These days are Friday through Sunday (Feb. 6-8).
Pictured here are the soft sands of Volley Ball Beach directly across Elizabeth Harbour from George Town, Exuma. This is home for hundreds of winter cruisers most of whom are sail boaters. The morning Cruisers’ Net reported that there were 215 boats in the Harbour—I thought there were more! This is a unique community of cruisers who are mostly retired couples from places like Alberta, Canada and Michigan and New Jersey. Ironically, these seem to be folks who looked at what the other retirees in their town were doing and decided to do something radically different—throw their stuff in a little sail boat and head for Volleyball Beach. Many come year after year and know each other well. Most seem to be organizers—they organize volley ball games at various different skill levels; they organize classes in knot tying, ham radioing, yoga exercising, lap swimming, arts and crafting; they organize contests in Trivial Pursuit and Texas Hold’em; they organize a Beach Church with adult & youth choir; they organize a morning Cruisers’ Net on the VHF Channel 72 with weather, community announcements, and welcoming of new cruisers to the area; and they mastermind the annual Family Regatta Weekend (which has lots of subcommittees for Tee Shirt sales, youth events, racing rules, music, etc.). Wow!
John and I are cruising because we love to sail. We are definitely not interested in parking the boat in Elizabeth Harbour and filling our days with lessons and committee meetings! Goodness, we don’t even know where to find a calendar to write down all those times and dates! That said, we don’t want to be so stand offish that we miss doing something that might be fun.
I started with the Beach Church thing on Sunday. My intention was to dinghy across Elizabeth Harbour to St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in George Town that John and I visited Easter of 1999 rather that the cruisers’ Beach Church. Well, Sunday was still very windy and I knew that we’d be soaked by the time we got to George Town for church and then we’d have an even wetter trip back across. Beach Church was right here at the boat—an easy and dry ride to Volleyball Beach—so I put on the pretty green blouse Gladys gave me for Christmas and attended Beach Church. You can see from the pictures that they are quite organized with music and song books, etc. You can also look at the folks and see that they really are a crowd of retirees. Next Sunday, I hope to attend St. Andrews across the harbour. We’ll see.
These last pictures are of John trying to get us onto the wireless internet at the St. Francis Resort near Volleyball Beach and our anchorage from the St. Francis porch. It was a lovely spot, but those fruity drinks were mighty expensive and the internet never connected with our laptop.
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