Category: 2017-18 Voyage to The Bahamas

Arrived here at 11 after a slightly bumpy motor trip, those darn north winds. The so called easterlies have mostly stayed somewhere other than the Bahamas. Bob expected a slack tide when we came through Current Cut but we had a two knot current against us.

No response from the marina after repeated calls on the radio so we pulled up to the face dock and a woman from a rather lovely yacht came out to help us tie up temporarily. Bob had to go search for staff to find out where our slip was. We are in the “Canadian Row”.

All the boats in our row of slips are from Canada; Halifax, Toronto & Montreal. I had a wonderful shower and we then had lunch at the Marina restaurant. It’s surprising how cool it is in the shade when the north wind is blowing.

Next important task was walking to the liquor store. We scored white wine under $10 a bottle and had a drink a Buddas to celebrate. We were prepared to handle carrying six bottles of wine back to the boat; back packs ?.

We’ve really enjoyed seeing the gardens most houses have, huge hedges of bougainvillea and houses are painted in lovely pastel colours.

We’ve been hoping to buy a piece of original artwork depicting the wonderful colours of the Bahamas but no luck so far. We did buy a wooden key holder made by a student at the local school. Speaking of original artwork, here’s a picture of an interesting outdoor piece.

We celebrated St Patrick’s day with a nine hour motor sail crossing to the Abacos, left the dock at 7:30 am and dropped the anchor at Lynyard at 4:30 pm. – 52 nm. The conditions were about as benign as one could get. Gentle swells with a long period and just enough wind to boost our speed enough to be able to run the engine at lower rpms. We were sailing in a depth of 15,000 feet and the swells coming on our starboard from open water to the Atlantic had travelled all the way from North Africa – quite amazing.

Worst case scenario based on the conditions had been a 10.5 hour trip, we  bested that by 1.5 hours thanks to the sails, a bit of current in our favour and no opposing waves.

There are quite a few boats at the anchorage but lots of room. We want to try getting into Little Harbour, a very protected spot, but it has to be done at high tide or close to it, the entrance channel has a spot which is 4 feet at low tide. Next low tide today is around 7:30 pm so we’ll try tomorrow. Meanwhile it’s finally warm enough and not windy so we were able to have dinner in the cockpit.

Nice quiet overnight at the dock. Today was errands day, groceries and laundry. Spanish Wells has a very well stocked grocery store and luckily for us, within walking distance of the marina. Those backpacks have come in very handy for hauling groceries and wine bottles. The other important stop was the “other’ liquor store to see if we can get a case of Kalik  beer in cans. Buddas yesterday had only Kalik Light which was just not an option, it’s lightly coloured water pretending to be beer. They would not get another shipment until next week. The other store had a partial case left, four cans missing, but the lovely young woman at the cash took four single cans out of the fridge to make up the 24.  Good thing it was a short walk back to the boat.

‘We saw a few houses for sale and looked up one of the. It was 3 bedrooms, 1,800 sq.ft, asking price was $470,000 USD. It looked very nice in the pictures.

Many large trawlers arrived at the marina today along with one yacht that was 150 feet +. Arriving for the weekend perhaps ?

We walked to the Shipyard for dinner, it’s at the north east corner of Spanish Wells. We’ve noticed that Spanish Wells has much higher population of whites than any other place we’ve visited in the Bahamas. We assume it’s because the island was originally settled by a religious group fleeing persecution in Bermuda. They were ship wrecked off Eleuthera in 1648  and the survivors lived in a large cave, now known as Preacher’s Cave, for many years. A group of them finally decided to leave the cave and founded the settlement of Spanish Wells.

Our young white waitress, Sierra, had an interesting accent, sounded slightly Aussie, so we asked her if she was from Spanish Wells. She was and said her family had lived there for hundreds of years. She also said she loved Spanish Wells, that it had no crime, people don’t lock their doors. Her only complaint was the cost of groceries, they go to the US on lobster boats during their off season, to stock up.

After morning coffee in the cockpit Bob called Pete’s Pub in Little Harbour to see of there were any free mooring balls, the answer was yes. We quickly got the anchor up and headed over to make sure we’d be going through that shallow entrance channel in low tide.  There is a bit of weather coming in on Wed/Thursday, but nothing like our stay at Stocking Island. Bob phoned the Marina at Hope Town to see if we could get a slip but no luck.

The shallowest water we saw in the channel was under seven feet, that was at high tide. There were several free mooring balls,  we saw a couple of boats come out of the harbour before we got there so we knew we’d be ok. We wanted to get a mooring as close to Pete’s as possible to make getting to shore easy. Lucky on that front, we got one very close, we’ll be able to row to shore which means we don’t have to do battle to get the outboard on.

It’s a very pretty totally protected harbour. Bob has some boat maintenance to do and we decided we would stay here until Friday morning. We don’t expect that the higher winds forecast for later this week will be that bad but why not hang in a nice spot where we’ll be able to go ashore every day despite what the winds are doing outside the harbour.

Bob rowed the boat ashore, lalaaa, and we had lunch at Pete’s sitting with a couple from Kincardine and a threesome, as in friends without privileges, from Oriental NC. It’s always fun comparing notes with other boaters. Lunch was good, fresh fish again – it’s a good life even if I shouldn’t have had that second large glass of wine.

 

 

We’ve really enjoyed the last three days at Little Harbour.  Bob has changed the fuel filter, oil change still to go. We’ve gone ashore each day and done some walking. We’re now regulars at Pete’s Pub, they remember Bob’s name. There is a walkway from Pete’s to the Atlantic side but it’s not a really long sandy beach in that spot.

Today walked to a former lighthouse near the entrance point to the channel into the harbour. It’s a stone building that is now quite crumbled, we don’t know when it became non-operational as a lighthouse. It was very windy so seeing the whitecaps outside the harbour made us happy we were in our little harbour.

We could see the anchorages at Lynyard Cay where we anchored with many other boats the day we arrived from Spanish Wells, there was one boat, I was surprised to see even one. Because of the winds, we put the motor on the dinghy, rowing to shore would not have been hard as the winds were from the north would push us to shore but rowing back might have taken a while. We also want to go for a bit of a circumnavigation of the harbour which would take way too long without the motor.  We’ll do that either Thursday or Friday when the winds have died down. We’re leaving here on Saturday.

Randolf Johnston, a sculptor from Toronto and his wife and three kids moved to Little Harbour in 1952. His son owns Pete’s Pub and Gallery that houses many of his fathers and Pete’s beautiful – and very expensive – bronze sculptures. We had hoped to have a bit of a tour of the foundry today, they were going to do a casting, but it’s being done tomorrow, we hope.

The excitement on Thursday morning was the arrival of a 65 foot motor yacht trying to pick up a mooring ball next to us. The wife of the couple, who was a very short slim person, was trying to pick up the mooring ball from the back of the boat! After many tries, which meant the boat had to maneuver back and forth around the ball, she was able to nab the line – so now what? We are guessing the plan was to somehow take the line to the bow and then do the proper tie up. Of course this proved to be impossible and now, as the boat was moving about, the concern was that the line would get entangled in the propeller. We also figured they were doing this because trying to catch the mooring ball line from the bow was impossible based on distance from the bow to the water.

Lots of people in their vicinity were watching the goings on. We were especially interested as this boat was getting very close to us. Then two dinghies arrived, big boat let go of the line, no entanglement with prop, and a couple in one of the dinghies helped them tie up to the mooring line from the front of the boat.  Now they were properly tied up but as our two boats swung in the wind and currents, we were coming quite close to each other so we were happy to see them shorten their line to the mooring ball taking us a little further apart. The owner was very pleasant and apologetic about all this but ………

This picture, which was a nice sunset, we had dinner at Pete’s, was really taken to show the size of that boat compared to us. We are second boat to the left of the hulk, directly behind it.

There were no bumps in the night and the next morning they moved to a mooring ball further out, we were all relieved. We had planned to leave on Saturday morning, anchor at White Sound for a night and the go to Harbour View marina in Marsh Harbour for three nights to avoid some high winds coming in on Monday and also provision and do laundry. However, quelle surprise, the winds were not going to be favourable for anchoring there, so we decided to stay at Little Harbour until Sunday morning. It’s a bit over 20nm to Harbour View so that’s only a four hour trip. We did go for a bit of a dinghy ride about the harbour but not for as long as we’d planned as it was pretty windy and the camera and I were getting sprayed with lots of salt water. We had our final lunch at Pete’s, and both agreed it had been a good idea to stay for one more day. We’ve loved our relaxing week at Little Harbor, which by the way is a totally off the grid community.

The entrance channel to Little Harbour has one spot which charts show as less than four feet at mean low tide. We came to Little Harbour at mid tide and the least water we saw was a bit under six feet. Bob checked the tide tables for Sunday morning and we decided to leave at 7:30 am. This was getting close to low tide  but would give us a foot under the keel, we draw 4.5 feet. Sunrise is slowly getting earlier so it was pretty much light before 7am. I was looking at the ladders at the dock as they provided a good guide of where the tide was, the more rungs you could see, the lower the tide. It looked to me that the tide was pretty low so Bob checked the tables one more time and said let’s  go right now. It was 7am. Bob drove slowly into the channel and a little ways in the depth sounder started beeping and we bumped. The depth gauge showed 3.9 feet!! After some high rev reversing, Bob decided to try one more time but steered about 10 feet to the left of the bump – success, we were almost immediately in six feet of water. If we hadn’t made it out it would have meant waiting at least until noon for the tide to change, to try again.

We saw quite a few boats heading south as we headed north, this was a good day for a crossing to Spanish Wells or other points south. The winds were light and of course on our nose from the north – as stated before, the stories of prevailing easterlies have proven to be a myth, at least for us. We went through some pretty shallow water but nothing less than seven feet. Once we turned west as we got closer to Marsh Harbour, we were able to put up the jib and do a bit of sailing. There is more water traffic in the Marsh Harbour area than we’ve seen since Bob arrived in the Bahamas with the exception of Nassau Harbour.

Marsh Harbour is a large harbour with a lot of boats at anchor. Our marina is full much larger boats than us. Many catamarans which we think are charter boats. I had a shower as soon as we got here, my first real shower since Spanish Wells. We do commando type showers on the boat once we really start to smell so it’s a real luxury to let the water run for more than 15 seconds.

We had a very nice dinner at Mangoes, the marina next door and arrived back at the dock  to the sound of our depth alarm beeping away. It was close to low tide. Bob used his hand held digital depth sounder to measure the depth off the stern and got 5.9 feet. The boat’s depth sounder is about a quarter way from the bow so it may be that the bottom in the slip tapers up a bit. Bob is going to recalibrate the depth sounder when we go out.

Monday was chores day. We walked to the grocery store which was the biggest we’ve been to, excellent selection and we were able to fit everything into our back packs and carry a couple of lighter bags. Lunch was on the covered patio at Wally’s, the lovely restaurant across the street from the Marina.

We went for a bit of a walk in the hopes of finding a shop that had some artwork of the Bahamas but still no luck. Laundry was partially successful. You get tokens from the office vs putting in coins. I was doing a single load and when I took out the laundry from the washing machine the load had obviously not been spun very well. I had only one token for the dryer and by now the office was closed. When I went to pick up the load from the dryer, the clothes were warm but definitely not dry, some not even close. Some creative clothes hanging in the cabin ensued. Meanwhile the winds by now were really howling and the boat was rocking, good to be at the dock.

 

On Tuesday, still in Marsh Harbour, we walked to a hardware store, the most exciting thing we bought was a new toilet brush and we did get a bit of a walk out of it. Still no luck getting a painting. We dropped into the Tourist office near the marina, they suggested we’d have better luck finding something at Hope Town or Man-O-War Cay. We had pizza for dinner at Snappas, next to the marina, not memorable but the price was good.

We’ve been watching a six part documentary on Netflix called Wild Wild West about a commune set up 1980s just outside of a little hamlet called Antelope in Oregon. The leader was Bhagwan Rajneesh from India. A very interesting tale of the times. We wondered whether the reaction of townspeople would be different today. It’s great having a good enough connection that we can easily download shows and still be nowhere near using all our data.

Wednesday morning we left around 10:30 with plans to fuel up on the way out but a big trawler with a Canadian flag was just beginning to fuel up. We bobbed around for a while but decided we could fuel up at Hope Town, boats that size take a long time to fill up. It was a bit of a bouncy trip to the anchorage, wind of course on our nose so we couldn’t sail but took only an hour and a half. We anchored behind the Lighthouse in 5.5 feet of water ( low tide). There was just one other boat when we got there but seven by late afternoon. Many more boats were anchored on the east side of the entrance channel to Hope Town.

Thursday morning we moved over to Lighthouse Marina in Hope Town harbour. We first went to the fuel dock, good thing there there were two guys to help us tie up, the winds were blowing us into the dock but there was a  maybe 15 foot runabout at the end of the dock making life difficult for Bob. Luckily a fellow from another sailboat docked here came to help. Trying to leave the dock with the wind blowing us into it was even worse. The doofus in the runabout finally moved out of the way. We thought getting into our slip was really going to be a shit show as it was a fairly tight turn into the slip but other than  Bob trying not to run over a inept paddle boarder who was right at the entrance of the turn into the slip, it was easier than we expected. The slip was protected from the wind that pushed us into the fuel dock and helped that three guys were waiting to tie us down. The main harbour is full of mooring balls, no room for anchoring.

Once we got settled in we took the dinghy into town for a bit of a walkabout, the main settlement is on the other side of the harbour, a three minute boat ride away. It’s a lovely place, we checked out places to eat and visited several shops in our search for a piece of art but still no luck. We saw one piece painted on a piece of wood which we really liked, it was $350USD, we haven’t bought it, yet. Later in the afternoon we climbed the lighthouse which is very close to our marina – the views are fabulous.  Our final walk was to the resort marina to have a drink and we made reservations for dinner. The good thing about going there is that we can walk there, it’s on our side of the harbour.

On Friday we had late morning coffee at Hope Town Coffee House, a great cafe with indoor and patio seating. They works by local artists for sale. There was w\one painting we both really liked but with a $350 USD price tag, decided against it. I wonder if we’ll regret it when we get home, I did take a picture of it.

We walked up the hill by the cholera cemetery again just to enjoy the amazing views of the Atlantic. Lunch, we are just so pathetically food centric, was at a terrific place called Wine Down Sip-Sip. Food was great, decor a wonderful mix of dark coloured wood trim, pastel coloured walls and lots of colourful cushions on the long benches along the walls. They also had the best selection of wines by the glass that we’ve seen anywhere in the Bahamas.

We went back to the Coffee House on Saturday and had brunch of coffee and quiche. More walking around town, this time almost to the north end of the island, we finally gave up as it was just too hot for walking. That part of Hope Town was much quieter as it’s all residential. There were some very large homes on the Atlantic side. We also saw signs on a lot of houses indicating they were holiday rentals.

We were sitting back on the boat when a group of young people arrived in a tender. There was a bit of excitement on the dock, it turns out being created by a manatee at the dock beside our boat. Someone had turned on the water hose and was aiming the hose at the manatee. Shortly after that one of the men from the tender went into the water and put the hose into the very happy manatees mouth – it appears they love fresh water. I overheard him talking to a couple of the women in the group in what sounded like a Nordic language so I asked, they were Norwegians. A couple of the women also got in the water, it was all very entertaining.

We had made reservations for dinner at Hope Town Marina & Resort, we had gone there for a drink on Thursday. It was quite disappointing. Our waiter was good as was our shared appetizer but the main courses were ho-hum and not cheap. This is the same marina we tried to get into a couple of times, it’s much higher end than where we are but in retrospect,  we’re glad we didn’t get in.

 

Today was our long walk south on the Atlantic side with the hope of having lunch at On Da Beach, a beach bar. It’s usually open on Sundays but we thought Easter Sunday might have been an exception. Regardless, we figured it would be a good walk. The first part of the walk was on Back Street which is all residential and leads out of Hope Town. The walk along the beach, which was about a mile was wonderful. There were a few families splashing in the waves and very nice looking houses along the beach at a higher dune level. All of them had steps to the beach.

We were very happy to find On Da Beach open. We got before noon so there were just a few people there but it filled up fast. The core is a covered building that includes the grill area. There are high stool seats all around the core, that’s where we sat and tables on the patio

three quarters of the way around the core, all facing the Atlantic. We loved it. One of the waiters told us it was for sale, I think it’s a older couple that currently owns it. He also pointed out that they can’t open in bad weather as they don’t those protective plastic walls. On the way our we ended up chatting with a young woman who had been sitting near us. She had lived in Hope Town for a while but went back to England and decided to go to Medical School, she will graduate in September. She took a very good picture of us standing at the top of the steps to the beach.

‘We walked back along the Queen’s Highway, houses large and small all along the road. A number of them had Elbow Cay for sale/rental signs. We’ve really enjoyed our time on Elbow Cay and Hope Town. We are thinking about maybe renting a house here for a few weeks next winter.