And Now There's Just Two....

Yesterday was a sad day on Gypsies - two of the Gypsies, Colleen and John, had to head home to restock the cruising kitty. I hate it when reality intrudes on a perfectly great life and lifestyle!!! Thanks again Jr for an economy from hell!! We took Gypsies into the dock at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club and offloaded all of their stuff - I think our draft miraculously went from 5.3 feet to 4.8! You just have a lot of "stuff" when you are planning on being gone for several years!! After one last cold Kalik at the Yacht Club, they caught a puddle jumper plane (Watermaker Air) over to Fort Lauderdale where I know they plan on hanging out at Colleen's parents house for at least several days to "figure things out". No goodbyes were said because they left with plans to come back and visit Gypsies in August before they start back with "real jobs".

Their change in plans has caused us to change our plans as well, at least for the time being....instead of heading down into the Caribbean for hurricane season, we are going to spend the next couple months in the Bahamas (mostly in the Exumas) which we have absolutely fallen in love with. There are still so many places to see and things to do that we could be over here for years and not see it all - we are going to head down to Georgetown (at the southern end of the Exumas) in the next week or so and then meander our way back up the island chain! After that we will make our way back to the States and probably spend the summer/early fall exploring more of the Chesapeake and all its rivers - when we were there last October we only started to scratch the surface of cool places to see there!!! While we're a little bummed not to be heading further south into the Caribbean, we are pretty excited to have more time to spend over here in paradise!! We'll figure the rest out as we go - whether we have to become respectable again (because we're definitely not that now!!) or we head back out and maybe do the Caribbean next year remains a mystery to us at the moment but as we've come to realize, life happens and we'll deal with it manana mon!!

After dropping the departing gypsies off, we had to make runs to the post office (we had mail sent several weeks ago and the mailboat came in yesterday but no luck), to the Yellow House for fresh bread and to get the key to the library/book exchange which was in the yellow and blue house, to the blue and pink stores to see what produce was available and then on to Isles General Store (run by the wife of the minister/Staniel Yacht Club owner Berkie who helped us get our motor mount fixed) but they were closed as well. Lots of things in the islands close for several hours for lunch and they are definitely on "island time"!!! No worries mon....

Yesterday evening we all (September Song, Tide Hiker, Rickshaw, Silver Boots and the remaining Gypsies) headed in to the beach laden down with coolers (of course) and app's for a beach party!!! We quickly spied the firepit and collected driftwood and assorted firewood for a Class A beach bonfire - even though Norm wouldn't go back to Tide Hiker for the fixings for S'mores, we all had a blast!!

There's just something really cool about hanging out on an island beach watching the sun set as you get a big bonfire going!!! Norm and Bob did grill hotdogs over the fire though!!



This morning rolled around bright and early - too early for some (not to mention names .... Rickshaw) and we headed out in our dinghies to snorkel Thunderball Grotto where several of the James Bond movies were filmed.

[Click here to see a Google map of the location of Thunderball Cave]

You need to hit it close to low slack tide so you can snorkel into the cave and don't get beat up by the current. WOW!!! We entered the cave and immediately were in a world of fish and amazing coral - the sun reflected down into the water of the cave from several skylight openings making the whole cave look like something out of a movie (now I know why they filmed there!!!) It was really spectacular - you could snorkel through the cave and out the other side although the current got pretty rough as you reached the edge of the cave! Outside the cave were more amazing fish and really colorful coral and sea fans - well worth getting out of bed a little early that's for sure!!!

Parrotfish

Sea Coral

an as yet unidentified fish

Queen Angelfish

We are back in at Staniel Cay Yacht Club about to enjoy some conch bits (cracked conch which ever since Nassau we also have fallen in love with - God this stuff is great!! especially with a couple cold Kaliks!)) On the way back to the boat, we plan on heading over to pig beach where the pigs actually swim up to your dinghy (good for pictures although you really don't want to walk on the beach....pig droppings...need I say more??) Tomorrow we are off to Black Point - a settlement further south where we've heard they have the best coconut bread anywhere!! Sounds good to us!!!

Click here to see our location at Big Majors Spot.