Monday, April 23, 2012

Assorted photos

I found these guys hanging out in Spanish Wells.
A guy stopped his car and actually asked them
how they were doing!
Typical tidy homes of Spanish Wells on the waterfront







Spanish Wells was clearly one of the more affluent of the Bahamian communities that we visited.  The manager at the marina told us the community did well because it did not depend on tourist dollars.



We met this guy in Warderick Wells Land and Sea park.  Although he did a nice job of cleaning up the crumbs in our cockpit he was a bit of a pest.  He moved into our cabin.  It took a little coaxing to get him to understand that we didn't want him there!
I thought I saw some blue-gray birds in the surf during our rough passage from Georgetown to Cave Cut but no - they were flying fish leaping out of the waves and gliding 60 feet or more.




Here we are on the pink sand beach.
There is the slightest of pink hue in the wet sand.

We made it to Harbor Island from Spanish Wells by way of the Devil's Backbone.  We cheated.  We took the high speed ferry.  At points it seemed like we could reach out and touch the beach as we flew past.  Some of our new friends hired a pilot to take their boats across the Backbone but the shoal depths made me wary even with a pilot.  It would have been a quicker way to get north to Little Harbor in the Abacos but it wasn't for me.  We rented a golf cart with Alan of "Unabated" and toured the island that is reputed to be the vacation destination of the rich and famous.  The famed pink sand beach was a little less pink than I was expecting - but nice.
Here's the Bo Hengy II our 25 knot aluminum
catamaran ferry to Harbor Island and back.
It felt like sailing in fast forward mode!







An example of the cuteness factor in Hopetown.
This was on someone's front lawn complete with
the Hopetown Lighthouse


This path was lovely - no cars allowed - but the telephone
cable didn't even clear my head!

























Hopetown was almost too cute but as you can see from my picture some of the infrastructure in the Bahamas is a little below the standards we have in the states.


If you have money you can do anything you like.  We saw more than one big motor yacht with water slides like this.  They usually also sport 4 or more jet-skis.  Who decides to market water slides to these guys? http://freestylecruiser.com/
This is the latest in "must have" toys for the big boys.    You can't buy them off the shelf - they have to be designed "to the exacting standards of your yacht."
We'll be ordering one of the first slides designed to be deployed from the spreaders of a sailboat.


The ubiquitous Bahamian lizard - chameleon?

These little guys are everywhere all over the Bahamas.  We were surprised to find one in our cockpit at anchor.  We couldn't figure how he got there.  I carefully unfurled a ziplock bag and tried to urge him to enter it.  I'm a little squeamish so I didn't really want to handle him.  He was not happy with the bag.  He preferred to jump onto my hand.  You'd be surprised how sticky his little feet are.  I reflexively shook my hand but he wasn't leaving his perch.  I also used some salty sailor language but he was unmoved.  Finally with my hand in the bag I was able to rub him off and give him a ride to shore.


Alan from the Pearson 424, "Unabated" and I explored a ruins on Royal Island.
It doesn't take long for tropical plants to take over the structures. 
Royal Island was our jumping off point for about a 65 mile sail out in the ocean from the Eleuthera area to Little Harbor in the Abacos.  Our AIS showed plenty of ship traffic traversing the Northwest Channel.  We even saw a 3 masted sailing ship shortly before we were hit with a drenching squall.  Fortunately, there was no lightning and very little wind associated with the downpour.  One of the boats sailing with us reported seeing huge whales that they thought might be sperm whales.  I'm sorry I missed them - Maryanne is not.


Sunday, April 15, 2012

It's hard to keep up the blog with such poor internet access.  We had a wonderful time with Chad & Nicole.   We went snorkeling off the beach on a small island north of Great Guana Cay, also snorkeling on the Atlantic side of Fowl Cay, and finally swimming Mermaid Reef outside Marsh Harbor.

After rigorous training Chad & Nicole show some aptitude for
relaxation.  The sailing life agrees with them.
Homes on the Sea of Abaco outside Marsh Harbor
near Mermaid Reef where we did some of our best
snorkeling.
Chad and I went scuba diving with Above and Below off Fowl Cay.  When Kay, the dive master began stroking a big friendly grouper I began smiling too widely causing my mask to flood slightly.  Clearing the mask is simple but the fact that I had to do it made me laugh.  Fortunately, I kept my regulator firmly in my mouth.  The dive was so much fun - being able to do it with my son made it even more special.

Maryanne has become very comfortable with swimming and snorkeling.  We had to swim a couple hundred yards from the beach to get to Mermaid Reef.  We were able to swim together only a foot or so above the shallower parts of the reef.  The yellow snappers came right up to us probably looking for a handout.  Other fish and lobsters were more shy, hiding in little nooks under the reef.  We didn't see any barracuda at Mermaid reef but there were a few at Fowl Cay.  Fowl Cay was a bit of a challenge since we had to dinghy out to the reefs beyond the Cay.  We also had to board the dinghy from the water.  Maryanne and I have mastered the technique of going vertically underwater and then swimming and kicking hard straight up to scramble into the dinghy.  The entry onto the dinghy isn't particularly graceful but it beats having to swim a mile and a half through a cut with strong currents.  We are really enjoying the snorkeling in the Abacos.

We will be leaving the boat in the Abacos for a couple weeks while we return to NY for Maryanne's teaching.  In NY I may be able to get some more pictures up on this blog.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Swimming in Marsh Harbor is not recommended.

Marsh Harbor is not a good place to swim - too many boats discharging effluent.  I did take a little dip at the dock on Friday.  The wind was pushing our boat too far away from the dock for Maryanne to get off the boat.  The wind was strong - but so am I.  I put my feet on one of the dock lines and pushed it down to get the boat in.  Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing my tight rope walking shoes.  My foot slipped and then instantly I found myself swimming in Marsh Harbor under the dock.  It happened so fast I was swimming before I realized I was in the water!  So...my BaTelCo wireless card is not waterproof.  No more posts via BaTelCo.

The docks pose many problems.  I landed at the dock at the Conch Inn on the downwind side with strong cross winds.  As scary as the landing was - it went smoothly with help from the dock hands.  The dockmaster when he returned later was unhappy with the berth that we had taken and told us that we would have to move.  The wind was blowing 30 mph so I let him know that moving would be difficult in the extreme.  He reluctantly agreed to make some adjustments while I stayed put.  The next day he announced that we would have to switch berths.  He left but gave us two dock hands to help out.  The wind was again gusting over 30 knots sideways.  When the boat backs the stern tends to walk to the left - in the same direction the wind was pushing us.  To complicate matters, as we left the dock there were 2 pilings we had to thread 20 feet behind us.  The situation was really close to impossible.  To make everything really bad our stern line slipped off the cleat just as we were beginning to back out of the slip. Our stern swung 45 degrees off the dock toward another boat and a piling.  A dock hand was able to throw the line back to me and pull me in for our next attempt to leave.  We backed out smoothly thanks to an amazing performance by a cruiser who pushed our boat into the wind as we pulled away from the dock.  With his dinghy acting as a side thruster or tug boat we were able to back in a straight line.

Our departure on Sunday was less smooth.  As we backed out of our slip into strong wind another boat came off their dock blocking the path behind us.  We pulled back into the slip and managed to barely hang on until the boat passed.  Again we backed out of the slip but didn't get far enough into the wind to make our turn going forward.  With the boat at right angles to the slip our stern began drifting into the bow anchor of a sailboat next to us while our bow pulpit looked like it would hit a piling in front of us. Chad was able to push hard against the bow pulpit of the boat with the threatening anchor while I tried to power the side of the bow to slide past the piling.  Nicole pushed against the piling and somehow we managed to escape with only a splinter in Nicole's hand to show for it.

We have a new definition for docking:
Good docking is when no one is bleeding after the attempt.
Great docking is when you can still use the boat afterwards. 
 So far we are doing somewhere between great and good docking.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Hopetown, Abacos

Hopetown Lighthouse from our mooring.
Kerosene flame lit by lighthouse keeper each night

The first harbor we visited after successfully anchoring by Linyard Cay in the Sea of Abacos was Hopetown.  Hopetown is a village of charming little homes of all different pastel shades overlooking the harbor.  The entrance was challenging.  We were warned not to attempt to enter until half tide or more.  To enter the harbor you have to aim for a beach about a half mile away and then follow the beach to the left.  Depths are about 6 feet with nearby patches of 4 feet.  The harbor is one of the prettiest we have seen in the Bahamas.  

Cemetery restoration project in Hopetown
We took a walk up a street closed to vehicular traffic to an historic cemetery that is being restored.  If it mattered to me where I was to be buried I would choose this cemetery.  It has one of the best views I have ever seen.
The perfect way to end a dead end road.
We saw this on our tandem bike ride through Hopetown.
This is a fun building in Hopetown -
a good place for ice cream but not for lunch

We spent two days in Hopetown - met some really nice people - a couple aboard Katahdin - from Cape Elizabeth, Me.  We also enjoyed spending time  with Richard and Ward from Bagheera - a trawler that we met on our crossing to Rock Sound, Eleuthera.  Ward gave us a ride to a restaurant in Spanish Wells on his rented Golf Cart. 

A park on the Atlantic Ocean in Hopetown.

Entrance to Hopetown

In the next Blog: Mishap in Marsh Harbor