Day 1 was spent traveling by plane to Miami and then on to Marsh Harbour. We chartered the boat from Sunsail in the Marsh Harbour Marina. It was a lovely three year old 38 ft. Catamaran. We all immediately loved it. Everything was roomier and the bathrooms contained a separate shower stall. The kids enjoyed the marina pool while we got all of our chart briefings done and took our stuff on board. The first night was spent in Marsh Harbour with the plan of setting out the following morning. Lesson number one, plans change and that's okay.
Day 2 at 7:00am I awoke with a stomach ache. Thinking a bathroom trip was necessary (after all, several hours on a plane has it's effects), I went on to the head. While in there, the vomiting started. My first thought was motion sickness (seemed odd since we hadn't gone anywhere yet, but I had nothing else to go on). I forced myself up top to the cockpit figuring it would dissipate. That was where my husband found me still puking my guts out. An hour later the diarrhea started. Part of me was glad it wasn't motion sickness, but the other part just wanted someone to kill me and get it over with! Apparently I had picked up a stomach bug. Needless to say, with me prone in the cockpit, trash can at hand, we obviously weren't going anywhere. I made my husband take the kids for more fun in the pool and around the marina while I stayed shivering and puking in the cockpit. Fortunately, it was the 24 hour kind of bug and no one else caught it.
Day 3 at 8:00am I popped my head into my children's bunks and watched them light up at the news that mom was fine and we were preparing to head out! Our first destination was Fowl Cay Preserve to do some snorkeling and kayaking. We figured the kids needed immediate fun stuff to remove the bad taste from the day before. Lesson number two, sometimes you must improvise. At soon as we anchored, we set about lowering the dinghy on the davit to take it around to the reefs (too dangerous for the sailboat in that area). The davit's motor decided it didn't want to let us have said dinghy and decided to lock up. The groan from the kids were audible as we hailed Sunsail on the VHF. They perked up when we told them they didn't need to wait on the dinghy, just jump in and snorkel and take the kayak! We got instructions on how to get the dinghy down and told to 'tow' it for the remainder of our trip. From there, we went on to Hopetown in Elbow Cay. It's the second largest town in the Abacos, so we figured it was a good place to see. It also houses one of the few lighthouses in the world that still works on kerosene and is hand cranked! Lesson three, make sure our boat is reading the depth properly. Our boat drafted 3.5 ft. The water near low tide gets pretty low. We watched the depth finder as we got closer and were very worried when it said we were at 2.8 ft (yet we hadn't touched bottom). Our theory was their depth finder was a bit off. Even at low tide we didn't touch bottom, but it made us nervous anyway. The water had been pretty choppy for the trip to Hopetown (especially with a dinghy tied off the back blowing around), so we decided to stay anchored just outside Hopetown for the night. We dinghied in to Captain Jack's for dinner before the sunset.
Day 4 the winds and waves were still pretty high with rain predicted. We decided to stay put for another day and visit the shops in Hopetown. We also needed a few things from the store, and Hopetown had a decent size one. We didn't get as much shopping in as we would have liked due to Hopetown celebrating their 'Heritage Day'. It was fun to wander around and see the people all day. We liked that we had 'stumbled' into a celebration! Our favorite place in Hopetown was the 'Sugar Shack'. We visited there more than once for their ice cream!
Day 5 we were up bright and early, our destination was Treasure Cay. We had decided to pay for a slip when we got there so we didn't have to deal with towing the dinghy (since it would take several hours to get there). Lesson number 4, you don't have to be someone else's entertainment. Apparently the Treasure Cay Marina decided to put the Sunsail charter's slip right up front for everyone on the dock and in the pool to see. At first we thought it would be awesome until they informed us we would need to parallel park our 38 ft catamaran into the dock. What??? Apparently it's quite amusing for them to watch the charter boats have to try again and again to get into place. My husband parked it like a pro even though it had been his first time 'backing' up. I guess we disappointed them, but we were pretty proud of the accomplishment ourselves. Treasure Cay was by far our favorite place. It has a three mile long beach with white sand that feels as if it's been sifted. Treasure Cay is classified as one of the world's most beautiful places, and we pretty much had it to ourselves. The kids spent lots of time body surfing, building sand castles, and throwing water and sand at each other. It could not have been more perfect. We spent the night in the slip knowing it was our last night on the boat.
Day 6 we headed back to Marsh Harbour to turn in the boat. We all wished the trip could have been longer. It didn't take long to get to Marsh Harbour, so we spent a large part of the day finishing our shopping for t-shirts and souvenirs. We had a fantastic dinner at Wally's and crashed in a hotel room to leave early the next morning back to Texas.
We absolutely loved the vacation and are so looking forward to living our lives that way. We made improvements to our bucket list for our own boat. We got lots of practice with docking both the sailboat and the dinghy (dinghy docking it's called). We learned that while we are new to this, we can already do some things better than most, which helps us feel reassured we'll be able to handle the things we can't yet do so well. Everywhere we went, and everyone we met was friendly. We helped people when we saw they needed it, and others did the same for us. Everything was so laid back and easy. It would seem 'no stress' just comes natural down there. The whole trip gave us much needed hope in humanity (that's gone away now that we're back, but we know it exists out there). We have every intention of going back with our own boat next year. There was so much we didn't get to see, and next time we'll have no time constraint!
