HOMEWARD BOUND



The view from our hike yesterday--little blurry--oops.

  Tomorrow will be the 1st leg of many voyages towards home. At first light in the morning we are leaving Exuma Land & Sea Park and heading north back to Allen's Cay, about a 8 hour travel day. If weather permits we should be back to Marsh Harbour by Sunday. Each day until then will be long travel days. We'll reprovision at Marsh Harbour & keep sailing north & then west to Florida! The Gulf Stream will be the longest day. Last time it was 18hrs. I will have internet when we get to Marsh Harbour, but probably not before then. Getting soooooo excited to see everyone!!!

We hiked to these ruins yesterday. Not much left but still standing since the 1700's ! Pretty impressive considering the weather they've endured.

Love & Miss you. XXXOOO

Happy Sunday

  
  Happy Sunday everybody! Hope you're all having a great weekend! We are stuck on the boat today due to weather. It's been raining non-stop for 12 hours. Scott caught about 20 gallons of water with our rain catching system! We make our own electricity via our solar panels, catching our own water...we live so green now!
I have to keep this short because I think my internet time is going to run out any second.

Dreaming of beach time

Scott's been studying the charts planning our route back to the states

Love & Miss you soooooooo much. Very homesick today. :(
XXXXOOO

Exuma Land & Sea Park

Partial skeleton of a 52 ton sperm whale

   Hey everybody!  We've been in Warderick Wells for a few days. This island is the hub of the Exuma Land & Sea Park. The park is 176 mile stretch of islands in the Exumas. No fishing, lobstering, or shelling allowed so the islands & reefs are awesome. We've been hiking & snorkeling everyday. The Exumas are the jewel of the Bahamas in my opinion. I wish there were a couple more islands with stores & internet ability but the scenery can not be matched. I have internet for a few hours today. It's $10/day or 100 megabytes of data...whichever comes first. I don't know what a megabyte really is but I learned the other day, the $10 buys you about 3 hours of internet time. So... we won't have internet everyday but maybe one more time before we leave Thursday. We have some weather we have to wait out before we can keep treking north. I'm going to keep it short here due to the internet restrictions. I'm not sure how many megabytes photos use up. ???

Malaika & Mellow Seas anchored at Warderick Wells. (On mooring balls actually, no anchoring allowed)

We ran out of bread a few days ago... No problem! I learned how to make tortillas from scratch!

Scott down inside a cave on our hike today

Enjoying the view

Scott & I out for a hike

Andy & our friend Andrea from s/v Rudekkiah (not sure I spelled that correctly?)

Love & Miss everybody!!! XXXOOO

P.S. To Roger from Connecticut---glad to hear you have followed our blog from the beginning! :) We do love Malaika. No complaints re: Island Packets ! We see A LOT of them here in the Bahamas. Just in this anchorage 4 of the 20 boats here are IP's. Good luck living your cruising dream---keep us updated! And yes, it's true, we had never sailed before moving aboard last August... except for our 8 day sailing course in Mexico. I should add, in 8 days we never even learned to anchor. It's been a very steep learning curve. :)

Dan & Cheri--miss you guys! where are you these days? I think we're going to take the same route home as we took getting here... Back through Abaco...etc. Hope all is well. XXXOOO

INTERNET GLUTTON

Our current backyard

CONGRATULATIONS MICHAEL & ALLIE ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT!!!! WE LOVE YOU BOTH SOOOO MUCH !!!!! MISS YOU LIKE CRAZY!!!!!


   Internet 2 days in a row!! I feel so spoiled. I am feeling guilty because as I sit here enjoying the internet, Scott is replenishing our water supply for Malaika. Normally, we pull up to the fuel dock & fill our water tanks while we're there. The fuel dock here in Staniel Cay is especially difficult to navigate. The current is incredible, it's very windy.... you all know how much we love docking.  Scott decided the best thing to do would be to bring all our jerry jugs to the the dock via the dinghy & we'll fill the tanks that way. I am FINE with that idea. It does make for a lot more work for Scott though...So, Thank You honey.

I love my hubby.  Notice his sexy new haircut !

 Oh, we were able to buy water today for the bargain price of  40cents/gallon. Diesel fuel is $5.95, gas is around $5.35.  We're also going to get some groceries if possible. The food boat comes once a week here (which makes groceries very expensive). We paid $6.00 for lettuce last Thursday. It's been almost a week so the store is probably empty but we'll get what we can. Tomorrow we set sail north ! There won't be any where to reprovision until we get back to Eluethra....which could be 7-10days away. As I said yesterday, I'm hoping to have internet at our next stop...
  I've been getting questions wondering where our friend Andy from s/v Mellow Seas is now... he's still buddy boating with us ! We've been having a blast. He plans to head back to Florida directly from Warderick Wells. He will be in St. Augustine in about 2 weeks give or take a few days.

Andy surrounded by sharks !

 Scott & I can't do a 5 days passage like that because we don't have auto-pilot. One of the many boat projects Scott will be doing during hurricane season. I'm going to get a job during that time. I can't believe almost a year has passed since I helped delivery a baby! I don't really miss working, but I do miss delivering babies. I also miss hanging out with all my nurse girlfriends !!

Jib & his new BFF Fred. They have a play date on the beach everyday at 10am

Beach Pigs!!

Missing all of you....getting excited to see everybody soon!!
XXXOOO

TURNING BACK

Scott spear fishing. He speared 4 that day.

  Hey everybody!! We're still in Staniel Cay, Exumas but plan on leaving Tuesday or Wednesday. This marks the turn around point for us this season. Now, we start the long trek home. Oh wait.... where's home? Of course, Phoenix is "home" but we can't take Malaika there. We don't have homes or jobs there. So the question is now, where do we want to take Malaika to do the many boat projects we need to do before next season? Florida? North Carolina? The Solomons in Maryland?  We plan on going to Phoenix for a much needed reunion with family & friends. The rest is up in the air. We'll figure it out as we go I guess. Meanwhile, many adventures still on the horizon! It's takes quite awhile to get home too!
  I hope to have internet at our next spot, Warderick Wells. It's a protected marine park & according to our guide book there is internet available at the Ranger station. We'll see....the guideboook said that about other places in the Exumas but hurricane Irene disabled many internet hot spots. I promise to write as often as I can. I'm sorry we worried so many people! I really didn't think the internet would be so random. Believe me, we miss having it too. Well, me more than Scott of coarse.
Love & Miss you all
XXXOOO

Dinghy ride through the mangroves of Shroud Cay. We saw black tipped reef sharks & turtles each day here

Im having trouble posting pics but will keep trying! Stay tuned. We have some awesome pics!

THUNDERBALL !!

Yay!!! Finally have some Internet!! It's been 3 weeks!! Hope I still have readers!
We are currently in Staniel Cay, Exumas. What adventure we've had!! Do to Internet/weather glitches, I am not able to post more pictures....hopefully tomorrow.
We've been to 6 islands since I last wrote. This group of islands we've been exploring are called the Exumas. Staniel Cay was the location of the James Bond movie "Thunderball". A huge portion of these Bahamas are protected parks so the water, islands, & reefs are pristine. It's so beautiful. We have never seen such clear water. I hope you'll all stay tuned for a photo blog. We've seen sharks, turtles, wild ocean swimming pigs, an island of iguanas that only exist here in Exuma. I have been a bit surprised by how remote these islands are. I have Internet now only because we took a mile & 1/2 dinghy ride with very dark grey skies & choppy seas, to "town" & we're sitting at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club (beach bar). We waited out a 2 hour rain storm before beelining it over here when there was a small window of sunshine. We were determined to get to town today to take our buddy Andy out for a cheeseburger to celebrate his birthday. You can not imagine how WONDERFUL a burger is when you've been out of the USA for 5 months. It's a little slice of Heaven.
Love & Miss you all so much. Please stay tuned to the blog. So many adventures to share with you!! Will post again asap. Hopefully tomorrow if the weather plays nice.
XXXOOO