A couple chumps at Chub Cay

We’re never leaving Chub Cay. At this point, I’m not even sure I want to. I’ve been completely swooned and won over by the gorgeous Chub Cay Club Resort. It has the greenest (fake) grass, most vibrant flowers, and a perfect beach with adequately spaced palm trees that face sunset. What more could you want?

Time to do laundry

Our time at Chub Cay was not all flowers and sunsets. We desperately needed to do laundry. Fortunately, we have a small washing machine on board. Unfortunately, without a water maker we never have enough water to spare to actually use it. Boating is give and take. Now that we’re at a marina, though, we can refill our water anytime giving us plenty to do some laundry with. We are still paying for the water ($0.54 per gallon), but it’s probably cheaper than paying to do laundry at most marinas, and that wasn’t even an option here ( I don’t think). I’m estimating that we use about 6 gallons of water per (small) load of laundry, so around $3 – not terrible.

Tangent: Everyone should really try living on a boat for even a short period of time. You don’t realize how much we truly waste when living with modern luxuries. Water for example – the average American uses more water in one shower (avg. 17.2 gallons) than we use on our boat in an entire day (avg. 10 gallons). Or electricity – nothing will teach a kid to remember to turn off the lights when they leave the room, better than living on a boat where every bit of electricity is important. Trust me, I know from experience. My mom always said she could tell every room in the house I had been in based on which lights were on.

After we wash our clothes in our little washer, there is an even smaller compartment where you can spin the clothes to get them somewhat dry. Then we hang them up all around the boat to dry anywhere that gets some wind and sun – so mostly on the bow lifelines and a temporary clothes line. Fortunately, things dry pretty fast this way, because by my fifth load of laundry, I was out of space. I’m sure all the fancy, mega yachts in the marina were impressed with our clothes covered boat!

To read more about what doing laundry on our boat entails, check out this short Boat Basics post on laundry.

Time to have fun

After all the laundry is done, and Matt is (mostly) finished working for the day we set off to enjoy some of the finer resort amenities. First up is that gorgeous beach – Monster’s pick of activities. We walk along the nice stretch of beach while Monster runs ahead, rolls in sand, and sniffs all the smells. Seeing how shallow the water is for a long ways out, we venture further and further into the water (still only knee high), and watch in amusement as little Monster sees how far she thinks she can make it. Her current method is to hold her back legs up (similar to how we taught her for swimming) but then to keep walking/skipping with her front legs touching the sand. As soon as the water passes over her nose doing this, she bails and heads back to shore. Still for her – that’s pretty brave!

We get lots of obligatory beach pictures before heading back to our boat. Matt has a little more work to do and I set to writing a blog post. Monster takes a final dip in her splash pool before passing out hard on the couch from all the excitement.

That evening, we head out again (without Monster this time) to enjoy the infinity pool and hot tub that overlook our old anchorage – which is significantly calmer and more peaceful than any night we were anchored there (figures). The pool and view was really just tropical paradise at its best – sooo nice!

Sunset would have been gorgeous from the pool looking out over the water, but it was getting a bit late so we headed back to our boat to get cleaned up. We had plans to splurge on another dinner out at the restaurant. When I say “splurge” I mostly mean over indulge in calories – the restaurant prices were very comparable to Chicago, as have been most restaurants in the Bahamas so far. We each got a meal with parmesan truffle fries (like a lot of them) – my stomach almost hurts just recounting that. I did at least bring half my burger back which will likely be Monster’s soon. We also shared a salad to start, so I think that cancels everything out.

Chub Cay fans for life

We even bought t-shirts (and a sticker) to prove it! That’s right, how could we not? With our (almost) matching t-shirts in hand, we head back to our boat preparing to try leaving Chub Cay for the third time.  We get all our lines off the dock and for the first time, I maneuver us off the dock. It was a pretty simple procedure, but a small little fishing boat had tied up next to us in the slip which made it slightly more nerve wrecking.

You know what also made it more nerve wrecking – seeing Matt hobbling around with a bloody foot in the air. What in the world just happened in the last 30 seconds? He apparently sliced his foot getting the last line off the dock cleat. So he’s trying to tend to the wound while I drive us out the marina – completely over-steering the entire time. The boat responds slowly, so over-steering is basically over compensating for each action – like if you were fishtailing on a slick road. Of course at this time a huge motor yacht is coming right at us (in the marina). There’s plenty of space for us to pass each other, but for a novice like me it’s stressful. I can’t tell if they are trying to simply pass by or turn in front of me to get to the fuel dock. I almost call out on channel 16 to ask them to please stay still because I’m a bad driver and just want to get past. It was completely fine though – I actually didn’t have any trouble driving us past and out the channel of the marina.

We motor past our old anchorage – still calmer than any day we stayed there and began heading out into the Atlantic. A little over an hour later, we’ve made it further than we had on our previous try, and as I write this we are over half way to New Providence. It’s beginning to look promising that we may actually leave Chub Cay!