April - July 2008
6 August 2008
pace is in reality filled with stores selling everything imaginable Disney. Kuno and Tatiana zero in onto the wildest rides in each park, while I am happy to join grandparents and small children in the waiting area at the exit, and watch them emerge with big smiles and a debate on how the rides could be made even more hair raising. Magic Kingdom, with its castle, princesses and some of the most classical rides, remains a favourite for Tatiana. It is fun watching her still getting excited about meeting the characters and getting their pictures and autographs, even when it means lining up for an hour. I thought she was too big for that, but apparently I was wrong. Hollywood Studios has some great exhibits about the original art of Disney movies and we learn about the process of creating a movie character. Tatiana takes a cartooning lesson and draws a great looking Goofy, while Kuno joins a stunt show. We are surprised by Animal Ki
ngdom that transports us to the world of Asia so well that Tatiana says she misses being in Nepal. We get completely soaked on the Kali Rapids ride, down to our shoes and underwear. I am sure it is a ploy to sell more Disney T-shirts, but it works regardless and soon we too are dressed with pictures of Mickey, Goofy and Tinkerbell just like the rest of the visitors. Our favourite park ends up being Epcot as it takes us to France, Italy, Morocco, Japan, China and many other countries. We are thrilled to have breakfast in France, with fresh baguette and pastries rather than the standard American breakfast fare that we are sick of by now. The evening entertainment in the parks is amazing and we don’t tire of watching the nightly fireworks. It is like having the Symphony of Fire every night of the year in three locations… I wonder how much money is blown up over the course of a year here. But it is beautiful. One night we go see the show La Nouba by Cirque du Soleil and Tatiana sits on the edge of the seat the whole time absolutely fascinated by the acrobatics and artistry. We return to our hotel each night tired but thinking: 
And I can’t help but think how time flies; it feels like only yesterday when little "kindergartner" Tatiana opened Minnie’s fridge and was surprised to see it full of cheese.
Blue Moon is packed and ready to go. Go on the truck that is. As I step onto the dock for the last time, Kuno just wants to check one more thing on the foredeck. That is when I hear a distinct splash sound. Not much I can do, the fishing net is locked up inside. Unsure of what Kuno dropped, I look into the water, but whatever it was, it doesn’t float. “Oh well” says Kuno, “I never liked that phone anyway.” Kuno hates Blackberries, but this one served us well, keeping us in touch throughout the trip (good thing I haven’t seen the phone bill yet). On the bright side, the phone is the only thing we have lost overboard during the whole trip. In fact, as we contemplate the end of our sailing adventure, we realize that we have had only very few mishaps and that as sailing trips go, this one went really smooth. I give most of the credit to Kuno, who never ceases to amaze me by his capabilities, ingenuity and plain smarts to deal with anything that comes his way.
Leaving Bimini, I was worried about coming to Fort Lauderdale. I read somewhere that Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale is the third busiest port in the US. We are not used to much traffic and here, container ships, cruise ships, fishing boats, power and sailboats, even kayaks, you name it, are all around us. And the bridges! Within the first thirty minutes of entering Ft. Lauderdale, I have the biggest scare of the whole trip going under a highway bridge that supposedly had enough clearance (just) for our mast to pass. Nervous as it is, Kuno says to me: “Look up to see if we will make it”. Well, have you ever looked up at something really tall directly above you and judged the height? Impossible, I was sure we were going to hit. But, the bridge clearance was as high as stated and we passed with a foot or two to spare. And then the Intracoastal Waterway and later 
New River opened in front of us and with it a passage through some amazingly beautiful neighborhoods of Ft. Lauderdale. We meander through surprisingly narrow channels about two miles inland. Every once in a while a big boat comes from the other direction and we have to stay to the side to fit. Incredible mansions along the way are fronted by docks with one or more boats tied up. The amount of money floating on the water in this area is incredible. The annual revenue from the marine business in Ft. Lauderdale alone is supposedly four billion dollars. Seeing the amount of boats, I am starting to believe it. I can see though why people like living here. It is very beautiful.
After another five bridges, including a railway bridge, that all open on demand via marine radio, we arrive at our final destination, River Bend Marina on New River. And now the hard work starts, dismantling Blue Moon in preparation for the long trip to the Northwest. Other than securing everything inside the boat, we have to take off and store the sails, bimini, dodger, boom and mast with all the stays and shrouds, the life raft, the dinghy davits. The deflated dinghy goes on the foredeck. Not having done this before, we get a rigger to help us take down the mast and prepare it for transportation. To break the boredom, Tatiana practices her RipStick skills and by the time we are finished she becomes quite proficient. While working on the boat, we sneak in a one day trip down the coast through Miami and the Keys. We love the coast, with its one continuous beach and fancy mansions along
the way, but after having been through the Bahamas, the Keys hold little excitement for us. We drive through a bit of the Everglades Park, full of mangroves, shallow water passages, manatees and crocodiles. In fact, it seems that all of Florida is just very low lying and any new development starts by filling in a swamp. And we note that there is a lot of development going on. I guess Florida is still in denial about global warming.
And then it is finally time to send Blue Moon off. As I watch her, ready to be picked up by the lift, she seems very small. Without the crowning glory, her tall mast, she seems naked and vulnerable. But I think of the times when she faithfully got us through tall waves and high winds, strong and proud. And I can’t wait for when we have her home, mast up and ready to sail the BC coast. Once she is on the truck, we say good bye and drive toward our last adventure, the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and Disneyworld.
Kennedy Space Center is fantastic. Very well done and so educational. Emotional too. Admittedly, to the amusement of my daughter, I cry even during children comedy movies, but I couldn’t help but shed a few tears of pride watching a replay of Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the Moon. I didn’t realize how many problems they had during the landing. They lost communication with the command centre, then they realized that the landing module was going too fast toward the Moon and will miss the selected landing area, the computers on board had several intermittent failures and were navigating the module toward a rocky landing area from which they would not be able to take off again. 
Eventually, Neil Armstrong took control, ignored the computers and the control centre, and to everyone’s astonishment landed in a completely new spot with literally no landing fuel left. It made me realize that during the first flights the astronauts really had at best a fifty fifty chance of coming back. Pretty impressive stuff. In total, twenty four astronauts have died during missions or training. More than half of them of course perished in the two disastrous space shuttle missions. I can’t imagine the stress of all involved in launching a craft after a preceding disaster. And so we learn about the Apollo missions, get to see a real Apollo rocket and the Moon landing module, and about the space shuttles, including taking part in a simulated take off and walking through a training 
shuttle clone. Some of the equipment from the early days, like the Moon landing module (see picture), looks like something out of a whimsical cartoon, very basic and crude, almost funny looking despite its underlying sophistication. We drive around the compound and see the assembly building as well as launch towers. It would be very cool to watch a space shuttle being launched, but the next one is only in October. The first shuttles were launched in early eighties and for a while, in late eighties and nineties, there were as many as seven or eight missions per year. Last year there were only about three or four and this year so far two. Out of the five space shuttles built, three are still in service. A little funny story about the prototype glide test space shuttle Enterprise is that NASA wanted to name it Discovery, but about a hundred thousand Star Trek fans petitioned President Ford for the shuttle to be named Enterprise and apparently, looking for any votes he could get, Ford made NASA change the name. And so Enterprise was born. Or so we were told...
The contrast between our last few days in the Exumas and the hoopla of Nassau is unsettling. I got used to our slow days and quiet evenings in empty anchorages more than I realized. I thought I was missing the civilization of restaurants, stores and entertainment, yet when I got all of that in Nassau, I wished we were still in the Exumas. There is a lesson in this observation and despite the fact that we have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about “living in the now” on this trip, apparently I have not quite succeeded. Like the lizard above, I should learn to just stay still and soak the moment in for as long as I can.
The last few cays of the Exumas provided some memorable moments for us. Sometimes the best comes when not much is expected. On chart, Shroud Cay didn’t appear to hold much interest. The shores are lined with mangroves which makes exploration on foot impossible. Instead we hopped in the dinghy and started exploring the shallow channels that crisscross the Cay, calmly winding its way among the mangroves, providing shelter for birds and fish. In fact, for a shallow draft boat, the channels could provide a decent hurricane shelter. We meandered through many turns until the channel suddenly widened and opened to the other side of the island with one of the most spect
acular beaches we have seen. The water was a deep turquoise in the middle of the channel, changing to the slightest shade where it spilled onto the white sandy beach with just a hint of pink. With the change of tide the water in the channel was running quite fast and we kept floating down the mouth to the sandbar just outside in the ocean, then running back to do it over again. The water, even on the wild side of the islands is warm, but when we dig our hands half a foot into the sand, it is nice and cool. No wonder so many of the sea creatures live inside the sand.
le drugs to the US. There is a wreck of a good sized plane in the bay that sits just below the surface and we anchor close by to check it out. I heard and read two stories about the plane. One said that it was shot down, the other that the pilot was high on drugs and missed the runway. He missed by a lot I might add. We snorkel around the plane that is still in an amazingly good shape, including the full body (sans cargo) and wings, a propeller on one of the wings and even some wiring in the cockpit. Small patches of coral are starting to envelope the wreck. I should note that while I like looking at coral and small colorful fish, I am never very comfortable snorkeling, especially when there are giant rays, nurse sharks and barracudas swimming around me. I have learned that none of them will bite me unless I bite them first (an unlikely situation), but that does not mean that I am comfortable around them. Throw a wreck of a plane into the mix and all I can think of is a big shark hiding in the belly of the plane waiting to surprise me. So I tentatively stick my head into the plane, making sure that Kuno is nearby as potential bait. 
The Atlantis resort and marina on Paradise Island across from Nassau will be our home for the next four days and we can see its massive towers for hours before anything else of the island appears. We have been warned by many people that anchoring in Nassau is difficult and there are a lot of break-ins, even in some of the marinas. While Atlantis is outrageously expensive, it has the added attraction of an enormous water park. I am not sure who is more excited about it – Kuno or Tatiana. The marina wrap itself around the casino and the hotel and despite being 
fully booked, we end up being the only sailboat there, and as such a bit of a curiosity. This is definitely the land of power boaters. The more horsepower and fishing rods, the better. The water park turns out to be a lot of fun and not surprisingly, Kuno ends up being the most adventurous. Several slides feature nearly vertical drops and while I am quite happy to watch others scream as they plunge down and contemplate potential safety issues (like what would happen if one leaned forward on the vertical drop), Kuno lines up for slides with names like The Abyss and Leap of Faith. Tatiana is somewhere in between, not a chicken like I, but with a healthy sense of life preservation. Our favourite feature is The Current, a mile long circular river where one floats through waves, rapids, tunnels etc on a tube. Elevation is gained by being transported up, tube and all, on a conveyor before continuing onto another round. One can take a detour to various tube slides, most of them pretty wild. Unfortunately too wild for me as I end up with a whiplash. Atlantis also has some well done 
aquariums and we get to see hammerhead sharks, manta rays and the recently transferred (I think from Asia) lion fish that is spreading throughout the Bahamas and devouring reef fish at an alarming pace. Just like with the Portuguese Man-o-War, I am struck by the combination of a beautiful form and deadly impact. The rest of Atlantis feels artificial, overdone and overpriced and after four days we don’t mind leaving. Perhaps it just feels that way to us because of the pristine places we have just seen.
Back on the water, we are now in the deep again and it is time to pull out the fishing line. And this time we succeed. It seems appropriate that I am just reading Hemingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea about an old fisherman catching his biggest marlin ever. And while our fish is tiny compared to that, it does many of the tricks that the story describes. Regardless of the size, there is a sense of excitement for me, who has never fished before. Sometimes the fish speeds up and with no pull on the line it feels like we have lost him, other times he dives or goes sideways causing Kuno to wonder how big he actually is. When we pull him out, he is beautiful, with big eyes and yellow sides. But the color quickly vanishes once he is out of the water. We are sure it is a tuna, but it is more difficult to tell what kind; we settle on Big Eye Tuna. Delicious dinner follows.
But progress is coming Bimini’s way and a change is in the making as a grandiose resort / marina / vacation housing project is being developed in the northern part of the island. We have seen the same happening on many of the Bahamian islands and although the islands are by no means untouched by tourism, I suspect that it is nothing compared to what it will be in ten years’ time. Especially on the islands close to Florida. Perhaps the Out Islands will keep their innocence longer.
climb the mast, something we haven’t done before. Climb is a bit of an overstatement, as in reality Kuno winches each of us up in a bosun’s seat, with only a slight help from us whenever we can step on the mast spreaders or pull up on the shrouds. Our mast is 54 ft high above the water and that is pretty high when one is perched up top. 
But the view is fantastic. To give us a sense of what it is like when there are waves (we are in a marina), Kuno rocks the boat. While I am quite tentative about this, Tatiana thinks this is great fun and asks if we can do it more often. I am just hopeful that I will never have to climb the mast while underway.
We finally succumbed to the lure of catching our own dinner: we are now in the ranks of cruisers who (attempt to) fish. Not successfully yet, just hopefully. After a search through the various lockers on our boat, Kuno discovered all that was needed to fish here. We are told it is pretty simple – a yoyo with a lot of nylon string, weight, big hook and a colorful squid. Picture this. Day 1: We let out the line, hook and all, and wait. And wait (other cruisers noted that it usually takes only a few minutes to catch something). Maybe we are going too fast. We adjust the speed. Nothing. At the end of the day, Kuno reels the line in and dryly says: “That was a very safe way to fish!” Not understanding what he means I look up and see that the hook was still inside the cork that we put on for safety during storage and handling. Ok, lesson learned. Take the cork off before fishing.
Day 2: Line goes in minus the cork. We adjust the speed and 30 minutes later there is a pull on the line. While Kuno starts reeling the fish in, I go get the fish identification chart and rum. Not to steel our nerves, but to subdue the fish. It is apparently a much more pleasant experience than using the winch handle. Kuno pulls a grey toothy beast in, nice dinner size, about 10 pounds. I pour a good shot of rum into his mouth and gills, while Kuno yells: “Mount Gay? Are you crazy?” Well, I thought I would make his passing a pleasant one, so that he doesn’t get a headache. Kuno and I start studying the identification chart, finding, to our dismay, that it is a barracuda (we think). Edible, but not top of the list. Potential issue with ciguatera poisoning. We decide to throw him back in on the chance that he can recover from the rum. We have pizza for dinner instead. And as for the next few days we will be in a park area with no fishing allowed, we may indeed remain unsuccessful in our attempt to feed ourselves from the sea on this trip.
We are now leisurely moving through the Exumas chain in the Bahamas, relishing the last few days of solitude before we enter the whirl of Nassau, and ultimately the dreaded dismantling of the boat and putting it on a truck in Ft. Lauderdale at the end of the month. While we are not looking forward to the mayhem of organizing the departure, all of us are starting to look forward to coming home.
e many of the anchorages to ourselves. Georgetown was an exception, with a few cruisers, who like us, for some reason or other, are late in their schedules, and a few boats who plan to weather the hurricane season in the area. After days of not meeting another boat while passing 
through the Out Islands, it is nice to have some company. We stay for a few days, just playing on the beaches, eating burgers in the beach bar, reading and sharing experiences. A huge rainstorm passes through our anchorage one night and washes Blue Moon from the accumulated salt. We haven’t noticed, but other boats also had an orange coating from an African sand storm that blew over us a few days ago.
I will forever have Exumas associated with the color of turquoise. I have never seen so many shades of it as in the water here. The Exuma islands are fairly flat, quite barren and there is very little civilization. But as we sail across the inside banks, the colors of our surroundings are of brilliant white beaches, jagged grey rocks and different shades of turquoise. The photographs can never make it justice. Yesterday Kuno was pointing out to Tatiana that the clouds have turquoise underbellies from the water reflection and she replied: “What do you mean? I don’t see turquoise clouds.” Turns out her grey lens sunglasses filter out so much of the vivid color that she has spent this vacation observing much blander scenery than we have. So now she is living the technicolor dream of brown polarized lenses, amazed at what she has been missing.
A big part of Exumas has been set aside as the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park in 1959, the first such park in the world. Fishing is prohibited and it shows when we snorkel around here – we see yellowfin tuna, grouper and lobsters meander right under our noses without any fear. We resist the temptation. 
location of another 007 movie, Thunderball, and the variety of fish and coral we find there is amazing, illuminated by streams of sunlight coming in through the holes in the cave ceiling. Tatiana gets spooked by the swarming of the little fish around her, as somebody drops a piece of fish food 
into the water. Hundreds of them zoom in to eat the little morsel. I don’t know how the fish 
do it though, but no matter how close they get to us, they never seem to touch. The bottom of the anchorages and bays is littered with conch of all sorts and we have never seen so many baby conches as here. Apparently the concentration of conch inside the park here 
is 31% higher than outside of the park. It is funny to look at the ground and see the shells move, as they drag themselves along the sandy bottom in search of food. Nurse sharks and stingrays have become a common sight wherever we are, just gliding around us, looking for food. Many nights we shine the flashlight into the water and drop some food overboard to see what creatures come out. A group of yellowfin tuna was particularly excited to get some leftover schnitzel. 
Anchoring in the Exumas is tricky, very unlike anything we have experienced before and we often pick up a park buoy instead of having to set two anchors. Even then, Kuno usually dives the buoy at slack tide to make sure that it is solid. Jumping into the water off the boat at any other time is dangerous, as the current is too strong. The Exumas, with its many cays, banks and cuts behaves in an unpredictable way. Well, unpredictable to us anyway. The tidal current through the anchorages is so strong, that on regul
ar basis we hang on the buoy opposite to the wind or sideways to the wind. Last night we were doing 360’s, luckily on a buoy, not on anchor. The tide is important here and we rely on it when we pass through some of the shallower spots, giving us an extra foot or two under the keel if we time it right. I am often on the bow as a lookout, but it is so difficult to tell the depth; the water is so clear that I can see the rocks and sand ripples as well in 12ft of water as in 8ft. Yesterday I was telling our friends on another boat about our uneventful passage of the day across the banks, when Kuno piped up: “Well, actually, I kind of missed the middle of the channel at one point and we were in 6ft of water.” Oops, we have a 5ft 8 draft. Of course, the culprit was the current, or so Kuno says. But the reality is that the charted channels are somewhat unreliable, as the sand banks tend to shift over time. So we sail by looking and feeling and watching the depth sounder like hawks, all the time marveling at the bright turquoise around us.
We have completely underestimated the time that it would take us to get through the Bahamas and spent way too much time in the Leeward Islands. By the time we were in Puerto Rico, the urgency set in and we knew we will have to make relentless progress, meaning days of continuous sailing with little or no breaks. 
We want to save enough time for the Exuma Cays in the Bahamas, supposedly one of the most beautiful cruising grounds. And so we set out from Puerto Rico and spent the next three nights and days sailing to Puerto Plata in Dominican Republic. We had some beautiful time on flat water with just the right amount of wind, when we could read, play cards, cook and even watch a movie underway. We also had a completely miserable stretch of big swell hitting us sideways that made both Tatiana and I seasick. Kuno seems to be immune to this discomfort, but when we finally landed in the Ocean World Marina next to Puerto Plata, all three of us were happy to be on terra firma. As a reward, we allowed ourselves some time to rest and enjoy the swimming pool and neighbouring ocean park. Tatiana and Kuno swam with dolphins, which did tricks with them and around them, and we watched a hilarious sea lion show. It is absolutely amazing how agile these animals are, defying their blobby appearance. Normally I am not too keen on animal attractions of any kind, but this place was pretty amazing, with wonderful 
space and facilities for the animals and we left feeling that both the dolphins and the sea lions actually had a great time performing, just like we did watching.
Before our night departure for Turks and Caicos, Tatiana was able to connect via Skype into her friend Abby’s birthday party and see and talk to all her friends. That was a real treat and made leaving for the long sail a little bit more bearable for her. Tatiana has by now settled into the rhythm of sailing, and is quite happy sleeping, reading and listening to her ipod while underway. We even started knitting a scarf together to keep ourselves busy.
Caribbean, we had it completely to ourselves. It is late in the season; most cruisers are now well out of this area, either back in Florida or south in Trinidad to weather out the hurricane season. It can be eerie at times to be alone on the ocean with no land and no other boats in sight, especially at night, but I have come to trust our boat and ourselves and there is an element of excitement to it. Just a few steps up on the beach at Sand Cay we saw hundreds of birds (I think they were terns) nesting and nearly attacking us as we walked by their eggs, openly laid in shallow sand holes. Even more interesting, we followed the sand tracks of a big turtle (you can tell by the width of the track and the tail dragging imprint in the middle) and discovered the sand pit w
here she laid and hid her eggs. A bit later we also saw baby turtle tracks. I wish I could see the little guys running to the water after they hatch, but we will have to leave that for another time, it might take days (or weeks?) before these turtles are ready. The beach was magnificent and we spent the afternoon boogie boarding in the turquoise water. Unfortunately, Tatiana got stung by jelly fish tentacles and had a rather severe reaction to it. When her tongue started tingling and she couldn’t keep down even water, it was time to research our options of how to get her to a hospital. Not many options in the middle of nowhere – three hour sail to an uncertain possibility of a medical facility on Grand Turk or a satellite 911 phone call to Coast Guard. Luckily, the reaction slowly faded away and a few hours later only a fever and the marks from the sting remained.
Taking the opportunity of Tatiana being exhausted and sleeping, we set out on our next leg across the Caicos Bank. The banks are incredible, shallow and spanning hundreds of miles, fringed by reef and cays all around. Within a few hundred meters the ocean depth goes from more than a kilometer to just a few feet. This can create some wild currents and waves, but we are lucky, as the day is calm, and our sail unfolds uneventfully. Once on the bank, we sail in 9 - 12 feet of water for many hours, occasionally dodging coral heads and seeing every rock at the b
ottom. For parts of the sail I stand a watch on the bow, trying to guide Kuno through the maze without hitting anything. The color of the water is telling of the depth below, but there is very small margin of error left. Our experience from sailing in similar conditions in Belize equipped us well, but it is still unnerving, considering that our boat draws 6 feet. We are rewarded by six dolphins joining us for quite some time on the journey, crisscrossing in front and under our bow. What a magnificent sight. Ying and yang, dolphins after a tiring sail …
After a brief stop in the lee of West Caicos with a dinner and a few hours of sleep, we continue through the night to the Bahamas. In the morning we sail through another coral maze into the anchorage in Abrahams Bay on Mayaguana, clearing in with customs and immigration, furnishing the necessary stacks of forms and a payment that includes a $150 mandatory fishing license despite the fact that we don’t fish. We are an exception; most cruisers delight in fishing and catching lobsters and conch – for entertainment and cheap source of dinner, even competition among companion boats. But neither Kuno nor I have a clue about fish, which ones are good to eat and how to go about catching them. This is evidenced by our long debate of whether the fish that settled herself under our anchored boat is a barracuda (yuck) or a wahoo (yum). And let’s not forget the mess of cleaning them up on the boat. No thank you, I will take the easy way out and have my lobster and fish on shore in a restaurant. Although admittedly, now that we are in what they call the “off the beaten path Bahamas Out Islands”, such luxuries as restaurants, stores and marinas are pretty much non-existent. Supplies to these islands come in once a week on a mail boat. A mention of ice cream makes the locals laugh at us in disbelief. How naive. I guess there is a difference between us and the die-hard budget cruisers. After a few days of sailing and anchoring, we are happy to find a nice marina with all the amenities of an “on land” life. I get excited when I read in the cruising guide something like: “the ultimate destination for the free-spirited, adventure traveler seeking an authentic experience without sacrificing the pampered luxury of an exclusive resort” (this is an ad I read for a marina on Rum Cay on the way to the Exumas). Despite it being somewhat of an oxymoron, I think it describes my desired style rather well. However, reality is not that easy. We have noticed that there are many such resorts and marinas advertised, but in reality don’t exist – either they were intended but never started, started but not completed or completed and already destroyed by a hurricane. Such is the reality in the Bahamas. Big ideas, slow progress and the constant threat of mother nature.
