Well, the clock is ticking down on our going-on-three-year Caribbean adventure. I figure we’ll be stateside come Tuesday at Fort Myers Beach, Florida, but in the meantime, the Bahamas is sure a great place to wind it up! We arrived at Hawksbill Cay in the Exumas a couple of hours ago after a motor-sail from Big Majors Spot near Staniel Cay this morning. The beauty of all the very clear and multi-colored water here is still the best we’ve experienced anywhere in our travels.

After leaving San Salvador at the end of May we spent a couple of nights at Rum Cay before heading over to Conception Island which is just as great a place as we remembered. While there we transplanted our palm tree in a spot that is visible from the anchorage. We hope to watch it grow as we revisit this place as often as we can. But with company coming we headed on to George Town and awaited the arrival of our daughter, Christina, her husband Rick and two very special grandkids, Justin and Kristina. A very few minutes after their boarding, the kids and their Papa (that’s me) were swimming off the side of the boat, which immediately became a daily must-do. If those kids had half as much fun as we did during their visit then they had a BLAST! We swam and snorkeled and hiked and dinghied around and played at the beach and even got to swim with a dolphin who decided to spend the afternoon swimming around the anchorage.

We made the all day sail back over to Conception Island, which pushed the endurance limits of the land-lubber crew but they all decided it was very much worthwhile after the first half day there. The snorkeling here is some of the best we’ve seen and the kids really enjoyed seeing so many of the fish that we had shown them in our fish-ID book. More time was spent swimming off the side of the boat with Papa and at the beach and hiking around. On day two, Christina decided to stay at the beach while the rest of us took a long dinghy ride over to and up the “creek” that is accessible only at high tide. We saw lots of turtles, starfish and barracuda in the crystal clear water of the creek. When we finally got to the very shallow headwaters we saw something splashing around ahead. Was it a couple of giant turtles or what? Wait a minute! It’s a SHARK! COOL!! We dinghied over and identified it as a nurse shark, at least 6 feet long in about 2 feet of water. We followed it around trying to get close enough to pet it but it kept swimming off. The kids thought that was pretty neat and we couldn’t wait to get back to the beach and tell Christina what she missed! However, when we returned Christina’s eyes were big as saucers and she excitedly told us about the sea monster she’d just seen swim up to her as she sat in the water near shore. From her description it sure sounded like a big shark! Can’t wait to see the pictures she took. For some reason none of them wanted to go snorkeling again, but strangely, the kids still wanted to swim off the side of the boat with Papa. We broke the return trip to George Town in half by overnighting in Calabash Bay at Long Island where there was more fun at the beach and swimming off the side of the boat with Papa and Mema.

After our return to George Town we still had two more days of fun before they flew home to their normal lives. We’ll be sure to rest up for the next batch, as we’ve got nine more grandkids to share this fun with. Y’all better hurry before we get too old!

Our current plan is to sail to Allan’s Cays tomorrow (20 miles) then on to Nassau which will be our last stop before Fort Myers (unless we change our plans, of course!)

See you in the USA!!

David and Claudia
6/21/2001