Goodbye Bahamas–Browns Cay

We left our spot in Warderick Wells at dawn. The winds and sea were both eerily calm so the cruise to New Providence was tranquil. We stopped briefly in New Providence for fuel before heading out again. By the time we anchored for the day, it was dark and nothing to see but the glow of lights from the big island of Andros. We headed out again early so we could get to our final stop before jumping over to the US.

Browns Cay is nothing  more than a tiny island full of nesting gulls. And by full, I mean full. We lost count at 30 nests complete with eggs. We made sure not to disturb any of them and quickly left the land to swim and snorkel around the island. There is a large sunken ship that appears to have crashed into the rock island and sunk many years ago. It was teaming with fish, lobster, and other sea life. While the boys tried their hand at lobstering, Danielle and I fished off the dinghy. We caught something with every cast! Unfortunately, we didn’t think to bring a camera so they will remain our personal “fish stories” but I swear the grouper we caught was at least 14 pounds! Also unfortunately, the huge lobster managed to avoid capture by the boys, leaving them with one antenna, a broken pole spear, and a bunch of painful scratches.

Once back on the boat, we were treated to our last spectacular Bahamas sunset. They never ceased to amaze us, each one more beautiful than the last.

Dusk brought out the dolphins. Who merrily swam around Miss Daisy, curious about the kids and dogs watching them. The sky was filled with seagulls, finding their final meals and settling in for the night.

Our last evening in the Bahamas. The dolphins and seagulls seemed to gather to say goodbye. Even the clouds got into the act and magically formed a large shark. There is a magic in the Bahamas. We experienced it everywhere we went. From the generosity of the people, opening their homes and lives to strangers. To the majestic silence of the huge sharks and manta rays, sharing their waters so peacefully. To the profound history each island owns and is there for anyone who wants to explore and learn. To the beauty of the water, the reefs, the ocean life, and landscape, cherished by all so that years from now, all of this will still be as it should.
This trip will forever hold a space in each of us. This trip changed us, for the better. As I believe any traveling does. It reminds us just how big this world of ours is and just how fragile it can be if we do not do our part to be good stewards.
Goodbye for now Bahamas. We’ll see you soon.
Next stop – Florida Keys.

Musha Cay–LSI part 2

We cruised from Emerald Bay back to Lee Stocking Island. It was time to start making our way back to the States, reluctantly, and LSI was our first stop on our way home. We didn’t get enough of it the  first time around and looked forward to exploring the island some more. We spent the next two days roaming the abandoned research center, strolling the crescent beaches, hiking the steep trail to the top of Perry’s Peak, and spending the evening outside looking at the Southern Cross. We’re going to miss this island.

We headed out to our next anchorage off of Warderick Wells, but we had a planned stop at Musha Cay. Just a few miles off of Great Exuma Island, Musha Cay is a small, private island owned by the famous illusionist, David Copperfield. The island is home to a cave, a little beach, and an underwater piano with a mermaid. That’s right! Situated in 20 feet of crystal clear Bahamian waters is a life sized, stainless steel, baby grand piano with a beautiful mermaid watching over it. Once we heard about Musha Cay, there was no way we could stay away.

The weather was beautiful as we passed by many beautiful islands and beaches.

We arrived and anchored next to the large cave. Once secured, we loaded up and headed out. First, the cave. The opening was huge. After the amazing caves we explored at Little Harbour on Great Abaco Island, we thought we might be in for another treat. This cave, however, turned out to be all show. We were able to drive the dinghy into the cave but once inside, the cave abruptly ended. We took a look around from the boat and then headed out to find the mermaid.

We rounded the point where we believed her to be and looked around. Not knowing what to expect, once we saw the large shiny underwater objects, we were pleasantly surprised. We threw out the dinghy anchor, donned our snorkel gear, and jumped into the sparkling water.

We spent about an hour swimming with our new underwater friend. We had a lot of fun “playing” the sunken piano, hanging out with a mermaid, and taking in the serene beauty of it all. It seems like a lot of money to spend on a statue that stays hidden just below the ocean surface, but we were very glad Mr. Copperfield decided it was a good idea. What a unique and amazing day.

We still had another hour of cruising to do before we reached our intended anchorage, Warderick Wells in the Exuma Land and Sea Park. We stopped at WW on our way down, read about those here and here. For now, we're only here to rest up before our crossing to New Providence Island. We settled in for the night with an amazing view.

Next up – Brown’s Cay. Our last stop in the Bahamas.

Emerald Bay - Great Exuma Island

After “roughing” it for a couple of months on the hook, we were looking forward to getting spoiled with a little dock time. We also needed to get the Commodore to Georgetown for her flight back to the states. We found a lovely marina in Emerald Bay, Great Exuma. We had a rough run getting there, as rain and wind moved in but the entrance to Emerald Bay is protected by two jetties and once we had rounded the first jetty, we had a nice smooth approach.

The marina was beautiful and a much needed break for all of us. It was situated next to a beautiful resort and golf course as well as a Sandals Resort. Here is a video tour:

Once we were checked in and settled, we headed out to explore the area. The grounds were beautiful. The clubhouse and facilities were stunning and inviting. We could get used to this!

Golf course with marina in the background

Overlooking the golf course

A friendly game of pool

Enjoying the free wifi

We quickly settled into a routine of relaxation. Enjoying the cable TV, free wifi, free washers and dryers, long hot showers, delicious coffee from Jamaica, and a gorgeous view. We visited the local pizza pub and even walked a couple of miles each way to enjoy huge burgers down island. 

As if all that wasn't enough, Steve and I took advantage of Sandals being right next door. As a couples only resort, we relaxed in the quiet, child-free, honeymoon atmosphere, with delicious food and libations. At times, the resort was almost empty, giving us access to the pool all to ourselves.

 

Getting spoiled

All to ourselves

Bliss

So good, we ate it two nights in a row!

After 10 days of gluttonous bliss, it was time for Commodore Peggy to fly out and for Miss Daisy to move on. We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Emerald Bay and would highly recommend it to anyone cruising in the Great Exumas Georgetown area.

Back to "roughing" it on the hook. Next up, Musha Cay and the underwater piano and mermaid! 

Lee Stocking Island

Who doesn't want to visit an abandoned town, especially one located on a remote island of the Bahamas? To see how it would look if everyone suddenly abandoned a settlement? We certainly did, and with limited information, we set out to do just that. Thinking we knew what to expect, what we found was something different entirely. Think post-apocalyptic movie set, but with a scientific twist. 

Lee Stocking Island was home to the Perry Institute for Marine Science. A once thriving scientific community making advances in marine science and research. From their website, perryinstitute.org:

John H. Perry Jr., Caribbean Research Center
Our research center on Lee Stocking Island is located in a remote area of the Exuma Cays, and it provides the ideal environment to observe, study, educate and inspire. The location was selected as a long-term research site and field station for two reasons - its proximity to the U.S. and the incredible variety of untouched marine habitats that surround the island. Scientists can take a 10-minute boat ride east to explore deep-water sea life off the Exuma Sound, where the ocean floor plunges 3,000 feet, or a 10-minute boat ride west to the shallow-water ecosystems of patch reefs.

The laboratory is one of the largest and most productive science field stations in the entire Caribbean region. And the field station is highly regarded by the most esteemed research institutions in the U.S. and abroad. 

PIMS began in 1970 by John Perry after being appointed by President Johnson to chair the new Marine Science Commission from 1968-1970. Mr. Perry was instrumental in the creation of NOAA. Read more about the history of the PIMS here: Perry Institute - History

Shortly after his death in 2006, PIMS lost their federal funding and the center was closed. What was once a place "dedicated to making a difference by protecting our oceans.", is now a wasteland of trash, chemicals, plastics, and pollutants that will negatively affect the very oceans they were once trying to preserve. But I digress. I'll get back to that later.

We anchored in the old mooring field, opting not to use the existing mooring lines per the advice of previous visiting captains. We had three other anchored boats in our little bay, right off the main part of the now defunct institute. 

We couldn't wait to get to shore and explore. From the boat, we could see many buildings that looked fully functional, so we were sure we would find it occupied once ashore.

We were wrong.

Walking down the empty roads, we went from building to building, inspecting. All the while, waiting for someone to walk out of one and ask us what we were doing there. In most of the buildings, it seemed as if somehow, everyone just vanished. Other buildings looked as if someone had tried to move out the contents but ran out of room in the moving truck and had to leave items behind. Exhibit 1, the dive center, complete with a decompression chamber. Yes, that's right, a DECOMPRESSION CHAMBER. That definitely wasn't going to fit into the moving truck!

Terrifying, right? We found it this way.

In the main house, we found a painted map of the island. This was an amazing discovery as it gave us the layout of the island and an idea of what each building once was.

There were several empty houses on the island. From the "Pink house" to the "Bahama house", the "Conch cottage" and even Mr. Perry's old house on the northern end of the island. Each house offered up it's own amazing view of paradise. 

Note the Christmas lights still hanging

Mr. Perry's house sits atop the northern point, overlooking Exuma Sound

The houses, like all the other buildings, sat abandoned and neglected. Vandalized by uncaring visitors and the harsh Bahamian weather. Any one of them, with a little bit of hard work, could once again be a beautiful home. We felt almost angry at the waste. Along our walk down the stone and paved roads, we found their "Home Depot", the hangar next to their airstrip and their junk yard. 

Home depot and workshop

The junk yard

The airstrip

We followed a path that led up a hill to a huge wind turbine. Now covered in vines and rusting apart. Next to it were the now-empty tankers that supplied the generator which powered the island. Steve couldn't help but have a little fun. 

Wind Turbine folded down.

We stumbled across the lab and storage shed, both full to the top with dangerous chemicals, thousands of pieces of plastic, Styrofoam, and glass. Hydrochloric acid, acetone, and chloroform to name a few. Pretty nasty stuff and here it sits, waiting to wash down into the beautiful blue waters the scientists once lived to protect. 

I wonder if this would make these Doctors proud?

The government cut their funding. I get it, war is expensive. I'm not getting into the politics of this or placing blame on either party, but there has to be an end-game plan. As a large non-profit agency, you have to have a plan if all those millions stop coming. How can anyone who truly cares about the environment, who, by their own words, is "dedicated to making a difference by protecting our oceans" leave this as the legacy of Mr. Perry. Shame. It's a damn shame.

Enough of all the negative. The anger and sadness I felt, and still do, will be why it's my number 2 spot. But there is a reason this was Steve's number 1 spot on our trip and it's easy to see why. First I will say that for Steve, this place will forever be known as the island we will live on when the zombies attack. We'll have everything we need and zombie's can't swim. But lets get to the real reason. Look at these views.

Around every turn was a new crescent beach. White sand, gentle waves lapping up to the shore. Incredible coral reefs just offshore and the waters filled with wonderful sea life. We had a resident nurse shark that would come swim under us when we were swimming around the boat. She floated along, back and forth, as if she wanted to join in on the fun. Happy to have visitors and new friends. Did I mention she was at least 5 foot long, a big girl. Along with her, we had several giant eagle rays, Nassau grouper, grunts, conch, snapper and so much more. With the crystal clear water, you can see all of them clearly. 

On the southern end of the island, is the trail to Perry's Peak. The highest elevation in the Exumas at 123 feet above sea level, there is a breathtaking view. See for yourself.

Lee Stocking Island. The place were we celebrated Jake's 17th birthday. We made new boating friends. We scaled Perry's Peak. The island where we'll live when the zombies come. The place where we all saw the Southern Cross for the first time. A once beautiful island community, where for but a brief moment, we sat on the deck of the remains of a beautiful home, looking at an amazing view and pretending for that moment, that we were the lucky ones who lived in this paradise. 

From our Skeye app

Jake turns 17 - Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt

While at Lee Stocking Island, we celebrated Jacob's 17 birthday. We had all been working hard on a big surprise for him and the big day was finally here. Jake loves Harry Potter and we knew we had to do something that featured his favorite books/movies. The rest of us put our imaginations to work and with limited resources and only the supplies we had with us, we created a magical Harry Potter world aboard Miss Daisy in the out islands of the Bahamas.

[Caution: If you haven't read the books or watched the movies, you may be a little lost. Just roll with it and know that this all coincides with the series.]

We decided we would create a bit of a scavenger hunt [Harry Potter style, of course]. Dani and I worked hard for several weeks, planning, researching, collecting, and downloading any fonts, clipart and photos we would need when we were able to access the internet. It would all start with an owl delivering Jacob his invitation to Hogwarts. For this to happen, we used a balloon, colored to look like an owl, tied to a fishing pole that had his letter tied to it. We custom made his letter using HogwartsWizard font in green [because that is the color Professor McGonagall writes in] and used coffee to stain the paper to look like parchment. In place of a seal, we used a Hogwarts Crest. We had recorded owl noises from the movie and had that playing over our loud bluetooth speaker and had his "Owl" meet him upon return. I don't have a great picture of either but here is the letter and a clip of Jake receiving it. In order to get the boat prepped and be able to surprise Jake, we sent him out to help Dad walk the dogs on the island and Steve was ordered not to return until we radioed him that we had generator issues.

From here, he then proceeded to Diagon Alley [the galley] where we had Ollivander's Wand Shop set up. We had the Harry Potter movie theme playing in the background for effect. Jacob has a decent collection of driftwood wands that he has found along our travels but Dani had worked hard the last few weeks to create the ultimate wand....the Elder Wand! She used some driftwood, added clay for the knots and end and then painted it all. So we filled the galley with his existing wands along with his new one. In true Potter fashion, I played Ollivander and had Jake try on several wands for size but then told him that he was destined for something greater. I pulled the Elder Wand. Jake's eyes lit up and his smile stretched from ear to ear. I then told him since that wand chose him, then I had something else for him. I pulled out his very own Marauder's Map. We made this with an extra large sheet of paper we had leftover from Dani's art class. I used some Mod Podge to stiffen the paper and add texture. Using different shades of paint, we got it the color we wanted and I tore the edges for an old parchment affect. The map would tell him what was expected of him in this journey and where to go next. 

After reading his note from Harry on the map, his first step was to head to the Great Hall and get sorted into a house. We set up the bridge as the Great Hall and made a sorting hat out of Steve's straw hat. We printed out house shields and put them on colored paper to make a banner with all the Hogwart Houses and the Hogwart shield in the middle. We had mixed together several sound clips from the movie of the sorting hat, where he goes back and forth, deciding on a house for Harry and ended it with the sound clip of the hat shouting "GRYFFINDOR!" [Jake's favorite]. After that, the sorting hat dished out a couple of presents - homemade bracelets in Gryffindor colors, red and gold.

Jake opening one of the presents from the Sorting Hat [on the left] while he still holds his Elder Wand.

 From here, the map said he was to follow his prefect to the Gryfindor common room, the aft head, for a welcome party. Steve played the prefect and led Jake to the door where he announced the password to the fat lady. "CAPUT DRACONIS!" and the door opened. [we had two doors to the aft head so I was able to open from the inside without Jake seeing].

Once inside, Jake found another gift with a note from Harry. It was an "invisibility cloak" for Jake to use later in the hunt. For this we took his favorite blanket, that he often uses as a sensory blanket, and wrapped it in red and gold string. I did the same process to the letter that I did to the other writings and hand wrote the note for effect. Inside the shower, held in place by the shower curtain, were dozens of balloons. Each balloon held money in either coins or bills, similar to what we did for Brandon's last birthday. Jake had loved that so much we knew we had to incorporate it into his. In one of the balloons on the bottom was one of the horcruxes. This horcux happened to be the Marvolo Gaunt's ring. We made it in our own style instead of trying to replicate the movie one and made it green for Slytherin. Jake used his Elder wand to pop all the balloons before he could continue on his quest.

Flashback of Brandon's birthday balloon massacre Aug 2015

After popping all his balloons, Jake's next task was to head to the Quidditch Room for tryouts. We had this set up on the back deck with access outside. We had worked for days trying to figure out the best item to use for his broom. We tried palm fronds, leaves, dried seaweed but settled on some cool foliage Steve and I found on Black Point tied around a broom shaped driftwood piece we also found. Once he had his broom, we told him he had to find the golden snitch. We made that out of two gold balloons wrapped around sand with feathers glued to it. We hung this from the front spotlight. He found it a lot quicker than we expected, but we got a kick out of the fact that he rode the broomstick the entire trip around the boat. Also hanging from the spotlight was the second horcrux - Salazar Slytherin's Locket. We used an old necklace, added some clay to shape it the way we wanted and then painted it black and green. Again, we weren't going for a match to the movie/book, just the idea of what it could look like.

 His next task was to use his "Invisibility Cloak" to access the Restricted Area of the Library. We had this under the inside helm. In there, we placed another Horcrux - Tom Riddle's Diary. For the diary, we took an empty journal and covered it with some spare material we had. On the first page, we wrote out the conversation Harry Potter had with the diary. Inside, we placed homemade Harry Potter themed bookmarks Dani and I had made for him. 

Can you see him under his Invisibility Cloak? 

Looking in the diary

Since he had now found the three horcruxes [the ring, the necklace, and the diary], he was to head to the Chamber of Secrets and find an item he could use to destroy the cursed horcruxes, thus banishing Voldermort and saving the human [and wizarding] race. We used the stair entrance to our engine room as the chamber. Since our engine room is quite large, we placed the "item" fairly close to the stairs but not too easy to find. The hint from his map was that it might bite. He figured out very quickly it was a Basilisk fang. Dani made this out of clay and painted it to resemble the large snake's fang. He proceeded to pretend to smash each of the three horcruxes with the fang, in true actor's flair and was ready for his final stop.

The three Horcruxes - Tom Riddle's diary, Marvolo Gaunt's ring, and Salazar Slytherin's locket

The chamber of secrets

Using the fang to destroy the ring

After destroying all the horcruxes, the map told Jacob to go to the Headmaster's office so he could receive his OWL results. We had turned our bedroom into the office, decorated with more owl balloons and a beautifully colored phoenix, Fawkes, that Dani made for Jake. He received his OWL results [Ordinary Wizarding Level testing], and in passing, then received his Master of Wizardry diploma. 

Finally!

 

With his mission complete, we settled in to a marathon of Harry Potter movies. For dinner, we made homemade pizza out of tortillas and had chocolate lava cake for dessert. It was a magical day for sure. All done without any access to party stores, a Walmart, or civilization for that matter! We used what we had on hand and what we found along our travels. We made all of his presents, except the money of course, and created an experience we'll all remember for a lifetime. Not your ordinary 17th birthday but then again, Jacob has never been ordinary! 

So for those keeping track, his presents included:

• Souvenir map, letter, diploma and OWL results
• A quidditch broom
• A golden snitch that happens to be a stress ball
• A repurposed blanket, now known as the invisibility cloak.
• A new, very unique, journal
• A new wand
• Two bracelets
• Three new bookmarks
• A Dani original Fawkes poster for his room
• Money
• Souvenir ring, necklace and basilisk fang

Also for those die-hard HP fans, we realize the timeline and accuracy are in question, but we weren't going for exact - and our resources were, of course, limited. This was about the experience for all of us and that was worth so much more. In addition to our family celebration, our new friends from Hawaii, anchored next to us, sang Jake a traditional Hawaiian birthday song and gave him some candied bananas from their farm back home. He couldn't have been happier with his special day!

Next up, Lee Stocking Island!