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After a few days in Little Harbor, we moved up island a bit to Marsh Harbor.   Marsh Harbor is the third largest city in the Bahamas and a good provisioning spot for anyone planning to cruise the northern Bahamas.  It’s been an alarmingly long time since we have had access to laundry and  a proper grocery and we are anxious to have clean sheets and some fresh food.

And, provisioning has been on our mind so far and with less than 24 hours in the harbor we have already visited the grocery twice.   Can you say avocados     Don’t ask what they cost…

The evening before last we had rain for the third time since arriving in the Bahamas in mid January.  It rained hard and for several hours.  The dink filled up with some 6” of water and the boat was very well rinsed.   Everything had gotten pretty salty over the last few weeks since the last rain so we were happy to have a rinse-off.

As you may recall, prior to our arriving in Marsh Harbor, we spent a few days in Little Harbor.  While we were there we went for a walk and visited a small blue hole that someone had told us about.  A blue hole is a salt water pond where the water has worn away the limestone rock and connected the hole to the ocean through an underground cave which might be a mile or more away.    As a result, as the tides rise and fall, the water in the blue hole rises and drops too.  These holes can be miles from the ocean and yet have a connection so that fish can swim from one end to the other.    One of the blue holes in George Town is reputed to be over 5 miles long from the “hole” to it’s ocean source.

In this case, the hole was very small and came up in the middle of the island over a mile from the ocean, assuming that the cave from hole to ocean was in a straight line, which it might not be.   The water in this hole was perfectly clear and just chock full of reef fish and some varieties that I had not seen prior to this spot.Some of the folks that we has spoken to had taken fins and mask and had gone for a dip in the “pool”.  It hardly looks big enough to swim around in, though.

The vegetation in the Abacos, while still pretty desert like, was much more lush than in the Exumas and areas south of there.   I expect that it’s greener here as there are so many more cold fronts with squalls and rain showers hitting this area in the winter than further south.  These cacti were pretty impressive specimens. Bromeliads (related to pineapple but grow on other plants and not in the ground) are fairly abundant too and quite large.  This one was about 2’ tall.   We also saw some native orchids,  but none were in bloom.  I think that they were encyclia.On our way back to the harbor we passed this very nicely painted home.  It seems that bright colors carry the day here.   Colorful buildings are the norm here.  Even the government offices are brightly painted, usually pink.   I like it.So, after two days in Little Harbor we made our way out of the channel, which is only three feet deep at low tide, and sailed north to Marsh Harbor.  The run was about 15 miles and quite circuitous given the many sandbars and shallow shoals that we had to go around to make the run.  I was very glad to have a self tending jib so that jibing around each way point and shoal was less of a production.  By the time we made it to within sight of Marsh Harbor the wind had piped up to over 20kts ahead of a squall which made for a spirited sail.

Last night we will have a couple over for cocktails to share stories and to hear what their first winter in the Bahamas was like.  They were from Rochester NY so I am sure that the temperatures here was a welcome change from winters at home.

Today we did laundry!!!  Clean sheets!!!  I tried to get a haircut, my first one in several months.  No luck…  Hopefully tomorrow morning.

 

 

It’s Friday morning, the sun is up, the surf is pounding in the distance and it’s another wonderful day aboard Pandora.

Yesterday we enjoyed the sights ashore in Little Harbor, a diminutive harbor here in the Abacos.   For our friends aboard Nati, this is their favorite harbor in all of the Abacos and one that they enjoy visiting at least one each season.

After only one day here I can certainly understand why this is a spot that’s so popular with cruisers and charters alike.  The harbor is totally protected, unlike most in the Bahamas that only offer limited protection from wind and seas, and it has the wonderful shore side attraction of Pete’s Pub on the beach.

Pete’s Pub is one of those quintessential beach bars complete with palm trees and and open air bar.  The food is quite good and we enjoyed one of the best hamburgers in quite some time.  Most spots in the Bahamas serve fried foods and to get something that hasn’t been bathed in oil and served along with french fries was a treat.  The burger came with a wonderful pineapple slaw and some Bahamas rice.  Yum…

For me, this photo says it all.  A real beach bar where you pull your dink up on the sand and step inside to watch the afternoon setting sun while bathed in warm tropical breezes.   Actually, “inside” is a relative term as there are no walls and the floor is sand.  It’s a fun and colorful place. Brenda and our friend Anne of Nati enjoying a cool one on one of the decks in  comfortable Adirondack chairs. While Pete’s Pub is the center of the social scene in these parts, the harbor is also the home of a world renowned sculpture studio that creates and casts work in bronze.   As luck would have it, the studio had scheduled a pour for yesterday and had invited anyone interested in viewing the process to visit the studio.  I understand that this studio is fairly unique in that they do the design of the pieces as well as the casting, a combination that is not common.  Most sculptors take their work to a foundry and have the actual casting done by someone else.   We met a young women,  Kristen, who was visiting for a few months to assist in the studio and work on her own pieces.  She was very nice and talked to us for a while about her work.  As the studio has been around for many years, there is a riot of old molds for designs everywhere along with some great pieces on display. I was particularly struck by this piece of a pompano fish, about two feet long.  I would love to have this in our home in Essex.  I didn’t even ask about a price, if it was for sale at all, as I was certain that it was well above our pay grade. The area around the studio had a number of large pieces on display.  These two really big rays were a wonderful installation that would also be perfect for our yard in Essex.  I wonder how they would look under three feet of snow?   Hopefully, I won’t be in Essex to find out any time soon when there’s that much snow on the ground. The furnace, powered by diesel fuel, was blasting away all day and around 2:30 the guys suited up in protective gear for the pour.  Imagine how hot it was in all those clothes.  Sweat much?They poured about a half dozen pieces in just a few minutes.  It was quite a spectacle.   After they are removed from the mold, there is plenty of work to be done before they are sold.  Right next door there is a very nice gallery where you can view, and purchase, their work.   To look at it, the gallery would be just as much at home in Arizona as in the Bahamas.  We have enjoyed watching rays in the water over the last few months and couldn’t resist purchasing one of the little cousins of the big ray sculptures in the outdoor installation to take home.   While not large enough to put in the garden, it will look great on our coffee table.  It’s all wrapped up so you will have to wait till you visit to see what it looks like.

Along the waterfront are lovely palms and well kept sandy roads and beaches.   This place is quite scenic and being the home to some artists has likely contributed to the look of the place. Of course, a shot of the harbor and Pandora is always nice to have in a post.   Isn’t this scenic?    You will have to trust me that Pandora’s in the picture, framed by palms swaying in the tropical breezes.  Get the picture?   I could get used to this.  No wait, I AM USED TO THIS!!!There’s even a very nice boardwalk leading from the Pub to the beach, complete with a nice bronze piece along the way. When you reach the top of the walkway this view greets you.  Pretty dramatic.  I am always struck by how violent the seas look from land and never seem anywhere as nasty from the deck of a boat.    Having said that, I expect nasty wouldn’t begin to describe the view if you were close to this shore in a boat.  These breakers would make quick work of Pandora if they had the chance.  Better be sure I never get close.    Note to self…stay well away from the hard stuff.All and all, Little Harbor, and it is indeed little, is a great spot and our timing to visit couldn’t have been better.

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.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and we are making our passage from Royal Island at the top of Eleuthra to Great Abaco where we will begin the final month of our visit to the Bahamas.  We had not planned to make two long runs in two consecutive days but the weather was particularly cooperative today so we decided to head out for the 50nm run.  While yesterday’s 40nm run was a pretty long day, it was across the banks and in protected waters.  That sort of run has it’s own challenges as it took us across some very shallow banks, mostly under 20′ deep and through a great number of coral heads, some only a few feet below the surface.  For a while avoiding these reefs was sort of like running a slalom course as I changed course moment to moment to stay out of harm’s way.

The good news is that with the clear waters of the Bahamas as our guide, seeing the coral heads was quite easy, assuming that the sun was shining, which it was.   These “heads” grow up out of the bottom and show like a sort of “ink spot” against the surrounding blue sandy bottom.    The contrast, under the right conditions, was marked.  This shot clearly shows how these dangerous spots show up.    What doesn’t show is just how many of them there were.  Happily, with some exceptions, they were separated by several hundred feet of clear water so avoiding them was easy even if it required constant vigilance.

While staying away from these heads was a bit of a worry, the wind was favorable for a good passage.  At the end of the day we had only run our engine for about 45 minutes and covered over 40nm, a good day’s run.  Last evening we were happy to discover that our friends and fellow SAGA 43 owners, Ginnie and Ted aboard Firecracker were in the same harbor so we invited them to join us for cocktails.  We had a great time sharing our experiences from the last month or so since we had seen them in George Town.

As I mentioned in my last post, we spent some time, three nights actually, at a really nice resort marina, Highbourne Cay Marina.   It was a real treat and the only time on this trip that we have spent any time in a marina, beyond Rum Cay which was free and didn’t count.   Highbourne Cay Marina is a first class spot and it was a real treat to have high quality meals and stay in such a lovely spot.  Pandora, while a decent size boat, was a peanut compared to the other boats in the harbor and for our first night, was the only sailboat.  I understand that one of the largest sports fisherman boats there, perhaps 100′ or so, was owned by the Bacardi family of Bacardi Rum fame.  There were some boats that were even larger so Pandora was clearly the dink of the marina.

On one of the evenings the chef and crew of one of the yachts put on a lovely outdoor feast for the owner’s guests under a beautiful gazebo , complete with tiki lamps and lovely flower arrangements.  At the end of the evening we saw some of the children making smores on the grill.   So, that’ s how the other half, no, make that the 1/10% lives.  I would do that.  My mother used to say that the wealthy were miserable but based on what I have observed on this trip, it isn’t always true and she was just trying to make me feel good.

Interestingly, the only reasonable way to get supplies to the island is by boat and the one that services this island is a 1920s vintage Chesapeake Bay Oyster boat. The owner told me that he brought it to the Bahamas over 30 years ago when he was in his 20s. The contrast of this vessel to the massive yachts was very marked.  Getting anything to these islands is a major effort and the prices reflect it.

However for a price, and I won’t go into what that price was except that it was a lot more expensive than dropping our anchor in some secluded anchorage, we were able to enjoy a few days on this wonderful island.   Perhaps this shot of Brenda reading on the beach, says it all.

Actually, she was reading from high up on a bluff overlooking a two mile beach, half of which was meticulously raked every other day to keep it looking fresh and clean.  And, let me tell you, plenty of stuff washes up on these beaches each day, some natural and some man made, or should I say, “man discarded”.  They even went so far as to line the paths to the beach with limestone walls.  What a great attention to detail.   We will be back.

Well, perhaps I should head back up on deck to keep an eye on things.  Brenda’s not feeling great as the swells are pretty large so she’s taking a nap and only the autopilot is keeping things moving.   Only another 23nm to go of our 50nm day and we will be in our first Abaco anchorage.   We are very much looking forward to our time in what is called “the Near Bahamas”.

It’s Friday morning and we are tied up in the Highbourne Cay Marina (http://www.highbournecaybahamas.com/highbourne-cay.php) on Highbourne Cay at the nortern tip of the Exumas  waiting for a cold front to come through with some nasty thunderboomers.   The sky is grey and the wind is picking up.  Happily, after this front comes through we are promised a week of wonderful “spring Bahamas weather”.  Given the lovely summer sort of weather that we have enjoyed much of this winter, I am looking forward to even better weather now.

The year round variation of temperatures in the Bahamas is less than ten degrees.  However, in the winter the winds are stronger and are influenced by the gales off of the US east coast.   As winter turns to spring, the weather here moderates as it does up north.  This is good for us as the Abacos, the most northern islands in the Bahamas, have much windier weather from December through April than do the rest of the Bahamas.   As a result, many cruisers opt to visit there in the spring and spend the earlier winter months in the southern portions of the Bahamas.    With the spring weather we too will head north to the Abacos.   The islands in the Abacos are much more developed than the areas that we have been cruising so far so our last month in the Bahamas will offer more civilized opportunites and we are ready for that.

Our visit to the Highbourne Cay marina is our first time in a marina since Rum Cay and our first time in the Bahamas to pay for a slip.  However, as it’s been weeks since we have been anywhere with even a rudimentary grocery store and laundry so we decided to treat ourselves with a few days tied up in a protected marina.  Another good reason, beyond the desire to be pampered, for tying up in a marina is that this cold front is expected to be accompanied by some nasty squalls, and being tied up in comfort beats being buffeted at anchor by 50+kt winds.  Somewhat north of here the winds are expected to be as high as 70kts which is a scary thought.

We chose Highbourne Cay as it is also home to one of the best restraunts in the Bahamas and our dinner last night bore this out.  The restraunt, Xuma, is an open air spot overlooking the neighboring islands and the views of the setting sun last evening was spectacular.    The evening was so nice that there was a camera crew shooting some footage for a travel program highlighting luxery getaways.  A two bedroom cottage here goes for $1,000 a night in high season, a bit above the Pandora crew’s pay grade.

The grounds are lovely with very nice buildings and well kept docks.

They even have nice spots to grill out if you are so inclined.

The nearby two mile long beach is spectacular and perfectly groomed regularly so it’s free of debris.  They even provide thatched umbrellas for you to lounge under.  Not bad.  Believe it or not, even the paths to the beach are raked and are lined with stone walls.  Very civilized indeed.

Of course, this spot, being so tony attracts some well heeled visitors.     You can get to the resort, and the entire island is a private resort, with your own boat.  Or, you can come by seaplane, one of which landed just ouside of the marina when we were coming in.

Speaking of coming by boat, Pandora is like a canoe compared to some of the other “boats” in residence.     We had a nice talk with a crew member of this huge yacht Dreamer, last night at the bar and heard that the launch forDreamer, Olivia, was brand new and cost $400,000 with her tripple 300hp outboards.   Dreamer is nearly new being built in Turkey in 2011 for a guy out of NY.  Of course, he’s in finance.  It seems that the recession didn’t hurt everyone.

There was also a massive go fast yacht, a sort of 150’ speed boat, that came in briefly last afternoon to discharge it’s bikini clad passengers who were dancing on the bow to disco music.  They were dropped, some dozen of them, at the dock for a visit to the bar.  Following afternoon cocktails, they were whisked out, by launch, to the yacht which had anchored outside of the marina where they all showered and dressed for dinner.    An hour or so later they returned, by launch, dressed to kill and ready to party, compliments of the owner who looked like he couldn’t be a day over 40.  Happily, my back was to the action as the view would have been even more difficult to ignore than it was for Brenda who was facing them.  Of course, Brenda kept me entertained with a running commentary of the antics of the revilers.   I expect that they are running a bit slow this morning.  One can only hope.

Well,  all isn’t totally perfect here today as it’s cloudy and a little cool (a relative term) given the approaching front.   However, all the better for a nice walk. We wouldn’t want to sweat too much, would we?

And, now for something completely random.  How about a shot of one of the iguanas , some up to 20 lbs, at nearby Allen Cay, where we anchored the other day.   These guys are very used to people and are always ready for a handout.  Yes, I was as close to him as the photo suggests.

Oh yea, speaking of wildlife, I almost forgot.  Yesterday we bought fresh grouper filets from a local fisherman.  We’ll have them aboard Pandora for dinner tonigh.  A guy’s gotta eat…