Life in a Bubble? … Sun 20th - Mon 21st May 2018

Life in a Bubble?   …   Sun 20^th - Mon 21st May 2018

(I't's now Tuesday evening and I'm sitting in Snappas bar. This blog wouldn't have been posted tonight except I read the comments on our previous blog (on my cell phone) and it motivated me so much I decided to jump in the Dumb Dog and use the WiFi at the pub. The excellent draft amber ale had nothing to do with my decision ... ! Today we took a ferry ride over to Hope tOwn and had a great day. We should get that blog up tomorrow with some photos.)

Now we are in Marsh Harbor our return to the USA seems imminent. We’ve had several people comment that cruising in a boat must be great because you get to leave behind all the bullshit that’s going on in the world. Have we been living life in a bubble? There’s no doubt that our lives have become focused on day-to-day life aboard and dealing with the challenges that constantly arise. I guess that I do like that aspect of cruising. We have tried to stay in touch with family as far as possible, but it’s not the same as seeing them in person. It’s our ties with friends that are perhaps most stretched – we’re not great at emailing / calling friends and we do feel out of touch. It has been great that some friends were able to visit us and it will be a great pleasure to see and catch up with both friends and family when we get back. The one area that is almost impossible to block out is the madness in the world. With pretty much universal 3G cellphone coverage and frequent internet access it’s hard to avoid being bombarded with mostly ghastly news stories and, in that sense, we have not been in a bubble. Our physical return to the USA just makes the constant anguish that we feel about the state of our country that much more real.

At this point I have changed the blog. I removed the two-page diatribe about Donald Trump. I still can’t get over how almost 50% of the people who voted thought he would be an acceptable president … anyway moving on to more positive things …!

So we are making preparations for the passage back to the USA. We’ve been doing lots of boat cleaning, inside and out, and it’s certainly looking better! We’ve also done lots of food and drink shopping and this afternoon we started to prepare some meals that we hope to freeze down and have ready-made for the long days and nights of sailing. We made braised pepper steak in red wine and meatballs in goulash sauce, both from the winter collection of British chef Delia Smith. (My dad used to call her Saint Delia because he was so enamored with her recipes). We also plan to make a pork and apple in cider dish and maybe a Thai green curry.

This afternoon we had a very pleasant surprise. Gloria, who was polishing stainless steel up on deck, called down to ask if I recognized the boat that had just anchored behind us. It was “Banyan”, a boat belonging to a Canadian couple, Dave and Alex, who we met back in 2012. At that time we were all sheltering in River Dunes marina in North Carolina as hurricane Sandy went by. We got to know several boaters during that week, including Dave and Alex, and we met up with them again later that year down in Florida. We managed to contact them on the VHF radio and they dropped by for a drink this afternoon. They have been living aboard for the past five years, the first three down in the Caribbean and the last two in the Bahamas, with hurricane season layovers in Florida. They spent the past two summers, whilst “Banyan” was on land, touring the USA in their RV. What I found really interesting is that they prefer the boating life to “land cruising” primarily because of the sense of community with fellow live-aboard boaters, which they found hard to find when most campers are short term on vacation. It was great to catch up with Dave and Alex. We may see more of them over the next couple of days, but they will probably take the opportunity to head back to Florida starting tomorrow before bad weather closes in at the weekend. No doubt more on the weather later!

Mike

Foredeck clutter ... If we partially deflate the dinghy we can tie it to teh foredeck and still deploy the inner forestay and stay sail, A better solution is to fully deflate the dinghy and pack it up ... much less clutter.

Aft deck cutter ... note the orange and blue fishing hand-lines and the gaff (lightly used) hanging near the outboard motor. When on passage you don't go ashore and garbage accumulates. We have one white plastic storage bin on the back of the boat, but that soon fills up. We were happy to get rid of these smelly bags!

A scary looking self portrait cooking up Meatballs in goulash sauce whilst listening to music on my iPod