This morning Paula went with our friends to the grocery store to assist in amusing the children while their parents provisioned for the next leg of their Bahamas adventure, the Exumas. Their stop here in Palm Cay is just for one night, as the weather is perfect for travel now, but much more uncertain for the coming days, so this will necessarily be a short visit for our friends from Plan B. Paula reveled in the stolen glory of being thought the grandmother to the three beautiful and remarkably well-behaved kids by staff and customers at the store. She also picked up a few things herself: fresh horseradish root, guava jam, (Shhh! More M&M’s) and also some evaporated milk for her next cooking project: homemade Greek-style yogurt in a Thermos.

Back at the boats, the families got together to trade provisions and tools and knowledge so that each sailboat got something they needed and gave something they had in abundance. This is extremely common in the sailing/boating community, and especially in more isolated locales. No one boater has a spare for “everything” and often the things you lack, use up, lose overboard, or have break before your eyes can never be anticipated and are not available for purchase in the place you are. Our friends showed us the details of the route that they took to come to Palm Cay and how to avoid the corals along the way, which will help us in our journey to our next likely destination which traces some of the same course. Paula now has some wonderful Nalgene storage bottles that she has longed for courtesy of our friends. They now can enjoy some of our extra spices, and will use a converter Tommy happened to have on board to utilize the green camp-style propane bottles for their galley stove, as they are unsure how much propane they have left in their large stove tank. Sailboat-sized tanks almost never have gauges, and even in those that do the gauges are notoriously inaccurate.  They will likely not have opportunity to fill the big tank ‘till Staniel Cay (if the supply boat has come in) and that is several stops away. They do have plenty of the small green canisters (used for the grill) and now can use them to power their galley stove if it becomes necessary.

Before we knew it, it was noon, a nice soft breeze and sunshine, and our friends on Plan B took off from the dock, heading south to further adventures in the Exumas. We will likely see them next in St. Augustine sometime late this spring or in the early summer. Thank goodness for email, “What’s App”, and other forms of communication. We each have blogs, and we will follow them as they do us.

After they left, it was (in order) nap, walk, and dinner. Paula made shrimp picatta and Israeli couscous, green beans and bread and butter. There are still a few brownies left for desert.