Happy in Hope Town

Desperately seeking an internet signal

Shipwrecked Sailors.... and happily ever after in Hope Town

February 25, 2009

Shipwrecked sailors… and happily ever after in Hope Town.

(Due to the weak internet signals here we have not been able to attach any pictures recently. We’ll keep trying!)

We spent four nights in Marsh Harbour last week at the Harbour View Marina. ($1 a foot) The marina is owned and run by Troy Cornea who purchased it after it was devastated by hurricane Floyd in 1999. This is one of the best run marinas we have come across during our travels in Florida and the Bahamas. Troy is always available to help whether it’s with boating problems or setting up cable T.V. so that ‘Southern Vectis’ can get better reception! The marina has a lovely pool area, and ‘Snappers’ restaurant, a lively bar, is also part of the operation. The majority of boats are sailboats, and many are ‘regulars’ with reserved seasonal dockage.
For the first couple of days we explored, and visited the supermarket to stock up on food. We were pleased to see Glen and Louise pull in on ‘Gray North’, a 47 foot Beneteau from Ottawa. We had met them in Green Turtle Cay. Their guest, Pamela also from Ottawa, had just arrived for a week of sailing, so we invited them on board for a drink on Thursday. On Friday we went over to their dock to help them off as they were bound for Hope Town, where they had taken a mooring buoy for the month. They were docked at Mangoes Marina, right next door to our dock. That’s when the excitement began! Glen was reversing his large boat out of the dock when the transmission failed and he lost control of the steering. It was windy, and, to cut a long story short, ‘Gray North’ headed towards our dock and was eventually tethered after doing some damage to one of the docked boats. But this was not the end of the story. Troy and his team pulled ‘Gray North’ out into the harbour, at which point Glen, who was not sure exactly what the problem was, put the boat into forward gear……and it went shooting backward and crashed heavily into some docking posts, causing damage to the transom. The boat was taking in water at this point, and again Troy and his helpers, with much advice offered by the many boat owners who had suddenly shot out of their cabins with all the excitement,
brought it into a dock and set up pumps to stop the boat from sinking.
While all this drama was happening, Pamela, the guest who had little experience with boats, was still on board. It was decided that the boat would be towed around to a boat yard and taken out of the water for repairs, so off it went. Pamela had come over to sit on our boat to get over all the shock, and we told her she’d be welcome to stay. So that’s how we inherited our first, and very perfect guest. Glen and Louise decided to stay on board their dry-docked boat but, the next day being Saturday and the day we had planned to leave for Hope Town, we all had lunch together, and then ‘Southern Vectis’ set off with Pamela, Glen and Louise, for Hope Town to take up ‘Gray North’s mooring buoy. Hope Town harbour entrance is very shallow, so we needed to go in an hour before high tide. We were very pleased to have Glen and Louise to point out their mooring spot, as, faced with 60 boats all closely packed together and swinging on their moorings, it would have been difficult to find it otherwise. Glen and Louise caught the ferry back to Marsh Harbour that night, and are still awaiting the verdict on repairs needed for their lovely boat. Pamela spent another night on board and then transferred to the pretty Hope Town Harbour Lodge for two nights. We really enjoyed her short stay with us, and spent a lovely day on the beach, and dinner out at the ‘Harbour’s Edge’ restaurant. She is en route to snowy Ottawa as I write this.
As always, the boating life is a very social one! We were pleased to make contact again with Lawrence and Jane on ‘Esprit’, and Lane and Marilyn on ‘Spirit’, and had a good evening on board ‘Southern Vectis’ the other night. It was also good to get to know David and Jill, our neighbours on the catamaran, ‘Jilly Q’.
So now here we sit on our lovely inherited mooring in lovely Hope Town. It is a beautiful spot, and will be even more so when the wind of this latest cold front goes down a bit in a couple of days, and the temperatures rise from a mere 18C to 25C. We have climbed the 101 stairs of the Hope Town lighthouse, one of the few still manually operated in the original manner with a kerosene-fuelled lamp. We have explored the town, and walked the lovely Atlantic beach, and plan to rent bicycles tomorrow to ride further south on Elbow Cay. We are not sure how long we’ll be here, but we hope to hear from Glen and Louise that their boat will be on the water again soon, so that they can come and take up their mooring again. Many people take long-term moorings here, and stay for the winter!
BIRTHDAYS: It was our granddaughter, LILY’s second birthday on the 19th February – HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY. ‘Aunty’ Louisa flew over from Toronto as a surprise for Lily’s party on Sunday.
HAPPY BITHDAY JOHN. It is my brother, John’s birthday today. He is spending it with all his family at a lovely resort in Antigua. I spoke on the phone to him, and they are having a wonderful time.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELODY. It will be Melody, my niece’s birthday on Friday 27 Have a super day, Melody.

Extreme sports and finding paradise

Tuesday February 17, 2009 – Little Harbour, Great Abaco Island

‘Extreme Sports’ and finding paradise.

We have been unable to get an internet connection for a few days as, although we have signed up for the ‘Out Island Internet’ service, it seems only to work spasmodically here at Little Harbour. We could receive messages on Saturday, but not send any, or get into Google or our ‘Blog’ site. Since then we’ve not been able to connect at all. But we have been having a good …and adventurous time since we last wrote.
We left Hatchet’s Bay, Eleuthera, about a week ago – Tuesday 10 February. The wind seemed favourable and we were keen to get back to the Abaco Islands. As we sped through ‘Current Cut’ on the way to Spanish Wells at 11.5 knots (5 knots of current assisting us) I held tightly to the wheel and my nerves, struggling to keep us on a straight path between the walls of jagged limestone. We made it, but little did we know that an even greater challenge lay ahead of us in a couple of days! We docked at Spanish Wells and were made to feel most welcome by Treadwell, the dock master. We were pleased to see Les and Kathy on Ragtop II. They had been at Hatchet’s Bay earlier that week. We decided that we would ‘buddy boat’ across the 50 miles of Atlantic known as the ‘Northeast Providence Channel’ the next day. So, on Thursday morning we left just before 7 a.m. to follow our pilot, a local character by the name of ‘Ole Pot’, through the coral heads of Ridley Cut to begin our passage. (‘Ole Pot’ is an interesting character. His direct forebears were some of the ‘Eleutherian Adventurers’, who came to settle the island from Britain in the 1640s…or so he told us!)
We had chosen Thursday for our long passage as our weather guru, Chris Parker, had forecast a favourable wind change to the south-east at about 15 knots. Well, it turned out that there was no wind that day, only a fairly large south-easterly swell – 10 to 12 foot waves, but at long intervals. We were rocking and rolling for about nine hours, but all was well, and Les even caught a four-foot Mahi-Mahi fish! The fish didn’t bite for Bill unfortunately! (Not sure we would have known what to do with a four-foot fish anyway.) The first sight we had of our destination – Little Harbour Cut, Great Abaco – was the white spume of huge waves crashing against the shore and rocky outcrops. We weren’t too worried at first, but as we got closer we could see that the surf was not just crashing on the rocks at each side of the narrow cut between the barrier islands into the Sea of Abaco, it was crashing all across the cut. We had to trust to our GPS waypoints and nerves to get us through – there was no way back! We led the way, but just as we hit the surf my hand-held GPS started flashing a red danger sign saying ‘low battery’, and the chartplotter, for some strange reason, lost the course line through the cut! We held on for dear life and hoped our course would take us through. When we turned around to look at the 12 foot breaking waves that were carrying us forward we couldn’t at first see Les and Kathy in their 30 foot Hunter. Suddenly they emerged on the top of another huge surfing wave. Kathy managed to take a photo of us disappearing into the trough, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the rocks! We made it though, and slunk along the sheltered shore of Lynyard Cay to relax, drink lots of gin, and anchor for the night. Les and Kathy gave us some of their fish, and we had a lovely fish fry for supper.
The next day both boats decided to go and take up a mooring at Little Harbour, just a mile or so south of the wicked Little Harbour Cut. (We didn’t have to go back through it!!) Bill and I dinghied over to check out the area, and loved it at first sight. The entrance, shallow at low tide, leads into a circular, palm fringed bay. We phoned ‘Pete’s Pub’, the only commercial activity in Little Harbour, and found that the tide was just right for our entry – we figured we could get through the entrance an hour each side of high tide.
We have been here ever since, tied securely to a mooring, and we have had a wonderful time. Pete’s pub is right on the beach. Pete is the son of Randolph Johnston, who settled here with his family in the 1950s and set up a foundry for bronze casting of his sculptures. The foundry and the art gallery border the beach, as do some lovely houses. Friday night is locals’ night at Pete’s Pub. We dinghied over and met some very friendly people, particularly David and Lenore, who invited us for drinks at their house the following day. Their house is most unusual, on many levels with views of the both the Atlantic and the bay. All the houses are powered by solar power and use rainwater cisterns. David and Lenore will be bringing their trawler, ‘Mr. G’, up to Kingston this summer to join a group from the Cruising Club of America. They expect to leave it in Canada for the winter and we were able to give them some useful tips. That evening Bill and I joined Les and Kathy for a Valentine’s dinner overlooking the beach at Pete’s.
Since then we’ve been hiking, fishing and generally enjoying everything this lovely out-of-the-way spot has to offer. Everyone we’ve met here, whether a local or a cruiser, has been extremely friendly and helpful. As an example of this, we awoke early on the morning after our Valentine’s night out at the pub to find our dinghy half-deflated and upside-down in the water, with the motor submerged! The gremlins, in the form of one of us dislodging an air-valve as we left the dinghy in the dark, had been at work again. Bill worked on the engine that morning, and was given so much advice by the neighbourhood that by the afternoon it was running fine once more. We hope it will last out the rest of our trip! Last night we were invited for a drinks party on a nearby catamaran owned by Andy and Alice who’ve been visitors here for eight years. Later that evening David and Lenore came aboard ‘Southern Vectis’ and we chatted more about their trip to Lake Ontario this summer. A cold front came through last night with heavy winds gusting to 30 knots and we were happy to be securely tied to a mooring and not anchored. Today we plan to travel 20 miles north to Marsh Harbour once more, to provision the boat, get an internet connection and buy some top-up cards for our Bahamian pay-as-you-go cell phone. We must wait until about 1 p.m. for the tide to be right for the channel. We’ll go over to Hope Town later in the week, after our stay in Marsh Harbour.

Hanging out in Hatchet's Bay

Monday 9 February

We are still firmly tied to the dock at Hatchet Bay, and have now become part of the scenery! Bob & Carole on ‘Sea Change’ left to move south last Thursday. They had a deadline to be in Staniel Cay in the Exumas for visits by family and friends. We decided that we’d like to linger a little, and as the weather with its incessant cold fronts seemed set in (now we know why a lot of people we met in Florida do not stir in this direction until April!) it seemed like a good idea to stay tucked into ‘The Safest Harbour in the Bahamas’- particularly as it’s free! Locals and boaters are very friendly; the Water’s Edge Internet Café is the local meeting place and pub; there are a lot of beach hikes and beach combing expeditions; Carl & Evi on ‘Three Belles’, the black schooner moored in the bay, have joined us in some adventures such as the fish fry (snapper with heads attached and staring eyes) at the new restaurant and gift shop owned and run by a graduate of Dalhousie University, N.S., and ‘Double D’s’ 39^th ++ birthday pool party at the lovely Rainbow Inn just down the road. ‘Double D’ is the owner of the Internet Café. Her name is Debbie, but she gets her nickname for another reason!!

What a party! The four of us got a lift there in the back of a pick-up truck. The mix of guests was interesting – from 8 year old guitar playing little boys, to flautists, to every sort of music maker taking part in a fantastic jam session which culminated in the arrival of Lennie Kravitz, great blues and rap singer, who is a local and is producing his latest album on a beach around here. We left as the full moon came up, as we had to hitch-hike the 5 miles or so back to the dock. We gave Carl & Evi a ten minute start, and then followed them up to the road. We got a lift in no time! You may be wondering why a couple of conservative grandparents would be hitching on deserted country roads in a strange land – well, everyone does it here. It is common practice if you want to get from one place to another. DON’T try it at home though! Today we rented a car to visit some of the other little villages and lovely beaches. We had lunch at a nice little restaurant in Governor’s Harbour, ‘The Buccaneer’ – about 25 miles south of here. We have decided that we won’t sail further south this year but will leave our exploration of the Exumas to a future year and different time of the year. We’ll be heading back to Spanish Wells, and then across the 50 mile stretch of Atlantic called the ‘New Providence Channel’ to the delights of the Abacos Islands later this week when the wind and seas calm down, and start blowing from the south.

Holed up in Hatchet Bay

We are sitting out a cold front here in Hatchet Bay, “Home of the Country’s Safest Harbour”, on the west coast of Eleuthera. We spent five days at Spanish Wells waiting for the last cold front to move through on Friday, so when a short weather window opened up on Sunday we took advantage of it to move further south. You may wonder how we get weather forecasts while afloat. Well, it’s not that easy, but a weather picture of the next few days or so can usually be cobbled together through a variety of sources, depending where in the Bahamas you are. The most popular method for boaters in the Bahamas, and those making passage throughout the rest of the Caribbean area and the Gulf of Mexico, is to tune in to Chris Parker’s broadcasts on the Single Sideband Radio (SSB) if you have one. We do, and we listen to him give a general synopsis of the weather patterns at 6:30 each morning, followed by a question and answer period for specific boats who have paid for this personalized service. (Carole and Bob have signed up to get e-mail forecasts, and can also phone Chris.) Unfortunately our SSB reception can be very poor to non-existent at times. Weather forecasts for the Abacos can be heard on the Marsh Harbour ‘Cruisers Net’ which broadcasts on channel 68 at 8:15 a.m. There are also various forecasts to be found on the internet, provided you can find an internet connection. (We have been using out enhanced wi-fi antenna, and usually we’ve been lucky to find signals so far. but our luck may run out when we get to the small islands of the Exumas.) In addition to all of the above, you’ll usually get the drift of what meteorological delights await you by just chatting with other boaters……and so many of them are Canadians who are, of course, very much attuned to weather!

Our trip from Spanish Wells to Hatchet Bay was not without excitement as we had to pass through the ominous sounding ‘Current Cut’, pick the right time of the tide and, once through, turn sharply to starboard (right) thus neatly avoiding the craggy rocks to the right and sand bar on our left. Sea Change paved the way, and we followed along in their wake! So far so good. However, now we were head-on into the 20 to 28 knot winds and 6-8 foot swells for the 18 miles or so to Hatchet Bay. We made it only to be confronted by an almost invisible and unbelievably narrow entrance between limestone cliffs which would lead us into Eleuthera’s safest harbour! Well……we made it, but as the mooring buoys were all taken, and the holding for anchoring was not too secure, we were advised by a neighbouring boat to tie up at the old town dock. So here we are, tied up against the crumbling concrete wall of what was once, before hurricane Andrew’s 200 mph winds, a thriving marina*. We can walk into the little town of ‘Alice’ – not at all like it’s Australian equivalent. Yesterday we spent some time at the Internet Cafe, and later had lunch sitting outside admiring the turquoise seas and clear blue skies.Today, if the stormy winds and rain drift off into the Atlantic, we hope to do the same. Later we may all take a taxi into Governor’s Harbour, about 15 miles south, for dinner. We are not sure when we’ll be able to squeeze between the rocky sentinels and navigate the dizzying swells at the harbour mouth to carry on with our passage south to Powell Point, the jumping off spot for the Exuma chain of islands. We’ll be in touch!

P.S.* A footnote on hurricane Andrew. Hatchet Bay, with its reputation as Eleuthera’s safest harbour, was packed with boats when the hurricane hit head-on. Many of the wrecks are still to be seen around the harbour’s edge and further afield! We should not complain about a mere 40 knot blow-out!