat, a dolphin darted past the boat to say hello. We talked on the radio with another boat of retired biologists that I’d previously befriended on facebook since they were fellow scuba divers. My mom was shaking with nervousness at the start of the trip, but when the waves picked up, I just smiled and she relaxed. Soon enough, she was doing better than me as I felt a twinge of sea sickness, but my mom was happily chatting in the cockpit with Paul and my dad was climbing up on the bow.
After about 4.5 hours of decent sailing, the rain came in and pushed the winds out. We started up the motor and my parents went down below for a nap. Our chartplotter was mounted on a swinging arm inside the boat, and when underway, we’d swing it out to the cockpit through the companionway. Paul had built a hatchboard with a window in it so we could close everything but still see the chartplotter, but we hadn’t needed to use it (or at least not since the cold days on the Chesapeake). On this day we put the window board into place and closed up the hatch to keep the rain from dripping down inside the boat. We laughed about how we’re normally smart enough not to travel on days like this!
After a few more hours, the rain started to clear and as the sun was setting, we made our way into the George Town anchorage to begin part 2 of my parents’ adventure.
