We have made our way up to the Abacos Islands, our final destination before we make the crossing back to the US. We have been to a few spots through the islands, and it is all beautiful, but we have heard so many good things about it and I have to say, I am disappointed. The Exumas exemplified what I was expecting in the Bahamas very closely, and after that, the Abacos are a little disappointing. It is very built up here, this is a popular destination for yachts to come, being so close to the US. Don't get me wrong, the islands are beautiful, but we have not yet found a place to go get lost in the wilderness without the invasion of civilization. A good example of this fact is that I am sitting out anchored in the middle of a bay off of Man-O-War Cay, and I get a random wi fi signal that I can connect to. This isnt all bad though, we just experienced the world famous cinnamon rolls in Treasure Cay, we had them for breakfast 2 days in a row, and today we went into town after dinner for an ice cream dessert, so civilization has its plusses.
The diving here is beautiful, we had a great day when anchored at Royal Island and came back with a boat full of fish, notably 2 big hog fish and a tiger grouper. The hog fish are touted as some of the best tasting in the Bahamas, and it certainly was delicious. We even used its reputation to our advantage, scoring a shooter for the spear I found as a trade for a hogfish fillet, and someone else let us borrow a spear, they called us the next day saying the lionfish and hogfish we gave them was the best fish they have had yet in the Bahamas. But dont tell anyone, it is illegal to buy sell or trade goods or services in the Bahamas without paying proper duties, we have heard that about 1000 times. One bad thing about the reefs being so full of life is that the prolific life brings prolific predators. At the reefs we dove today, I had to abandon a grouper I shot and was trying to pry out of his hole because a shark came snooping, and later a couple baracuda chasing after me turned into 6, then 8, then 14, then 17 barracuda faces looking in at me from all directions, it was pretty intimidating, and when I gave up on the hunting because of them and headed back to the boat, a big ol shark came moseying by as well. With just one day left until I make it to one entire year of being alive, I decided to play it safe and call it a day.
Today is April 10th, on this day last year I got into a car accident that nearly took my life, or rather, very briefly did take my life, and here I am a year later living the good life in the Bahamas with nothing but a couple scars and a deeper appreciation for my friends and family to remind me of it. So I decided that I would call today my deathday, just a couple weeks after my birthday, and instead of getting things from people, today I would give to people, just because so many people helped me on this day last year, and hey, I got some money out of the whole deal, what better way to spend it. So, if you would like, come on down to the Bahamas and I will buy you a drink and make you a delicious hogfish dinner.
Turns out we are going to be back in the states sooner than we thought, we are planning on crossing some time after the 15th of April, and will be back in New Bern a month after we cross, that is unless we just decide to hop on a plane as soon as we get to Florida and leave Sandpiper on a mooring somewhere. It is crazy how many derelict boats you see, there are some in just about every mooring field we come across, I want to know what the deal is with that, when can you legally just take one of those boats? Now that we are sailing again, I have a lot of free time, I mean, not that I didnt have free time before, I guess my mind has a lot of free time now, the task of sitting behind the helm not being very mentally taxing, anyway, I have been using that time to do important things like memorize the phonetic alphabet, write sappy poetry, I am sure that my posts will involve a lot more random stuff, like I wrote a remake of the I'm on a Boat song, look for that later
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