Bahamas!

A dolphin visited our boat and swam with us all day long! So magical!

We have sailed the Mediterranean, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and explored all over the Caribbean from Barbados to the Bahamas. We have seen more marine life and stunning water colors since arriving to these lovely islands a few weeks ago. We keep saying, "Wow"!

Nature's swimming pool! 

Family time!

Steve and Tina captured this lovely pic of our dolphin friend. To see more of Steve's amazing
photography skills, check out his website: www.stevezmak.com  

Tree swing at Chat-N-Chill beach.

We swam all day with our dolphin friend!

We met up with Jared's parents in Georgetown, Exumas who flew in for a week. It was so good to see some family after almost 2 years away. Our friends Steve and Tina also came out and stayed aboard with us for the week. We explored the town of Georgetown, swam with a dolphin right at our boat for a day (it stayed until nightfall, but what an amazing experience), and moseyed on over to Chat-N-Chill beach for a day. That place is tons of fun! Volleyball courts, little beach shack, swings, swimming with the stingrays, treehouse, slacklines, and all sorts of things for kids (and adults) to do. We met all sorts of people and made new friends. We can see why people get stuck here for awhile.

Family volleyball match.

Exploring Georgetown.

Roundabout at sunset, Great Inagua Island.

After sailing around Great Exuma island with the grandparents, it was time for them to return to California. We said our 'see-you-laters' and set off for White Cay with our friends to see the pigs. We sailed north for a couple of hours and anchored off of white cay. The pigs are a bit shy at first, but friendly. After seeing we had some goodies for them, they slowly entered the water near the dinghy. They sat like little puppy dogs, mouths wide open, awaiting the treats. We fed them lettuce, carrots, and apples. Zach brought some cheese pizza and a chocolate chip cookie along for his snack, but they fell out of his bag on accident and the piggies gobbled them up! I hope their tummies were ok after that rich food! When they saw we were out of food, they slowly wandered back to the beach.

The following morning, we dropped Steve and Tina off at a little restaurant on the beach across the bay. Turns out, this was the same restaurant featured in the Fyre Festival documentary. We had a couple of cold drinks while they waited for their taxi.

We were surprised by lemon sharks feeding close to shore, so of course, that distracted us for awhile. They are so swift and graceful in their movements!

Just after sunrise, we exited the cut and out into the ocean for a sail north to Rudder Cut Cay. It is all about the tides and current, here in the Bahamas!

We heard there was an underwater statue that needed to be discovered. Turns out, this is one of David Copperfield's islands. He also owns Musha Cay and a handful of others in the area. If you have a spare $42k, you can rent Musha Cay resort for a day.

We dropped the hook of Rudder Cut Cay and dinghied over to explore the sea caves and the mermaid/piano statues. It's pretty easy to free dive down to the statue. Word on the street is that the original one was stolen a few years ago, so this one they affixed to a concrete block. Another cruiser mentioned seeing a 6' nurse shark in the area, but we didn't see it. As we sailed by Musha Cay, a gentleman came out of one of the remote houses and waved at us. Could it have been the famous magician himself? We couldn't tell from so far away. If so, hello Mr. Copperfield! =)

From there, we moved on to Great Inagua. We anchored off one of the beaches and fed the iguanas lettuce. They are quite a beautiful mixture of pink and green skin, and very friendly.
We made a pit stop at Blackpoint for some of Lorraine's mom's special coconut bread, as well as her coconut raisin cinnamon bread. These made amazing french toast!

Meeting Lorraine's mama and buying some fresh coconut bread!

We spent the night anchored off another beach on Great Inagua. They all seem to have iguanas roaming around, so you can't miss out on seeing them.

They come up to you as soon as you land on the beach. 

Thunderball Grotto was our next stop along the island chain. We spent one night anchored off of the Grotto and then moved around the corner to Big Majors Cay to wait out a blow coming through. The pigs here are famous and know it. They are a bit more aggressive than the shy White Cay piggies, but simply hold up your hands and they will go find someone else that has some tasty morsels for them. We saw lots of little piglets here as well.

Cruisers' beach, Big Majors Cay

Crystal clear water!

Hermes at the edge of the gorgeous water (cruiser's  beach)

Pigs of all shapes and sizes! The little ones were so cute!

Nurse sharks at Staniel Cay.

Fun tree at Chat-N-Chill beach.

Petting the friendly stingrays.

We spent a few days hanging out at cruiser's beach, snorkeling the grotto again, checking out Staniel Cay (go swim with the sharks off the marina), and waited for a fridge part to show up from Watermakers air (we replaced the compressor module). After swapping out the parts, we were back in business and made our way up to Little Halls Pond Cay, also known as Johnny Depp's private island. You will know for sure it is his, because of this sign on the beach: "This is NOT Disney. You are NOT welcome". We were hoping to catch a glimpse of our fellow pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow, but alas, he was out sailing the high seas during our visit. Right next to his island is a rock known as The Aquarium. This place has the most tropical fish we've ever seen in one place! Wow! We wandered around the other little islands and beaches, and prepped to cross over to the island of Eleuthera the next day.

We sailed about 5-6 hours and dropped the hook in greenish tinged water off Poison Point. The kids built a little campfire and we cooked dinner and made s'mores. We invited the other boats in the anchorage and made some new friends. The next morning was Monday, so we dinghied over to The Island School for a tour. Zach heard about this amazing marine science school and wanted to check it out. Stef ended up with a job offer at the end of the tour (no, she didn't take it,but perhaps a summer position in the future).  Zach  decided to apply to attend their Sophomore year. If you are in the area, please go see all the projects their students are working on. Simply hands-on project based learning at its finest!

The next couple of days were spent adventuring around Rock Sound with our new friends. One of them had a daughter Cadence's age, so she was happy to finally have another sailor girl to hang with.

We saw two of the big Ocean Holes inland, cliff dove, and crawled through Cathedral Cave, winding around the spider webs, bats, and all!

Planning on where to jump off at the Ocean Hole  (closest one to Rock Sound)

Cathedral Cave with the bats

At first light, we sailed back over to the Exumas and anchored off Norman Cay. This is also one of the islands featured in the Fyre Festival documentary. The current here can be wicked, so be sure to set out a 2nd anchor (aka bahamian style anchoring), otherwise you risk the anchor chain messing up your bottom paint when the current is one direction and the wind another.

From Norman Cay, we spent another night at Rudder Cut Cay, and then moved on to Georgetown, as we hopped our way south. We rode out another weather system here for a few days and went to play at Chat-N-Chill beach every day. So. Much. Fun!

Mid-afternoon, after getting some last minute provisions, we set off for Hog Cut Cay. We ended up not liking how it looked, even with high tide (take your dinghy in ahead if you are uncertain of the depth. A portable depth sounder is VERY handy for situations like these).

Sunny on Castle Island.

Shipwreck treasures on Hogsty Reef Atoll (Sand spit)

We anchored off for the night and at first light, went around the long way, around Long Island. It definitely has the correct name. We spent the night off of Castle Island (this beach is really cool and the old abandoned lighthouse deserves a look as well--don't go inside though, its falling apart). Snorkel the reefs there, as you'll see lots of pretty fish and colorful coral.

Anchored off Hogsty Reef Atoll.

We moved on to Hogsty Reef Atoll the following day and had the place to ourselves for the afternoon and evening! This is a truly amazing place, with so much wildlife! We found a few conch and made fritters (freeze them for 24 hours, then you can easily remove them without breaking the shell). You can only visit this place when the sea and weather are very calm. There are over 200 wrecks in the area. Ashore, there are lots of shipwreck treasures like pottery, glass, square nails, and remnants of cargo. We placed these on a flat piece of concrete towards the pillar on the east side of Sand Cay. Please add to these but don't take so that others can enjoy. Some of the pottery is stamped London 1888. You can snorkel some of the wrecks (you'll see at least 2 large cargo shipwrecks and the rest are below the surface). There's nice coral, lots of conch, and fish.

Next morning at daylight, we sailed on to Matthew-town, Great Inagua. We cleared out, got some provisions, dinghy fuel, and then set off on our 5-day passage to Panama! Jungle, here we come!

Next up: we arrive in Panama, haul out, explore the jungle, and prep for the canal transit.

Goodbyes and See You Laters

Had a little taste of the cruising life today, as one of my closest friends drove away. She and her family bought a gorgeous river front home on the coast of Maine, which had been a dream of theirs for years. Today, she finally realized her dream. As we stood there in the early hours of the morning (we had one last coffee walk) and watched the huge moving truck arrive, it hit home that this would be the last time we would see each other for awhile.

For the past year, we have been hosting yard sales in our effort to downsize, planning out our adventures, chatting it up at work, and grabbing coffees on early morning walks. Excited for one another's upcoming move, we enjoyed sharing in each other's experiences (and frustrations, successes, etc) with planning such a thing.

A week later, we had our "sailing away" bonfire with friends, as we will be leaving a few days afterwards. It was so great to see everyone, but also quite emotional.

Goodbyes and see-you-laters are a large part of the cruising life. Guess I had better start getting used to these situations. Still....it's not easy...
~Stef

When The Family Freaks Out

When The Family Freaks Out! a post by Jared

Several family members have expressed serious concern recently and have asked a few questions. Hopefully, this will calm those fears a bit and shed some light on the lifestyle in which we are about to embark.

How can we afford to cruise? Are we sacrificing retirement in the future?  Are we crazy?  

Our plan of cruising does not involve taking off from work to go on a two-year vacation.  This is a temporary (or permanent) life style change in which we reduce our costs, get a safe home that floats, and continue to work while we travel and educate our children in various locations around the world. 

Before I even considered this lifestyle, I asked myself: 

Are there risks?  

What if we lose the boat to catastrophe?  

What if it sinks or starts on fire?  

What about pirates?  

Why would you sell your wonderful home with an ocean view?

Are there risks?  

Yes, there are risks.  Some are the same as we encounter in everyday life in addition to some additional risks (like sinking!).  If you want to get depressed in a hurry, start studying the risks of living amongst people.  People are crazy!  

What’s worse, those crazy people can go buy guns (in the US) and do some serious damage pretty quickly.  What is riskier than that?  Driving.  We take some necessary precautions to make driving safer but still, people die every day in vehicle accidents.  

Every time you get in the car, you are essentially rolling the dice.  And I hate driving to boot.  The first half of my driving life involved sitting in the car driving for at least 20 to 30 minutes to get anywhere.  This is a quick way to waste one to two hours every day.  It’s not healthy to sit that long either (more on that later).  If you think you’re safe in your home and nothing could hurt you there, please realize that 1 in 1 million people die from eating peanut butter (not allergy related), our own water systems have killed hundreds of people (water treatment mistakes, oops, that chemical wasn’t supposed to go in there), and sickened countless thousands (think lead pipes).  

The materials in our home can also do us in (asbestos, lead pipes, formaldehyde…) and talk to a grocery supply expert about the amount of food recalls every day!  We don’t hear about these things because it’s not news worthy.  It happens too often and we live with these risks.  The barn may seem safe until it’s not!  How do we live with these risks?  We buckle our seat belt, filter our water, and use our heads to think about keeping ourselves out of trouble.

Losing our boat would be a major setback, just like losing our home would be a major setback.  People die in house fires every year.  Boat fires are scary, too.  Our answer to this is to be prepared. The boat will have insurance, we will practice fire drills, have smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and be as safe as we can in this regard.  This is probably my biggest fear.  If it happens in the open ocean (a very rare occurrence), we will have an emergency life raft and our dingy to jump into, several EPIRBS to alert the authorities, and of course, fire extinguishers and lots of water nearby to bucket brigade if possible.  

Our kids swim well, but life jackets on passage, and harnesses for all anywhere outside of the cockpit / interior of the boat will be our seatbelts and personal locator beacons on life jackets. 

Pirates?  

How about car jackings, home invasions, or theft in general?  Nope, you don’t escape bad people on the water, they just call them pirates.  The definition of piracy? Criminal acts at sea. 

We choose not to live in high crime areas and we are choosing to not visit high crime areas.  Does it eliminate the risk? No, but the risks are manageable and if conditions change, we can leave and seek safer locations.

But your beautiful home! That ocean view! 

We have a wonderful home in a small city. We can see the waves breaking ½ mile away.  It’s great!  We can also hear the neighbor two doors down washing their dishes.  Yes, two doors down!  That means they can hear us, our kids, and anything else that makes noise.  It’s kind of weird.  We could sell and move back to our home town, but that would involve lots more of that driving stuff and being located close to high crime areas which isn’t all that fun.  It’s also not very enriching.  

We have an opportunity to travel and learn about our world; not though text books, but through the world itself.  I’ve read about Venice, seen pictures, and sailing affords the possibly to experience and learn about amazing places like this with our children.  Way better than a text book in my opinion and worth the risk to our finances.

Finances!  

We do not plan on exhausting our finances.  As part of our making the decision to cruise, we talked to a financial planner.  It wasn't a decision made over night, but after YEARS of careful and thoughful planning. We can do this without exhausting our savings/retirement.  

True, it is risker investment than owning a home.  A home has the potential to go up in value, where as boats tend not to go up in value, ever!  That said, we have been on the wrong end of the housing crises and we don’t plan on doing that twice.  The money we make from selling our current home will buy the boat and provide for about one to two years of cruising.  I will continue to work as I spend most of my time sitting at a computer.  I need frequent but periodic access to internet to keep working but that appears possible from all that we have read.  The other portion of our home sale funds will go to investments and a portion will go to emergency funds.  When we are done cruising, we will either put the boat into charter or sell it to recoup some of our investment. 

Why not wait and cruise when your children go off to college?  

There are a few reasons not to wait.  The chief one being that we want take our kids with us while they want to go along.  In 5 years, the boys will be in high school and would not want to leave their friends or the experiences of high school (girls).  

Another reason? My health. After having health issues for the past several years and it culminating with pneumonia last summer, I realized that time may not be on our side.  We are rolling the dice every day and each new dawn could be our last.  My doctors feel that we have my health issue figured out and thankfully, I’ve had no issues since last fall.  We will not be away from medical care while out cruising and our doctors have shared their personal phone numbers and emails with us!  They have been overwhelmingly supportive.  Our child’s pediatrician said we inspired him to do something similar with his own family.  They are in the initial planning stages and have a departure date four years from now. 

Are we crazy?  

Yes, but in a good way.  I feel we have been living the typical white collar life in lots of ways.  A teacher and engineer with three kids. We even have the typical golden retriever! Each of us spends most of our day working to pay the bills and when we get home, spend the rest of the time corralling the kids to events, meals, and bed time. 

“Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future, that he does not enjoy the present moment. As a result, he does not live in the present or the future, he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never truly lived.” – Dali Lama

I have a great job.  I work for myself from home.  I also sit on my butt 8+ hours a day.  Then, when I can, I head off to the gym in hopes of not losing my health to this lifestyle.  I fit into the Dali Lama’s quote like a key in a lock.  My health, at 39 years old, is fair.  I only get exercise when I can break away.  On the boat, I’m hoping to swim, surf, paddle board, walk and run more (on land of course) and gain fitness through an active lifestyle while we explore the areas we are visiting.  And because our expenses will be much lower than they are now, I will not need to work nearly as much.  I’ll be spending more time with my wife and kids, taking part in my children's education, and taking better care of myself.  In my mind, the additional risk of living on a boat are far exceeded by the benefit of an active lifestyle, world travel, and the experience with my family.

So to our family and friends who are a bit worried. We love you and cherish the relationships we have with each and everyone of you. We hear you and understand your concern. We will not sacrifice the safety of our family and we hope you find time to join us.  However, we are choosing to experience more than just life in a box.   

Related posts on this same topic:

Nomadic Matt

Totem

Feast of Lanterns

At the end of summer, our town holds the Feast of Lanterns. It is an annual celebration, over 100 years old, of the legend of the Blue Willow, a fabricated "Chinese" story.
From the Feast of Lanterns site: 

"Long ago in far off Cathay, a land now called China, there lived during the reign of Emperors a wealthy Mandarin named T'so Ling. His land holdings were vast and fertile, and his treasures beyond counting. His palace was built of fine woods and rich lacquers with a roof of blue tile that gleamed in the sun, and a handmade fence that ran below the palace. Behind the palace grew an orange tree, and beside the palace ran a river with a graceful willow that gave shade in the heat of the day.

Of all T'so Ling's possessions, his beautiful Princess daughters with their jewel names were his greatest joy. The Mandarin delighted most in his eldest daughter, Koong-se, who he named Topaz, so named for the golden lights that twinkled from her eyes. Topaz passed her days in a summerhouse that leaned over the rippling water, where she did elegant embroidery on silk while listening to tales of old Cathay as told by her faithful nurse, Chun Soy.

T'so Ling thought Topaz so lovely that he wished to crown her as Queen. A coronation ceremony was planned, and all the princes, potentates, maharajahs and lords of the realm were invited to attend the coronation. One of the old Mandarins brought a chest of gold so impressive that T'so Ling thought this rich man would make a fine husband for his daughter Topaz. T'so Ling made plans to combine the coronation with a marriage feast.

Topaz heard this news and became quite despondent, for she had fallen in love with a poor, young scholar called Chang. Hearing of this, T'so Ling forbade his daughter to marry Chang. Topaz wandered off into the dark to drown herself. T'so Ling alerted the villagers to search for Topaz with lighted boats and lanterns. During the search Topaz and Chang reunited. In a final burst of lights, Topaz and Chang were illuminated as they changed into Monarch butterflies and escaped into the sky.

The pageant, which takes place on the last night of the Festival, tells the story in pantomime and ends with a burst of fireworks overhead as the lovers are seen for a brief moment departing in the guise of Monarch butterflies."

We love to anchor out in the bay to watch the show and lovely display of fireworks. Also, to avoid the huge crowds that cram themselves onto the beach. We often bring out friends, food, and have a lot of fun. This year, we truly had a boat load of people on board! =)

Fun times!

Glow sticks are lots of fun! Plus, a great safety hack for keeping track of the kiddos.

View of the shore.

Sleepy time. The kids were worn out after a fun evening out on the bay!
The wagon in this pic is AWESOME. We use it for just about everything (walks to the grocery store, hauling beach or boat gear, and even sleeping kiddos!)

Busy Times!

We are in the middle of construction! Working on the home addition, while working full time and maintaining our sailing preparation to-do list has kept us pretty busy. Hence, lack of posting on the block. Believe me, I have a few posts in the works, but have to find the time to get them all completed!

Yesterday, one of my students brought me a bouquet of pencils. In type on each pencil was a different saying. The one that I took out to use had this on it: "GET IT DONE". I took that as a sign, I had better start getting posts up on the blog! =)

Just some of the things we have been up to (beach time, horseback riding, school, etc):

Friends in town!

Last weekend, we had friends come to visit. Of course, this meant we had to go tide pooling and, you guessed it,... sailing! We had 14 people on board! The kids (and adults) had a blast!

The previous day found us hiking at Garland Ranch and then lunch at Baja Cantina in
Carmel Valley. What a great day!










Tide pooling and beach fun at Asilomar Beach,