shroud cay, bahamas
Over the last couple weeks we've been back and forth through a couple of the small islands in the Exumas. In the Eastern Caribbean to go between islands could take days, but in the Bahamas most of the islands are within a couple hours of each other.
We spent many hours at the beach in Highbourne Cay. The island is private, so there wasn't much to do here. Emma quickly found sand dollars which kept her busy searching for hours.
The majority of our time we spent at Shroud Cay. Braden and I wanted to visit here in 2012, but we never made it. It has turned out to be at the top of our list of favorite Bahamian islands. A lot of the island is mangroves and if you plan the tides just right you can dinghy up the river and then float down the lazy river back.
The sand on the beach is the softest we've ever seen, and the girls had a great time jumping off the rocks.
Holidays on the boat always take a bit of planning. Last year for Easter we were in the USVI, so it was easy to get things for Easter baskets. There aren't really any huge stores in the remote Bahamian islands, so this year I started stashing small things away months in advance.
Unfortunately Olivia caught on this year after recognizing some things in her Easter basket. She was all smiles here, but all tears later.
This is a tricky time of year for us. The majority of people living on their boats are doing it full time. They don't have a house to go back to, so they don't take a break for months at a time. We still have our house in Minnesota, so for hurricane season we go home. We enjoy taking a break from he boat, but as the summer quickly approaches we start to get antsy with all the planning that is needed to be able to leave the boat while also dreaming of our huge beds, a dishwasher and unlimited electricity and water.
This is also a bittersweet time of year for us. We've been lucky enough to travel with three other boats through most of the Bahamas. This week we all went our separate ways. Sometimes it's goodbye. Sometimes it's see ya later. Most of the time we never know.
The popular saying is "plans are written in the sand at low tide". Even if we plan to meet up somewhere at some point we never really know if it will happen because plans change so quickly. We don't know if we will see some of our friends again, or we may pull into an anchorage and be surprised to find them already there.