currently at: Sampson Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
current date: 5 April 2005

After a tour of the central Exumas stretching from Warderick Wells in the north to Cave Cay in the south, we dropped our guests off at Staniel Cay. Now we're ready to head south again, back down to George Town and then further south and east, to the Jumentos and Hogsty Reef. Too bad the weather doesn't agree; right now it's howling 20 knots from the east, with the wind expected to shift southeast, which is even worse for our plans. The forecast is grim until the weekend.

But if you're the type who damns the torpedos, you're not going to have any fun cruising the Bahamas. It's not just waiting for weather: everything here is done on island time, and you just have to get used to it. For example, Rolfe and Kristen were supposed to arrive at Staniel last week on the Flamingo Air flight out of Nassau at 12:35. At 2:30 the plane landed, but they weren't on it; they'd been told it was full, and as it turned out, it was empty. But they found another plane and arrived a few hours later. On the way back, their pilot showed up only half an hour later than promised, but other travellers weren't so lucky: a group of Canadians returning from a sea kayak tour had been waiting at the airstrip for four hours, trying to arrange a plane after their original pilot told them he was "too tired to fly today."

When we saw them off again at the Staniel airstrip we walked back via Natajia's Ice Cream Parlour. We'd rung the bell on our way out, and got no reply; this time, a few minutes after we rung, a young women came out from the house next door, unlocked the store and showed us what was in the freezer. We walked back sharing a pint of strawberry ice cream; so what if we got it a bit later than we had intended?

In George Town a few weeks ago, we took our laundry to the cleaners who had promised that clothes brought in before 8:30 would be ready late that afternoon. Well, maybe. When we returned at 4:30 we were told there was a problem with the boiler, and that we'd have our clothes in the morning - assuming it got fixed. We didn't mind waiting, though, because the our propane refill was also delayed; our tank was across the island somewhere, the truck had had a breakdown, "come back tomorrow, it be ready."

If you approach everything with the idea that it's going to take twice as long as you expect, you'll be fine. Of course if you have a tight schedule, this isn't going to work - which is why cruisers are rarely on tight schedules. Windom was supposed to be going south; Undine II, next to us, was supposed to be going to Rock Sound, Eleuthera, and Sea Kata, behind us, was going to head to Nassau. Instead we're all sitting here at Sampson Cay drinking blender drinks (Ron on Undine II makes a mean pineapple-mango colada) and talking about everything except the stupid weather. But that's okay; we're living on island time.