Category: Julie

A post by Julie

After leaving Vista Mar, we headed to Benao, a little surfer village recommended by our friends on Sago. We were surprised to be the only sailboat there. We were planning on surfing for a day or two and then moving on (but stayed over a week because we were having so much fun). The first night we arrived, everyone was settling down for the night, playing a game, and I was getting water to clean our dinner dishes. The bioluminescence was absolutely amazing. Looking down into the water was like a reflection of the sky—there were little bits of sparkling blue as far down as you could see. If you splashed the water, you created a tremendous sparkly blue wave. You could see the fish darting around well under water, trailing blue streaks behind them, and blue bubbles rising above them. Incredible!

We decided we needed to swim in this blue light up sea. When we jumped in, it looked like someone turned on a big blue/green light underwater. We got out the kayak, cannonballed off the back of the boat, dove off the back of the boat, and played games trying to see who could make the largest and longest wave of blue light up magnificence. It was so cool!

Later that night, I heard tapping on the hull. Then, I started hearing blowing noises. I went out to investigate and found a pod of dolphins happily playing in the small wake of our boat (caused by the wind, waves and current). They were playing just like we had earlier. I went back in and woke up Mark to come watch the dolphin gymnastics in a sparkly blue ocean. They were zipping all around our boat, then a lone dolphin swam quickly from behind the boat, seemingly charging us on the sugar scoop and then disappeared under our boat with a trail of blue bubbles. Dolphins are always fun to watch and make us happy. Blue sparkly water dolphins are magic!

The bioluminescent bay stayed with us for our visit to Benao, but the first night was by far the best. This will be definitely be one of the ‘remember when’ moments from this adventure!

We have been in Grenada for almost 2 months. It is the longest time we have stayed anywhere on our trip since we left Chicago last October. It is beginning to feel like home. We visit the GSPCA every Wednesday to bathe and play with puppies. We have been here long enough to see many new puppies and dogs come in as well as many find new homes and happily leave the shelter. We bump into our new friends on the streets, at the beach, and at the grocery store. We know our way around the island by bus, we’ve experienced Carnival, we know where to find the best food and local juice, we have “our” guy at the fish market, and we love turning on the radio stations to hear the lively Soca music. We are so lucky to get to know Grenada so well and are glad we’ve picked this beautiful, friendly country to spend this hurricane season.

Throughout our journey down through the Caribbean to Grenada, we’ve constantly seen dive boats and divers exploring the ocean floor. Saba, a Dutch island we visited, had scuba divers everywhere. It is a really hard place to visit and you have to put a lot of effort into getting there, whether by sea or by plane…and everyone there was diving (except us). We felt like we were missing out as the dive boats headed out into the lumpy sea. So, this last week, the whole crew of Love & Luck has taken the plunge and we are learning SCUBA. The kids take lessons in the morning and Mark and I take lessons in the afternoon. We have finished our confined water portion—which was actually done at the beach near our boat. On Monday, we make our first open water dive all together. We are all looking forward to a new experience! I expect we will all feel a bit like the new swimmers we taught earlier in July that put on goggles and got to see the pretty fish underwater for the first time…

I’m sure someone will be posting a blog to tell you all about it soon!

After enjoying and exploring the areas near Luperon for almost 3 weeks, it was time to start looking for the next weather window. Our weather guru, Chris Parker, suggested that it was immediately time to go straight to Boqueron Puerto Rico, as ‘now’ is a great opportunity and could be the best time for a few weeks or even a few months. The timing wasn’t perfect for us—we had hoped to visit some friends on vacation in Punta Cana as well as check out the city of Samana and a really cool looking national park, Los Haitises, before leaving the Dominican Republic. Knowing there are lots of other amazing ports ahead of us, and having a healthy respect for this passage, we decided to make the jump through the dreaded Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.

Since I started researching our trip and route, the Mona Passage has been the most daunting part of it all for me. This passage is located between the eastern end of the Dominican Republic and the western end of Puerto Rico. It is a water passage that goes very close to the Puerto Rican Trench—the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean at about 26,800 feet. Just off the eastern shores of the Dominican Republic, there are the hourglass shoals—very shallow water dropping very quickly. So, I kind of imagined the ocean here being like an underwater waterfall with crazy currents, water that appears to be boiling, and waves crashing upon themselves in all directions. Then, you add in the wind and heat from the island which creates its own weather—generally a series of thunderstorms off of both the Dominican Republic coast and the Puerto Rican coast that form each evening as the land cools off. These can build into raging storms or trickle out—but it’s hard to predict…There are lots of sailing stories of really rough rides through this area. But, there are also ways to avoid the chaos—mainly waiting for the right weather (light winds and small waves from the right direction), avoiding the areas where the depth changes dramatically, and always having a bailout plan. Thank you, Bruce Van Sant for sharing this wisdom with us in your book and at your talk. So, given the chance to cross at a great opportunity was not to be missed. We had an easy uneventful sail—which we didn’t mention until we were safely anchored 47 hours after departing Luperon. I should also mention that I did pray to Poseidon and the gods of the wind as we were sailing under the stars that night!

Eleuthera, the northernmost island in the Far Bahamas, February 6-9, 2018

The wind was in our favor, so we decided to head north from the Exumas to Eleuthera—looking for pink sand beaches, blue holes, caves and shells. The north side of the island is Spanish Wells, the east side of the island is full of reefs and pink sand beaches, the south side of the island is all wrecks and dive spots, and the west side of the 2 mile wide island is full of harbors.

We stayed in Rock Sound Harbor —very protected and close to town. Our first stop was the Blue Hole—which happened to be next door to the primary school. It is said to be immeasurably deep and Jacques Cousteau couldn’t figure out how it connected to the ocean…Pretty cool!

We met Joshua, or Lord Josh, on the beach while walking Willie and looking for shells. He has been a fisherman all his life and advised us to go and visit the Caves up the road, across from the church, and just past another Ocean Hole. We followed his directions and walked through a labyrinth of caves formed by coral heads. It was a great relief from the heat too!

On our walk back to the boat, we stopped at the gift shop to buy some postcards. The owner of the shop (who also happens to be the owner of the sewing shop next door) was super friendly. She told us all about the Island School—a school for American high school students and which also supports a grade 7-9 local school. She also offered us the use of her car anytime she was at the shop—wow! We called the Island School and arranged a tour with Brittany the next day at 10:00.

The rest of the day, we broke out the windsurfer and the girls took their first lesson. They all did great! Here are some pictures of our windsurfing.

The next day, we went to the Island School. CJ, the harbor master, met us to help guide us in. We planned to sail over, anchor out, and dinghy in to look at the school. It turned out to be a great day for a sail, a super friendly and loving staff, and a really neat marine biology/wildlife conservation school. Here are the most notable remembrances of the Island School:

Scuba certification
53 kids per class
Farm with pigs, ducks, chickens, Juju fruit trees, veggie hydroponic garden
Woodshop
Biodiesel made onsite from Princess cruise line cooking oil
Studying and tagging bonefish
Researching black oil—turning plastic into oil
Real science
Awesome outdoor dining hall
Great upkeep
Run and swim
Duck eggs for breakfast

We made plans to reconnect with Brittany to see some sights. She surprised us at the dock with homemade Bahamian macaroni and cheese—a very yummy birthday present! And a great map of the island. I would love to work at a school like this one day…For now, heading back to the Exumas Land and Sea Park.

I am writing to share the news of our family’s upcoming sailing adventure.  Mark and I have dreamed of and are planning to sail around the world when we retire.  However, we have recently decided to bump up our departure date and sailing plan to include our girls…not around the world (at this time) but for a 2 year stint through much of the Caribbean—leaving from Florida this November and returning to Wilmette for the fall of 2019.  We hope our journey will take us south through the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Haiti, Dominican, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and down to Grenada.  From there, we plan to head back north by way of Trinidad, Venezuela, Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and back to Florida.  I’m sure our plans will change a hundred times before we return home (and likely before we even head out).  I am looking forward to many new adventures sailing, boat schooling, learning about new cultures, and living a different lifestyle.  We are still learning lots about the best ways to stay in touch, where to blog, packing lists, food lists, boat parts lists, and things we don’t even know about yet.

So, if your children come home and tell you that Heidi, Lucy, or Sally is going on a sailing trip—we are!  We look forward to a new and different lifestyle camping on the water.  The girls will all be learning how to sail, how to stand watch on ocean passages, how to fish, how to wash laundry in a 5 gallon bucket using seawater, right along beside us.

In the meantime, we are purging all kinds of household stuff, looking for renters, thinking about property managers for our house, inexpensive storage units, etc.

We look forward to sharing more as we get closer.  And, we would love to have visitors and/or meet up with friends along the way.  Now, to find a boat…