Stay Over Days in Emerald Bay

—Blogpost written by Bob

Thursday, April 9

It actually rained last night and it was a significant amount! It rained very hard but didn’t last long (maybe 15 minutes). It was the most rain we experienced while here in the Exumas. In the morning, the wind was light—less than 10 knots out of the southeast. The nearby palm trees moved ever so slightly. Later in the day, the wind increased slightly (but still no more than 10 knots) out of the south, and then southwest, as it began to clock around.

Condition of Our Boat’s Bottom After Two Months in a Marina

Since we have been in a marina for the past 2 months, I decided to use our GoPro (mounted on our longest boat hook) to look at our boat’s bottom. The following GoPro pics illustrate the degree of marine growth we’ve experienced:

An overall underwater view
of the boat's stern

There are some blotchy spots on
the hull which we have to
investigate.

Another pic showing the
blotchy spots.

Several small fish swam up to
the GoPro out of curiosity.

Our boat’s bottom was painted with Petit Trinidad SR-60 last summer.  We’ve been successfully using this paint during the past five years but I have never seen the blotchy spots on the hull previously.

Creative Cooking During Pandemic: Cabbage

Cabbage has been easy for us to get from the grocery store here on Great Exuma and it is very low in carbs and very high in nutrients. I’ve been making very tasty cabbage-ground beef stews lately. We’ve recently tried a new recipe using cabbage called Cheesy Cabbage Gratin that was published online by Bon Appetite. Maggie made this a few days ago and it turned out great. (It required a lot of dishes and pans though.)

Cheesy Cabbage Gratin
(photo and from recipe
from Bon Appetite)

Maggie also made Asian-style Slaw with cabbage per the recipe below as an accessory to a different meal.  Since we didn’t have (and couldn’t get) snow peas, she substituted a chopped green bell pepper. 

Maggie's Asian-style Slaw

INGREDIENTS (2.6 net carbs)

     1 cup, chopped Snowpeas (we substituted green bell pepper)

     1 large (7-1/4" to 8-1/2" long) Carrot

     12 oz Chinese Cabbage (we used regular green cabbage)

     2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

     1 tbsp Toasted Sesame Oil

     2 tbsps Gourmet Rice Wine Vinegar

     1 tbsp Tamari Soybean Sauce

     2 tsps Ginger

     1 tsp No Calorie Sweetener (we used one packet of Splenda)

DIRECTIONS

     1 Place cabbage in a large bowl; grate carrot into cabbage. Mix in snow peas

     2 In a small bowl, mix oils, vinegar, tamari, ginger and sugar substitute.

     3 Pour dressing over salad; toss to coat. Season to taste with salt

Latest Projection on Our Return Home

It now looks like we can safely plan on our trip north on the ICW (and outside occasionally) through the month of June. Based on this estimate, we will leave the Bahamas for the U.S. in late-May. This estimate is based on the latest (recently revised) projection (by University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) on when the (first wave of) COVID-19 pandemic will be essentially over in the U.S. and the end of social distancing (first week in June).  If the Bahamian restrictions allow, we will leave this marina in mid-May. Even though hurricane season officially starts on June 1 (and this hurricane season is expected to have above average activity) we hope to make it home during the first week in July and before the development of any tropical storms and hurricanes. In fact, I wouldn’t want to leave any later because the danger from hurricanes substantially increases.

Friday, April 10

We’ve been running the A/C lately—in fact, all through the day and night. In the early morning, there was absolutely no wind whatsoever and the water’s surface in the marina was flat calm—it looked like ice (which was very unusual in our experience). By about 9 AM the wind increased to about 11 knots from the southwest, as it continued it’s slow clockwise change in direction. By tomorrow afternoon the wind is expected to be out of the east again, the prevailing direction for the Exumas. (As a sailor, the wind has personal importance to me, even when stuck in a marina for months as we have been. )

Book Review: Rising Out of Hatred by Eli Saslow

In this book, Eli Saslow, the author, traces the growth of today’s white nationalists back to the same people who were grand wizards in the Ku Klux Klan as they modified their actions and messaging to be less violence-based and more political-based. 

The author tells the story of Derek Black, the son of one of the founders of the movement and a prior grand wizard in the KKK.  Derek, once seen as the heir of the movement, graduated from college and went on to get a Master’s and a PhD in medieval history.  His education disproved most of the talking points of the white nationalist movement and he turned against his families' hatred of blacks, Hispanics, and Jews. 

This book also covers the boost in attention and membership created by the election of Donald Trump, who echoed many of the beliefs of white nationalists, as they are now called.  Richard Spencer (of White Fish, Montana) was a strong influence in the AltRight movement (an offshoot of white nationalism) and a college friend of White House Advisor Stephen Miller, who has been advising the President on immigration policy. This book also examines the role of FOX news in the white nationalists movement.  (I learned through this book about the racist views of the Tea Party as it tried to influence the Republican Party several years ago.)

I purchased this book as an audio book but it is also available as a kindle book from Amazon.  I listened to this audio book over a 3-day period and it held my attention throughout—the audio book takes about 11 hours of listening time.

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Tracked Health Crisis in China as Early as November

As we enter the "peak" of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., just yesterday it was reported by CNN that our spy agencies were tracking the outbreak in China as early as November.  You can read more about it at this link.  On January 3, after it was confirmed by a sufficient number of sources, the information made its way into the President's daily briefing.


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