Ten Days of Bliss

It is actually only eight days so far bit the bliss of this vacation in the Bahamas is ocean deep. I flew to Ft Lauderdale March 30, had my last sips of the tubes (for the first time since I can’t recall I’m travelling without a laptop, just the iPhone- how free it is to be so light).

The next day was a charter airline flight to Stanisl Cay in the Bahamas– I am here to meet up my sister and her husband (and Baily the sailing Sheltie) who have been retired and living on their 38 foot sailboat since leaving Annapolis in early October.

Harriet has blogged and Google mapped their trip at a wordpress.com blog.

I’ve not had such a long unstructured stretch of commitmentless time since… Beyond my memory banks. I’ve read 2.5 inconsequential books, snorkled colorful reefs, absorbed multiflabored rums, hiked, kayaked, and snoozed some long afternoon naps.

I know nothing of sailing so I am totally useless on the boat unless instructed. In my stint here, this life of “cruisers” as they call themselves– mostly retirees, cashed out lucky ones, a very few families home schooling kids on boats–is one dictated by the weather. Accurate information is shared like gold nuggets, with the local wizard issued by short wave radio by a prognosticator named Chris Parker in Florida. After weather, sailing life is a trading of info on anchorages and routes, food, gadgets, outboard motor repairs, food, wind, food.. and booze. People wave all the time, like in small towns, except for the mega monster yachts.

I’ve been remiss motto describe the water here, but it is indescribable. The Bahamas sit on a now isolated edge of the continental shelf, and “crystal clear” is an understatement. You could read pages of a book dropped to the bottom 15 feet down. It shifts from deep blue to turquoise to emerald to azure to… I had no pre-concept that natural water could have such hues. We’ve seen many small sharks, rays that leap out of the water for no apparent reason, lurking barracuda, and the usual reef assistment of candy colored fish.

And I’ve easily left the email, web sites, twitterness behind to be dealt with… later.

This post is being drafted offline using the WordPress iPhone app as on return home I will have a large enough task sorting through hundreds if tropical photos.

So here is my hypothesis– the electronic world spins on fine without you, and hopping back on is just reaching out and grabbing a rung.

That is, unless this iPhone washes up in the Caymen Islands a few months from now…

 Share this barking on social media

If this kind of stuff has value, please support me by tossing a one time PayPal kibble or monthly on Patreon