Well after a couple of days of westerly winds and a fair bit of bouncing around on the mooring ball the wind finally clocked around to the east and now the chop is significantly less and being on the boat is much more comfortable. In this particular mooring field there is a large expanse of water to the west with no protection so the fetch (as we boater call waves when they are created by the wind across an open area of water) makes sitting here on the mooring rather bumpy. To the east is the island and so the when the wind swings around from that direction the water flattens out and there is relatively little wave action, finally.

This also means that it’s better for snorkeling, easier to swim, easier to see and lots more fun. Still I can’t complain the last couple of days here at the Exuma Land and Sea Park have been great even though we didn’t get in any snorkeling. The girls loved the birds, hermit crabs, and lizard all so tame you could feed them by hand. They also liked the Hotias, which are supposedly nearly extinct although we saw plenty of them on our numerous walks on the island. Additionally the girls had plenty of fun on the beaches, looking at all of the shells and sea creatures and doing hours of cartwheels, handstands and such.

Even Paul enjoyed the hiking and the beaches but let me add here that he didn’t do any cartwheels or handstands or such. There is no fishing or taking of any kind; even empty shells here at the Exuma Land and Sea Park so it is a look only spot. That has stopped Paul’s new fishing experiment for the moment. Too bad, I’ll be ready to have more fish by the time we leave here.

Snorkeling this afternoon was fun we saw a number of beautiful fish on the small reefs here in the park. We chose to do some of the smaller reefs in shallow water for the girls and it was great. Warm water and lots of fish made it ideal for everyone. Nicole and Claudia saw 3 stingrays and we all got to look at a number of crabs, conch, live coral, and an incredible variety of fish. The colors here are amazing, coral can be purple or pink or yellow. The fish have black and blue, purple and yellow, and many other combinations, stripes, spots, stripes the other way, it’s great. I don’t have any photos of the fish or the reef because we don’t currently have an underwater camera but you can look on line and see much of what we are seeing in person. Fantastic!

Our next port of call after the booming metropolis of Rock Sound Harbor Eleuthera was to be the Exumas Land and Sea Park at Wardwick Wells. This is not so much a town as a preserve. The snorkeling is said to be wonderful and we were looking forward getting a chance to get in the water again, especially now that the water temperature had increased from 65 to 75 degrees.

Okay, I’m thinking here I’m going to get some good natured ribbing but in my defense when you are going to be in the water for an hour or more the difference between 65 degree water and 75 degree water is substantial. If you don’t believe me you come visit and I’ll show you.

On arrival to the island we were disappointed to find that there was a strong westerly wind which made the mooring field quite bouncy. Expecting the wind to settle down and switch we settled in for the night and in the morning went to check in at the office. Due to the fact that the wind had not yet clocked around or reduced Monica and I decided to do home school on the beach near the office. It was a stunning vista and completely comfortable (on land).

In addition to math, reading and writing Nicole was also enamored by the small yellow and black banana birds which you could feed by hand just outside the park office. They have tongues that they flick in and out as they eat almost like humming birds. We fed them in our hands sometimes with as many as 7 per hand. The park provides sugar in a small jar and they flock to it and literally lick the sugar out of your hand and wipe their beaks on the sides of your hand when they get too much crusted along the edge of their beak. The whole thing was just adorable as well as a good nature field trip for school.

Then we fed some other birds (which looked more like the mocking birds we have back home) some of our crackers, they came to visit us the moment we sat down at the picnic table, smart birds. After that we created a hysterical scene with some giant hermit crabs and a bit of the same crackers. These hermit crabs are not like the ones we have on the boat these guys are the size of Nicole’s fist. They are so big I’m afraid to pick them up due to the risk of being pinched.

I decided perhaps the hermit crabs (who were hanging around under the bird feeder) would be interested in some of the cracker too. I took a corner of one back to the spot I’d seen the hermit crabs and dropped it in front of one of the larger hermit crabs who appeared to be combing through the sand for crumbs of sugar dropped by the birds. For a moment I thought the crab wasn’t going to be interested. Suddenly I saw him wheel and head off to the underside of the building.

As though in slow motion replay of a football move the larger hermit crab (I’ll call him #1) tucked the entire piece of cracker under his shell and headed away from the other crabs. The nearest crab wasn’t fooled, somehow he knew about the goody and started following #1. #1 turned and with his other claw he pushed the smaller crab, a big shove, which the smaller crab tried to block. The smaller crab was no match for #1’s strength and it rolled the smaller crab right over on his back. By that time the other crabs were on to #1 and started to bum rush him (all in slow motion mind you). It was quite interesting to watch.

Later Paul got a chance to reproduce the drama with another piece of cracker and then even later we fed a large rather bold lizard a piece of cracker that had apple (kind of like the peanut butter crackers) jam in it. He had the kids in stitches as he tried to fit the entire piece into his mouth at one time. Once he finally managed to swallow the cracker, which took a lot of work, he licked his mouth to get the crumbs and jam off his lips and finally resorted to rubbing his side of his mouth on the rocks to get rid of the excess. We all laughed until it hurt! No snorkeling but what a great time.

In the Bahamas you should be prepared to do it yourself or go without. We have it good because regularly at home we try to solve our problems without buying something new or taking it for repairs. Boyd, in particular, hates to pay someone else for something he can do himself. He finds that many of the repair people you can get to come out to the house are not familiar with the type of product you expect them to service even if you called ahead to tell them the exact make and model of whatever you are calling about.

When our furnace died in the middle of the night on a Sunday night some winters ago he calmly got up went to the basement, popped off the front of the furnace and filed down the prongs (I think the are called igniters) then screwing the front back on the furnace he hit the restart button and the 15 year old furnace fired up as though it were new. Last year before we left the house the refrigerator, which was only 7 years old, started getting a thick coating of frost on the inside of the “frost free” freezer side.

No matter what I did it didn’t seem to matter. I adjusted the temperature, kept the freezer relatively free of unnecessary items and still it frosted over every 7-10 days. Once frosty it was impossible to keep anything appropriately cold in the freezer and I lost several partial gallons of ice cream to the problem. Left to my own devices I would have had to call a repairman or even worse purchase a new refrigerator. Boyd fixed it.

I think here in the Bahamas all of the experience working on our home, our rental units, and even more so our boat before we came has put us in a good position to be self reliant and it’s a good thing too!

The following is a true story and none of the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Paul has been somewhat resistant to fishing (well truth is he loves the fishing part and he even loves the eating the fish part, he can’t stand the part in between). Up until the last 3 days he has been something more than hesitant to go fishing knowing that if we catch it here I’m not playing, I’m cooking it! At home he just catches and releases in the Royal River.

Three days ago our friends on Taua put out a line and amazingly Peter caught an enormous Mahi (or dolphin fish). We weren’t able to weigh it but it was 49 inches long and when I lifted the carcass with the majority of the meat already removed it felt like about 30 lbs still.

We have eaten that as Taua shared generously for the last 3 nights. We had it sautéed in garlic, marinated in teriyaki and tonight I battered and fried some as well. It has been absolutely delicious and, I think, finally Paul is ready to fish.

Just a couple of problems were left to overcome. The first one was that we didn’t have the correct lures, so we bought some. The second one was that we didn’t have the correct line, so we bought some of that. The last one was getting the line that was on Paul’s reel off Paul’s reel and getting the new heavier line onto the reel. I think that this picture should explain it all.

Here Paul holds the line as Boyd winds it off the reel with an ingenious invention involving two paper plates, an empty coke can, a pencil, and the battery operated drill. Nicole helps by holding the pencil. See if you can figure out how we did this.