ABACOS

We sailed almost all the way from Spanish Wells to Little Harbour.  The wind was about 15 knots (Lynn’s favorite wind speed), and seas were about 3 feet.  We saw several ships as we crossed the Northeast Providence Channel, and appreciated having radar on the boat to keep an eye on them.

The Abacos are the northernmost islands in the Bahamas, and we entered by way of the Little Harbour Bar Cut, turned left through a narrow channel into charming Little Harbour, where we picked up a mooring and made plans for dinner at Pete’s Pub, an open-air beach bar.

Pete arrived in Little Harbour as a boy more than 50 years ago, on a boat with his family.  The family lived in a big cave just above the anchorage for a while.  Pete’s father was an artist and sculptor, and Pete has followed in his footsteps.  There is a gallery of beautiful art works, and an on-site foundry for bronze casting of spectacular pieces.  The Pub has pieces of the family boat in it.  They catch lots of fish out of Little Harbour, and it’s usually on the menu at Pete’s.  It’s touted as the place where “The elite meet to eat in their bare feet.”

The list of things that stopped working on this cruise is longer.  The boat’s old green screen GPS/chart plotter has given up.   Now we can’t get speed-over-the-ground reading at the helm.  Thankfully it’s available on a hand held gps or from Captain Voyager on the computer.  The boat might be going 5 knots through the water, but a current might be slowing us down to 3 knots or speeding us up to 6 knots, and that is speed over the ground, or the actual speed that we are making.  Important to know, and it shows how vital it is to have back ups for all this stuff.

We enjoyed our time at Little Harbour – watching the many turtles, kicking back some, reading, and doing some boat chores.  George scrubbed the water line of the boat, and Lynn cleaned some rust off the stainless steel topside.  We toured the gallery, and enjoyed happy hour at Pete’s in the evenings.  It’s nice to come back to a place you’ve already been – you don’t feel like you have to see it all a second time and you can pick and choose your activities.

Hope Town, with it’s striped Red and White lighthouse, was the next destination for Sunspot Baby.  The trip was less than 20 miles, with 15 knot southeast winds and a following sea.  George steered the boat through Lubber’s Quarters in very skinny water at close to low tide.  We picked up a mooring in Hope Town Harbour, and set off for a dinghy exploration. 

What a charming spot!  The lighthouse is one of the last of the kerosene powered lighthouses in the world.  It requires constant attention at night from the keepers, but the light is dazzling and has a totally different look than modern lighthouses.  There are many little shops and cafes, and pastel painted gingerbread houses – many available as rentals.  A number of businesses have their own docks, making it easy to dinghy from one to another.  The beautiful Atlantic beaches are a very short walk.  It’s easy to see why people fall in love with Hope Town!

We were expecting Man-O-War Cay to be similar to Hope Town, but it is totally different.  It is a famous boat building community, and most of the residents have the surname Albury.  A number of cruisers keep their boats on moorings at Man-O-War, so a number of the boats near us were not occupied – their owners having flown home, or left their boats there for one of the yards to do excellent boat work. 

Moorings are a common occurrence in the Abacos.  They seem to be universally priced at $15/night, and in many of the small harbors there is no room to anchor.  So once again we picked up a mooring – albeit crammed into a very tight spot with many other boats.  We weren’t comfortable with this, but since we were almost always on the boat or just a few minutes away, that’s what we did.  Our mooring was owned by David (Albury, of course).  He showed up in a beautifully restored 1972 Bertram power boat, painted lemon yellow with green canvas.  Albury boats are prized throughout the Bahamas, but we saw a number of nicely restored Bertrams in Man-O-War Cay.

Other than getting your boat fixed, there isn’t a lot to do at Man-O-War.  There are a couple of nice shops, and a good café.  The marina laundry charges $5 to wash and $5 to dry per load.  We did one load of desperation laundry.  We can always read or do boat things.  Lynn got a hair cut and made a pizza dinner one night.   George got up to date on information if we should decide to ever leave Sunspot Baby here.   

The weather inevitably kicked up, and the tight moorings became an issue.  The boat next to us had a very long bowsprit, which was threatening to poke itself inside our stainless steel arch at our stern.  We pulled our mooring line up as tight as possible, and the other boat’s owner (fortunately on board), let out a few feet on his line.  Still it was not a comfortable situation.   

We had a big rain.  George scrubbed the boat, then he took a rain shower, then he opened up our water fills and propped beach towels around them to funnel the water in.  In less than an hour, we had completely filled our water tanks.  We filled all of our drinking water jugs, and got several buckets of water for laundry, as well.  With water costing up to 50 cents a gallon in the Bahamas, this a windfall!  Of course we can make water with our reverse osmosis watermaker, but at 1.5 gallons per hour it would take a long time to fill our 170 gallon tank capacity. 

Most places in the Abacos have wi-fi.  However, it’s difficult to get in some spots without an external antenna .  We enjoyed the wi-fi when we could get it, and added an external antenna to our shopping list. 

Great Guana Cay is the last island in the southern Abacos before the Whale Cay passage.  It’s a must-stop, if only to visit Nippers, the funky beach bar on the Atlantic side.  We were at Nippers shortly after our arrival – to have a drink and scope out the view of the ocean.   The big rolling waves were spectacular, but not to our liking because we had hoped to go diving with Dive Guana during our stay.  Nevertheless, we got our dive gear out and did a little checkout dive around the boat so we would be good to go if things changed.  

Sunset Beach Resort is a little down at heel, but once a week they host a potluck dinner and it’s a favorite activity with cruisers in the nearby anchorages.  Lynn made a big tray of saffron rice to take along.  Any time cruisers get together there is good food and lots to talk about.  We heard that Sunset Beach Resort turns out great food from its own kitchen, so we will try that the next time we visit.  We didn’t get to dive, but we did enjoy our stay at this pretty spot. 

Green Turtle Cay is a favorite place for us, and it was to be our last lengthy stop in the Abacos before making our way toward the U.S. coast.  To get there, boats pass through the Loggerhead channel into the Whale Passage, a tricky and sometimes downright nasty piece of water.  The direction of the passage coupled with a commonly prevalent northeast swell of any size can eat boats.  The cruiser’s net broadcasts information on all of the cuts in Abaco every morning and there is always sizeable interest in the condition of the Whale.  Sunspot Baby came through the Whale passage on a fine day in beautiful blue water.  Some acquaintances came through the day before, surfing in on a 10 foot swell.  We did well to wait a day for better conditions 

We moored in Black Sound at Green Turtle, just in time for the weekend and the annual Heritage Roots Festival.  Lynn started in earnest preparing food ahead for the next week, and George worked on routes for our passage home, prepared Sunspot Baby for her long trip, and did a massive chicken-grilling stint at the barbecue.  We froze the results in meal sized bags.  There was still time to attend the festival, walk through quaint New Plymouth village, and have other cruisers over for lemonade in the afternoon.  Even though we were a long dinghy ride from the festival, we clearly heard the lyrics to the music late into the night 

We spent one night each at Crab Cay and Great Sale Cay, finishing up our Bahamas visit at Old Bahama Bay marina in West End.  Even though we were moving daily, we managed to find a beach for shelling and George opened a green coconut for the juice and soft meat. 

We will miss the Bahamas, but we are certain to have more adventures on our trip home.

Lynn Stateham

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