The tourist tree gets its name from the fact that it looks like it's sunburned and peeling, like a tourist.
The red bark naturally peels off this tree, resembling a nasty sun burn. These trees are found in the tropics, so when you are cruising and come across one of these trees, you know you have made it to a nice tropical destination!
With modern navigation software, GPS, and chart plotters, finding land may seem really simple. While all of these electronic devices are convenient, there is still a very easy way to spot land in the Bahamas from far away without the aid of technology. All you need to do is look up at the clouds in the sky!
Clouds over deep water will look darker because they are reflecting the deep blue of the water beneath them. Clouds over shallow waters will look turquoise as they are reflecting the light colored water beneath them.
The coulda over the deep water on the left look like regular clouds, but the clouds in the middle have a turquoise hue to them, and these are over the shallow waters where land can be found.
The Bahamas are truely amazing because the flats will be 20 feet deep or less, and then you will sail off a cliff and be in water that is 8,000+ feet deep. Yes, water that is over a mile deep, right off the islands! Thanks to the clouds, you will be able to find your next island chain to explore long before you see the flat islands on the horizon.
If you had to point to the most valuable item on your cruising yacht right now, what would you point to? Would it be your new chart plotter? Your radar? Maybe where you keep your cruising cash? Or your jewelry?
The truth is, the most valuable item on your cruising yacht is your dinghy. Any dinghy, and all dinghies, have the same value to a cruiser. It can be a cheap pool toy looking inflatable, or a fancy center console Boston Whaler. This little boat gets you from boat to shore, and into places where your yachts draft will preclude you. Without your dinghy, you would be stranded on your boat with no way of getting to shore, or on shore with no way of getting to your boat.
When you are anchored in a remote location, there is no amount of money or other objects that can get you back and forth from boat to shore. The only thing that can do it is a dinghy, and if you don't have one, you are stranded.
You might be wondering what kind of dinghy is best, and this is certainly a topic of much debate. Some swear by hard dinghies, others tout the stability and carrying capacity of inflatables. The truth is the best dinghy is the one you have on board, because when you need to get somewhere, any dinghy will do and any dinghy will serve the purpose of transporting you and your crew to shore and back.
While anchored in Great Harbor Cay, Bahamas, we noticed something a bit unusual being done on a catamaran. Usually, cruisers will do their laundry and then hang them up to dry on the lifelines. This cruiser put their laundry up during a rain storm and let them get thoroughly soaked in the rain!
At first, my mind interpreted this as "they forgot to take their laundry in before the rains came" but they intentionally put them out as the rains were coming and even into the rain itself! They wanted their clothes to get soaked!
It took me a moment to capture what was really going on here: they were rinsing their clothes with fresh water.
On a cruising boat, clothes will get salty, no matter how hard you try to keep them salt free. Either a rogue wave, spray, or simply handling a wet line; salt will find its way into your clothes. Rinsing the salt out can consume a lot of water, and rain will provide you with such a resource.
After a long rain, all the salt will be rinsed from your clothes and you will have clean laundry. Once the rain finishes, simply let it hang out a bit longer to dry and you will have clean and dry laundry!
Next time you see rain coming, consider doing your wash cycles and then hang the laundry out for the rinse and dry cycles. It will save you a lot of water and time!
Two items that I thought we wouldn't need but now greatly enjoy having are a generator and an outboard. A portable generator makes cruising so much more care free. You can run the fridge, and leave the lights on a few hours longer without worrying about the batteries. Without the generator, I would look at the weather to see if we could keep our lights on or if we had to shut the fridge down. We only had solar panels and relied heavily on the weather to provide us the power needed to sustain our battery banks. A week of cloudy skies meant a depleted electrical system and a nightmare to recharge.
Now, I don't worry anymore. All I do is wait to see if the sun will come out. If the batteries get a bit low, I fire up the generator and charge everything back up!
The other indispensable item we now carry is an outboard motor for the dinghy. For seven months, I have been rowing us to shore. It was slow but it did work. We timed our land adventures by the tides, only traveling when the current was slack or in a favorable direction. We would anchor close to shore to minimize the distance needed to row, but there were still times when I would have to row us over a mile to make landfall.
The outboard has changed all of this! It lets us chug along at a slow speed while not getting exhausted. Our little outboard is only 2hp, enough to push our 7 foot dinghy at hull speed (3.5 knots). Not setting any speed records, but it also doesn't burn much fuel in the process.
Now, a popular size outboard is the 9,9hp and 15hp. Both of these will push your dinghy along at a remarkable speed, but they have one major flaw to them: weight. A large outboard is heavy, and will require a lifting mechanism to get it on and off the dinghy. Our small 2hp outboard is so light that Maddie can lift it with two hands, and I can easily carry it with one hand! Going small might not be very flashy, but it gives you the convenience you are looking for without the burden of heavy machinery.
