Leaving Warderick Wells

Yesterday was an interesting day for us. We moved down to the Emerald Rock anchorage near the Exumas Park headquarters. Our plans were to meet up with Andrew from the park to donate the one good battery left over from our battery upgrade. We had emailed the park about this, and Andrew was the one who replied. He offered to come out in a skiff and pick up the battery.  We also had a box of latex gloves and some hats.

The website has an entire list of things the park would love to have donated, if you happen to be heading this way. By the way, one of Andrew's favorite donations is DVDs! It appears the volunteers love to have any kind of DVDs to watch.

Last night's dinner was a quick one pot boat meal. We chose to add 12 ounces of pre-cooked rotisserie chicken. However, the original recipe that I found was meant to be vegetarian, and you were supposed to use all fresh ingredients. That is so NOT possible on a boat with a minuscule refrigerator! So, I came up with this variation with boat friendly ingredients. This one is for you, Linda. (Linda is a vegetarian as well as a good friend to LUX.)

SPINACH MUSHROOM PASTA 

Ingredients:
8 ounces whole-wheat pasta
2 T. olive oil or margarine
1/2 tsp. Garlic powder
3 cans of mushrooms - 4 ounce cans
6 ounces cream cheese
1⁄2 cup milk
1 can of spinach
freshly ground black pepper
grated parmesan cheese
Directions: 

Cook pasta. Drain and transfer to a large serving bowl.
Heat olive oil or margarine in a large frying pan, add garlic and mushrooms, and cook until mushrooms are heated. Add cream cheese and milk and heat until boiling stirring often. Add spinach and cook until heated thoroughly.  Add Parmesan cheese - as much or as little as you like. Season to taste with pepper, then pour over pasta. 

Serves 4-6.

Total time: 20 minutes Serve with green salad and bread.

In other news for Linda, our anchorage last night was 8'6". A large Lagoon catamaran tried to get into the little bay in front of the park headquarters- but she ran aground on the sandbar in the entrance. Emerald Rock was nice, but it suffers from the same affliction as all the other places to anchor around here. It is not so protected from winds coming out of the west. So, we rocked and rolled all night.

This morning, the sky is fascinating.

The winds are supposed to be favorable for us to sail down to Staniel Cay. It is 8 AM, and the sails are up. Hopefully, we'll get to see the swimming pigs. Since the weather continues to be chilly, I seriously doubt that any of our crew will decide to swim with the pigs. Even the lure of swimming with the sharks- another favorite activity in Staniel Cay - might not be enough to get our crew into the water. Although the water temperature is 71 degrees, it's only going up into the low seventies today. Chris Parker, the weather guru in this region, says he has hopes that the weather might begin to warm up in March. Of course, we'll be on our way home by then.