Merry Christmas from Hope Town

Hi All,
We're back in the Bahamas after a trip to Texas and Connecticut to see friends and family. It was a great trip and really enjoyed seeing everyone. Besides the visiting I played a round of golf, we got to play with all the grandkids, saw my grandson Alec's final school Candlelight Concert (what an absolutely outstanding event) and saw the Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

It's Christmas Day in Hope Town and there is blue sky, lots of sunshine and the high for today is forecast to be 80, with a low of 76 tonight. In other words, it's wonderful. It is a bit strange to see people in swimsuits.  At least a bunch of them have on Santa hats.  That helps.

Here are a few pictures we took last night and this morning so you can get a feel for Christmas in The Bahamas. The ones taken at night might be a bit blurry.  No alcohol was involved, though.  NOT!!

Good Morning Vietnam with the moon on Christmas Eve.

Good Morning Vietnam on Christmas Eve.

Good Morning Vietnam and the Hope Town Lighthouse in the background.

Our Christmas tree.

The view from the picnic table at Hope Town Inn and Marina. This is where we watched the song writer concert before Christmas.

While in Connecticut I decided to shave. Sort of.  In stages. Not a great picture but this is how I looked for a couple of hours. Then we heard we'd been invited to the house of some friends of Shaun and Jen's.  I decided to go ahead and shave off the rest. So much for looking like a pirate.

Take care.
Brian

Hope Town

Hi All,
We're in Hope Town still, getting ready to fly back to the US for almost two weeks to see family and friends. The weather here in Hope Town has not been great. The wind has subsided but now it's raining. And raining. And raining. There have been some breaks, but not many.

We did get nice weather on Sunday so we were able to attend a music festival here with eight different Country and Western song writers benefiting several local charities. You've probably never heard of these people because they don't perform their own songs, others do. The likes of Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw and Rascal Flats perform their songs. Before the music started we had dinner with our friends Lee and Randy (Silver Maple) and Brian and Casandra (Miss Informed). It was a great evening concluded with fireworks over the harbour. And right over our boat! Which we weren't on but fortunately there was enough wind to kept the embers from falling on it.

Earlier in the day we took our bikes ashore and rode them down the island some. We stopped along the way to have lunch and watch two guys kite surf. It was cool to watch them get their stuff all lined up and then start out. It looked like a lot of fun but also something you'd need a lot of practice to do well. Like most things. Here are a couple of pictures of our view where we stopped for our picnic lunch.

While it's been raining we've done exciting things like laundry, replace the float switch on the bilge pump and trace down the bad smell we haven't ever been able to get completely eliminated. But we found the source so while in the US we're going to buy the parts we need to hopefully fix it once and for all!

This will likely be the last post for a couple of weeks. We're supposed to be back in the Bahamas on December 22nd and I'll post again once we're back. We're both a bit anxious about the trip. Since July 11, when we left Kemah, tomorrow night will only be the third day / night we haven't been on the boat. Our plan is to catch the ferry from Hope Town to Marsh Harbour tomorrow, stay in a hotel and then get up early and get a taxi to the airport for our flight to Nassau. From Nassau we go to Miami and then on to Dallas.

Take care and if we don't speak to you or I don't post again until after Christmas, please have a very Merry Christmas!
Brian

Elbow Cay and Lynyard Cay

Hi All,
As my brother reminded me it has been a few days since I've posted so here is an update and some pictures.

Monday we sailed over to Hope Town on Elbow Cay and picked up a mooring ball. Hope Town is a pretty neat little town with a working lighthouse on the hill. The lighthouse is one of the last manual lighthouses in the world.  The lamp burns pressurized Kerosene oil with a wick and mantle.  The Fresnel lenses concentrate the mantle’s light into a beam directed straight towards the horizon.  The lenses and burner equipment, weighing 8,000lbs, float in a circular lubricated tub.  This reduces friction so that the 700lbs of weight, when wound up to the top of the tower by hand, smoothly rotates the 4-ton apparatus once every 15 seconds.  The lighthouse keeper on duty must wind up the weights every 2 hours in order for the red and white candy-striped lighthouse to be seen from 17 miles away. It's pretty cool and I hear it is possible to witness the lighting of the lamp.

The weather and wind are really nice so rather than stay in Hope Town we decided to sail around and check out other places after spending one night in Hope Town, including dinner and bingo (actually called JACKS because those are the letters across the top of the card) at Cap'n Jacks with our friends on Panthera (Ritchie, Jane, Dal and Denise). Tuesday we sailed down to Lynyard Cay and anchored off a beach there close to the Little Harbour cut out to the Atlantic. Panthera was there too as they were staging there for their trip to the Virgin Islands. We were able to actually sail the entire way down to Lynyard, about four hours.

This morning, Wednesday, we said Bon Voyage to Panthera. There are taking what is known as the I-65 route to the Virgin Islands. This route is really simple, you sail due east until you get to longitude 65 West (about 600 miles) and the you turn due south and sail another 600 miles and oila! You're in the Virgin Islands! They expect it to take them seven days. Here is a picture as they headed out from our anchorage this morning. Fair winds and following seas Panthera!



Shortly after Panthera left we picked up our anchor and headed back north. Another cold front is on the way and we want to be back in the well protected harbour at Hope Town by Thursday night. Rather than go all the way back to Hope Town we stopped a bit short to explore another part of Elbow Cay, Tahiti Beach.  Here are some more pictures from the day.

Between Lynyard Cay and Elbow Cay someone has done part of their house to look like the lighthouse in Hope Town

I think it's about time for a shave.

Still the house, not the real lighthouse. But look at that water!!

Tahiti Beach, Elbow Cay, The Abacos, Bahamas

More Tahiti Beach

At high tide there is no beach

Don't you always have to have a picture like this?

The other side of the peninsula, still technically Tahiti Beach

Interesting tree on the beach, blown over but still alive

Last picture for today

Once we dropped anchor we put the dinghy in the water, stopped by to introduce ourselves to Silver Maple and invite them over for a sundowner and then went ashore to snorkel and walk the beach. Not a great place to snorkel but we did see a fair number of fish and on the way back to the beach we saw two bright red-orange starfish bigger than my hand. I didn't take my camera with me so I didn't get a picture of them. May go back and get a picture tomorrow before we head back to Hope Town.

That about covers it for now. Take care.
Brian

Bike Ride

Hi all,
It's Sunday and the wind has finally started to subside. Thank goodness!

Several boats left the harbour this morning but we're going to wait until tomorrow. We're going over to Hope Town to spend a few days.

We took our fold up bikes to shore today to explore the island a bit more. Friday we rode them out to the Marsh Harbour International Airport to get tickets to and from Nassau for our flights back to the US in a couple of weeks. Man, were my legs burning. Today we rode in the other direction just to look around. We stopped at a small beach alongside the road and had a picnic lunch where we were visited by Zoey, a local girl of about 5 that was very cute and very talkative. Once another girl about her age arrived she was off to make new friends and we were left like yesterday's news. 

As we were finishing our lunch several bus loads of people arrived. The beach was the location for today's baptism of two Haitian girls- wade out into the water and be fully immersed baptisms. It reminded me of my good friend T Moore's baptism at Lake Bardwell, a lake he and I have skied on a multitude of times. Some of today's service was in Creole so we didn't get much but we did stay to watch and congratulate the girls as they dried off.

Our latest new friends; Richie and Jane from Vancouver on Panthera. We had them over for a sundowner the other evening and have run into them several times in town. We got off to a great start when Susan spilled the pitcher of gin and tonic they had brought to drink. Oops, party foul.

That's it for now. I'll leave you with a couple of picture of the beach today. The pictures just don't do the water justice.

Take care.
Brian

Howling

This post is titled howling not because it is a full moon but because the wind has been howling for several days. I think it started Sunday and it's not supposed to let up until this coming Sunday, night. The one word that will sum up our time here in Marsh Harbour so far is "howling".

The forecast is for winds between 20 and 30 kts. Last night I turned on the instruments to check and it was blowing between 26 and 30. And it never lets up. It blows just as hard during the night as it does during the day. Going anywhere in the dinghy always involves getting wet with the wind and waves.

But there are a few other things to report. Last night we joined several other couples on Satori for a sundowner. Due to the aforementioned wind we didn't actually get to see the sunset because we were all below deck. Besides ourselves and previously introduced Sargo, we met the folks on Jubilee and Satori. We had a nice time and enjoyed meeting everyone.

This afternoon we went ashore and had Thanksgiving dinner at Wally's. It was a great dinner; turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, candied yams, dressing, vegetables and a piece of pumpkin pie. All very good, but a bit odd to have Thanksgiving without family but with temperatures in the 70's and watching the palm trees sway. For sunset we want back ashore and met John and Shelly on Planet Waves for a beer and to watch a bit of the Cowboys game at Snappa's.

All along I've said it's the people that have made this trip so enjoyable and it still is. Common practice is to take a dinghy ride over to a boat anchored near you, knock on the hull and introduce yourself. Invariably an invitation is extended to have a sundowner on your boat or their boat. From there new friends are made and the entire experience is enhanced.

A post wouldn't be complete without a comment about bread. We found a bakery and bought a loaf of coconut bread. Oh my. It was half gone before we made it back to the boat. The next day we finished it off. Another trip there is on the agenda for tomorrow.

We have gotten a few things done on the boat over the last couple of days. We made a new anchor snubber, seems everyone here has longer ones made as bridles. In this wind it seemed like a good idea so now we have one too. We also used some more of the fire hose (thank you, Allen) to make chaff guards for the snubber as it rubs against the rub rail.

That's it for now. We hope y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Take care.
Brian

As promised, pictures from today

Hi All,
 Even though the wind was blowing between 20 and 25 kts today we motored out of Marsh Harbour for a couple of hours to run the water maker. Here is a picture of a house on shore just as we re-entered Marsh Harbour.

Here is a picture of the marinas in Marsh Harbour and some boats at anchor.

Here are a couple of boats that are anchored near us. Not modern looking fiberglass boats.

Here is the aluminum boat Sargo with our new friends John and Laurie. This is their second or third sailing adventure having already crossed the Atlantic in their previous boat with their then young children to sail the Mediterranean.

And finally, a few pictures of tonight's sunset. Goodnight Soli!

That's all for now. Take care.
Brian

Marsh Harbour, The Abacos

Hi All,

We kept waiting for the weather window and finally got one Friday night. We left off the east side of Great Harbour Cay about 4:30 pm and motored all night around the south end and then up the east coast of Great Abaco. It didn't take us as long as we thought so we got to the channel before sunrise. The North Bar Channel enters the Sea of Abaco about at the midpoint. The wind and swells were coming from the east and the tide was going out (moving west) so we hung out in the Atlantic doing circles for a couple of hours waiting for better conditions in the channel before entering.

About 9:00 am we entered the Sea of Abaco and meandered our way north. I say "meander" because a good portion of the Sea of Abaco is too shallow for us. Having already run aground more on this trip than I'd like, we took the long way to Marsh Harbour. We dropped anchor a bit after noon. After a quick bite to eat it was time for a nap.

I know I've said this before but we are still looking for something about overnight passages that we could label as fun. I don't think it exists. At least on this trip we did pass several cruise ships at night. When I'd see a floating city coming our way I'd check the AIS info on them. Some boat lengths are shown in feet, some are shown in meters. The cruise ships are shown in nautical miles. The Oasis of the Sea is .194 nautical miles long. In other words, get out of their way! Sail boats have the right of way on the water, but don't confuse that to mean they have to get out of our way. Tonnage wins.

Now we're in Marsh Harbour and will be staying here for a while. We'll be doing day trips and that to sail around but we'll call this our base through the end of the year at least. Today we went walking on shore and found they have a grocery store here that is unlike anything we've seen since we left the US. They have fresh produce, meats, a deli and a gluten free section. The ice cream aisle has Haagen Dazs, Bryers and Blue Bunny along with many others. Are you sure we're in the Bahamas?

The wind and rain is coming so I'll wrap this up for now. I PROMISE I'll try to take some pictures this week and post them.

Take care.

Brian