Off the beaten path
On a couple of occasions, I have mentioned the radio “nets” (networks I assume) that some cruisers use to stay in touch with others. If you have a HF radio as we do, you can check in to these regularly-scheduled nets, receive weather data and other pertinent info, as well as make contact with other cruisers that would be out of range of the standard-issue VHF radios. We find it interesting when we come across a boat that we recognize from one of these and this exact thing happened yesterday when we docked at the Nassau Harbor Club marina. Beside us was a boat named Blessed Spirit which we recognized as a regular on the morning Cruiseheimers net. Before we could make our way over to introduce ourselves, Corning was over to say hi to us, commenting that he recognized our boat name from the same net.
Approaching Nassau Harbor. We had to radio them to ask permission to enter the harbor.
Corning, along with his wife Tita and dog Demi, are not Bahamas first-timers as we are. Apparently they have been doing this for at least a few years and when he saw us scanning our charts in the cockpit, he was happy to give us some tips on our intended destinations. When I asked him if he knew a place where we could purchase a winch handle (remember one of ours went AWOL), he actually went back to his boat and got one to give us, for free! For the non-sailors, these are not cheap!!! If that wasn’t enough, he then came back and offered us a bag of ice, which for cruisers is almost like gold (you can’t have sundowners without a sufficient quantity of ice cubes). Very, very cool people! If you end up reading this guys, thank you very much. Hopefully we run into you again down island a bit (they left the marina earlier today) and can return the favors.
The deserted beaches that most people visualize when they think of the Bahamas now lie within a half day’s sail from our current location, Nassau. Hand in hand with deserted islands will almost certainly come a lack of internet access though, which may hinder the regularity of our blog’s updates. Hopefully not too much, but if we don’t get this updated quite as consistently as we have up to this point, please don’t freak out. 🙂
I stumbled across your blog and started reading it on 17 Dec while you were waiting for a weather window to cross to the Bahamas. I just love it and i look forward to reading it every day. I actually went back to the beginning and read the whole thing so now i am up to date.We are also living in Kingston, Ontario actually just up north in Sydenham. We are hoping to do the same thing as you two one day, god willing once we become empty nesters.
Please keep up the excellent blog updates because we are learning through you and we will follow you on your wonderful journey.
Hi Denis
Thanks for reading our blog. Hopefully Kingston hasn’t fallen apart since we left. 🙂
It would kill me to be without ice and had heard it was pretty expensive in the Bahamas. Then I found out it’s not so much the expense but the availability. We ended up buying a portable ice maker (Koldfront) that uses very little power and starts pumping out ice within 10 minutes. I really didn’t want another appliance on board but since we ditched the microwave I figured it was worth it for me.
I’m enjoying and looking forward to more of your videos.
Our friends have one of those ice makers and we’d love to have one too. It’s not the expense of buying one as they are very reasonable. Our challenge is where to put it.
We have met many such generous and helpful people throughout the cruising community, as well as many in waterfront communities. Kind humans restore your faith in humankind.
I agree Larry!