Bye, bye Bahamas

The last couple of days have been pleasant here in Lucaya with Paula. On Wednesday, we relaxed in the condo, played games, swam in the pool and enjoyed dinner at (Paula's) home with her friend Poppy. Yesterday, Peter was making arrangements for returning to the States, having decided that, based on weather forecasts, today is the day to start moving north. 

Paula and Sherri at Paradise Beach

Paula and I went to Paradise Beach on the west end of Grand Bahama Island to snorkel. The sun was shining, the water was mostly clear and we enjoyed swimming with a great variety of fish, including fish not seen or seldom seen by me this year: a black margate, porkfish with two bold black bars--one diagonally from the mouth across the eyes to the dorsal edge and the other from the dorsal side to the lateral line behind the gills, striped grunts, greater amberjacks, sailors choice, smallmouth grunts, and ocean triggerfish. Oh, but I simply must list the most abundant (because I love them all!): gray angelfish, foureye butterflyfish, spotfin butterflyfish, blue tang, ocean surgeonfish, doctorfish, bar jacks, yellow jacks, keelhaul needlefish, flat needlefish, hound fish, saucereye porgy, knobbed porgy, bluestriped grunts, French grunts, Caesar grunts, tomtates, mutton snappers, mahogany snappers, lane snappers, yellowtail snappers, schoolmasters, yellowtail damselfish, night sergeants, sergeant majors, blue parrotfish, stoplight parrotfish, princess parrotfish, blueheads, yellowhead wrasse, squirrelfish and queen triggerfish. I spotted a group of eleven squid, iridescent and sleek, lined up neatly and holding their positions. I swam after Paula and brought her back to see them; they were Andrew's favorite sea creatures and she is sure that they are connected to him. When we reached shallower water, I encountered a lone squid in less than a foot of water that allowed me to get quite close and observe all its prismatic details. Close to shore, we swam with two large green turtles munching on sea grass, unfazed by our presence.

We stopped at the supermarket and then came back, thinking we were running late for a party to which we had been invited. When we got here, Paula checked the email and we were relieved to find that it wasn't scheduled until 5 p.m., so we had close to an hour. Still, we were late because we were all waiting for each other but unaware that we were doing that, so 5 o'clock passed with each of us wondering when we would leave. Nontheless, we were not the last of the seven invited guests to arrive at Lynn's condo for her blind red wine tasting party; we were just fashionably late. 

Lynn has a welcoming home, the walls lined with stunning pieces of art. We started out with champaign and then sat around the dining table to sample and identify five bottles of red wine wrapped in plain brown paper. After we had tried all of them, we went to kitchen to help ourselves to a wide array of colorful and delicious food provided by Lynn and the guests. We poured ourselves more mystery wine to see if we thought differently about our identification while consuming it with food. Then, it was the great reveal. Some got none of them correct, two or three of us had one right guess. Jo had two out of five, and Ellie won the prize--a locally made gourmet chocolate bar--with three accurate appellations. Nicely, she shared it with all of us.

Lynn, Poppy, Ellie, Peter, Paula, Jo and Jeff at wine tasting party

Paula had made a large pot roast for dinner and I had made a cream of spinach soup, but the amount of food we had devoured at the party had sated our appetites. Paula and Peter had some of the meat nonetheless while I had nothing more to eat.

Today, Peter and I hanked on the staysail and furled it, and he did other tasks in preparation for leaving while I spent time with Paula, playing anagram again, of course. She won today; I won on Wednesday. Now we are just waiting for the tide to rise a bit to get out of the Lucaya channel safely before we set off for days on the open sea.