Friday. MB and Paul have a last Caribbean swim, followed by MB and JB doing a yoga session inside as it has become too hot to venture outside.
We leave the Atlantis Marina, and refuel at 'Hurricane Hole'. We then leave on a 17 hour cruise to the USA.
The weather is absolutely perfect, flat calm and warm. We are determined to catch fish with our special Ballyhu rigged baits.
We enjoy a relaxed afternoon reading, doing the Age quiz, and get our first fish strike in the early afternoon. We loose 3 baits in quick succession with no hook up. Finally we hook a large fish but to our disappointment we haul in a giant Barracuda. This is followed by another large Barracuda. We then see a large flock of feeding birds which we follow, but with no result.
Saturday. We approach the US coast and all we can see is a coastline extending for many miles of wall to wall high rise buildings of Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
We enter the canals of Fort Lauderdale with it's mass of cruisers and other pleasure crafts in multiple marinas, most of which are white. We are now definitely out of the wilderness.
Once we are tied up we visit the US customs office for check in.
The crew spend the rest of the day cleaning our travel weary boat and get ready for the extensive maintenance over the next few months.
We pack and get ready for our departure tomorrow. We wonder what it will be like to go from this humid high 20's climate to the middle of a cold Melbourne winter.
The Caribbean as we saw it:
We have had some of the best cruising we have had in the world. We were lucky we were here at the end of the high season because it was very comfortable with few other boats and people, in most of the Islands we visited. The people appear to be happy and have been particularly friendly and polite.
Many of the towns have been quiet simple and often shabby, but very colourful and clean.
The Geography of the place is very diverse. Our first impression through the Grenada group and Grenadines and St. Vincent's, is that the islands are lush ,green and forested Islands, with mountains and good rainfall.
Turks and Caicos and The Bahamas are totally the opposite. Flat, sandy, scrubby and sparsely populated.
Everywhere we have visited the beaches and water have been spectacularly stunning. Brilliant white sand, turquoise water and deep ink blue in the deeper waters. Nowhere more so than the Bahamas. In terms of natural beauty the Bahamas are a standout.
In the early part of the trip our fresh food supply was fantastic as most islands had open air fresh food markets with produce grown and sold by the locals. We caught a lot of fish, some spectacular in size and type. When we ate ashore there were plenty of good places to choose from. This became less so by the time we got to the Bahamas although there was always a supermarket of some description.
We acquired a taste for rum which is mass produced in the islands. Our rum punches have become a nightly event before dinner.
Scuba diving, snorkelling and swimming generally were brilliant.
We have played on some fantastic golf courses most with fantastic views across the sea.
We enjoyed our Sunday masses, which were celebrated in a very different theme of local slave descendants music language and history. This gave the singing and style it's own local flavour which was natural and generally fun loving.
We immersed ourselves in the extraordinary history of the Caribbean. We learned about the Arawak Indians who occupied many of the Islands. Afterwards the south american Caribs came and conquered these earlier people, and were here when Columbus arrived in 1492.
After the Spanish came other powers of Europe, all fighting over the centuries for domination of these rich Islands that produced Sugar, Tobacco, Cotton and indigo.
We learned about the famous period of the pirates dominating commerce especially in the early 18 th century. Non of this wealth could have happened without the slave trade and slave workers who eventually got their freedom in the 1830's.
The descendants of these slaves now make up 95% of the population.
Our only regret was that it is so far from Australia that our children and Grandchildren could not join us on this epic adventure of the Caribbean.
We will be back!
JB and Mick