The Hope Town, Marsh Harbor and Man-o-War Cay May 1-12, 2016

We got up late.  Mary wasn’t feeling well so we abandon the church idea.  I wanted to walk so I took the dinghy in and while Mary slept, walked up the same road we had explored yesterday, but went to the end. To the left was the road to Sea Spray Marina where we filled up the dinghy the other day.  To the right was a garden center and I was hoping the road to the marina we have been frequenting for drinks.

This was a relatively busy road!  Oddly such a small island has a surprising number of cars, mostly little trucks but a spattering of Cadillac, F150 and SUV’s.  There are also many golf carts, most of which are gas spewing clouds of exhaust when they go by.

I went right and ran into nothing, just a road and property for sale signs.  So I headed back and of course passed this road hogging chicken again.

If there' a road there will be a chicken on it

Some rather large houses here on the ocean side

On Da Sea sign

Returning along the same road, I caught sight of another bar, On Da Sea.  Small little place up on a rise overlooking the ocean.  Nice, but a hike from the public docks in the marina.  Speaking of public docks, Hope Town has 4 of them which is so convenient for moored boats as well as those anchored outside the harbor.

You can see all the bottom sand its kicking up

After a few hours I came back to the boat.  Mary was still napping.  I watched a large island freighter come in the narrow inlet and tie up to lighthouse marina, presumably to off load fuel since the deck of the ship had two large tanks. 

Mary still wasn’t feeling well today and my idea of leaving at 8AM before low tide (10:30) was scrapped.  We’ll wait until noon when the tide is rising.. And so will she … I hope.

Noon arrived and Mary was up so we did take off from the mooring close to noon.  The wind though were really blowing and the mooring field is so tightly packed I was concerned how we were going to maneuver out of here without bashing another boat or running over a mooring ball.

We let go the the starboard line attached to one of the two floats on the mooring ball.  That seemed to swing us out away from the other boats.

But the pendants were simply a loop in a rope so the friction was hard to overcome when pulling a line through.  Mary had to do it so I could drive and not run into anyone.  And after a few seconds we were free, she did it!  We had drifted a bit to port which was clear of boats and off we went out the entrance.

The harbor entrance wasn’t too shallow but our depth sounder wasn’t recording anything due to the turbidity as we made our way through the entrance. 

Once clear we were seeing depths from 4’7” to 5 feet for about a mile.  The depth sounder alarm is set to go off for anything under 4’ 9” and it was playing a little concert.  We didn’t go aground though, but it sure was close! 

Had we left at 8AM when the tide up, it would have been fine.  But noon was only a few hours after low tide so we were riding the low end of the water.

Anchored at Matt Lowe Cay

Once we cleared the shallows it was an easy 2 mile ride to Matt Lowes (Not Rob Lowes) Cay where we anchored along with a few other boats.  Our idea was to anchor here for a few hours, make water, do some laundry and get the dinghy brought aboard. It wasn’t as smooth as I thought, the east winds roaring through the small open area along the small islet forming a barrier of sorts.

But we managed to get it all done.  And I washed down the dinghy and the boat too.  Its amazing how salty everything gets out here.  

We were making 65 gallons of fresh water an hour and it took about three hours to fill the tanks.

The pre-docking or abchoring beer is a prerequisite 

Once all our tasks were completed, we hoisted the anchor and drove off to Marsh harbor along with two other sailboats who, I’m happy to report, we passed.

We entered the harbor and slowly maneuvered through the anchorage (couple dozen anchored boats) to Harbor view marina where Vincent was waiting for us at slip 21.  In slip 20 was a big old Krogan 58.  Slip 21 was a few feet wider than we were and I had to back it in.

Did I mention how windy it was?  And that the current was running?

Entering Marsh Harbor

First try was a fail because I couldn’t see how the wind was effecting us.  No sight lines to the back of the boat.  So I moved it away, further to windward and backed again, this time without a problem.

Whew.  No colliding with anything other than the posts.

Vincent the dock hand helping Mary set up lines

The owner of the Krogan 58 which was next to us, came to help, providing hand signals etc.   But I think he was secretly making sure his 3 million dollar boat would be safe from us.

Looking out towards the harbor entrance through the anchorage

Our Krogren friend, Fred's bost

We tied up, took 30 minutes to get the lines and electrical straightened out.  Vincent is a patient man.  You’d think we hadn’t ever dome this docking thing we were so disorganized.

Finally after getting everything reasonably secure we walked up the dock to the office were a nice elderly lady and a more elderly gentleman provided info on the marina etc.

Tied up

Snappas Bar

We stopped at Snappas Bar for a drink before heading to Wally’s across the street where, so we are told, the food is good.  Snappas though is an interesting place, right on the water overlooking the harbor.  Of course I don't have a picture of that, but from their outside deck its quite the place for watching a sunset.

Wallys entrance

Great bar at Wallys

 Wally's has a great bar, much more peaceful than Snappas.  It's pricey.  But fun.  Met two women there who work at one of the marina's on Green Turtle.  They were a load of laughs as we compared their commute on a boat for 20 minutes to our past commutes of an hour in a car.

Well, they weren’t kidding about the good food.  Table clothes and really good drinks with a nice staff.  We will go back even thought it will cost us $100 again.

We returned to the boat, turned on all the A/C units and are showering and then going to bed.  We have dockside water ($17 for the first 3 days), no internet ($1 a day beginning tomorrow) and no pump out at the dock so we have to judicious with using the heads(bathroom).

Leaving Wally's for the marina right across the street

Tomorrow, well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.  Rain, so says the forecast.

We both slept till 9:30 in air conditioned comfort.  Ahhh …  I keep patting myself on the back for plunging in and doing all the work to get that aft AC unit fixed.

We didn’t do much all morning except read and I did a little internet banking. 

Later, I went over to the marina office for the wifi code.  I set it up on our local boat network  and its petty decent speed wise.

Walking up to Maxwell's through their parking lot

Maxwell's.  Just like a Publix.

The Royal Canadian Bank right past the BTC store in blue

I struck out to the BTC store a few miles away which is conveniently a block away from Maxwell's, the premier grocery store here.  It's really almost identical to a Publix with most everything we'd need.  Even name brands.

BTC office wasn’t all that helpful.  I have an account but can'o link my new phone to it.  So I don’t know whether I can add minutes/dollars to the data plan which we need to have for weather info.  But at least they gave me a few suggestions to try so who knows.

Next I stopped at the Royal Bank of Canada bank who’s ATM dispensed a $100 in cash.   Bahamian cash.  The fee was only $1.  I’m quite sure the international transaction fee, Bahamian VAT tax and what other little extras I don’t know about will propel that $1 to more like 5 or 6.  Oh well.

Why RBC has a branch here is a good question, one which I didn't ask. 

Aisles upon aisles

When I returned to the boat Mary was just finishing up washing the hull.  She rested, and I vacuumed, the accumulation of a few weeks anchoring.   Then we both walked to Maxwell's for a few things.  Its about 2 1/2 miles round trip, so if we have to stock up I’ll use the bike.

This trip though we only purchased a few things.  $70.  I used my debit card and it seemed to go through without an issue.  Except $70?  The lesson of stuffing the boat with everything you need before arriving over here echo’s in my head.  We did, I thought do a pretty decent stuffing job.  Except we ran out of wine after a week.  Had no little cocktail snacky things, and Mary ran out of cereal.  But our freezer is still full of meat, veggies and milk, bread and butter.

We got back, put everything away and then I went to the liquor store for wine.  Not a real good or cheap selection.  Ended up buying a $36 bottle of Pinot Noir which sells for $15.99 in Marathon.  Another "Oh well" moment. But a fifth of Captain Morgan is only $14.

We talked a little with our neighbors on a Krogan 58, Fred and Caroline.  Nice couple. Casablanca is the name of the boat.  They are from Texas and had previously owned a KK 42, then a 44 and now this 58.  They bought the bought in San Diego, had it shipped on a freighter to Florida before coming over here.  Beautiful boat!

And I ponder whether an item on amazon is worth the shipping costs ...

Think I’ve get a solution to our GPS/auto pilot woes so I’ll try tweaking that tomorrow.   Also planning on using our little green Machine upholstery shampooer thing to suck all the salt off the sun deck could.  At least we have plenty of water ($17 initially plus $5 per day)

Nice sunset tonight.

Sunset looking out over Marsh Harbor from our boat.

Party animals that we are, we went to bed at 9:30.  Yeah …

I spent a an hour configuring the autopilot interface this morning and it looks like its working fine,  This will be much better than the previous arrangement.  It required some virtual COM ports created by a program, GPSgate.  Those COM ports were active for the Garmin GPS antenna we had been using.  It's signal had to be routed to an old Garmin chart plotter,  a GPSMAP 215.  The 215 then split the GPS data to the Autopilot and the Navigation software we were running, Coastal Explorer. 

A few days ago I re-wired the interface cable to the autopilot but couldn’t get the Garmin out of the loop.  Turns out the COM port the autopilot was using wasn’t available, probably because I didn’t re-boot the PC when I did the re-wiring.

Anyway, now we don’t need the Garmin stuff (its 10 years old) and can just use the USB GPS antenna I purchased in Marathon.  And I can disable all the virtual COM ports.  Simplicity!

I know, I know.  A riveting story... not.

We did some laundry at the marina laundry room ($9) and I walked to the store for a few things.  The weather was forecast to become stormy and sure enough the clouds were gathering out to the SW and the Miami weather radar was a spectacular array of color.  So I put a few extra lines out, and battened everything down ready for the high winds and heavy rain. 

Talked with Fred who's next to us on the Korgan 58.  He was planning on leaving tomorrow but maybe re-thinking that idea.

The rains came around 9PM as we were having cocktails.  On the plus side, the rain washed all the salt off.  The downside was the bouncy ride we were treated too.  We were facing SW right on the wind so we hobby-horsed most of the night.  But the humidity was blown out with the passing storm so we wont have to run all the A/C units.

Today is chore day.  I charged up the dinghy batteries, bleed out the hydraulic power-tilt system on the dinghy outboard, shampooed the sundeck couch, trimmed my beard and washed off all our screens which were surprisingly dirty. 

Mary did laundry and vacuumed.  Not sure what we are doing the rest of the day, but its nice to have all the work completed before 3PM for once.

So long Fred and Caroline

We helped Fred and Caroline off the dock as they were headed to Lynyard key to anchor. It was windy but their boat, all 50+ tons of it, hardly moved.

Helped a sailboat off their dock a short time later and shared Chris Parker's Bahamas forecast too.  Aren’t I nice guy, pointed out a lady on Liquid Assets (boat behind us).  But your not getting getting any tips!

Our WD media player, the first generation is flaky.  It's not seeing many of the videos I’ve put out on our NAS(Network Attached Storage).   Doing a little research reveled its been a reported problem for some time.  That and its over five years old.  So I guess we are now on the search for another streaming device, probably one that can play blue ray etc too.

Watched a Fleming 65 come into the dock today with all this wind.  He had bow and stern thrusters, plus a steering station on the upper back deck.  I mean really … how easy can you make it … this from me who only has two engines and more windage than any of them.

Today I worked on re-constructing a lot of log notes today.  Google, fast becoming my enemy, dumped them so I have had to scramble back through old picture and log notes.  Took me most of the morning.

Mary started washing the boat today.  I did a few windows and re-aligned a wifi adapter so we can watch Frankie and Grace tonight on Netflix.  It seemed the antenna wasn’t picking up a strong enough signal even though every other device can watch Netflix just fine.

Later we walked to the Abaco Marina and Beach Resort (AMBR) the other side of the island, only a mile or so away.  Its an older resort, but well known and luxurious if not a little worn

AMBR beach frolicking

AMBR marina

 We had a beer at the pool bar and then walked back to the boat.

The bar at AMBR 

Mary though,stopped for an ice cream.  I did not.  But on the way we did see some interesting sights.

Its a condo / vacation rental building.

Another bar we didn't visit

Church up on a hill (I wasn't aware there were real hills here)

Walked back towards the store (Maxwells) but first stopped at the Royal Canadian Bank again.  It has a 24 hour ATM in a small vestibule.  A sweet lady guard inside the bank who I'm sure has difficulty keeping awake said hello through a microphone.

So for another 5.23 cents I was able to take $190 out of our checking account.  All Bahamian cash again, so we'll have to spend it before we head back to Florida

After that I swung by Maxwell's to buy a few things including bottled water.  Our supply has been dwindling of later and we’ll be anchored out for another two or so weeks.  I brought along a little cart which was previously Mary's stain glass equipment cart which we used to lug all her stuff to the stained glass classes in Green bay.  It's been re-purposed as a pretty decent grocery cart.

The route to the store has a good stretch of psuedo-sidewalks.  About half the route is typical sidewalk, but the other half is gravel, potholes, crushed rock from crumbled construction projects and other assorted debris.  It's a little hard on the poor carts' rubber wheels, but made it back fine.

Went over to Snappas again to get food to take out and while we waited we had a beer and some fried conch fritters.  Fried food again … reminiscent of going down the rivers where every restaurant we ate at specialized in fried food.  Almost a thousand miles of fried food.  It still makes me grimace.

We walked back with Philly cheese steaks (its one of their “specialties) and sat down to watch Netflix, Frankie and Grace.  Of course the damn WD media player would connect to Netflix again.  So instead of tearing into that problem we just watched two episodes on my laptop.  Tomorrow if I cant get it working I’m donating the damn thing to the marina.

Other than that, we went to bed early, rocking and rolling again because the last of the fronts is going through and the winds have picked up substantially.  We just might leave here Sunday for Man-of-War Cay and the anchorages there which provide a lee shore to the expected easterly winds on Monday and the rest of the week.

At least it was sunny out.  And not humid.

A number of boats did leave today,.  Not sure where they are gong though with these roaring west winds.

Geez, we woke up at 10 this morning.  Due I’m sure, mostly because of the band playing at Snappas, a few hundred yards away.   We;;, it wasn’t really a band, but a DJ.  Bass notes shook the boat.  They didn’t quit until 12:45AM which meant we did start falling asleep until 1AM.

I varnished the swim ladder steps and two of the main steps to the swim platform, but they still aren’t completely dry yet so I don’t think a second coat isn't going to happen.  We even contemplated leaving Sunday, a beautiful, windless day.  Weather is supposed to be storm free, but windy Monday and Tuesday,   The winds will be from the east which is the prevailing wind pattern here and the little islands (Cays) offer great protection from most NE to SE winds. 

Our Sony Blue Ray payer which at one time had a Netflix and YouTube component no longer has those options.  But it does now see network shares.   It updated itself when I got it connected to wifi.

The WD media player has Netflix and YouTube but wont connect to NetFlix, most likely because it doesn’t have a ESN (electronics serial number) which Netflix seems to want to use for device identification.

Nothing like old technology you have to replace.  Hey!  That could be a really profitable business model.  Wonder why no one has thought of it yet?  Anyway I spent several hours researching all that and playing around with configurations. 

I should get a Chromcast device and just use a laptop to cast Netflix etc. to the TV.   But again tonight,  I ran a HDMI cable from my laptop to the TV and we watched two episodes of Frankie and Grace.  A less than elegant solution.  But a solution.

This morning we walked to the store again for a few more things.  Mary bought some non Kalik beer from the liquor store across the street.  The store is a Sands Beer distributor and doesn’t sell Kalilk.  When she returned I noted I was low on rum and ran over there myself only see the gaily decorated  “CLOSED” sign swaying in the wind.  I don’t think they are open on Sunday, so maybe we’ll leave on Monday after all.

Laid out routes to Man-o-War, Green Turtle, Great Guana and Manjack cays tonight.  And completely forgot about Treasure Cay which is the only place offering any real protection from northwest winds which occur when we get a front blowing through.  Guess I’ll get that done tomorrow

Verified that the water heater tank is not leaking water.  It is either a leaky heat exchanger or, more likely, one of the fittings used to route hot anti freeze from the engine to the water heater's heat exchanger, is corroded.  Another thing to check in Stuart when we get back there.

The boat behind us, Liquidity is leaving tomorrow for Eleuthera .  The other boats here are mostly charter catamarans with groups of 4-6 people arriving with their luggage which is carted down to one of the charter boats.  They all board, spend a few hours with one of the charter guys and then the boat disappears in the morning before we get up.

Are we too leisurely?  Well, I guess they do have to sprint out there to have fun and then dash back in time to return to work.  All we have to do is get to the store before noon otherwise its too hot to walk,

Not a real loud music night here.  Thank goodness.  Maybe we can sleep a bit.

Mothers day.  We went to Wally’s for brunch around 11:30.  It was us and a really (and I mean old) elderly couple for a good portion of the time we were there.  Other families began to drop in to the restaurant after noon.

Sundaes for breakfast?  Well it is Mothers day after all

We had ok food, and finished off breakfast with sundae’s.  Mary left after getting impatient with the waitress who wasn’t real fast.  I finally got the bill and paid it.

Mary, even on mothers day started to wash the windows.  I cleaned up the dinghy and washed up the solar panels because they had some weird film on them which I think happened when I chased a bunch of birds off and they, indignant for being shooed away, left reminders of their displeasure. In rained shortly after which dissolved what they left leaving a nice cloudy sheen.  The power drop was only an amp or two, but still!

Mary did a last load of laundry while I walked to Maxwells' for the for some last minute grocery items.  In search of rum, I found out about a liquor store, Davids.  It was the only one open on Sunday and located about ½ mile further up the street from Maxwell. 

Davids was kinda of funny.  The clerk, maybe it was David even, was all decked out in a brilliant white suite with a huge, almost a foot long silver cross dangling from his neck.  Very nice man with rum and Kalik beer too.

Kailk hidden under the guise of Bud Light

He didn't have a Kalik Beer carrier so after much joshing around I ended up with a Bud Light carrier.

Luckily I had the cart with me and traffic was light.  The sidewalks here are more trail-like, than sidewalks in many spots along the street.

After we had everything put away we finished up the windows and I, going from the dock to the boat stepped in between the dock and the boat and went flying don on the deck.  Luckily only a small gash on by leg.

The cause … my glasses.  They were bifocals and I had been looking down forgetting which glasses I had on.  So I stepped where the reading part of the glasses showed the boat deck.  I was a little off.

Tad (Yes, Tad not Todd), on a catamaran was asking around for a snake, as in plumbing snake.  I had one last year but it was so rusty and cracked I threw it out.  But I directed him to the big hardware store here only a short distance away.  Open on Monday!

Idyll time, this Krogan 48 we first ran into at Marathon and spotted at Hope Town, pulled in to the dock next to us.

Now, after showering, cleaning up and watching some more Frankie an Grace on Netflix, the dockside power just dropped off for the whole marina.  No AC tonight for us, our last night here.   Wonderful.

It's not a rare event when power either browns out or completely dies over here in the islands.  Maybe that's why we all have generators?

The marina office opened at 9AM and while Mary took care of that I started disconnecting lines and the dockside water and electric.  The wind had started picking up out of the east so when we finally did get all the lines off we were being pushed into the dock.  Not hard, but nudged.  The starboard bow line caught on on of the posts and Jeff and Sue on Idyll Time next to us used a boat hook to help Mary get the line off.

I pushed off the dock and off we went.  Once outside the entrance channel I engaged the autotpilot and its working like a charm.  Much better than before.  I maybe be able to scrap the whole Garmin setup now.

Here we are ... anchored over an old truck

In our new, junk free spot

It took us maybe an hour to get to Man-o-War Cay and we anchored about 100 yards off shore.  Oddly though there was a weird coral formation right below the bow which didn’t look right.  So after a time, I got out the fins and masks and dove down for a look.

Anchored right over a truck

That's our anchor chain lying on top of the cab

The fish love the old truck

An old pickup truck, complete with engine.  It was right below our bow.  And the anchor chain was hanging right above it.  It was down a good 12 feet and was home to a whole bunch of fish. 

Not a good thing to have anchor chain over a truck wreck.  The chain could easily catch on the frame and we’d be stuck trying to untangle it when we hauled up the anchor.  So we moved, about a ¼ mile north and found a different, and junk free area to anchor. 

It's known that this general area has several junk deposits around and luckily the water is clear enough to get a hazy idea of whats down there. 

We never did take the dinghy down, just hung out o the boat and did some computer work.  Had dinner, watched an episode of Frankie and Grace through our Bahama phone data connection and then went to bed.  We did run the generator for a few hours again.

The batteries are holding up wonderfully.  I was concerned earlier since the solar panels were only putting out 7 – 10 amps, but the display was showing actual charging amps, not raw, solar panel output.  Seems the display options had been tweaked somehow.  Tweaked back now so we’re good.

Tomorrow we’ll take the dinghy into the Harbor and then head 4 miles north to Fowl Cay for some diving on the reef there.  It’s supposed to be wonderful.

It was rocky last night with the winds picking up late pushing the SSE swells. Fowl Cay, so close but also so rough.  Again, weather pretty much put the kibosh on a snorkeling/diving adventure.  

Man-o-War harbor entrance

East Harbor

West Harbor

We did take the dinghy down and went into Man-O-War Cay Harbor.  The entrance is a cut right out of solid rock.  There is the east and west harbors.  The east is a fair anchorage and was full.  Not much around there except a boat repair shop.

The west harbor is where all the marinas are located.  And most of the town.

After puttering the length of the west harbor looking for a dinghy dock we finally tied up at a marina's dock and when I told the girl in the office she didn’t think we need to pay anything.  OK, fine with me.

No one seemed to mind if we toed up our dinghy in a slip

We walked along Bay street.  It’s a quaint little village with brightly colored buildings and most surprisingly, a concrete paved road.  Thick too, like a foot.  But the only vehicular traffic we noticed were golf carts.

When I went by Edwins' boat repair shop there was a large sailboat out of the water on the slipway.

Big gash.  A long slit runs aft too

It had a long gash about the length of the whole hull and a separate oval gash which was being worked on by two guys with a large grinder.

I talked with the woman on board.  They, (two sons and her husband), were from Nova Scotia and had been cruising down here in the Bahamas since last June.  They were on their way back and had entered  Old Ship Channel, a channel once used by Disney Cruise boats years ago.  In 20+ feet of water they and as it turns out 2 other boats, hit a submerged piling, holing the hull and then making that long gash. 

They managed to get back to Man-o-War and Edwins.  One of the other sailboats I guess sank with no loss of life.  The other boat, a 52 Grand Banks drove up on the beach to keep from sinking.

Frightening story!  Especially since we have to traverse the same route in next week.

Continuing on we walked around the town which consists largely of little homes along “lanes”, or very narrow streets. 

The Post Office

Public Library

The High School on Uncle Tweedies Lane

The elementary school

It’s a quiet little place.

We stopped in at Hibuscus for lunch, the last ones before they closed up for the afternoon.  There are two restaurants on the island.  Hibiscus and Dock and Dine by the marina.  Good food here, no beer though.

The island is dry except there is a rumor that Dock and Dine serves beer now.  We, of course, chose the dry one and were treated to a lengthy dissertation on missionary activities by our waitress. dry place.   She's a long time resident and related how she grew up in the islands but I forgot most of it and didn't write down what I remembered except the island was quite a bit different back then.  They are quite religious here.

Man-o-War ocean side beach

After lunch we walked to the ocean side and took a stroll along a coral strewn beach before walking back down Queens highway (still just a single lane) to the grocery store where we lucked out. 

Grocery Store and the crowd gathering becasue of the fresh bread delivery

They had just delivered fresh bread, I got the last unreserved loaf, and we beat the surging crowd (about a dozen people) cramming in to the store as I was checking out.

And yes, people do call ahead to reserve a loaf of bread here.  

For some reason Bahamain bread is really good.  Maybe its just that “they” say its so good and we don’t know any better.  But still, it really is good!

Finally made it back to the marina, and took the dinghy back to our boat.  The winds had moderated so we decided to make a quick visit to Fowel Cay, a reputed good dive site.

It was abut 3.5 miles away and as we approached there were several other people on the little beach.  We couldn’t see any mooring buoys for snorkeling and diving, but we went into the beach anyway.  Its was very shallow and I had to leave the dinghy about ¼ mile off the beach in the sand because the tilt mechanism for the outboard wasn't working well..

The small contingent, maybe a dozen people, were Germans I think.  They had dinghied over from a large catamaran anchored a short distance away.  They had a captain who was up in a little gezvbo while his charges frolicked in this little sand filled tidal pool.

I wish I had brought a camera.  Oh my, the water was as warm as any Florida pool for seniors.  Wonderful.  But we couldn’t stay.  The darn power tilt on the dinghy motor was leaking somewhere (check valve I think) so the motor would always drop down to its running position.  In a foot and a half of water, the prop and skeg bury in the sand and with the swells, that could cause some damage.  So we had to leave.  Dragging Mary away from warm water, other Germans and dead things on the beach is not easy.

Tomorrow we’re not sure what we’ll be doing, or if we’re even leaving.  We have a few weeks to make it back to Florida so there is no rush.  Except the weather is forecast to be very calm over the weekend and we need to traverse that Old Ship Channel which leads out to Whale Cay passage, an inlet to the ocean and a short 2 mile ride before another inlet where we would re-enter the banks.

The Bahamas are essentially a series of islands (Cays) that serve as barrier to the Atlantic.  Behind the islands (to the west) is the Sea of Abaco.  Sea of Abaco is shallow, around 20 feet or less, and incredibly clear and sandy.  Reefs are usually found on the islands ocean side.  The Sea of Abaco is usually very calm and great for cruising except for some shallow areas.  However between Whale Cay and Great Guana Cay there is a 2 mile stretch where the open ocean is the only avenue of travel.
There is a very shallow channel on the Sea of Abaco side which boats drawing less than 4 feet can use, but most vessels have to use Whale Cay Passage.

So we all venture out into Whale Cay Passage.  But the weather has to be reasonable to do this.  But more about that later when we actually do  it.

We hauled up the anchor and left to go to Great Guana Cay about 11AM.  It was only 8 miles north.

Anchored in Settlement Bay

We arrived and anchored in Fisher Bay, near Settlement Bay which is the small harbor surrounded by the town.  Well, lets say buildings becasue there really isn't a town..

Tied up at Nippers dock

Grabbers 

Looking out towards the anchorage from Grabbers Bar 

In the afternoon we took the dinghy into Settlement Bay and tied up to Nippers dock.  Nippers is another of those iconic must see bars. and walked around the island.  Stopped at Grabbers bar first which looks out west towards where we are anchored.

Grabbers Beach

Then walked the other way looking for Nippers but ending up on private road which had beach access. 

The incorrect path to the beach and Nippers ...

... but at least the wrong path had some accessibility equipment

So we went out to the beach and Nippers as a few hundred yards away.  We evidently took the wrong road.  We walked up the beach a ways and then back to Nippers to have a drink and maybe eat.

Nippers which over looks the beach

Nippers bar

The reef at Nippers beach

Nippers, well known as a fun place was sort of dead but at least they were playing tolerable CW music.  Grabbers was blasting this pop drivel which was hard to tune out because it was so annoyingly bad, and loud.

Another view of Nippers

The real path to Nippers ... take a left at the cemetery 

We took a stroll up the beach a ways past Nippers.  Great  beach and the reef was right there a few hundred yards off the beach.   It's too bad we didn't have any snorkel gear.

Strolling the large beach 

On the correct path to Nippers there is this!

Anyway we had a beer at Nippers and then, with  a couple we briefly met at the beach,  we tried to find the exit road exit.  It took an embarrassing few minutes but we found it. It was a small little lane behind the bar.  We escaped and went back to Grabbers where we were the only ones there for a good bit of time.  We each had a drink.  

I had my usual Captain Morgan and water.  The bartender basically filled the glass with rum and splashed  a little water on top.  Yikes!  As I think back it was probably a ploy becasue I ordered another one.

Not real weak

Their kitchen was closed until tomorrow for cleaning and re-modeling but we were able to order a burger for me and ribs for Mary. 

Later we walked the beach and talked with a guy who lives in Florida but owns a house near Back Beach Marina on the north end.  He explained how to get from the anchorage to the grabbers beach.

Me sitting in a hammock at Grabbers looking out cross the beach to the anchorage

Another fellow we we met mentioned the good snorkeling near Nippers.  There is an extensive reef off the beach about a 100 yards.  So we’ll try that tomorrow.  Maybe with the couple who we met at Nippers trying to find the exit road. They are dong much the same thing we are.  Dive/snorkeling tomorrow.

Later back at the boat we tried out the wiMax wifi service I signed up for.  Its good for a week.  But it's glacially slow.  We couldn’t get a Netflix movie going so resorted to the phone again.

It was windy and cloudy all day today.  Not a typical tropical sunshiny day.   In afternoon rained a few times so I had to close up the fly bridge.  Then spent some time fine tuning the routes I had to Green Turtle and Noname keys. 

I talked with Merlin, the sailboat couple we met yesterday about Treasure Cay and if there was room for us to anchor or take a mooring and he called us back on the VHF after a few hours when they arrived.  Yes, plenty of moorings.  So we debated on going the 10 miles today or wait until tomorrow.  Decided tomorrow.  The winds, although out of the west in late morning will be light so hopefully we can grab a mooring without as much trouble as we had in Hope Town.

The pendants on the moorings here in the Bahamas are short and hard to reach.  And we have a bow about 9 feet off the water so its doubly arduous to snag a pendant and get  a line through it before the boat drifts off.

Someone constructed a strange tepee like artifact here

The spoil island eastern side

Looking out towards Whale Cay Passage

The calmer western side of the spoil island

Later we took the dinghy over to the spoil island near Old Shipping Channel.  It’s the island formed when Disney dug out the channel for their cruise ship to dock, so passengers could get out and frolic in the sandy beach.  Its long since been abandoned but the island remains.  Supposedly it’s a good shelling beach but it was rough and windy and we didn’t see much although I’m not the real beach comber here.

We rode back in rough seas which was making the throttle handle jump around and decreasing the engine RPM which meant we’d get off plane and get bounced around by the waves. 

It was only a 4 mile run, but felt like 20.

We stopped at the boat briefly and then took the dinghy back to Nippers dock and went into "town" so Mary could buy some stuff.   Against my better judgement I bought a bottle of wine.  Yuk …

Large ray cruising the Nippers dock

We came back to the boat and had cocktails and used the internet connection for awhile until it go so slow we gave up.

Mary identified this fish, a Short Nosed Bat Fish.  Like who knew

Had dinner, and watched a Frankie and Grace episode using the Bahamas phone internet connection.  It did the whole episode too which was surprising since I had received a message this morning about having used 75% of our data plan. 

We leave tomorrow for Treasure Key to wait out some weather.  Two cold fronts are swooping down from the US east coast but they are being touted as minor and shouldn’t have much of an effect on us down here aside from clocking the winds around to the west and northwest.

Most every anchorages here is orientated to act as a lee shore for the typical easterly winds.  Treasure Key is one of the few that we can use to ride out westerlies.