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.