It’s Thursday morning and we have moved into a nice little harbor, named appropriately, “Little Harbor” home of the famous “Pete’s Pub” a real beach bar, complete with palm trees, sand and all of the other features you could imagine in a romantic island retreat.
The harbor is ever so small with an approach depth of only 3′ at low tide. As you might imagine, with Pandora’s 6′ draft, we timed our arrival today to coincide with high tide. Coming into the channel was a bit of a nail biter as we saw less than two feet under our keel a few times. The channel is so narrow that I’d hate to get stuck and force other boats to delay their departure or arrival. That would not be a popular move here, I am sure.
To say that this is a small harbor doesn’t really make the point. It’s really tight and I don’t think that there are more than about 20 moorings. Happily, there were a few open when we arrived so that’s good. We are so close to one of the docks that it would be easy to toss something to someone from Pandora. I did check to see if we’d hit if the wind shifted by moving the boat in circle on the mooring and we cleared the dock by less than a boat length.
For the last two nights, since our arrival, we anchored near one of the nearby beaches, a very pretty spot. Yesterday I headed ashore to check out the local beach as a possible shelling spot. Given the popularity of the beaches in this area, I wasn’t expecting to find anything. However, after a few minutes, I realized that it was a GREAT SPOT to shell and headed back to Pandora to get Brenda. We returned to the beach and after less than an hour we had a great haul of shells including nearly a dozen sea biscuits, a sort of sand dollar. There were many scattered around the shallows at low tide. The live ones are black and are covered with little spines, sort of like a sea urchin. When they die, the spines fall off and what’s left is a white skeleton. They are very pretty. The ones that we picked up are still a bit dirty looking but a bit of bleach and some time in the sun will make them look much better.
Our “haul” from the beach was great. With a little bleach and some sun, they will really clean up nicely. 
This is one of the sea biscuits. They have a very intricate structure to them. Very pretty. 
When we were entering through the cut into The Sea of Abaco, perhaps better described as The “Lake” of Abaco as it’s just not that big, especially after a 50+ mile run through water that was a deep as 17,000 feet at points, our friends on Nati, hailed us on the radio. We had not seen Anne and Dick for some time after spending a few weeks with them in Rum Cay and Conception Island more than a month ago. They have spent some time in the Abacos in past years and agreed to go over our chart books with us to help us get some ideas on what places to visit in over the next few weeks. We had a very enjoyable cocktail hour with them and were impressed with a tour of Nati. Nati is a 38′ catamaran and is their full time home. We hope to see them this summer as they may go to Maine. It would be great if they visited us in Essex too.
The view to shore here from Pandora is really nice. This spot gives the impression that you are in some remote island retreat. Of course, that impression is somewhat belied by the number of homes lining the shore. Very pretty, never the less. I love the whole palm, sandy beach and thatched umbrella thing. 
This is the famous “Pete’s Pub” as viewed from Pandora’s bow. I’ll bet that they sell drinks that have little umbrellas stuck in them. Perhaps 11:00 is too early to confirm that. Perhaps later. Yes, later… that would be good. And, I expect that we will be able to find our way there and back without getting lost. Pretty close. 
Well, lots to explore and I hear that the ocean is very close, just over the dunes. I can hear the surf pounding.
I can smell suntan lotion from down below so I guess that Brenda is about ready to check out the local sights. With that in mind, I’d better finish this post up and get the lead out, PDQ…
With that in mind, I’ll sign off for now.