Atlantis

We decided to spend two days in Nassau because there was just too much to see.  We ended up walking quite a bit.  We went downtown where the cruise ships come in and there were three ships in port so it was VERY BUSY.  Then we took a cab over to Atlantis and toured as much of it as we were allowed.  You have to be a guest to actually see all of it or buy a day pass and since it was so late in the afternoon we figured it wouldn't be worth it.  It's just like one of the casinos in Vegas except it has a marina where you can pull your boat (or in most cases your Yacht) up to.  Then we walked through the shops in Marina Village and took a cab over to the other side of the bridge where the local fisherman have little shacks the back their boats up to and they serve fresh made conch salad and fish dishes and of course beer.
Now we are getting ready to head to the Exumas and keep trekking south.  No signs of any hurricane activity YAY.

Atlantis

The stingray pool at Atlantis

The turtle pool at Atlantis

The local fisherman booths under the bridge

In Nassua

We made it to Spanish Wells and then to Nassua. 

Matthew: You might recognize the boat next to us in the marina. 

It’s the Blackbeards boat you were on. Morning Star. We meet Charlie who trained you and we went and partied with the crew last night.

We are going to stay in Nassua two nights. Karen wants to look around Atlantis and we may only be here once.

We had a great sail down here. We didn’t have to use the engines at all and we made about 5.5 knots average. That means when we were sail fast we were doing close to 8 its. We did finally reef when the winds got over 20 kts, but that only lasted 5 minutes.

Stuck in Marsh Harbor for the Broncos game

We are in Marsh Harbor today for the Broncos game. We are going to watch it at a bar called Snappas. It's right on the bay where are boat is anchored. Here are some pictures.

This is the bar.

This is our boat from the bar.

This is us.

here you go Amanda

Boat Repairs

We finally left Man o War, It cost us $4000 to get everything fixed. But they did work for the 4 grand. We had two sails fixed. We had a cover made, We had the transmission replaced, we had the starboard drive shaft replaced, we had our port side strut strengthened, which required some fiberglass work. So we actually got a good deal, but it still hurts to spend that much on the boat.

We had a pretty good time in Man o War. I started running again, the dogs and I would go about 4 miles, it was two miles up to the north end of the island.  We went to every beach on the island. They are gorgeous beaches. Every once in a while you would see some of the locals swimming on them. tThe dogs loved the beaches. The beaches are protected by an offshore reef but there are still some rollers coming in. Max didn’t care, we get to the beach and he would just runs right into the waves and starts swimming.  It’s amazing to watch because when we first got him he didn't know how to swim at all. 

Today we are in Marsh Harbour. We will be here until Monday. Karen needs to see the Bronco’s game tomorrow. Today we are also going to resupply. They have a grocery store here that is the biggest in the Bahamas. They have almost everything and we need some stuff. After that we are going to start heading south.  I want to be in Turks and Cacaos by the 15th of October. Then we will make the passage to Puerto Rico.

Stuck in Man O War

We are stuck in Man O War until at least next Tuesday. The reason we are stuck is we need a new drive shaft for the starboard motor.  We already changed the transmission on it. We also tried a new prop. But we still have a vibration when we put that engine into gear.
I think Man O War is probably the best place in the Bahamas to get the work done. The folks we are working with are definitely competent. But although it may be the best place to get work done it's one of the worse place to be stuck in.
This is a dry island. We are down to 5 beers. Luckily we have a lot of rum and wine so we can stay here a month if we need to.  But since they don't have any beer for sale they don't have anything like a sports bar.  No place to watch football.  Last weekend we were at Nipper bar on Guana Key. They had all the games on. Karen got to see the Broncos although we had to stay up until midnight to see the whole game. She was also forced to sing "paradise by the dashboard light" during halftime. But different places have different rules for watching a game.  I'm not sure where we are going to watch the game this week. I think we can get it on the sling box. If we can then I won't be in trouble. If we can't then, I might be.
We also got some sail work done here so I now have good sails and tomorrow we will put the main sail back up. Other than that we are just stuck here.
Once we get everything functioning correctly we are going to start heading south. I want to be in Turks and Cacaos around Oct 15th. Then we can plan the trip over to Puerto Rico.

Green Turtle Cay

We motored over to Green Turtle Cay and stayed at Black Sound Marina.   Just as we pulled into the bay there was a mama dolphin and her baby playing and they came right up to the boat.  We walked around the island and bought some really good coconut bread from this local woman.
Then we decided to head out to Gilliam Bay which is on the south side of the island because they say you can find sand dollars there.  I think we were a little late to get some good ones.  We found a few small ones.
Then we dinghied over to No Name Cay, which is uninhabited but the lady docked next to us at Black Sound said there are wild pigs there so we went to check it out.  They were so cute but they sure didn't like our celery and limes that we brought.  Picky little guys 

Nipper's~Great Guana Cay

We spent Monday and Tuesday in Marsh Harbour at Harbour View Marina.  Marsh Harbour is really nice and has just about everything that you would need except CO'2 tanks for my soda stream.  They have a really nice grocery store (Maxwell's) that is comparable to King Soopers.  We met some really great people in the marina and had a great time eating their ox tail stew. We rented a scooter and ran all over the island which was a lot of fun.

Then we headed for Man of War Cay and then the trouble began.  I unzipped the canvas cover to the entryway and the wind kicked up and it blew off the boat.  We went back to find it and it must have sunk.  Then the thunderstorm came and we headed back to Marsh Harbour tried to anchor and I backed over the dinghy rope which stopped the starboard engine.   Then the winless wouldn't work so  Wes had to manually drop the anchor.  We finally got anchored and once the thunderstorm passed, Wes dove down to get the rope untangled from the prop.  It was a very eventful afternoon.

We finally made it to Man of War Cay and picked up a mooring ball. 

We met some really nice people that were moored right behind us.  Some of them were actually from Steamboat, CO and the others were from Ohio.  It was their last night cruising so they asked if we wanted their left over provisions, which consisted of a ton of stuff from Gin to Cinnamon.  Thank you Ocean Breeze and we hope to see you again in the tropics.

Today we made it to Great Guana Cay.  We dropped the sail off with Jay on Man of War to have it repaired along with the canvas measurements for the cover that I lost and hopefully he will have them done by Tuesday as he said, but again, we are on island time.  

We are now at Nippers for a little relaxation rum, which is an awesome beach bar that overlooks the 3rd largest barrier reef.

Nippers bar which is where I will be watching the Broncos game on Sunday

To all my Banker friends, don't you wish you had hours like this?????

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.