Trip to George Town via Little Farmers Cay

At 7:15 AM on Friday, March 9, we weighed anchor to head as far south along the Exuma chain as we could get. It was not an elegant exit from Shroud Cay, however. We were trying to drag the dinghy behind the big boat assuming that the waves on the banks side wouldn’t be bad. After about 15 minutes of watching the dinghy bounce around trying to capsize itself, we motored back to the shelter of Shroud Cay to get the dinghy out of the water. We caught a mooring and scrambled to secure the outboard engine on the stern rail and to lash the dinghy to the foredeck.

Okay now, with the dinghy and outboard secure, we headed south again. We had hoped to sail but we were into the wind again and needed to motor—boo! We made VHF radio contact with our friends Lynn and Ian Bashaw aboard Windward as we passed the Wardrick Wells part of the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Wow, it’s so exciting to reconnect with fellow sailors! Unfortunately, Lynn and Ian were going to Staniel Cay and we needed to press on south to Little Farmer’s Cay.

The challenge for us was to get as far south as we could, so the next day of travel would be do-able. The route to Elizabeth Harbor and George Town, Exumas requires at least 40 or 50 nautical miles of deep water travel on the eastern side of the Exuma chain. During this past week of heavy wind and squalls, the seas were big with waves around 10 to 12 feet—not exactly my cup of tea! The weather guys were saying that by Saturday, March 10, the seas would be way down to 7feet---still sounds like a lot!

We made it to Little Farmers Cay in about 8 hours, in spite of our restart from Shroud Cay. Again, we were not able to sail, but as the day wore on the sun came out, the wind died down a bit, and the banks-side waves became smoother. John tried fishing, but it seems the fish don’t like to bite while we’re running the motor. At Little Farmers Cay we anchored with several other boats planning to sail down to George Town on Saturday as well. We didn’t go ashore as the dinghy and outboard were already secured for tomorrow’s travel. It was a peaceful night.

At 7:30 AM Saturday, March 10th we were ready to jump out into those 7 foot waves and sail 40 nautical miles south to George Town, Exumas. We motor-sailed out of Little Farmers Cay Cut on a rising tide so that the wind, waves, and current flow were all going the same direction. Capt. John reminded me that if the current in these “cuts” is going against the wind, the sea creates huge breakers called rages—so I’m guessing you don’t need further explanation about why it’s a good idea to avoid that sort of thing! Off we went—not a sign of any rages and those seven foot seas were quite manageable. Apparently, if the wave period (time between wave crests) is long enough the high seas are not bad. And, the wave period at this time was 9 or 10 seconds. Caribbean Soul did her “happy boat” thing where she merrily plows through the dark blue sapphire colored seas! The predicted eastern wind was coming right out of the southeast instead, so we couldn’t sail it without spending the day tacking back and forth which would have added too many hours to our trip. We furled the jib and left the mainsail out to motor-sail directly southeast making the best time possible. It was a full day—about 8 ½ hours

It was a nice passage. The skies were clear, the seas were blue, and we had lots of company. Three sailboats followed us out the cut at Little Farmers and a couple more came out through some other cuts. Caribbean Soul and her very fine Westerbeke diesel took the lead and stayed at the head of the parade the whole day. In addition to all us south bound sailboats, there were herds of north bound boats leaving the George Town area. These north bound boats passed us in groups of 8 to 12 at a time with sails way out and one with a beautiful spinnaker as they all had the wind behind them.

We snacked on granola bars and sipped lemonade all day, as this fair-weather sailor was feeling good and didn’t want to risk sea sickness by messing in the galley below. Capt. John stayed at the wheel and I sat in the cockpit sightseeing all day—nice. We were close enough to shore to see all the little cays along the way. The seas that were quite manageable under our boat were looking pretty fierce when they crashed into the rocky shores—they were putting on quite a show sending huge plumes of water high into the air. Sometimes the crashing waves were bright aqua in color—just beautiful. Then John thought he saw a blow hole along the coast sending geysers of water up like Old Faithful. As he was pointing to where I should look, something big in the sea between our boat and Old Faithful rose up and flipped its tail at us. Wow! It was a whale—honestly a whale! We slowed the engine to watch it play. It was about 25 or 30 feet long—almost the size of our boat—and seemed to be having a great time surfacing and doing its own imitation of Old Faithful.

By 3:45 PM we were entering Elizabeth Harbor which is where George Town and 250 sailboats are located. The seas turned from sapphire blue to a vibrant aqua. It’s hard to get the camera to take a good picture of this water. It seems that all the auto adjust things can’t deal with the intensity and vibrancy of this water color. That said, here are some pictures that come close to letting you see Elizabeth Harbor.

Our next challenge was to go ashore to find an internet connection for a Skype call home, pick up the mail, and get gas for the dinghy and fresh water for us. But it was getting late and we were starving (granola bars will only take you so far!). We anchored on the east side of the harbor near Volleyball Beach. George Town would be a 20 minute dinghy ride over to the west side of the harbor. So we decided to put that off until tomorrow and head into Volleyball Beach for cheeseburgers at the Chat in’ Chill (one of our favorite beach bar and grills). In hardly no time at all, we had the dinghy back in the water and the outboard mounted on her stern (guess all that practice makes us faster). In three minutes we were walking on the soft sands of Volleyball Beach---the first time we’ve been ashore since Chub Cay a week and a half ago! Chat in’ Chill did not disappoint us—great cheese burgers and chilly Kalik beers—ahh!

Tomorrow we’ll look for internet and such in George Town.

Hunkered Down in the Big Blow

After 8 hours of motoring from Finley Cay to Norman’s Cay, we anchored in the shelter of the cay and prepared to go ashore. We arrived at 3:00PM and had plenty of time to get cleaned up, put the dinghy in the water, and motor ashore. The Beach Club Restaurant/McDuffs was a pleasant 10 minute hike over to the little airport and across to the restaurant. As it turned out, the restaurant no longer had internet—they said that it got knocked out last September when Hurricane Irene blew through. They did have some good food, Bahamian beer, and a big screen TV with the Carolina v Duke game. We were disappointed about not getting internet, but the basketball game was certainly satisfying—Go Heels.

Sleeping in the quiet of Norman’s Cay on Saturday, March 3 was great. We had not slept well the night before so this definitely helped us catch up. Little did we realize that we needed to “store up” some sleep, because the next night—Sunday, March 4—was tough. The predicted cold front and all its heavy winds moved in from the east where we had little protection—another rocky night.

We, along with most of the boats at Norman’s, decided to find a better place to anchor. Although the wind was already howling, we put out just a little of the jib and sailed right down to Shroud Cay—it only took a couple of hours. This provided good shelter from the new wind direction—northeast and east. We stayed at Shroud Cay until Friday, March 9th—almost 5 days. Yikes! I got some cleaning & rearranging done in the boat and John made some repairs as one of the brackets holding the wind charger brace needed replacing, etc. Mostly, however, we just read and wrote some blog entries for posting whenever we get to internet. Oh yes, I messed around in the galley a bit—made a no-knead loaf of bread and a pizza. Here are pictures of John reading and hiding from the wind in the cockpit; me writing up some blogs at the nav. desk.

Mostly it was gloomy weather out with occasional rainy squalls and wind, wind, wind without end!

Every now and then the sun would come out, but the wind continued. Here’s a picture of a sunny moment off the bow of Caribbean Soul.

The rocky shore you see in the picture gave us lots of protection until Wednesday night when we had to pull up the anchor and move a bit farther out from the shore—the winds moved more southerly and Capt. John worried that they would push us into the rocks. Yes, the same rocks that had been giving us protection for days.



Other boats were hunkered down at Shroud Cay too. At one point we counted 12 or so boats here.

On Thursday, March 8th I watched a seaplane land right beside a big yacht that had been waiting out the weather just south of us. Then I saw two dinghy loads of people from the big yacht ferried out to the seaplane. Wow! I guess if you have lots of money and your are tired of being trapped on a boat for 4 or 5 days, you just radio a seaplane to come pick you up. Impressive! If you look closely, you can see the yacht and the seaplane in this picture.

We continued to listen to all the weather information we could find on single sideband radio and our SkyMate satellite system. It seemed that a small window of reasonable travel weather was coming up on Friday and Saturday, March 9 and 10. We studied out charts and decided to do a day-long run on the less-wavy banks side of the islands on Friday hoping to give the big waves on the deep seas of the Exuma Sound time to calm down a bit before we tried sailing to George Town on Saturday.

On to Nassau

Although we had yet to find some usable internet connection, we decided to push on toward George Town, Exumas. We motored out to begin the 7-hour ocean passage to Nassau. The trip was uneventful and we arrived in Nassau Harbor at 3:30 PM on Thursday, March 1. Here’s what the harbor looks like. It is dominated by the huge Atlantis Hotel and Casino buildings and the big cruise ships.

We anchored and checked to see if we could pick up some wireless internet from the shore, but no luck. The weather seemed right to actually sail over to islands just north of the chain of Exuma Islands. So, we left the dinghy lashed to the foredeck, cooked some canned food onboard and went to bed early. At 7AM we weighed anchor and put up our sails to sail out of the Nassau Harbor and north east to Fleeming Cut and Finley Cay. Here’s a picture of the little Nassau lighthouse as we left the harbor. And here is John setting out his fishing line.

We had a terrific day of sailing—almost 10 hours of perfect sailing. Finley Cay seemed to be the best place to anchor for the night, so we furled the sails and motored around a bit looking for a shallow spot with no wave surge. You cannot sail up to Finley Cay because it’s surrounded by sandy banks that become dry at low tide. The best we could tell from our anchorage, Finley Cay was just a big rock (sorry about that Fin). We ate supper onboard again and went to bed in the calm seas with no other boats around. Later that night things changed and our calm anchorage turned into a rockin’ and rollin’ anchorage. We stayed put—well, there was no place else to go—and we were ready to head south first thing in the morning.

Once again we had to motor as we went directly into the wind. The weather reports were sounding grim with a front coming and high winds with squalls predicted for the next week. Norman’s Cay looked like a good place to hide from the weather. Also, we had been there before and knew that there was internet available at the Beach Club Restaurant (formerly McDuffs). We also knew this restaurant to make mighty good cheese burgers and conch burgers. Hopefully, none of this had changed since our last visit to Norman’s Cay three years ago. Yes, indeed, our hopes were high.

Chub Cay

On Tuesday, Feb 28 we left Great Harbor Cay for what we hoped would be telephones in Chub Cay. Also, if we decided to continue our trip on south to George Town, Exumas to pick up our forwarded mail before we head back to Beaufort, Chub Cay would be on the way south. Of course, we couldn’t just zip over to Chub. We sailed for 6 ½ hours across the banks to the Northwest Shoals and anchored on the banks again out of sight of land. It was not dangerous but very rolly all night as we were getting a surge from the deep ocean nearby.

The next day, Wednesday, Feb 29, we motored for 3 ½ hours to Chub Cay. Although we were heading directly into the wind, there wasn’t much wind and the seas were very calm. Here’s a picture of Captain John during this trip to Chub—he’s looking pretty calm too! When not snoozing on the dinghy, John was fishing again with the hand line. This time, however, we were not so lucky—John caught two good sized fish, but they were barracudas! We tossed them back.

After we anchored at Chub Cay, we put the dinghy back in the water and motored into Chub Cay Club Marina. It was a big, fancy place with lots of expensive floating docks, but mostly empty slips—just a few sport fishing boats. We found a nice dinghy dock and wandered over to the restaurant & bar which wasn’t open yet—it was around 3PM. Right in front of the restaurant was a public phone that had instructions for using a credit card—yea. But wait—the phone seemed to be rimmed in crusty salt or something and we could not get a dial tone. We’re in the Bahama’s mon—you try not to let these things bother you, but we did need a telephone! A building near the restaurant said “registration” so we went in to ask the lady at the front desk about the telephone. She told us what we already knew—the public phone didn’t work—so we asked her to help us. She was glad to lend us the office phone and said that she’d charge us $1 a minute for a call to the US. How wonderful is that! We would have paid anything at that point. I dialed Mom and had a very nice conversation about how she was and what she needed to have us do. She wasn’t interested in having us change our travel plans, but did admit that it would be nice to have us back home earlier. She also said that she was pretty much pain free, but getting around wasn’t easy and that Nancy was helping her a great deal—in fact, Nancy was out getting her prescriptions filled and groceries bought.

From there we wandered around Chub Cay Club, which seemed to be another very expensive ghost town. As you can see from the pictures, the houses and the beach are beautiful—but empty.

The construction on this restaurant just halted and is now suffering much neglect—we call it “arrested development.” We ate dinner and watched Carolina beat Maryland at the little shack-like restaurant nearby. The bartender said he didn’t know why construction on the big beach-front restaurant had stopped, but that the swimming pools were open and usable. Here are pictures of “arrested development” and the infinity pool out front.

This last pictures show you Caribbean Soul anchored out in the cove. What a beautiful place!

Tomorrow we will take CS into the fuel dock to top off the diesel and fresh water tanks. Then we’re off to Nassau and eventually George Town, Exumas.

Great Harbor Cay

Slogging to Great Harbor Cay on Saturday, Feb 23 was a short three-hour trip but choppy and not very fun, motoring into the wind as the stormy weather was already moving in—plus we were worried about Mom in the hospital back home. We anchored outside the harbor near the real Bahamian village of Bullocks Settlement and got the dinghy back in the water for the first time since we lashed it down on the foredeck when we left Marathon, Florida a week ago.

Great Harbor Cay Marina was filled with lots of partying sports fishermen as today was the final day of a big fishing tournament. Also docked at the marina, were guys we had met in Bimini—Mike, Lennie and Dennis aboard Jack of Hearts. We had chatted with them on the VHF radio earlier today and they’d offered us their internet connection to contact my sister Nancy. We dinghied into the marina area and had a hard time finding a place to dock the dinghy but no trouble finding the bright red motor cruiser, Jack of Hearts. Finally, we docked the dinghy by squeezing in beside a small boat and climbing a 6 ft. ladder to get up on the dock. From there we hiked down the crowded docks to what we’d hoped would be an easy internet connection on our friends’ boat.

Well, it was great to see the Jack of Hearts guys but the marina internet they’d gotten right from their boat earlier in the day was no longer working. It was getting dark and we needed to be heading back to our boat, so we thanked the Jack of Hearts guys and went to the marina office still hoping to connect to the internet. Bingo! Sitting inside the office, we were able to get online but could not do a skype phone call—signal just wasn’t strong enough. So we sent out emails with lots of promises to connect with Nancy soon.

The next day—Sunday, Feb 24—was so windy and the seas were so choppy, we decided not to make the 20 minute dinghy ride into the Marina. John decided to swim over to the rock ledges in our little protected anchorage cove. Sure enough—the rocks were full of yummy lobsters and John speared three and just picked up a huge spider crab. We boiled them all and feasted.

On Monday, Feb 25, we got back to the Marina and hooked the laptop up to their internet. The phone Skype worked long enough for us to leave a message on Nancy’s phone and Mom’s phone. We had a bit of a conversation with our neighbor Patti Frank who helped get Mom to the hospital. Then the signal faded so we gave up on the phone calls. Hopefully we emailed everyone and continued to promise to connect via phone somehow another day. Meanwhile, we were running low on fresh water. As we were inquiring about drinkable water to purchase from the marina, our Jack of Hearts friends rescued us—they have a watermaker onboard and happily filled our 7 gallon jug to take back in the dinghy.

So on Tuesday, Feb 26 we actually talked to Nancy on the phone. The skype was not strong so we kept losing each other, but Nancy assured me that Mom was home from the hospital and fairly strong. She had meds for the pain and seemed to be doing okay. We offered to fly me home ASAP or to start making our way home with the boat. It seemed that flying home wasn’t a good idea as I’d still need to fly back and help John bring the boat home at some point. We’d see what we could work out about getting both of us and the boat back to Beaufort well before our mid-May previous plans. Nancy said it was amazing all the help Mom’s friends Anne and Jim Searles have been. They and Patti and Alan have been wonderful. We thank them all so much!

For lunch on Tuesday, we hiked over to the ocean side of the island. On the way be passed a not-too-old country club in ruins and a raggedy golf course. We passed some very nice beach villas and then some new construction that seemed to be abandoned. At the beach club we ordered up a hamburger and an excellent conch burger. I asked our waitress about the country club—thinking that it must have been damaged in a recent hurricane. “No,” she said, “I think it’s in ruins because of neglect.” Interesting, and who knows, but we keep seeing new construction that seems unused and often fallen into ruins.

Here are pictures of the beautiful beach out in front of the Beach Club and the Beach Club itself—which shows some signs of neglect too.

Tomorrow we head down to Chub Cay. Our cruising guide books say that Chub Cay Club has public phones that take a credit or debit card—yea!

Sailing East to the Berry Islands

Saying goodbye to our friend and favorite dock master, Henry, we left Bimini on Wednesday, February 22. The wind and waves were perfect for a leisurely sail east across the Great Bahama Banks. After seven hours of great sailing, we furled the sails, set the anchor and settled in for a nice night on the banks with no other boats and no land in sight.


Thursday morning we weighed anchor at 7:30AM giving us the whole day to sail and fish our way up to the Berry islands called Little Stirrup and Big Stirrup Cays. The cruising guide books warned that these two cays were used as destination spots for large cruise ships. One guide book said that the anchorage was just too chaotic with parasail boats and jet skis zipping about. We, however, were feeling adventuresome and ready for a little chaos!

We sailed all day (about 9 hours) and just as we caught sight of the islands and the first cruise ship, John started catching Spanish Mackerels on the hand line he was dragging behind the boat. Actually, he only caught two mackerels—decided to catch only what we could eat—besides we were getting ready to find a place to anchor for the night. We almost forgot to take a picture of the mackerels for you, but here is one being filleted.

We anchored Caribbean Soul in Slaughter Harbor next to Little Stirrup Cay. Contrary to what the guide book said, the harbor was calm and empty—we were the only boat there. The colorful Bahamian village on the shore facing us was empty too! Well, it was only Thursday and chances were that this little village that had been constructed just for the tourists would come alive tomorrow. So we grilled the fresh fish with lots of butter and lemons—yum—and lounged in our cockpit enjoying the Bahamas! Here’s a picture of the village with rows and rows of bright blue beach chairs. We couldn’t see the rental jet skis and other water toys, but we knew they were there somewhere. There seemed to be staff/workers on the island but we couldn’t see them—they certainly weren’t lounging in the beach chairs or fishing from the pier as this was not really a Bahamian village—just a pretend village for the tourists. Our evening was lovely and quiet.

So Friday we awaited the transition into cruise ship craziness, but it didn’t happen that day. A few fast boats from the real Bahamian villages around Great Harbor Cay ferried over lots of workers during the day, but the cruise ship passengers didn’t arrive until Saturday morning. Then the village did come alive with lots of Caribbean music, sunbathers, swimmers, kayakers, paddle boarders and—yes—jet skiers. It all looked like lots of fun and created a nice sort of chaos.

We were already planning to find another anchorage to wait out the stormy front that was predicted for Sunday, when we got a satellite email from my sister Nancy. Although we often have no internet or telephone connection here in the Bahamas, we always have a satellite connection called Skymate that John installed so we can always check the weather and receive emergency emails from home. Nancy’s email explained that Mom (Jean) had been admitted in the hospital with compression fractures in several vertebra. Friends were helping Mom and Nancy was flying from Tucson to North Carolina on Monday. Oh Dear! We used the same satellite email to tell Nancy that we would get to internet tonight and figure out if or when I should catch a flight back to the states. We were sure that when we got to Great Harbor Cay Marina tonight we could log on to the marina internet and make a Skype phone call to Nancy and maybe one to Mom in the hospital too.

So off we went—motoring this time because we were traveling into the wind—across the Great Bahama Banks to Great Harbor Cay Marina.

Awesomeness at Bimini

Before we returned the rented golf cart to Captain Pat, we drove down to the southern end of North Bimini Island. It was nearing sunset and oh so remote and beautiful. To our surprise we found an old ship wreck rusting down nicely. It seems amazing that these beautiful places survive all the pounding from the ocean, but they not only survive but seem to flourish.

Tomorrow—Wednesday, Feb. 22—we sail east on the Great Bahama Banks.

Land of Plenty & Land of Scarcity

Exploring North Bimini (February 21, 2012)

On Tuesday, Feb. 21, we rented an electric golf cart to explore North Bimini—the Land of Plenty and the Land of Scarcity.

Bimini, like most of the Bahamas has some of the best beaches we’ve seen anywhere. This is Paradise Beach and seems to be part of Bimini Bay Resort on the north end of the island. Here John is in his new birthday suit---well, the wetsuit he bought with his birthday $$. As you can see, it was a beautiful day and a beautiful beach (oh, yes, and a handsome snorklerman).

Here is what some of Bimini Bay Resort looks like. You might notice that there are very few people here—the place was a ghost town—albeit, a very upscale one. There were fabulous restaurants, coffee bars, beach bars with multiple swimming pools overlooking the ocean, an exclusive beachwear shop and an expensive jewelry store. Clearly, international investors have dumped tons of money into this project. But since we know nothing about such, we just hope these people are not dependent upon folks like John and me to get a return on their investment. We enjoyed their place and purchased an expensive cup of latte’, a Kalik beer, and a gourmet pizza. We passed up the $700 cotton beach dress, the $2,000 necklace, and assured the nice sales representative that we weren’t interested in buying a Bimini Bay Beach vacation home. The land of plenty?

Going back to our boat in Alice Town, we passed back through the other parts of Bimini—the parts where people seemed to be living. This is Bailey Town, Joe’s Place, and the marine hardware store in Alice Town. The land of scarcity? No, it really might be the land of plenty. Of course, we like it all. It’s all part of the adventure and we love it!

Getting Back to Blogging (March 6, 2012)

Ahhh—the Bahamas! There is nothing like the Bahamas! It’s the best sailing, lobstering, conching, swimming and just being we have ever experienced—it’s at the top of our list. We love it!

So why haven’t we been sharing all this wonderfulness with you on this blog? The answer is: NO INTERNET CONNECTIONS. We left Marathon, Florida on Friday, February 17—the day after John’s birthday—clearing customs and immigration in Alice Town, Bimini Saturday afternoon. We docked at Brown’s Marina to facilitate clearing customs and to use the internet. Contrary to our old cruising guide’s warnings that Brown’s Marina was in disrepair, we found new docks, a friendly dockmaster named Henry, a marina tiki bar, freshwater showers (cold but fresh) and free internet. We stayed at Brown’s for 3 ½ days. We first checked email and logged on to a variety of marine weather sites to plan our sail over to the Berry Islands and on to the Exumas. On the day I decided to post lots of pictures and get you caught up on our Bahama adventure, we discovered that our laptop was broken! Yikes! Our laptop is our main connection to our family, the marine weather forecasts and all of you.
The Bahamas, in all its wonderfulness, is not a good place to have broken things fixed. We asked dockmaster Henry to help us find someone in Bimini who could possibly fix our laptop. The good news was that he instantly came up with the name of a lady who does that sort of thing; the bad news was that he couldn’t get her to answer the phone number he had for her. After a day or so with no laptop, we were considering a trip up the island to Bailey Town where the computer lady had a shop even though she didn’t keep regular hours—had a job at a bank somewhere on the island too. Luckily, we were spared that trip. One morning Henry waved from the tiki bar on the beach then trotted down the dock to our boat to tell us that Marlena—the computer lady—just happened to be turning her car around in front of the marina. Henry went out and flagged her down. Marlena was waiting for us at the tiki bar! John grabbed up the computer and turned it over to Marlena who seemed confident that she could get it going again. It would be a few days, she said. We had the time and were content to wait if she could just get it fixed. This is soooo Bahamian—it seems to be the way things work—you make friends with the folks (very easy to do as most seem to be so nice) kick back and wait—no worries mon! Good ol’ Marlena not only fixed the laptop at a reasonable cost, but returned it that same day. We were immeasurably happy!
Checking the marine weather forecasts came first and then updating the blog was to come next. As it turned out, I out-did the catching-up-on-the-blog thing by trying to load about 20 pictures. Finally, I just gave up on the blog telling myself that we would find more internet connections in a few days. Well, that was February 22 and today is March 6. We have not connected with internet yet. In fact, these comments are being saved in a Word file and will be posted when we eventually get to internet in Staniel Cay or George Town, Exumas sometime. A huge weather system with winds up to 30+ knots, big waves, and squalls has stalled over this part of the Bahamas. We are safely anchored in the lee of Shroud Cay, Exumas and can monitor the weather via single side band (SSB) radio and our SkyMate satellite connection. The forecasts, however, tell us that we’re not likely to be sailing before Friday or Saturday, March 9 or 10.Our plan is to sail to GeorgeTown, Exumas and pick up our mail, get fresh water & fuel, and resupply groceries. Then we’ll head north making our way home to Beaufort. Meanwhile, I think I’ll draft some more blogs for posting when we get connected. The sailing has been fantastic and John has been catching big fish and fat lobsters!