Monday, April 13, 2009

Livin' Da Good Life

And then there were two...but not for long - September Song and Gypsies are still anchored between Allan's and Leaf Cays waiting to hook up today with TideHiker and Rickshaw (formerly part of the Marathon Gang of 12)!! They got a little later jump over to the Bahamas given some technical difficulties but have been following in our footsteps (or should I say wake) and are supposed to arrive at Allan's today. It will be great to reconnect with those guys as we haven't seen them since we left Pelican Bay after the DeFever rendezvous at the end of February!!

Lucky Stars left two days ago to head south and we've heard they are anchored off Norman's Cay where we are headed tomorrow. Life's2Short pulled out yesterday to go explore a couple little cays and will head down to Norman's tomorrow as well so I'm sure we'll have a grand "reunion" at MacDuffs (the beach bar on Norman's)!!

We've been busy doing boat chores in the morning (they never end!) and exploring and playing in the afternoon/evenings. Doug was able to change the membrane in our watermaker so we are water self-sufficient once again - yeah!!! Thanks to September Song who offered to be our water mule if we couldn't get it fixed but we're good to go and actively making good water!

Two days ago while Colleen was off exploring by dinghy with Todd (they found a bar, now there's a shocker!), Doug and I dinghied over to a deserted beach on SW Allan's Cay. We had this beautiful beach all to ourselves - or so we thought!!

No sooner had we got the dinghy anchored and were reaching for our beach chairs when out of the scrub grass came about 5 or 6 iguanas to check us out!!!!

It was a pretty weird feeling at first sitting on the beach with these iguanas kind of stalking you - new ones kept coming out of the rocks and grass. Now we've come to realize they were only looking for food and aren't going to harm you in any way, but all we knew is that these pretty big iguanas were eyeballing us as potential lunch!! It's amazing how fast they can run too - which we learned when we opened our cooler to have our sandwiches! We thought better of eating until we put our chairs out in the water which seemed to foil the iguanas!!

We came back from the beach and put our hula lounger together - now what you may ask is a hula lounger?? A toy Doug found on the internet before we left and after we had sworn there was no more room left on the boat - we made an exception. It is a big four person lounger made of pvc piping and floatable noodles with mesh seats and drink holders that floats in the water!!!! Doug and I of course had to try it out - we tied it off to the swim platform where the cooler of beer was (of course!!) and jumped in. The water is finally warm enough to just float around for a couple hours - pure bliss!!!

As if we couldn't have any more fun for one day, we then dinghied into the beach on Leaf Cay to join Life's2Short and September Song for cocktails and to watch the sun set. No one really wanted the evening to end so we all decided why not have a bonfire on the beach later....sounded like a great idea at the time! So we collected driftwood, dead palm fronds and branches and anything else we thought would burn and made two big piles on the beach. The iguanas were quite intrigued by our wanderings and not at all sure they were going to like what we had planned.

After dinner we all met back on the beach and had a grand ole beach bonfire, complete with joke telling and much laughter!! I haven't done that in a really long time - we sat around until we had nothing left to burn and the embers were dying out!!! We had so much fun I'm sure there will be a repeat performance on some other island farther south - especially if Brenda (Queen of the Bonfires) has anything to say about it!!

The next day we actually washed the boat (we really needed to get all that salt off her from the Tongue of the Ocean!!) while Doug worked in the engine room - and then it was time to play. Doug and I were off in the dinghy to explore the surrounding cays - they are all very rocky and the sea has eroded much of the rock to form caves and overhanging cliffs - very cool!! The seas were a little rough so we made our way back to the beach on Leaf Cay for an afternoon of reading in the sun - then it was back over to the boat for hula lounger sundowners!!! I could get used to this!!!

We had an early evening for a change because we know the festivities will pick back up tonight with the arrival of TideHiker and Rickshaw ....and on the seventh day, even God had to rest......

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