The Marina at Emerald Bay

The Marina at Emerald Bay   ...   Wednesday 6^th Feb 2013

Many of you who know me would probably be astonished to hear that I was very excited to see an iron in the laundry room at the marina.  No, the months at sea have not turned me into a starched and ironed kind of person.  Rather, in preparation for the trip, I had acquired a couple of new sewing projects.  One is a patchwork quilt.  This takes an unusual approach to the construction.  What you need to do is iron under the seam allowances on half the pieces and then …There’s no need to bore you with the technical details.  The key thing is that in order to do this project, I need to be able to do some ironing.  Imagine my excitement at the presence of an iron and ironing board in the laundry room.  That is far from typical.

In fact, this is quite an exceptional marina.  If we understand it correctly, this marina is associated with the Sandals resort here on the northern tip of Great Exuma Island. While the fees for dockage are pretty high at the “serviced slips” ($2.30 per foot), here at the ‘non-serviced’ slips [no electricity] it’s pretty reasonable - $1 per foot per night with a 3 night minimum stay.  Whilst water is $0.40 per gallon, the showers and laundry are included in the dockage fee, as is good wifi internet service.  We have done three loads of laundry and have enjoyed the “real showers”.  Almost as exciting is the hot water in the sinks.  Having hot water to wash your hands is a real luxury.  In addition to the aforementioned features the marina has a ‘clubhouse/office’ where you can hang out, read or use the internet.  You can also borrow games or DVDs.  Tonight we are hoping to watch a movie on the computer. 

To celebrate our arrival at Great Exuma, we went out to lunch and then had a walk around part of the Sandals golf course.  This overlooks the lovely turquoise and blue ocean most of the way.  It’s almost enough to make you want to take up golf…For dinner tonight it was roast pheasant with red cabbage and wild rice.  That’s what the recipe said! To some of you it might have seemed that our recipe was more like chicken with red cabbage and pancetta flavored rice.

On the topic of cabbage…My cookbook suggests that one definition of eternity is two people and one ham.  In my view one could just substitute the word cabbage in place of ham.  The new statement would be equally true.  Your try to buy the tiniest cabbage you can find.  Once you start cutting it up, there’s enough cabbage for a battalion.  I guess if I ate coleslaw we might be able to get through a cabbage but… That reminds me, interestingly, Mike chose to have coleslaw with his lunch and then cabbage with his dinner.  Must be his German heritage coming out.  

Gloria

Prime real estate - Emerald Bay

A couple of views of one of the most beautiful golf courses I've ever seen

I'm sitting in the cockpit reading Bill McKibben's book "The End of Nature" when in comes a relatively small power boat with 4 x 300 horse power outboards on the back ... the book is depressing enough without the confirmation of everything it says staring you in the face