Valentine's Day & Songwriters In Paradise

By: Kathy

Valentine’s Day is the second holiday we have experienced on the boat that we felt the difference between land and water. Usually the we spend a fair amount of time creating valentine cards for classmates and the kids make boxes or bags for their card exchange at school. This year they do not have classmates so we had to come up with a different plan. We were at a marina in the morning so they made a couple of valentine cards to hand out to some boats that were at the marina. There was another kid boat that had a 4 and 5 year old onboard so they drop off a little valentine to them. Sam decided to put all of his effort into one card for the dog on one of the boats. The dog’s name is Rocket Man. He had made friends with Rocket Man a few weeks ago during our first visit to Marsh Harbor.

Getting ready to deliver the valentines!

Sam and Rocket Man

The delivery crew!

So where did we go in the afternoon?? As I mentioned in our first post we were planning to go to Man-O-War Cay to get our sail bag repaired after the zipper line accidently snagged and pulled some of the pulleys and rip the bag in the corner. BUT – this is a big but…… We had heard about a music festival happening over in Elbow Cay. After looking at the schedule we realized that if we wanted to see one of the shows it would have to be Valentine’s night. The next night had a $20 ticket price and after that we were going to head south to get ready to leave to Abacos.  So we had to weigh our options….sail bag repair vs cool music concert. You can guess what we picked -  cool music concert. After looking at the sail bag we decided that we could do our own repair.

In the afternoon we headed over to Elbow Cay and anchored the boat near the entrance to White Sound. Emma made cupcakes and we grilled some steaks for our Valentine’s dinner before we headed into Sea Spray Marina for the concert. 

Emma working hard making cupcakes!

Enjoying our Valentine's Day dinner. 

The name of the festival is Songwriters in Paradise. The performers are primarily songwriters out of Nashville. They are not necessarily people you know from the radio but they write some of the songs that you hear. They do a different type of concert each night at different locations around Elbow Cay. For the Valentine’s concert it was a round robin style concert with 3-4 artist for each set. The setting was very casual. Just guitars and artists. The talent was amazing. I have no musical talent so I am in awe of people who do.  It was so laid back they didn’t even have security and the artists just mingled in the crowd. On stage they would chat and make jokes between songs. In the first set one of the songwriters was Mark Bryan who is the guitarist from Hootie and the Blowfish. He played the most popular Hootie and the Blowfish song – “Hold My Hand”. About halfway through the first set he called up a friend to sing with them. His name was Mike Mills who turns out is the bassist for R.E.M. I was super excited….I love R.E.M. The kids gave me the “you are so old” look because they had no clue what I was talking about. They played a song that was written by the drummer from R.E.M that was never recorded. I thought it was very cool!  I still can’t believe they have an event like this on this tiny island in the Bahamas that you can only reach by boat. Check out their website: Songwriters In Paradise.  They have a cool video that they did from their visit in 2016 of Hopetown and the song is about the festival. 

The crowd at Sea Spray getting ready for the show. 

Round One with Lauren Jenkins, Mark Bryan and Phillip Lammonds

Still Round One but Lauren gave up her seat for special guest Mike Mills from R.E.M.

Here are a few pictures between sets:

Round Two: Johnny Bulford, Kylie Rae Harris, Matt Warren (in a very interesting outfit), and Channing Wilson

This was a great ending to our time in the Abacos. We will miss these beautiful islands and hopefully we can return in the future!

Welcome to our blog!

By: Kathy

Welcome to our blog. This is our first official post on the blog!! We are so excited to share our travels and adventures with you. To start off I want to fill you in on the who, what, when, where and how of our trip so far.

Where are we??

Right now we are in the Abacos, Bahamas. We crossed the Little Bahama Bank to the Abacos right after Christmas. Most people have never heard of the Abacos. I encourage you to pull up Google maps and check it out. There is a big island with the main city of Marsh Harbor (one traffic light and regular cars instead of golf carts). Then you have the out islands that are separated from the main island by the Sea of Abaco. We have spent almost all of our time cruising the out islands and we are now in Marsh Harbor getting a few errands done and some good provisioning. It is a wonderful place full of amazing people and beautiful water. The water is pretty shallow so this part of the Bahamas cannot have a cruise ship port and is kind of a little hidden gem in the Bahamas.  

What are we enjoying about the Abacos??

The water!! It is so beautiful and clear. You can see the bottom when you are in the dinghy and paddle boarding.  This was a perfect spot to get our hulls wet and start this adventure. We also love the culture and people of the Abacos. There is a difference in the islands that have cruise ships and those who do not. We came from Grand Bahama (Freeport) to the Abacos so we definitely saw the difference. It is kind of hard to catch a good beat on the local culture when the big boats come into a port. Even when they are not in port the stores are different, the restaurants are different, and the activities around the island are different. When you go to islands that do not have big ports you see a little bit more local culture and even though there are less people you will actually meet more people.

The water in the Abacos is amazing!!
photo location: small island near Whale Cay, Abacos

Who do we meet??

This has been the most intriguing aspect of the trip for me. We meet all kinds of people. The islands here are small. Some only have about 125+ people living on them. I think there might be more people in Target right now at home. The locals on any island we have visited will very kindly answer any questions and help you with anything. We have learned a lot just by asking questions when we go out to eat or talking to people at the marinas or stores. Everyone is happy to share information. If you go to dinner you will most likely have a conversation with the people that work there and any table that is near you. This vastly different to what we experience in the states. I would never talk to the table next to us at a restaurant when we were in Florida. If we stay on the island for a few days you will run into the people that you met at the dinner the night before and have a chat. Some are locals and some are seasonal residents. There are also a lot of cruisers here. Right now it is their low season but there are plenty of boats around. The most surprising thing that we have seen meeting other people and seeing other boats is that there is a big number of cruisers from Canada. I think every other boat we see is from Canada. We have asked a few why they come all of the way down here (it is a long trip) and the two answers they give are: the great weather and the cost is about the same as what they pay in Canada. For us, the cost of goods is much higher than what we are used to paying in the states.

How do we find things to do??

This is something Dan worried about before we left. Would there be enough things to keep him busy? I was less worried about this aspect of the trip. It turns out that there is plenty to do. Even when we are at anchor and it is raining and we can’t go outside and play we still have plenty to do. Of course there is always schoolwork to do. We are usually playing a little catch up from the nice weather days. Sometimes it is a boat project because as soon as you fix something there is another thing that is broken. We also have spent a lot of time learning the boat. How does the alternator actually charge the new batteries? Why does it shut off before the batteries are charged?? It is not broken but we are trying to figure out which setting needs to be changed. What do we do for fun? Sometimes it is just swimming or paddle boarding from the back of the boat. Pretty easy to do and very close to home.  If it is a beautiful day we may postpone school and head out to a beach and snorkel. Sometimes it is just to relax and enjoy the day while we read or play games. We are always game for a good festival or market. I try to read all of the flyers around any island to see what is going on. There is also a great thing called the cruisers net that is on every morning on the VHF radio that will fill you in on all of the happenings around the islands. If we go somewhere on an island it is usually about 5 minutes away even when we are walking.  This has made me realized how much time I spent on land going from point A to point B even when I thought they were close.

This is one of our favorite places to relax on the boat!
photo location: Guana Cay, Abacos

We have just finished gathering all of our supplies and food. It was really different grocery shopping for such a long period of time. It took me 3 trips to the store to finally get what was needed. We are now heading over to Man-O-War Cay to get a little canvas repair done on our sail bag and also to make preparations for our crossing to Eleuthera at the end of the week!!