A Brief Break from the Daily Drudgery of Logs

December 25, 2005

Friday, December 25, 2005 - December 25, 2005
By Tom

Well, this is kind of lame. Today is Christmas and we are in Georgetown. Thats not the lame part. The lame part is that we haven't been keeping a daily log since we got here. We move the boat so infrequently here that it just seems funny trying to have a log that says "And today we didn't go anywhere".

To be sure, we are doing lots, but we aren't really going anywhere. Instead of a daily summary, I have put together a general overview of what life has been like the last two weeks or so. Here goes.

We arrived in Georgetown on December 10, one day after the Amy birthday. There were less than 30 boats here when we got here. It was kind of funny in that respect as neither one of us have ever seen it that empty here.

It was almost a home coming of sorts. We quickly caught up with Eric and Susan off of Elysia as well as Ollie and Pam from Dejarlo. We found at least 10 other boats that we had met last year and hadn't seen since. After so long of traveling alone it was nice to be among friends.

We anchored off of Volley Ball Beach within view of the Chat and Chill Bar. Volleyball was already under way when we landed and I wasted no time in joining in. It what must be a case of mistaken identity I have been promoted to the "professionals" volley ball court and now I spend my time playing three on three or four on four volley ball with people who are a lot better than me.

After two weeks and maybe ten lost pounds I am holding my own. I have even been invited to play in the holiest of holies! Two on two. Sweeeeeeeet. Actually, I think I am the fifth man in the rotation, but injuries here are frequent, so I have been called in to service several times for two versus two duty. Mega cool!

We reconnected with the Anam Cara's here on our second day. It was great to see them again after a month or two apart. We enjoy having someone our own age that we can relate to and we've been averaging a happy hour together every other night.

Amy's ear problems continued right up through Christmas and entailed no less than four trips to different hospitals and clinics. The health care may be cheap down here, but so far it sucks the big Kahuna. Amy finally went to the private clinic dude who flies in from Nassau once a week (Thursday) and he seems to have finally nailed down the problem. As I write this now, Amy is 2 days away from being allowed back in the water.

Don and Sandy off of Anam Cara have been going fishing with me a lot. Their starting to get the hang of it and they are successfully catching their own food. It's nice to have people to hunt with. Since we have been in Georgetown, I have snagged 4 lobsters and either 7 or 8 multi meal fish. Suffice it to say the hunting has been pretty decent.

The mother and father unit of Sandy flew in around the 11 th or 12 th and they are staying on board Anam Cara until the th of January. We have been hanging out and doing a lot of happy hour and beach parties together. Its funny how quickly you fall into a routine here.

Most days I wake up at am to get the weather. I got hunting from 10 til 12 and then I have a lite lunch and head in for volleyball at 1 or 2. After volley ball its time for a quick dip before we run off to the evening activity of a beach bonfire or a boat happy hour or dinner or whatever. Its a pretty hectic lifestyle for people who are supposed to be retired.

We did laundry (finally) about a week ago. There is a new cleaners in town that will wash, fold, and shrink wrap your laundry for $1 a pound. 60 dollars later we had clean clothes again. It's good to be clean. Actually, a bunch of us got together and compared notes up at the volley ball courts. It's actually cheaper to drop your laundry off and have it done than it is to do it yourself! Washing machines are going for $2.50 a load and dryers are between $4 and $6 dollars a piece!

Honestly, its worth having it done by someone else if for no other reason than you don't have to spend all day waiting and watching your clothes spin. If you've never seen a Bahamian laundry, understand that fresh water is at a premium here and that sometimes it can take over an hour for the washer to fill for ONE rinse cycle! One time last year it took us 5 hours to wash 5 loads of clothes in 5 separate machines! Suck ass!

Another major stumbling block this year has been propane. It seems that there is some kind of propane strike going on between Nassau and the outer islands. We ran out of gas our third day here and it took a weeks worth of tracking down, conniving, stealing and bribing to get my tanks filled.

They tell me that it is a temporary supply glitch, but it looked pretty serious to me. I hope they get it figured out.

Christmas time came and all of the cruisers got together for a Christmas potluck on Hamburger Beach. A few of the cruisers rehearsed various Christmas and boat songs and performed them on a make shift stage in the sand around our camp fire while the rest of enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner. Amy and I made a ham for the festivities. See accompanying actions shots posted at the right.

December 26 th (Boxing Day) saw us at Junkanoo which starts at the un-godly hour of 4 am. Junkanoo is the Bahamian version of Carnival. The locals get dressed up in wild outfits and march through the streets with their instruments playing Bahamian styled classics as loud as humanly possible. We had the Anam Cara's (Don and Sandy plus Mom and Dad) over at 3 am for a waffle and bacon breakfast. In keeping with the festive atmosphere, most breakfast participants had Bailey's Irish Whiskey with their coffee. Milo and I stuck to beer and Mila slept through it all.

The Junkanoo festival itself was pretty cool. The people who live here are so nice and generous with what little they have that you cannot help but have a great time.

I almost forgot, the highlight of Junkanoo. Right after we tied up at the dinghy dock and were walking towards where the festival was held, we saw a local come running past us at a high rate of speed! We then saw two uniformed police officers running after said local. Don (Anam Cara) and I quickly joined the pursuit. Don kept singing that theme song from Cops. You know "Bad Boys Bad Boys. Whatcha gonna do? Watch gonna do when we come for you?" while I yelled to the officers "Use the Taser! Use the Tasers!". I don't know if our help was appreciated by the officers, but the gathering (and very drunk crowd) thought it was funny.

I think we both may have a promising future in law enforcement.

Ok, so sorry for the informal format, we have started keeping normal logs again and I hope not to be as lame in the future.