Still anchored.

All in all, it’s been a really good week weather-wise. Mostly light wind, the kind that lets the boat sit comfortably without much fuss. We did have a stretch earlier in the week—around New Year’s Eve—when it kicked up a bit. A little windier, a little choppy, enough to remind you that winter still has a say, even down here.

By the back half of the week, though, things settled nicely. Daytime highs in the mid-70s, cooling off to around 65 or 66 at night. No meaningful swell to speak of, and very little roll. There was a brief period of north wind mid-week that put some motion into the harbor, but nothing serious—just enough to notice, not enough to complain about.

Overall, conditions have been kind and steady here in Elizabeth Harbour. The sort of week that makes staying put feel like the right call.

📝Harbor Notes

I’m starting to feel properly settled. Not just anchored, but oriented. Learning the routines, the rhythms, the small patterns that make a place start to feel familiar rather than temporary. It’s been really, genuinely good.

The community here is strong. The cruisers’ net in particular has been invaluable—equal parts local knowledge, weather updates, and quiet reassurance. You get a sense pretty quickly that people look out for one another here, and that makes a difference when you’re new to an anchorage.

I’ve started to find a few regular haunts. One is Sand Bar, which is exactly what it sounds like: a small beach shack at the north end of things over on Stocking Island. Low-key, friendly, unpretentious. Last Sunday, I somehow won their weekly pool tournament—eight participants, and by the end of the afternoon, I was $140 richer.

Then there’s Chat ’N’ Chill, which needs almost no introduction. It’s the iconic beach bar here, with volleyball courts right out back. The cruisers run a standing 2 p.m. volleyball game most days—except Sundays, I think. I haven’t confirmed that yet, but I’m learning the cadence.

Across the harbour in town, Exuma Yacht Club has become a regular stop. Solid food, easy atmosphere, and a good place to run into familiar faces as the days stack up.

And then there’s the Fish Fry. More about it later in this issue, but it’s worth noting here as part of the harbor’s social fabric. Like the one I’ve been to in Nassau, it’s really a collection of restaurants and bars gathered together—loud, lively, and full of local flavor. It’s where visitors and locals mix, where music drifts between establishments, and where chance conversations happen. That’s where I ended up meeting a visiting DJ the other night, which turned into one of those small, unexpected connections that make traveling by boat feel so rich.

All told, Elizabeth Harbour is starting to feel less like a waypoint and more like a place to be for a while. That’s a good feeling to have.

A couple of weeks ago, someone wished me Happy Junkanoo after I said Merry Christmas. I had absolutely no idea what they meant.

So I did what most of us do now—I Googled it. What I found was a celebration of Bahamian music and culture that’s often compared to Mardi Gras, but only as a loose reference point. Similar energy, maybe. Similar scale. But very much its own thing.

This year, Junkanoo fell on January 3rd. I figured there was no excuse not to go see it for myself. I bought a ticket, which came with a spot in the bleachers—an easy, comfortable way to take it all in.

But it didn’t take long to realize the better place was down on the street.

Right up close. As close as they’d let you get.

Junkanoo is hard to describe in words, which is probably why I’m glad I took some video. It’s loud, kinetic, relentless in the best way. A dense mix of drums, horns, movement, color, and costume. There’s no sitting still through it. Even if you think you’re just watching, your body eventually gives in—you’re tapping, swaying, moving along whether you planned to or not.

It really is an intersection of music, dance, and full-on pageantry. And while the Mardi Gras comparison helps frame it for outsiders, the feel is unmistakably Bahamian—its own rhythm, its own pulse.

I got a front-row lesson in local music and culture—and a new reason to smile the next time someone wishes me Happy Junkanoo.

New Year’s Day always sneaks up on me a little sideways. It’s supposed to feel clean and hopeful, but for me it usually carries a quiet weight. This year especially. I said goodbye to a lot—some things I’ll write about in time, some I probably won’t. Not everything needs an audience.

New Year’s Day morning, with the boat still and the year brand new, Spotify served up Goodbye by Steve Earle. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before, but today it landed differently. Maybe it was the timing. Maybe it was the accumulation of endings. Closing out a year does that—it sharpens certain edges.

I listened once. Then again. And somewhere around the third time through, I knew I wanted to learn it.

So I spent the morning working it up, letting the song settle into me. By late afternoon, it felt comfortable enough to stop thinking about the mechanics and just play it. I’d had so much fun recording in the cockpit with Scott last week that I decided to do it again—but this time I went digging and found a condenser mic and an audio interface I had onboard.

I bought them years ago in Austin, back when I was trying to learn the fiddle. They were mostly used as a mirror—recording myself, listening back, figuring out what needed work. There are some truly awful recordings floating around somewhere of me scratching away at fiddle strings. I used to call it “fiddle sawing,” which felt generous.

This time, the gear got a second life. The condenser mic definitely sounds better than the wireless bluetooth mics we used last week, but it also picks up everything else. You’ll hear the boat. The water. And at one point, a speedboat absolutely rips through the anchorage behind me and bulldozes the moment.

But that’s part of it.

This wasn’t meant to be polished or isolated. It was recorded in the cockpit of a sailboat, sitting at anchor, on a day that asked for a certain kind of honesty. The noise belongs there. So does the song.

It just felt right for the day.

Enjoy my cover of Steve Earle’s Goodbye complete with an accompanying speed boat.

I met Nina last Sunday night at Fish Fry in Georgetown—one of those easy, open-air collisions where plastic tables, karaoke microphones, and passing conversations all blur together. Fish Fry is a culinary gathering place made up of beach shacks and vendors serving fresh authentic Bahamian food. This particular spot was an outdoor karaoke bar-the kind where the audience is half participant, half cheer squad. Somewhere between songs, we got to talking.

She was in from New York City for a couple of days, playing sets at a beach club over on Stocking Island. She invited me to listen to her set the next day and I did. I’ll admit it: I came with a handful of assumptions about DJs—most of them lazy, all of them wrong. That afternoon and especially the conversation that followed, quietly dismantled every one of them.

Nina isn't just selecting tracks. She’s teaching a room how to listen. She understands where a groove can land, when it needs space, and how to thread one feeling into the next without anyone quite noticing the seams. Watching her work, it felt less like a playlist and more like a conversation she was having with the crowd—one built on rhythm instead of words.

We hung out that evening, and the rest of her story came into focus. She’s a first-generation immigrant, entirely self-made, who built her life by following curiosity, discipline, and a stubborn belief that art is worth the work. Nothing about her path was handed to her, and you can feel that in how seriously she takes the craft. There’s a quiet confidence there—earned, not performed.

Her depth of musical knowledge is wide and unpretentious. She talks about sound the way sailors talk about weather: patterns, pressure, intuition, and timing. It’s less about control than awareness.

Then there’s another layer altogether. She’s also a comedian and an actor, which suddenly made a lot of sense. There’s a performer’s instinct in how she reads a room, a sense of timing that goes far beyond beats per minute. She knows when to hold back, when to lean in, and when to let the moment breathe.

I left that night with my understanding of DJs fundamentally rewired. At their best, they’re not background noise or button-pushers—they’re architects of atmosphere. Nina showed me how much care, intelligence, and lived experience it takes to build a space where people can simply enjoy being there.

That’s exactly the kind of person who belongs in People of the Tide.

Back in October, when I stopped off in Fernandina Beach in North Florida, I had a couple of nights where I got caught out after dark in the dinghy. I ended up making the run back to the boat with no nav lights. That’s obviously dangerous, and I don’t condone it. It was a gap in judgment.

One of those nights ended a little more memorably than the others.

As I was making my way back toward the anchorage, the Nassau sheriff’s marine patrol lit me up with blue lights. He came over the loudspeaker and asked why I was running with no navigation lights. I told him I hadn’t expected to be out after dark and had forgotten them on board. A small white lie, delivered quickly.

He paused, then asked if I at least had a flashlight on board.

I didn’t.

Instead, I turned on the flashlight on my phone and held it up in the air. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but he waved me on. I suspect he didn’t want to bother with the paperwork. I was grateful, but the message landed anyway.

I had been carrying a portable tricolor navigation light that could mount on the bow of the tender, but I lost it earlier in the year. I’d pressed it into service as a makeshift stern light during my run up to New York when a vessel behind me called and let me know my stern light was out. So I rigged up the portable light with zip ties and duct tape, and somewhere overnight it went overboard. I never replaced it. I hadn’t been impressed with how bright it was to begin with, and that gave me just enough justification to put it off.

When I was in St. Augustine, I picked up a set of clip-on navigation lights from a marine store. They were lightweight plastic, felt flimsy in the hand, and I couldn’t convince myself they’d survive real use. I returned them and kept going.

Down here in Georgetown, with how busy the harbor is, it became clear pretty quickly that I needed a solution. I’d been using a high-powered spotlight when I absolutely had to move at night, basically announcing myself in bursts, but that’s not a substitute for being properly lit.

While in Fort Lauderdale last month, I bought two proper fixtures: a 12-volt white all-around light on a pole and a combined red and green navigation light. The plan is to mount the navigation light once I finish the dinghy chaps, adding a proper surface under the fabric. For now, I installed the all-around white light on the transom so I’d at least be visible from every direction.

That left the question of power.

The light draws very little, about 1.5 watts at 12 volts, so I started thinking through options. Solar felt like overkill for something this small. What I eventually settled on was a lithium-ion battery from my rechargeable drill. I had two of them on board. They’re robust, reliable, and easy to recharge.

I built a small power box out of an old dry box I had on the boat. I cut a hole in the side for a switch, added Velcro inside to hold the battery securely, and wired everything up with a simple harness from the light to the switch and battery. To make recharging easy, I repurposed an old power cord, cut it apart, soldered the plug prongs onto new leads, and used that as a quick disconnect so I can pull the battery and drop it straight into the charger.

The dry box ended up pulling double duty. I’ve zip-tied it just below the outboard, and it’s still fully watertight. When I step into the dinghy now, I have a place to drop my phone and wallet without thinking about it.

The first real test was New Year’s Eve.

It’s bright. Very bright. Supposedly it’s rated for two miles of visibility, and I believe it. The first time I powered it up underway, it wiped out my night vision. Lesson learned quickly: eyes forward, don’t look back at the light.

For now, it does exactly what I need it to do. I’m visible. I’m no longer relying on a spotlight, a phone screen, or luck. The navigation lights will come once the chaps are finished, but this closes an important gap.

The first week of 2026 carries a little weight for me.

The end of the year tends to do that—close things out, whether you want it to or not. This past year especially. A lot of chapters wrapped up. That usually leaves me feeling a bit quiet, a bit reflective, maybe even a touch melancholy as the calendar turns.

But standing here now, looking ahead, that feeling is giving way to something else.

I’m on the edge of a new chapter. Cruising over the last three years has mostly meant moving steadily along the East Coast—familiar rhythms, known waters, incremental changes. In 2026, I’ll be stretching my legs more than I have so far. There are plans forming that I’ll start to share over the coming months, and while I won’t get ahead of them just yet, I know this: it’s going to be a meaningful shift for me.

That’s exciting.

But, what’s surprised me most over the last couple of months is how much this writing has mattered. Having a place to put things down—to describe what I’m doing, how it affects me, what I’m learning along the way—has turned out to be more than documentation. It’s been grounding. Almost therapeutic. A way to slow down the experience long enough to actually feel it.

I’m grateful to have this medium now, and grateful to anyone who’s chosen to read along.

So hang on. Stick with me. I think the road—or the water—ahead is going to be an interesting one. I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads, and to sharing the journey as it unfolds.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2026.