Ruth-Sat, Dec 8th

Dear Blogspot,
These last few days here in Nassau have been
absolutely charming! It gives us both a sense of
relief to top off our provisions and take care of
things back in New Orleans via the Internet. We have
been visiting the starbucks across the street nearly
everyday to get online and it’s been helpful. We were
able to charge the boat batteries, stock up on more
water and food, and stock up on everything we need
hardware wise. The best part of our Nassau experience,
though, has been the people we’ve met! Other boaters
and all the locals have been AWESOME and have treated
us so well!
After docking, we soon met Chris who is cruising
alone on a huge Trawler (big powerboat, luxury yacht)
next to us. That night the music of a practicing
Junkanoo band (Junkanoo: the Bahama’s celebration of
Christmas, Boxing Day, and the New Year) wafted over
the marina, so all three of us decided to go out
walking to try to find them. The walk was very nice
and it ended up in a café/bar called Jumbey’s. It is
a very cozy, warm place. We sat together and drank and
talked ALL NIGHT, till at LEAST 4 in the morning. We
all got to know each other, he shared with us some
really key islands to visit, and him and I discussed
running a bit. We all talked a whole lot about dogs,
cats, and raccoons that night (Chris once spent time
raising baby raccoons and releasing them into the
wild). All three of us, at some point in the
conversation, teared up when referring to a particular
special pet of ours that had passed away. (My tears
were for Beau and for missing our dogs, and Jack
teared up about his previous dog Tang). One guy at the
bar had brought his dog and she was running around
being playful and adorable. I think that cheered all
of us up. When the bar closed at 11 we checked out the
bar upstairs and hung out on the balcony that
overlooks part of the harbor. Topics of conversation
included the adventures of cruising we’ve experienced
so far, our reasons for being there and our family’s
reactions to the idea. We eventually headed back to
our boats and Chris was kind enough to give us the
grand tour of his palace. His yacht is gorgeous inside
and out, especially in terms of woodwork. Needless to
say, we were extremely impressed. Jack was especially
fond of the woodwork, good ol’ chap.
What I enjoyed about Chris the most was the fact
that after touring and hanging out on his boat for
awhile, he jumped right on over to our tiny thing
(tiny in comparison with his) and actually came inside
to drink a little more and chill. He even picked up
the ukulele for the first time and Jack taught him a
couple of chords. That was great of Chris to do,
because most people don’t even want to set foot on our
boat, and those who do barely take a peak of the
inside. I guess because of its size. But size doesn’t
matter, b*tch. So that was way cool of him to hang out
with us on our turf for awhile. It was very nice. We
rarely have visitors. Another way cool thing that
Chris did was actually stay an extra day (which is
expensive in a dock like this with a boat like his)
JUSt to hang out with us a little more. We all bonded
very well. We exchanged emails and chances are high
that we will meet up with him at either Norman Cay or
Waldrig Cay near the top of the Exumas.
There is a couple from Ireland docked across from us,
who live on a huge catamaran and work for a company
doing charters and fixing up the boat. They had
Nathan, from Miami, working with them. On Thursday
night Jack, Chris, and I went back to Jumbey’s to
check out a jazz band, and Nathan later joined us.
Seeing the jazz band was great! They played standards
like “Straight, No Chaser,” “My Favorite Things,” you
get the picture. The setup was drums, a bongo and
djembe player, upright bass, keyboard, and a
saxophonist. They were very good and you could tell
they had been playing together and knew each other’s
style. A couple of locals who attended the show got
called up to the stage near the end and sang. One man
and one woman, and they were amazing! During the
show, Nathan encouraged us to check out Potter’s Cay
(about a six block walk from the marina), where none
of the tourists are, a very local spot with a bunch of
little shops that, according to him, serve the best
conch ever!
Well, on Friday night, after we said goodbye to Chris,
we headed down there with Nathan, Michelle and Gavin
(the Irish couple). Nathan was so right!!! Jack and I
even went back there today for lunch and ordered waaay
too much food! It is sooo good! Last night we ate the
conch salad, conch fritters with fries, and a fried
yellowtail (snapper that is). It was soooo much fun!!
We met the fucking BEST people there. I love it when
older folks party it up and live it up with the
younger crowd! We met a local legend named Hugh
Mackie. He is 76 years old but has more energy and
lust for life than even myself! It was nonstop
laughter. One example of a good time was when he kept
joking about his baldness and I joked about him
getting a wig. Before I knew it, he got in his car and
actually came out with the FUNNIEST crazy hair wig! We
had plenty of laughs passing it around and trying it
all on. During that time, Jack was behind me playing
checkers with the locals. Apparently Bahamians have
twisted the traditional rules of checkers and turned
it into their own game. Gavin and Michelle are very
very nice people and a WHOLE lot of fun and laughs.
Just plain great people to be around. I guess it all
comes back to that great, outgoing attitude. They
even bought our food and beers! I am in LOVE with the
local Bahamian beer, Kalick. It tastes similar to a
Miller High Life but much MUCH better. There are no
bathrooms over in the Potter’s Cay area, so when you
have to go (and believe me, you DO after about 12
beers) you have to go behind the buildings into the
ocean! People kept buying us beer after beer after
beer…after beer after beer, etc! It just went on and
on! They wouldn’t stop bringing it too us! It was
great!! J
There are many more people I could mention that
have touched us emotionally with their friendliness
and kindness. All the locals and cruisers have been
sooo sooo helpful. “Everything’s cool” is a phrase
I’ve heard from a number of locals down here since
being in Bimini. It’s kind of like a “don’t worry, be
happy” type of phrase. Every time I’ve asked someone
how they were doing, my response was always along the
lines of “I’m doing great…ALL the time!” The attitudes
are inspiring to say the least. Peter the Harbor
Master -- “and the harbor master too,”(snuck in a
personal joke) – let us stay a night for free. That
saved us 50 bucks! For the record, most marinas cost
us 20 to 30 bucks because of our small boat. I guess
he’s told a couple of people that he really likes our
boat. We’ve gotten the same reaction to our boat in
Great Harbor, where the harbor master, Shaggy (yes his
name was Shaggy!) let us stay three nights for free
because he said he liked our boat! Yeah, that was also
the time that, besides free dockage, we got a car ride
all over the island from Patty and Bonnie, POUNDS of
wahoo from a neighboring fisherman, another fisherman
offered to set up a good lure for us, Patty and John
picked up our tab at the local beach club bar and had
us over for a large and very much in charge
thanksgiving-esque dinner!
We went to a dive shop the other day and bought a
Hawaiian sling for spear-fishing, and aqua shoes to
protect me from sea urchins when we walk rocky reefs.
Nathan has invited us back to Nassau in January when
he and his girlfriend will have the boat to themselves
for a couple weeks. He has offered to take us out
scuba diving! The boat is equipped with tanks, a
compressor, and all the basic gear! Normally a trip
like that would cost a fair amount, but we would get
to do it for free of course. It never stops!
I hope everyone in Michigan is enjoying a beautiful
winter. I hope all your evenings consist of hot cocoa
in front of a warm fire. I hope you’re all making
snowballs or slushballs, snowmen, going sledding, and
enjoying all the fun things that go with the season!
The only music we hear down here at this time is
Christmas music a the stores and restaurants. There is
also a decent amount of decorations and lights
throughout the stores and the city, so I am
experiencing it enough to feel festive. J I will miss
everyone around Christmas the most. I will be thinking
of you!!! Love you. Love you too, Blogspot. Goodnight!

Where do these people come from?

Jack
Wednesday, December 8. I have no idea why I just wrote that. It’s Saturday, I think. Or, they SAY it is anyway. I don’t believe them. I think it’s still today. Whatever it is.
I’m having that weird and wondrous strange feeling you have when you’re hungover. When everything’s kind of in slow motion, and strange, and kind of funny. And all of your nerves are raw from being up late last night drinking Guinness, and playing checkers with old guys named “Telephone,” and Charlie. And Hugh, who became an American citizen so he could fight in Viet Nam and lost some of his fingers. And because all of your nerves are experiencing the opposite of the depressant effect of the alcohol since it has now worn off, you feel excitable, and all of your emotions are cranked up another 75%. Everything is a big deal. Like this morning when we went back to the place we ate last night because the food was so incredible, and a guy asked about my “Lucky” tattoo, and I told him it’s not a nickname, but rather something that’s on my arm to tell you guys how I feel because I have you all. And I told him it just brought tears to my eyes to say it, and it did.

Anyway, here I am again. Still in Nassau. We had expected to pull out the day before yesterday, but Peter the harbormaster said it was okay, we could stay the night at no charge. So naturally, we stayed two more nights. (Oh, quick side note: Peter was quoted as saying he liked our boat, among all the other boats in that marina, all these huge, amazing, expensive boats, and he said he’d like to have one like… ours. The way we set it up. With the solar panels, and all that. How incredibly flattering to me. Of all these boats…) And now tonight, and we told him we’re staying again, because we’re still trying to email home, and make sure our dogs are okay, etc., and he charged us for one night only. People are so amazingly nice here, it’s like the opposite of usual with strangers, it’s like Christmas and everyone’s trying to give more to the person around them than they’re receiving, and you end up with this flurry of abundance and you’re sitting in the middle of it scratching your head, and the only thing that makes any sense is the tattoo on your arm.

Last night, we went to a place called Potter’s Cay, even though it’s still on the island. It’s a few blocks, under the bridge to Paradise Island, which is like the Bloomfield Hills of Nassau. What it is is where poor people hang out, old guys are playing checkers and dominoes, and drawing a crowd, and they even invited me to play and tore me into little pieces in about two seconds. It was sweet. There’s these plywood buildings, like fifteen in a row, 10x10, all touching, with people inside making cracked conch (sliced, breaded, and fried, with French fries), and conch salad and not much else. Conch salad is amazing. I think it may be the best food on the entire planet, and not just because if you eat it it adds 10 years to your life (per serving), but because of how it tastes. It’s made up of:

Conch, raw, sliced, chopped and slathered up with lime juice
Raw onions, slathered up with lime juice
Barely pink tomatoes, maybe a bit green even,
More lime juice
That’s it. And you can get a bit of Scotch Bonnet pepper, the hottest in the world, with a nice flavor, and mix it in, and if you’re totally insane, you can put it in and start to eat without mixing it thoroughly.

But it is, as my mother would say, “a bowl of health.” It is AMAZING. Better than you would ever imagine the sum of these parts could be. The meat, in the lime juice, becomes tender, and is the purest, whitest flesh you can imagine. And the onions react with the lime juice, so you don’t have any of the heat of the raw onion, just the sweet crunch. Incredible food. Absolutely incredible. I think it’s the culinary highpoint of human experience, thus far. Just perfect. Could not be improved. And you get it for 6 bucks or something, and they take a big bowl, and pile it high like it’s a giant bowl of soft serve ice cream. Like three times taller than the bowl it’s in. Just stacked up there, and they’re like “here you go,” like it was just a normal everyday thing. Absolutely incredible.

And there’s few tourists, mostly locals. And you help yourself when you want another beer. You just walk back behind the counters and get another one. The Guinness is the kind we used to get in Detroit but can’t anymore, without the nitrogen capsule, in a bottle, served cold. And it’s 7.5%, and Michelle and Gavin and Nathan keep sticking another in your hand like every two seconds, and then at the end of the night, pick up the check. Something in the water?

I told Gavin about the book “How the Scottish invented the modern world,” and another book “How the Irish saved civilization,” because he and Michelle are from Ireland. And he said “Again?” And then he said “I knew the Scottish had invented copper wire.” I said, “Oh, yeah?” He said “Two Scotsman fighting over a penny.” That killed me.

They’re traveling with our friend Nathan, who lives on the catamaran with them, and helps crew it for diving expeditions. Another great guy, and funny as the day is long. Cool guy. We’re going to come back up in mid January and go out for some dives with him.

Speaking of good people (all I ever get a chance to write about anymore… did I mention that I’m typing on Tom Deater’s computer?), we just had two people come ask us all about our boat. They wanted to know all about how we’re doing it, and that was quite flattering, because the guy had been a captain and lived on a boat for years. Their names were… drum roll… Laura and Peter. (might be a sign, you guys).

Less than ten minutes later, we just had ANOTHER guy stop us and ask us about our boat. He said there’s rough weather coming in, a low (pressure system). 5 minutes into the conversation, he told us he’s going to try to find the GPS coordinates of a free, safe, mooring that he knows of that has no buoy. You dive for it. So in this big city, it’s unused, and he’s going to offer it to us. While he’s paying for dockage.

DOES THIS MADNESS EVER END?