Alone and Restless

The band of boys has piece by piece disassembled; all being called back home to commitments, businesses, their women.  Although,  not before getting a couple more dives, dinners, and excursions to Grand Cay and Green Turtle Cay! But now we are left on our own again.  We didn’t think we’d find our selves back in Green Turtle again, nor Manjack, but here we are floating in familiar harbors.  Maybe too familiar…we just got asked to “chicken-sit” for a few days by the couple that owns the house here at Manjack. Guess they figured since we practically are living there anyway….why not.  While we have no idea what we are doing next, the thought of committing to staying in one place for four or five days proved too much and we declined.  The one-day-old baby chicks almost got me though. It’s not like we haven’t stayed in Manjack for more than a week at a time before, but we are restless and incredibly indecisive at the moment.  We get this way when we don’t have a clear plan and what is in front of us isn’t grasping our fullest attention.  We go through phases like this every once in a while, they can prove dangerous because we start brainstorming and daydreaming and spontaneous decisions are often made in moods like this. Like, hey, lets sell everything and go cruising! Eeeks, we have a good thing going, lets not mess it up! 

^^serious sun protection

^^Grand Cay

 

^^John and Keith seeing Tom on his way home

Right now all we really need to decide on is when to go back to Florida.  We don’t have to go back until the end of the month but to our surprise we are kind of ready now.  Maybe its because we’ve already made the list of the projects we need to complete and upgrades made in preparation for our next leg of this cruise that will be taking us less familiar waters and we are eager to move forward.  Or maybe it was the little taste of having our friends so close that we want a little more of that.  Of course as soon as we’ve agreed to this and start looking at weather windows to cross, we flip and decide to squeeze out every bit of the last remaining days in our favorite playground.  We know as soon as we get to Florida we are going to miss being able to slip into the cool, clear water to cool off so I don’t fully understand this motivation to move on at all.  We don’t even have much fish in the freezer-we can’t head back yet!  Still, oddly, our mindset is on getting this list started and completed.  What happened to my procrastinating nature!?  The other dilemma is once we are in Florida, how long before we can escape again?  Can we really make a quick jaunt back to the Exumas-do we want to spend hurricane season in the Exumas?!  We don’t want to spend our cruising kitty sitting in the brown waters of the Indian River, do we?  NO. Definitely NO.  Maybe, and this is where those crazy thoughts started to creep in, we should find a source of income during the hurricane season while in Florida to offset the costs while not cruising.  Believe me, none of the ideas proposed required submitting a resume!  Anyway, we are a boat without a heading at the moment. 

 

Update- later that night……

So, in need of a little focus on what is right in front of us we made an impromptu jump from Manjack late this afternoon and sailed up to Powell Cay, only about eight miles a way, but it’s someplace new with lots of long beaches for walking and new reefs for diving. It was too late in the evening for either when we got here so instead we took a dinghy ride around the island and and found a small cay for Kai to claim as his own.  This should keep us entertained and focused for a few days.  Maybe tomorrow we will put a few fish in the freezer  🙂

 

 

Update-next morning…….

Well, over coffee and tea this morning we changed our plans once again after playing a long game of “What do you want to do–I don’t know what do you want to do”.  We are Florida bound.  Still in my pajamas, we pulled up anchor and started the sail to Great Sail Cay where we will jump off from tomorrow towards Florida.  We still can’t put our finger on it, we are just feeling like its time to go.  With Tropical Storm Bonnie to the north and a Tropical Wave to the south, the gradient winds have completely collapsed and it looks like we should be in for a slow, but mellow, motor across the Gulf Stream.  See you on the other side (as long as we don’t change our minds again)!

  

Update-a few hours later (Sunday 3:15pm) …….

We got a few miles from Great Sail, looked at each other and said to each other almost in unison “should we just keep going tonight?”.  If guess when we are ready to go, we are just ready to GO! We did stop the boat for a few minutes allowing us to check things over bow to stern and do a few last minute preps. We are underway now and hopefully can reach the last bit of Bahama cellular data signal to post this.  On our way to Florida, see you there tomorrow!