We are in Georgetown at "adult summer camp" and guilty of not writing home very often. Most boaters love or hate Georgetown. We have mixed feelings. The weather down here is not something we can complain about to the frozen people up north, the wind chill is not part of our daily weather report. But...the fronts have been coming through with such frequency that we haven't found a great window to visit other islands. The morning after we arrived, many boats left for a race to Long Island, the next island south. It's good that we had heard or we would have wondered about the mass exodus. It was extremely windy and one team told us they weren't speaking by the end of the day, some argument about how much sail they had up.
We've had guests for the past few weeks and have to be sure we can get them back to the airport, so here we've stayed. First came Barb and Jack, Carolyn and Lizzie from Rochester.
Our daily routine is to listen on single sideband radio to the Chris Parker weather report at 6:30 and then to the local cruiser's net on VHF 68 at eight. The cruiser community now has around 260 boats and is quite organized. Volunteers manage the morning net on the marine VHF radio, with boaters calling in to get on the list with their agenda. We all sit on our boats with pen in hand to write down the activities we'd like to join; anything from volleyball, bocce, dominoes, Scrabble, dances, seminars, dinners, ARG (alcohol research group), book exchanges, doggie get-togethers, trivial pursuit, poker, baseball. Local business make their announcements followed by the boater exchange requests. Lee often has parts and knowledge to help with boat problems. Most boats anchor in the three harbors at Stocking Island and dingy across the mile to Georgetown village for shopping, library, laundry, internet and baked goods. Stocking Island has a beach bar, a restaurant, and the beach with shade and picnic tables for all the activities. A short walk leads across the skinny island to the ocean beach where we walk. We were the first to arrive after an announcement for a lobster sale and got a very large one. We had to ask on the radio for cooking instructions. He sat in a five gallon bucket on the galley floor all day and I felt very sorry for him.
Another morning's radio announcement was the offer of a sourdough bread starter. Lee dingied right over and brought back the container and three pages of directions, complete with colored pictures. We're been in bread heaven ever since, with variations of southwest cheese sourdough, breakfast cinnamon/raisin sourdough, etc. The only problem has been the lack of a large enough bowl for the overnight rise.
Take a look at look at the oceanswatch.org website if you have time. They have a boat here awaiting a weather window to carry supplies to Haiti and are encouraging cruisers to join the flotilla. The smaller boats can enter harbors on the south west shore away from the bottleneck where supplies don't get transferred to the people who need them. One cruiser is definitely going and we are all donating supplies and money to buy more. Lee later was able to keep in touch with them by single sideband and report that they arrived safely and distributed the goods to an orphanage, a fishing village, and a work for food program.
Lee's news: We did have one sailboat race, we came in second of 3 catamarans, I placed Sherry and Carolyn on shore first and took the other guests as crew. I was expecting times compared to all the single hull boats that I was able to pass, but was only given the placement between one super fast home built cat and one that seemed to have stretched out sails. I heard one single hull boat complaining they could not go up wind enough, that is supposed to be a catamaran problem. My sister Tracy is aboard for a week, there may be another race this week that she can crew for. This time I am letting the water tanks go down and leave the dingy behind to save weight. Tracy's week aboard was notable for the cool windy weather and the race was cancelled. She mostly had to be happy with hikes and land events.
Last night we had Rake and Scrape music at a local bar/restaurant, watching the dancing is quite interesting. There are about 5 Bahamian men that show up and dance, we were there last week with guests Barb, Jack, Carolyn & Lizzy. Carolyn, age 17 kept getting dance requests from age 30-50 Bahamians. I told them to go find a Bahamian under 20 and they said that anyone that young would have no rhythm. Otherwise, the Cruising American/Canadian men don't seem to dance much, and there is just this one wild young Bahamian woman that comes, so there is a group of wild eyed 60ish American women, dancing with Bahamian men, great people watching! We actually stayed out until 10 PM!
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