A Tale of Two Chemists: The Beanie Weenie

The Beanie Weenie … Monday 11 March 2013

Flashback to July last year and we are driving through rural Maine trying to find our way to a farm that specialized in dried beans. At this point we felt that these would be an essential part of our provisioning for a cruise to the Bahamas. Paul and Fran had given Tasha a GPS in preparation for her trip across country in "Jane" and we were trying it out. Having just missed a turn the GPS re-calculated the best route and sent us down a road that first became dirt road then a track, It became one of those situations where we couldn't turn around even if we wanted to and at one point we felt we'd be lucky to get out alive! Anyway we finally made it to the farm, bought a stack of beans and today for the first time we ate them. Perhaps not as essential as we thought! They took a fair bit of cooking but these baked beans were excellent and we ate them with sweet Italian sausage cooked on the barbecue. One lesson though, next time we go cruising we'l lake a pressure cooker.

We started the day by listening to the Chris Parker weather forecast at 6.30 a.m. on the SSB radio. With the hour going on it was a struggle to get up at this time. After breakfast we pulled up anchor and headed southwards down the harbor and re-anchored off Sand Dollar beach. We had heard from others that this was a nice location and so it is. Once secure we took the dinghy into Georgetown itself to post some letters, fill a jerry can with water and buy a few additional provisions. It was long (~2 miles each way) and bumpy ride, with winds blowing out the south east at 15 - 20 knots the journey to town went fairly smoothly, but the trip back was very wet!. (The fresh bananas we bought in town got totally smooshed on the journey back and we ended up sautéing them in butter and syrup for dessert tonight - very yummy!)

Later in the afternoon we took a much shorter ride into Sand Dollar beach itself and hiked over the southern part of Stocking Island to the Exuma sound coast. The path took us to the top of an unstable cliff overlooking the ocean and the the swells were truly impressive, rolling in and creating waves that crashed into the beach and headlands. We followed a track along the cliff tops and down into a cove that was mostly dry but every now again would be swept by larger waves that poured over the rocks. It was impressive to see but also a bit spooky.

Tomorrow afternoon Gloria's brother Rod and his wife Sue arrive, so we have some cleaning tidying and cooking to do.

23 30.875 N, 75 44.762 W

Mike