Back to Maryland, Earthquake, and Hurricane Irene

After spending a few months of summer at home, it was time to return to the boat in Maryland.  The kids were excited to come back to the boat, but sad to leave their friends at home.

We arrived back to the boat in time to spend a week visiting with cousins before they returned to school.  And then came the earthquake and the hurricane. 

We were sitting on the boat in the afternoon when i thought, what is that?  It felt like the engines on the boat were running, but there was no noise.  David looked at me and said the same thing—what is that?  He looked out the window and noticed that all the pilings on the dock were shaking.  It was neat watching them vibrate back and forth, all together.  David, having grown up in California suggested it might be an earthquake, and I, being from Maryland, disagreed—because we don’t have earthquakes in Maryland---well apparently we feel them here.  While the earthquake was far away in southern Virginia, the rock here is soft, so it travels far.  It was felt all along the east coast.  I think we were somewhat buffered from it because we were on the boat in the water.  But we definitely felt the rumbling. 

After that excitement passed, it was time to prepare for Hurricane Irene, who was only a few days away.  The marina where we are staying hauled over a hundred boats out of the water.  We were asked to move docks if we did not choose to haul out.  We kept watching the storm and determined that the winds would not be damaging to the boat, but if there was a tidal surge that raised the water level higher than the pilings we would have a problem.  We watched the storm and decided to stay in the water, but would move from the outer dock further up the creek to a more protected dock. 

I made arrangements to to take the kids to my brothers house to ride out the storm there for the night.  So Saturday before lunch as the rain and the wind started we left David on the boat.  I called a family friend and invited him to hang out with david on the boat should he need help.   Jason and his brother both went out to stay the night thru the storm.  While the wind blew, the water only came up several inches, and the storm was somewhat uneventful on the boat.  We are grateful there was no tidal surge during or after.

Meanwhile at my brothers house the kids had a great time playing all together with cousins.  We planned for a power loss, as that always happens in almost any storm at my brothers, but the power never went out.  We were concerned about a tree falling on a house as my brother lives in an older neighborhood that was built in a forest.  The trees are so tall and aging.  The last hurricane that came thru in 2005 brought down a tree on the house across the street.  So for this storm, we all slept in the basement.  The kids thought it was great! 

Sunday morning, church was cancelled, as it continued to rain, and thousands were without power.  Luckily, we still had power at Gerritt’s.  David had lost power to the boat Saturday afternoon.  But with 2 generators on board, we can handle a power outage easily.  Around lunch time we were ready to head back to the boat.  We helped Gerritt clean up his front yard and while we were picking up sticks we heard a loud crack and a 30 ft. long branch across the street fell on a house diagonal from where we were.  It created a small hole in the roof.  As we headed back to the boat we could see where trees had fallen across roads, fields, and paths.  There were fallen branches all around.  Luckily any blockages had already been cleared. 

The next day we visited some friends of my parents and helped clean up their yard, where it had rained large branches.  We must have emptied the wheelbarrow 20 times over.  They were also still without power.  We did not get power back at the Marina for 4 days after the storm.  And there were still thousands without.    I am grateful for generators that kept our food cold and allowed me a hot shower everyday, light at night, and kept my washer and dryer running.  I am grateful that we live at a time where hurricanes and storms can be tracked, and we can be forewarned to prepare for disasters.  How blessed we are to live at this time.

Starfish and Sand dollars

Just some of our collection.  The sand dollars are still covered in little spiny hairs that will fall off, they are then greenish purple brown.  They whiten in the sun or as rinsed in fresh water with bleach.  I will then paint them with a 1/2 part elmers glue mixed with 1/2 part water to help harden their shell.  The little starfish are soft in the water and can easily break.  After rinsing them for a few hours in fresh water, they need to dry completely in the sun to harden and then painted with the same glue mix to help protect them.

Dolphins

 

In US waters we have seen dolphins almost everyday.  In the Bahamas we only saw a dolphin once, for a brief moment.  But on our trip back when we were almost to land, 7 dolphins came to play with our boat.  I was taking a nap as we had driven all night and I was still catching up on sleep I had missed while I drove the boat late the night before.  The kids had a great time taking pictures from the bow of the boat as the dolphins swam and played in our boats wake.  It is amazing how clear the water is.  This is about 50 miles off the Georgia coastline.  Once you reach the shoreline, the water is murky.  But out in the ocean it is amazingly blue and clear.  It was incredibly calm that morning that we could see jelly fish floating in the waters.

Even as we travelled on the murky inter coastal waters we saw dolphin at least once a day.  The kids get excited every time and were sad when the dolphins wouldn’t come to play.

Church in Savannah, GA

 

It was 5.5 miles to church, do we decided we’d pull the bikes off the boat, hook up the trailers and get to church.  In Florida we bought electric assisted bikes.  They help you pedal, or give you a speed boost.  We thought with the trailers loaded with kids that would be nice over regular bikes. So now we had a chance to put them to good use.  We had used them previously a little here and there.  We got the kids dressed and loaded, which took us a little longer than we had planned.  But off to church we went.  We arrive a little late, but we made it, and since it was Sunday morning, traffic was not much and the heat was not bad.  I am sure we will be doing this again.  It was fun, and we could get to church.

 

 

 

As we were walking in the chapel to take a seat, I heard a thump and a terrible scream.  I looked to see Benjamin sprawled on the floor screaming in the middle of sacrament meeting.  I had the baby but tried to pick him up too to see what was the matter.  David quickly came and carried Benjamin out, as he leaned on to his dad, I saw what had happened.  He had a gash in his eyebrow.  He must have been running to keep up and didn’t look where he was going and ran into a bench.  He split his eyebrow open; it was bleeding all over and quickly swelling.  We rinsed off the gash and grabbed some ice to stop the swelling.  It was fairly deep and needed something if not stitches.  The boat is not far, but we are on bikes.  We walked out to the foyer where I asked an older gentleman if he knew where a first aid kit might be.  He saw Benjamin’s gash and said he’d be back.  He grabbed a sister off the back bench who came out to look at Benjamin.  She is a Dr.  and said she’d run home to grab some supplies to help.  It’s is comforting to know there are good, helpful people in this world.  They could have just grabbed a first aid kit or said, he should go to the ER for stitches.  But this good sister went home for some supplies, and then the store b/c she did not have any steri strips in her supplies to close the wound.  She came back as Sunday School was starting, she even brought a lollipop for each of the kids.  The others were in Primary, but Benjamin loved his lollipop and it sure made cleaning his cut and bandaging it easier.  It was so swollen, he had a huge lump over his eye.  She even gave me the rest of the steri strips she had bought.  Which with Benjamin, I may need them again.  Just a few days before he had hit is forehead on his dresser and made a small cut on his forehead.  He seems to be our most accident prone child, luckily the gash on Sunday has been the worst so far.   I took the above picture 2 days after his accident.  His whole eye turned purple and blue.  It looked like a good shiner.  We feel very blessed to have been at this ward on Sunday.  We are very grateful for this kind sister that helped us.  All of the members we met in the ward were very nice.  We enjoyed attending church there.  After a few weeks of not being able to attend due to travel in remote areas, it was so uplifting to be among these angels and worship with them.

The journey home

And a journey it will be.  After spending so much time in Florida we only ended up spending 9 days in the Bahamas.  Shorter than our last trip there.  I had hoped to spend another 4 or 5 day there after Rob flew home, but David had 2 concerns, one was weather.  If bad weather rolled in and stayed a few days that would delay our journey home and we might not make it to our final destination on time.  His second concern is, the boat still needs more work done on it, and he did not want to start any repair projects while in the Bahamas where parts are scarce and expensive should he need to find parts.  Both reasons are understandable, but I was still disappointed to leave so soon. 

If you read my previous post, you know we left Marsh Harbor in the morning and made a stop in the afternoon at Moraine Cay to snorkel.  We pulled up our anchor at Moraine and headed back to the ocean side to continue heading north west to the top of the Abacos. It was after 10 pm and dark by the time we arrived near Walkers Cay.  There are 2 routes in thru the channel, one more narrow and surround by coral heads on the sides.  We didn’t pick that route.  We took the other one that was a little wider and we prayed that the GPS and nav charts would do it’s job. We set our course and hoped the autopilot would work fine, sometimes it acts up and we were hoping this wouldn’t be one of those times as it was very dark outside.  The moon was just rising and it was an eerie orange; low to the sky it wasn’t providing us with much light to see by.  Into the sea we made it!  the Garmin didn’t let us down.  David wanted to anchor not to far in, so we dropped our anchor, set it, turned off the engines and off to bed we went.  The wind had picked up while we were dropping our anchor and being close to the ocean made it quite rolly.  I was not happy about having to sleep in such a rolly boat.  After about 20 mins of my complaining, david got up, turned on the engines, pulled the anchor in and drove us 2 miles closer to Grand Cay where we would be more protected from wind and waves.  We dropped the anchor again, set it, turned off the engines, and again off to bed and this time to sleep without any bouncing around.  We were in a much better spot for the night.

5:30am and it is time to get up and get started for the next 2 days to reach land.  We decided to head north and take advantage of our time in the gulf stream and spend 2 days straight traveling.  I am not very excited about this plan.  It involves someone being awake all night to watch for other boats and that our boat is running correctly.  After less than 6 hours of sleep, I am already tired, and not interested in even less sleep for the next 36 hours.  The hope is to make it to Georgia by tomorrow afternoon.  We’ll see.  Hopefully all goes well.  The ditch bag is ready if not.

We still will have many days of travel.  The final destination for this trip is my hometown area of Maryland.  We hope to leave the boat there while we head home for a couple of months.  In June the cousins visit, and we can’t miss out on that.  We will see a lot of the south east coast along the way.  Hopefully David will agree to a few stops.

Moraine Cay, 2nd time around

Well after uncle Rob took a taxi to the airport, we also left Marsh Harbor.  As we passed bakers bay, we had to head out into the ocean to cut around Whale Cay.  We decided it was pleasant enough in the ocean to run as far north in the Abacos as we could on the ocean side rather than head back into the Sea of Abaco where we would have to make our way around shallow areas.  This gave us an extra hour of time to stop at Moraine Cay and snorkel again.  There were no storm clouds rolling in this time, but it was low tide when we arrived which made snorkeling over the coral a little more difficult.  I couldn’t find the same spot as before with all the vibrant purple sea fans, but it was still a pretty reef area with lots of fish.
When we first dinghy’d over to the reef susie spotted a couple of fins sticking up out of the water.  We tried to get closer to see, but it was very shallow and rocky, and then the fins disappeared.  There were 2 fins and it looked like a shark to me.  Needless to say no one was in a hurry to jump out of the dinghy at that moment.  So we slowly moved around in the dinghy looking for a good spot to snorkel.  We decided on a spot and into the water I went.  Followed by Calvin, Savannah, Susie, and Benjamin on a floaty raft.  We swam over the reef area for a few minutes when I looked up and around and about 100 feet away I saw the fins again.  I called for david to come towards us as I had too many kids, including the snorkel raft with benjamin to pull around to have to worry about sharks too.  We loaded the kids back in the dinghy and spent a few minutes watching the shark fins swim further away from us. The kids would point and shout “there they are”  in random places.  I didn’t see them again.   Susie and I stayed in the water to snorkel a little more and david took the dinghy out towards where we had last seen the fins.  He came back a few minutes later and decided what we were seeing was shallow reef poking up out of the water and not shark fins.  From his reconnaisance trip he had found a nice reefy area and led us and the dinghy over to it.  The kids braved the water again, well Isabel and Savannah did.  David also jumped in after we found a sandy area to anchor the Dinghy.  Susie stayed in the Dinghy with Benjamin and Calvin for a bit and then she and David traded spots so she could check out the area too.  I kept checking all the cracks and crevices in the reef looking for a looming shark, but I saw none.
Today as we travelled I had some time to pull out our shark book and take a look, and while David is probably correct that what the kids kept pointing out was most likely parts of coral or sea fans poking out at low tide.  But I have no doubt that what we saw when we approached the area and the 100 ft away after we first got in were in deed shark fins.  I only saw one set of fins.  It’s dorsal fin being distinct.  So I am sure there was at least one shark swimming among us.  I would like to see one when I am snorkeling, just so I can get the fear of it over with and have a good experience near one.  99.9 percent of the time sharks are harmless, we should not be so afraid of them.  I am just not sure I want to have that experience with all my kids in the water too.  Just in case.

Fowl Cay Reef Park

Calm weather has come and we were able to head to Fowl Cay reef park to snorkel in the afternoon.  David and I had dinghied into Hope Town to drop off Rob so he could go diving in the reef park.  Since we would move the boat to be anchored outside Fowl Cay, the dive boat would just drop him at our boat on their way back to Hope Town. 

We set our anchor at Fowl Cay and got the kids ready to head over to the reef to snorkel just as Rob arrived back from diving.  He told us it was great.  The park is a large area with lots of different spots to dive or snorkel.  He told us he saw 3 sharks while diving in 2 different spots.  All 3 were larger than him and didn’t seem to care that there were divers around observing them.  Good to know.  He stayed on the boat while Matthew took his nap and the rest of us were off to snorkel.  There were lots of other snorkelers at different spots through out the area.  We stopped at 2 different spots.  They were both fairly similar in underwater scenery.  We were there at low tide, so it impossible to snorkel over the reef and coral heads so we had to circle around the outside watching the fish and coral.  Calvin, Isabel and Benjamin were done after the first stop, but I still wanted to check out another area of the park just for a little variety.  So we dingh’d over to the south end to pick up another mooring ball.  David stayed in the dinghy with the kids while Savannah, Susie, and I explored the area.  We saw lots of large fish in the 2 foot range and I saw one swimming on the bottom, blending in to the sand that was about 4 feet long. I wish our underwater camera hadn’t broken. 

Talking with rob later, the 2nd spot we went was near one of the spots he went diving.  We stayed on the west side of the reef and he dove on the east side, in that area is where they saw 2 sharks.  We didn’t see any on our side.  I had thought about swimming around the outer east side, but it was more exposed to the ocean waves and the current was running a little strong that day so we had opted to stay on the west side of the reef.  No sharks for us. 

Hope Town

 

Near Tahiti Beach is the little town of Hope Town.  It is a lovely town, with pastel colored homes along its shore.  We spent a morning there.  They kids were excited to buy Bahamian stamps to mail postcards to friends and family.  We even bought a homemade Key Lime Pie to have for dessert after dinner. (it was delicious!)  We had a nice time walking around the small town, waving at the kids in school, and seeing the ocean side of the island.  We even found a play park where the kids had a great time playing on the slides and climbing the trees.  We noticed though how hot it was on land.  Out on the boat there are almost always constant breezes that keeps it cool until about dinner time, but on land, it was so hot.

Before we headed back to the boat we crossed Hope Towns Harbor to the light house where we climbed the steps to the top, luckily its not too tall.  It is still a working light house with an oil lit lantern.

bakers beach

 

		Bakers Bay Beach VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We headed to the beach before lunch at low tide.  The beach was big and the sand was soft.  We had a great time looking for sand dollars and found several. Benjamin searched the beach and shallow waters with me searching for sand dollars.  He searched and searched and finally found one under the sand.  He was so excited, he ran back to show Dad. The kids and uncle Rob found more than 15 starfish; each about 12 inches in diameter.  The kids collected them to look at them all. They would put them on top of the boogie board to transport them to the collection area.  It was neat to check back after a while and see how the starfish were crawling away from the collected area.  It is neat to see the different color and pattern variations in them.   Susie found a beautiful crab in the water.  It had pretty blue coloring.  It was missing one of its claws.  It was so scared of us and would back away from us with it’s one claw raised at us snapping.  

Spoil Bank Cay aka Shell Island

 

This was one of our favorite spots when we were last in the Abacos.  Shells wash ashore here and they are everywhere. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kids had a great time .

Matthew loves the sand.  It is soft for crawling in, and he thinks it tastes great too.

This is after we told him no more sand, rocks, shells in his mouth!  He was so mad!  Silly boy!