An Accident and Finally Making It Home

We prematurely celebrated our pending return home.

Our wake-up call to hurry back to Maine came after a Florida marina called and canceled our reservation due to COVID-19.  We then traveled an exhausting 150 miles or so per day from Florida for a week to arrive at a marina on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  We secured covered boat storage for a month and my brother Bob and Nora, who live near D.C., dropped off our Prius that they had had since we started the Great Loop.  Greetings were an appropriate six feet or more apart.

Salty Paws minus its canvas, food
and most anything removable.

We spent all day Saturday (3/28) cleaning out the boat and packing the car to the max.  Our plan was to enjoy a last meal and night on the boat and leave early Sunday morning.  Then, we listened to the news and heard that President Trump was floating the idea of initiating a quarantine of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, three states that we needed to travel through.  Our plans changed to leaving ASAP. 

Soon we were on the road for our 500 or so mile trip home.  Right out of the marina we made a wrong turn and missed the entrance to the highway.  We traveled a local road for a few miles.  Molly was at the wheel, and she accelerated to the 50 mph speed limit as we entered more rural countryside.  Suddenly, the car hood flew up, striking the windshield and completely blocking and smashing all the glass.  Luckily, Molly was able to bring the car to a quick stop without striking anything or ending up in the ditch.  If we had taken the highway, we might not have been so fortunate.  Whew!

Our shattered windshield. as we drove slowly back to the
marina. 

I then slowly drove the car back to the marina as we contemplated what to do now.  Molly called my brother, and he said that he and Nora would talk and get right back to us.  Quickly they called back and said “take our RAV.”  What a gift!  Two hours later they arrived with their car and a borrowed vehicle for them to return home.  Again, greetings and thanks were an appropriate six feet or more apart.

Our stuff removed from
the Prius.

We unpacked the Prius, packed the RAV and decided to catch some rest on our boat with the two blankets that remained. 3 ½ hours of sleep later we awoke and began the trek home at 2:30 am.  Other than missing the I95 turn off the George Washington Bridge in New York, the trip went well.  We stopped briefly in Massachusetts to visit our daughter Caroline and Noah and pick up our other vehicle.  Around 2 pm Sunday our

Our home in Georgetown.  A special place.

two vehicles pulled into our driveway in Georgetown, Maine.

President Trump chose not to follow through on his travel restriction idea, but the Governor of Maryland announced a ban on all nonessential travel and recreational boating beginning on Monday (3/30), 8 pm.  We had gotten out with just a day to spare.  Now, we are self-quarantined in our house with enough food from the boat to last for the next couple of weeks.

We are blessed on many fronts.  We are home while many of our boating friends are holed up in the Bahamas or marinas throughout the southern United States.  May you all be safe and able to resume cruising in the not-to-distant future.  We are also so fortunate to have completed the Great Loop and cruised the Bahamas for two months.  Our 7,000 miles exposed us to so many of the wonderful sites and people throughout Canada, the United States and the Bahamas. More time will be needed to fully reflect on our adventure, but below are some of the pictured highlights (each covered in earlier blog posts) that stand out for us:

The beautiful Exumas in the Bahamas.  Pictured is the anchorage at Warderick Wells, headquarters of the Exuma Land and Sea Park.

Chicago.  What a fun city.  We visited museums, attended a Cubs' game, ate Chicago-style pizza and hot dogs and averaged
10 miles walking a day during our 4-day visit.

Tarpon Springs, FL.  We explored the town with Loopers Duane Jelly and Diana Laverda of Bella Donna and also connected with them at Cayo Costa State Park, Cabbage Key, and in the Bahamas.  

The beautiful sunrises and sunsets that we saw most every day.

The welcome we received on less visited Andros Island.  Here we are at the school that serves descendants of Seminole
Indians and slaves who escaped Florida as early as 1821.  The settlement was not detected for 100 years.  This is one of three schools that we donated school supplies.

The Florida Everglades.  We kayaked and motored where few boats could go because of shallow water.

The sea islands of Georgia.  We visited 5 different islands that illustrated the history of extreme wealth, extreme poverty
and incredible nature.  Pictured is Blackbeard Island that is only accessible by a shallow-draft boat.

Our 181 mile Gulf of Mexico crossing that
took 21 hours because of sea conditions.

Coming home for Thanksgiving and the wedding
of daughter Caroline and Noah.

Mobile, AL.  We celebrated with Dwight and Chris Pierce of Mon Amour finishing the rivers and locks from Chicago to the Gulf.  We loved Mobile and spent three days visiting the USS Alabama, the Mardi Gras Museum (it started in Mobile!) and some wonderful restaurants.  

Civil War sites throughout the South.  Here is the cemetery in Columbus, MS.  We were particularly moved by the
National Park in Shiloh, MS, where our visit was cut short by mini-hurricane Olga that topped numerous trees near us.

Visiting Nashville with daughter Elizabeth, Matt and Charlotte and also seeing them at Thanksgiving.

The Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario, Canada, was very special although it began with Bill going to the local emergency room with chest pains.

Jay and Barb Morrow of The Blessing introduced us to Fast Eddies, an institution in Alton.  We went on to enjoy may anchorages and experiences with them and celebrated Molly's birthday in Paducah and their crossing their wake at Aqua Marina in Mississippi.  While in Alton we also visited St. Louis, St Charles and the impressive Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site..

The North Channel in Ontario is spectacular.  This picture is at Covered Portage with our boat 500 feet below.  Here we also met fellow Rosborough owners Mike & Melissa Reid on their boat Time & Tide.  Later we met in Florida and they showed us some of the sites around Homestead, FL, before we departed for the Bahamas.  If you are down that way, visit the produce store, Robert Is Here.  Unbelievable story.

Paducah, KY.  In addition to visiting the fabulous National Quilt Museum and Hancocks of Paducah, we went out with four other Loopers to celebrate Molly's birthday.  Boy, was she surprised when the entire staff came out to sing Happy Birthday.

Going up the Tennessee River to Chattanooga.

New York City.  We visited the City twice, biked from the Upper West Side, where we used to live, and attended Hamililton and Evan Hansen, two wonderful musicals.

Singer Castle.  We visited two castles in the 1,000 Islands, Singer and Boldt Castle.  Both had fascinating, but very different, stories.

The Finger Lakes and Taughannock Falls, which, while skinny, is higher than Niagara Falls.  This was a great side trip and included a visit to Seneca Falls, home of the National Women's Hall of Fame and  the Women's Rights National Historical Park.

Being able to meet up with cousin Zeke and Hallie of Mikat on multiple occasions in the Exumas.

Grant and Wendy Wolfe of Vindaloo were so fun to be with when  the winds keep us anchored on Cambridge Cay and in the marina at Cape Eleuthera.  While in the marina we celebrated the sunset every night by blowing our conch horns. Bill had a great time making ours.

While hiking through Bruce Peninsula National Park Molly, fellow Looper Stacy and I met our first Massasauga rattlesnake,.  Jan and Stacy Risheim of Ceci Kay shared a number of experiences with us from kayaking on the Trent-Severn Waterway to time in beautiful Tobermory.

The Culinary Institute of America.  Martha Nordstrom and Stephen Fay cruised with us from NYC to Poughkeepsie and we shared one of our best meals anywhere at CIA.

Great Bear Sand Dunes National Park.  We paid Johnny, long retired, to drive us from Leland to the Park.  He slept in the car while we hiked barefoot 5 miles to and from Lake Michigan over the dune.  We also loved Fishtown in Leland.

MacDuff's Restaurant, Norman's Cay, Exumas.  We had a great time with Annie and Dietrich Floeter of Calliope here and on Cambridge Cay where Dietrich and I climbed Bell's Rock.

Over 100 locks!  Here we are approaching our very first lock on the Erie Canal.  The word is that the two most favorite locks for most Loopers is the first lock and the last lcok.  This isn't far from the truth.

Dunedin, FL.  We stayed there for two days waiting for the strong winds to subside and met fellow Rosborough owners Happy and Mark Jordan pictured here at their fantastic food truck.  Wealso  meet owners of three other Rosboroughs, Jacquie Albina, Tom and Jody Goldman and  Bob and Wendy Louthen.  They provided cruising suggestions, free docks and maintenance and repairs support.  What a community!

Coronavirus, Seahorses and Spring Break in Ft. Lauderdale

Our last Bahamian cocktail hour on the bow of our boat.

Being mostly off the grid for a month isolated us from much of the media attention on COVID-19, but we did get headlines, snippets and developed an understanding of “flattening the curve.”  You most likely already know that this refers to trying to spread out the timeframe in which people will get infected by reducing social gatherings, meetings, large events and travel.  These moves should slow the contagion down to help our medical facilities and personnel not be so overwhelmed and buy more time for a vaccine to be developed.


The large cruise ships at the Nassau pier
along with a "small" 200 foot ship.

We have also received advice from friends and family back in the States.  Some suggested that we should stay in the Bahamas as it is likely a better location to engage in social isolation and enjoy the outdoors.  On the other hand, the island country has until now been visited regularly by numerous cruise ships and may be less able to cope with an expected outbreak.   If either of us did have a medical issue, it would likely be better addressed in the States.


After seeing our first Eleuthera sunset,
we gathered every night on aptly named
 Sunset Beach to celebrate and observe
the beautiful ending of the day.

Vindaloo and Salty Paws together
at the Cape Eleuthera Marina.
 

While we were contemplating all of this, the strong winds kept us in a nice marina in southern Eleuthera, one of the outer islands, for six days.  We used the time to rent a car with Grant and Wendy on Vindaloo, explore much of the island, go snorkeling for seahorses, blow our conch horn at sunset and visit the international Island School. 

We got pretty good blowing on the conch shells, and Grant participated even without a shell.  The shells are exceptionally hard, and it took Bill a couple of hours to drill and get our hole at the end of the shell large enough to get a sound.

Here is a 6-inch seahorse in its natural setting.
Unlike in the New England Aquarium, we
didn't seethem swimming along.  Instead, they
had attached themselves to bottom plants.

We had hoped to make it to the Abacos, a cruising paradise but still recovering from Dorian.  The winds and waves in that direction just didn’t cooperate.  Finally, beginning Wednesday, March 11^th, the winds and waves died down just enough so Salty Paws could begin the largely open water trek back to the States.  We covered over 300 miles in three days, including 163 miles on the last day.  Whew! 

 

 

We didn't see any scenes like this when we
were in college!

 

 

Now we are in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and vegging out a bit.  We’re 50 years late, but we finally made it to Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale! News of COVID-19 and the request for social distancing has apparently not made it to this year’s group.

 

Las Olas Beach in Fort Lauderdale.  The cruise ship in the background just left the harbor, and the next morning we noticed
that it was anchored right out front, no doubt waiting to see if there will be a cruise next month.

Soon we will start the likely slow trek back up north over the next 2 ½ months.  Then again, one suggestion we received was to leave the boat in a marina somewhere and hightail it back to Maine, where our home in a sparsely populated Maine coastal community is the perfect place to practice social distancing.  If anything, the times are fluid. 

 

Below are more pictures of our fun time in Eleuthera.

The glass window is the narrow divide that cuts Eleuthera in two.  The water to the east (on the left) is the deep blue Atlantic while the much lighter water to the west is the Bight of Eleuthera.

Molly at the Glass Window.

Looking out to the Atlantic from the naval base
abandoned after WW II.  The area has just been
bought by the English-based company Philautia
and is slated for development.  However, we did
see many failed developments throughout the
Bahamas, often ended after being uprooted by
a hurricane.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting ready to look for seahorses.

 

 

 

 

Sweetings is a salt water pond and a perfect
area for seahorses, octopus and other sea life.
The location is not publicized, and we only
learned about it from another cruiser.  There
 is hope to make it a national park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That blog in the middle is a 2-foot octopus!

 

 



 



Grant found a brittle star.

We enjoyed the popular Friday fish fry on Governor's Harbor
although we all opted for the bbq'd chicken and Bahamian
Mac and Cheese.



The Island School attracts researchers
and high school students from all over
the world.  Here Molly and Wendy are
talking with the scuba instructor.

The Island School raises its own vegetables, fruit and tilapia (fish).



We were given a tour of the School and grounds
by Cove, a 9-year old whose parents teach at the
school.  He was adept at climbing the trees
barefoot to give us fruit samples.



Cove is demonstrating how to eat
a sapodilla, one of many fruits we had
never seen or tasted before.