We’re not in the Bahamas any more…

We headed out from Georgetown Monday morning and enjoyed a nice sail to Conception Island where we dropped anchor for a few days. It’s a remote island – beautiful and uninhabited. We enjoyed the solitude, being the only humans around for the first 24 hours or so. Other boats joined us on and off over the next few days. Including the Conway family on their boat Patronus.

The Conway family lives aboard their Beneteau 473 and had been traveling in e Caribbean since we last saw them last fall in Annapolis. They are on a one year trip and are now working their way north through the Bahamas then back to the states. We also met their friends on Anything Goes, another family of 5 cruising on their boat. The families met one another as part of “The Salty Dog Rally”, a group of boats that sailed from the east coast to the Virgin Islands just after Hurricane Sandy passed through last November. They continued to travel together after the rally and you can read about their amazing adventures on their blogs. It was great to see the Conways again and to meet the Boyer family.

While at Conception Island we explored Conception Creek by dinghy, it is a beautiful mangrove system with channels winding throughout. It was a bit tricky entering and exiting the area but our timing with the tide helped us. Although we didn’t see any, this is a hatching site for green turtles. we didn’t see any there but have seen plenty in other areas. We also walked along the long white sandy beaches which although beautiful are littered with numerous plastic items that have washed ashore.

We had attended a talk in Georgetown a few weeks ago where Fabien Cousteau (grandson of Jacques) spoke about the health of the coral and the ocean in the Bahamas. He did mention the existence of huge plastic islands in the oceans created by currents bringing together large amounts of floating debris, not too hard to imagine given the amount of plastic garbage we see on many of the beaches we visit. Along those same lines, we thought we would share a video we ran across that talks about the impact of acid buildup in the oceans. Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification..

Tonight is our second at sea, we have finally left the Bahamas after 5 months and are currently near Provo in Turks and Caicos. We will wait till dawn to enter the harbor and clear into the country. It’s a beautiful night with a mostly clear sky and lots of stars, no moon light. There are storms in the distance with lightening visible at times. It’s been some time since we’ve been at sea for a few nights and it feels god to be back at it for now.

It is a particularly difficult time for us right now. Mary’s birthday was Sunday and it is also the anniversary of the day our lives changed forever. It was the night of Nate’s accident and Monday May 6th is the second anniversary of his death; the Nate we all know and loved was gone from us on April 28, 2011. We want all of you to know that we are doing the best that we can given that the pain of our loss follows everywhere we go, Nate remains close in our hearts wherever we travel and we try to focus on the memories. We know many of you are by our sides remembering, smiling and grieving the loss of our special boy. Time spent between the accident and his death was spent by his side trying to get our minds around what was happening, something we continue to work on to this day and suspect we will do so for years to come.  Love you buddy.

Thanks for coming along with us on our journey ~ Jeff and Mary