Hope Town

We stayed the night at a mooring ball in Hope Town which is off Elbow Cay in the Central Abacos.  It is tucked into a nice little bay and it has adorable brightly colored houses lining the shore.  We walked around town and it is such a a very cool little town with small streets that basically can accommodate golf carts and bicycles.  There aren't very many cars on the island and the ones that are here are very small.  Everything is in walking or dinghy distance though.
The island is very narrow and long and you have the nice calm bay on the one side and then you walk a short distance and just over the dunes you have the large waves crashing into the rocky shore.
There is a lighthouse that we visited today.  It is one of the oldest working lighthouses that still uses kerosene.

To the Abacos

Wednesday 8/28:

We left Great Harbor Key Marina and went up to Great Harbor. They are actually about 8 kts apart. That way we will have a  shot to the Abocos tomorrow.

Thursday:

Took off for the Abocos today. After we were out about 2 hours we got caught in a storm. There was a little bit of thunder and lighting but not all that bad. I learned two things about being caught in a thunderstorm at sea. First they get really windy. We had 30 knots of wind at times. We didn’t have the sails up but I will always reef when I see a storm coming. 

Second is the radar isn’t that much help when you have all the rain coming down around you. We had a tanker that was going to cross our path.  I was tracking him on radar and it looked like he was going to cross in front of us. When the storm hit all I could see was rain  on the radar and I could not see the freighter. So I had to keep an eye out for him. Which is tough to do in a storm.

Also just before we got the rain from the storm I caught another barracuda. I was pulling him in and I could see the rain getting closer. Before I got him on the boat it just poured. 

So I had Karen driving the boat and watching out for the freighter and I got soaked pulling in a fish and the dogs want to see the fish. Basically it was mass chaos.     

Anyway the storm moved on, the freighter passed  in front of us and sun came out before we got to the Abacos.

Friday:

We left Sandy point in the Abacos to go around to the other side. It’s supposed to be 60 knots around. 

Just when you think that you are starting to figure this sailing thing out the simplest things can happen. We started out and I heard a thump then a couple of them. We looked around the boat but didn't see anything, Then I looked at my starboard engine on the control panel. It was off. Then I looked and we weren’t going very fast maybe a knot. I looked over the stern and saw a rope was wrapped around the prop. I got in the water and found it was my anchor rope with the anchor attached. Everytime I take in the anchor I put a latch in the shackle to keep the anchor in place. The latch is tied off on a cleet up front. I’ve been doing this ever since I got down here.

Well the latch was untied from the cleet but still attached to the anchor. I found this out two hours later after we retrieved the anchor and removed the rope from around the prop. 

I don’t think I will describe the entire exercise Karen and I went through to get the boat back to running condition and to find the anchor, but there were several swear words involved, a lot sea water being swallowed and a good test to see if Karen really loves me or not.

This all happened on our first two miles of the trip.

The next 16 miles we’re going in a 15 kt wind with 4 foot seas. Since we were going directly into the wind we could not sail so we just had to ride it out. Max is looking a little sea sick. Its good Karen and I don’t get sea sick.

 We got around the south end of the Abacos and headed up the east coast. There is nothing between the east cost of the Abacos and Africa. So we had seas of 5 to 8 feet. We were moving sideways on them so it was an interesting ride. Basically we would go up one and then surf down the other side. My speed odometer was going from 3.9 to 6.5 kts. Everytime  I climbed on we would be down to 3.9 and when we went down the other side it was 6.5. But the nice things about these waves were there was a lot of room in between them. So you didn’t get a chopping feeling.

We anchored off of a town called Cherokee. I have no idea why they call it Cherokee. That seems like a word that doesn’t belong in the Bahamas.

  

Moving On

It looks like we are going to avoid Cristobal thank goodness.  So we are getting ready to head out and start our way to the Abacos.
There is a local fisherman, Silas, in the marina that has been waiting out the storm too and Wes has gotten to know him pretty well.  He has given us so much helpful information.
Wes asked if he would come over and show us how to make cracked lobster.  So last night he brought over some lobster and red snapper and showed us how in exchange for some rum drinks.  We had a great time and WOW the food was delicious.

While Silas was filleting the red snapper there were 3 nurse sharks swimming around enjoying the scraps.

Waiting out Cristobal

Not much happening the last couple of days.  We've just been hanging out at Great Harbor Cay Marina waiting to see what Tropical Storm Cristobal is going to do.  It's definitely not a bad place to be stuck though.  There are a couple other boats here and we have been getting to know the people pretty well.  Hopefully this storm will decide what it wants to do and we can head over to Abaco, but in the mean time, here are a few pictures

The dogs are really loving the Bahamas cause they can basically run all over the beaches

Another beautiful beach on Great Harbor Cay

Sharing some great food with some new friends

Update for the past few days

Monday 8/18:

We left the marina today. We got gas. I used 19 gallons since I was in Tarinveir FL and I ran the engines most of the time we were traveling. Not to bad. Of course diesel is $6:20 a gallon.

We tried to go to the cruise boat island but they would not let us in. The have a security rule that when a cruise boat is in port no one else is allow on the property. It was the same for the light house. That was on cruise boat property too.

A guy that was fishing for lobster stopped our boat. He had a whole bunch of lobster. I asked how much for a lobster but he never did give me a price. He wanted to trade for them and the thing he needed was beer. We got one lobster tail for one coors light. Not a bad deal and those guys were thirsty because they needed at least 12 beers. So we got 12 lobster tails. We had them last night and they were really good. I had two and I could not finish the last bite.

The lighthouse on the private island owned by Norwegian Cruise Line

Tuesday 8/19:

We sailed to Hoffmans Key. I say we sailed, we tried to sail but the wind was coming directly at us so we motor sailed. Most of the sailing we have done has been motor sailing. I hope to get more pure sailing in soon.

Hoffmans Key has a blue hole.So after we search for the trail for a little while we found one that lead us up to the blue whole. Looking at in reminded me of the cisterns down in Mexico. But here the water is salt water. Max didn’t seem to care, he jumped right in and swam around for a while. I also took a swim.

We saw three boats yesterday. There is not a lot happening out here. Two of the boats were way out in the ocean. The other boat passed right by us and waved but that was all the contact we had with the world. We saw a lot of turtles and rays and the dogs are having a great time running around the beaches. So its not that bad around here. 

  

Wednesday 8/20:

We went to Flo’s Conch House. It’s own by a guy named Chester. He and a woman live on the island all by themselves. We had two beer and then we asked abut the rum punch. I don’t know what he does to make the rum punch but it’s good stuff. It has some pineapple in it and some kind of red drink. but it is mixed into a kind of slush and it real cools you down on a hot day. We also tried the conch fritters. They know how to do conch down here. We had some in Fort Landerdale and they we terrible. but Flo’s restored conch fritter to my menu.

Chester, the owner serving up some beers for us

Thursday 8/21:

We went to Bird Key. It has an abandoned village and mansion on it. It was cool looking through the mansion. It had a pool out front and a court yard in the back. It was laid out like a spanish house, with bedrooms in the main part then other bedrooms around the court yard.  It was built in the 1940's by Francis Francis, heir to the Standard Oil Company.  I'm not sure how long ago it was abandoned but it is currently for sale for $8.9M.

Great Harbour Cay

We have spent the last two nights in Great Harbour Cay Marina on Great Harbor Cay.  It is a nice, quiet, little marina and the people here are very friendly.  We decided to rent a jeep (which I don't think was the safest automobile on the road) but we were able to drive all over the island and see quite a bit because it's only about 10 miles long.  They have some amazing beaches here.  I have never seen sand like this - it is like powder.  I think we probably went to 5 different beaches and stopped at a nice little beach bar for refreshments.

These are the caves that you can swim in

This is what some of the roads look like on Great Harbour that we were driving on

Here are some pictures of the lighthouse

Berry Berry Good Day

We just got to the Berry islands. The Berries are a group of about 30 islands that are part of the Bahamas. We just got here last night and stayed out of the harbor because we got here so late and I didn't want to try to dock at night.

It was a long trip over here. 75 knots. Which is at the limit of a one day sail for this boat. We lost our wind about 3 hours into the sail and had to motor the whole way over. We are looking forward to checking out the Berry islands. We will probably stay a week or two.

As for what we did before we got here. We left South Bimini on Tuesday. We went to Gun Key. They have a light house on Gun Key and we climbed to the top and took some pictures. At the north end of Gun Key is Honeymoon Harbor. On the weekend they say it gets packed. But since we were there Tuesday and Wednesday there were only about 10 boats each day. 

There were a whole lot of rays in the water around Honeymoon Harbor and they like to be fed.  People feed them squid. So you have about 30 sting rays crawling over your feet or legs looking for food. They sometimes suck on your feet to see if they can get something to eat. Then we had two nurse sharks swim by. These sharks were small, one was 3 feet and the other 4. But they swam right a long with the sting rays about 5 feet from where we were standing.

I threw out the fishing line on the way over here and caught my first barracuda. He was about 2 and 1/2 feet long and his teeth were well developed. In fact I had to figure out how to get the hook out of that mouth. After he settled down a bit I was able to grab him by the back of the head and use the pliers to pull the hook out. Then I put him back in the water. We forgot to take a picture so I will have to record he next one.   

I think we found nirvana

We have been in Bimini for two days now and it is great. Yesterday we spent most of the day at the pool and the beach. They have a nice salt water pool and a pretty good beach at the Bimini Beach Resort. The cost to put our boat in a slip is 30 bucks so that is not bad.
Today we took a ferry to North Bimini. We got a phone over there that we can use for emergencies and if we need to call home. It is still 80 cents a minute to call home so we won't be doing that much.
I don't have the phone with me so I will put the number on here tomorrow.
We ate lunch at a place up on the hill in North Bimini. It over looked the Atlantic. What a sight. The ocean was just beautiful. Then we came back to South Bimini and went to the Sharklab. That is where they study Lemon, Nurse, Hammer Head and Black Tip reef sharks. If any of you are shark week fans they are featured tonight in the program about hammer heads.
We went out to this sand bar where they have an enclosure. They had several young lemon and nurse sharks in the enclosure. We got to touch them and we learned all about them.
Karen and I really love this place. The water is incredible. The dogs also love it. They get loads of walks and are having a wonderful time.

Made it to Bimini

We made it to Bimini without any trouble at all and in pretty good time.  We left really early this morning from Elloitt Key and we made it by 2:00pm.  It was really smooth and we did about 7 knots the whole way.  We had some fairly good wind but we motor sailed the majority of the time.  I think Wes was a little anxious to get somewhere new.  We had some dolphins follow us for a while and it was so awesome.  We tried our luck at fishing on the way but didn't catch anything. It is really nice here, we may never go back!! just kidding.

Lexie found a new place to relax-in the shade

Lexie was very interested in the dolphins-we actually thought she might jump in and try swimming with them.

This is where we are staying tonight-that is our boat docked in the background

not sure what this is but I thought is was pretty cool.

Getting ready for the crossing

We are still here in Tavenier, but we are making preparations to go to the Bahamas on Saturday.
We still have a ice maker on order which I hope comes tomorrow before 2:00 pm or we will have to leave without it. We have a load of pasta, the freezer is full of meat and we got 5 cases of beer so I think we are ready to go.  I guess beer is expensive over there.
It looks like the wind will be favorable for a Saturday crossing. It should be coming out of the south at 9 to 14 knots. That should allow us to use the sails and make good time. I don't think we will get too much wave action because the wind is out of the south. When the wind is out of the north the gulf stream blows up bad.
We still need to get gas and water before we go. There is a fuel dock on the way up to Elliot Key.
Elliot Key is where we will leave from. It is 50 knots over to Bimini. So if we leave at 5:00 am we should get there about 3:00 pm. That will give us enough time to anchor and may be check in.
If not we can check in on Sunday.
Once we get over there we will not have Karen's iPhone for internet but there are some marinas that have wifi. So we should still be able to update the blog but maybe not quite as often.
That's all for now.

Diver down

For the first time we went diving today. Karen and I had been to 4 dive spots but it was always to rough. But today we went to dive Hens and Chickens. That is a popular dive spot down here near Tavernier. It was a great dive. There is a lot of 10 foot coral sticking out of the bottom and loads of fish. I don't think I've seen that many different kinds of fish on one dive. We saw a ray, lots of barracuda, some tangs, some sergeant majors and a whole bunch of other fish.
The only draw back was it was murky. There was a lot of little particles in the water. We had snorkled the sight in July and it wasn't murky, but today it was so the pictures didn't turn out that well.

But here they are anyway:

The middle one is a sting ray hiding under a piece of coral.

Stuck in Tavernier

We are back in Travernier Florida at least until Thursday. That is the first chance I have to pick up my alternator and starter that are being rebuilt. We need to do a little refitting before that, I have to fix the sail that ripped and also get the bilge pump working correctly. But those are minor things. My big problem is I can not get the water maker to work correctly. I think I'm going to have to buy a new water maker. That is about 2700 dollars. I didn't budget for that but if it works it will be worth it. Not quite sure when I can get the water maker. I think it won't be ready until the end of the month, so I will have to have it shipped to the Bahamas.
Right now the winds are perfect for going to the Bahamas. We have a west south west wind. We will go over if we have anything but a north or east wind. A north wind whips up the Gulf Stream and a east wind means you are going against the wind and it takes longer to sail. So it has to be a west or south wind.
If it is a south east wind we could also go.
We will have to see what they look like next Friday.

Jay, I finally used your tanks. It was just to clean the bottom of my boat but everything worked correctly. We might actually do some diving soon. We have been to 4 dive sights but the water has always been too rough. It doesn't bother you when you are under water, but we have to put everything on onboard and will all new equipment we just want a calm day to do that.