leaving george town, bahamas

After almost 2 months in George Town it was time to move on (finally)! But there were some things we had to do first....

One of the last kid events in the regatta was the kids model boat race. Olivia built her boat on the very first day using a coconut husk, a couple wooden skewers and leaves.

Emma's boat was a little more involved and took a couple days of building, testing and re-building to get it just how she wanted it.

Both girls boats were in the multihull race (that's Olivia's boat in the lead!).

Olivia's boat "Still Floating" won first place in the multihull race and she won an award for most ecological design.

Emma entered some photos in the Tweens and Teens photo contest. Turned out it was just her and one other kid who submitted any photos. They were shown at the kids movie night for everyone to see. Emma was a little embarassed, but she was excited about the cute bag and visor she got for participating.

There were two things I wanted to do - first, hiking to the monument. Our boat was anchored in front of this monument for weeks, so we had to hike to the top.

Up next, Renaldo's conch salad. We aren't huge conch salad fans (it's kind of like a ceviche with a gigantic snail), but we had to try it after we walked by his conch stand for weeks.

One of the best things to happen in our last week in George Town... Olivia went swimming! Braden and I had been trying to get her to try getting in the water ever since we got back from her doctor appointments. She was terrified, so we stopped talking about it. Finally one day she decided to test it out on her own.

It started with her foot. She was all good. No hives.

Then she ended up falling in trying to get on the paddleboard, panicked, realized she was totally fine. After that she was all in!

Of course we had to celebrate by having some fruity drinks at the fancy beach bar! I'm happy to say that was two weeks ago and she has been swimming almost every day since. No hives.

Over the last couple days we enjoyed (and said goodbye) to the beach where we spent the majority of our time. We said goodbye to the orange cat that lives at Chat 'N' Chill beach, to the stingrays, to the beach volleyball Emma loved playing, to the rope swing (man... I'm glad to say goodbye to that rope swing) and to Emma's favorite frozen drinks.

Since we'd been here so long it was strange to see the anchorage behind us, but we were all so ready to start exploring the rest of the Bahamas.