Wildcat-March 20, 2005

March 20, 2005

I have not written for a while because we have been busy traveling. The days have flown by and we've been enjoying being here in the Bahamas. I'll go back to where I left off saying goodbye to our friends Becky and Mark. We decided to head north again and spend about 3 weeks north of Whale Cay.

I wanted to mention a little bit about navigation in the Bahamas. There are very few markers that you can count on to be working. For example, in order to anchor behind Crab Cay you look for a light at the end of the Cay. The light stucture is partially there but there is no light on it anymore. This is not just something that happened because of the hurricanes. This is just the way it is in the Bahamas. With GPS available today navigation is much easier. However your greatest asset is your eyes. You learn to judge the depth of the water by the colors that you see.
You end up getting fairly good at this technique. You must try to arrive at your destinations in daylight. Everyone here accepts that and travels accordingly.

We had settled in for a few days in Green Turtle Cay where we had an exciting experience. We decided to have lunch at the only 4 star restaurant in the Abacos. It's called Green Turtle Club. When we dinghied in we were greeted by a policeman in the very official uniform of the Bahamas. He helped us out of the dinghy and we chatted with him then went on our way. We noticed a large table set up for at least 30 people as we entered the restaurant. It turned out that this group of people represented the heads of the judicial departments of the countries in the Carribean. They had gathered together for a conference in Freeport, Bahamas. The conference group arranged for them to be flown to the Treasure Cay airport, taxied to the ferry dock, and then ferried over to Green Turtle Cay for lunch. We spoke with the photographer for the event, Vandyke Hepburn. He told us that there were many high ranking officials here at this luncheon. We had quite an interesting political discussion with our new friend. We suddenly realized why the police were there, and that they were making sure we were not a danger to the group. After lunch the group took the ferry back to Treasure Cay, taxied back over to the airport, and then they flew back to Freeport to continue their conference, about 200 miles round trip. Only in the Bahamas! We can vouch for the 4 star rating and we hope to dine there again in the future, but probably not with all of the excitement.

We traveled further north and saw fewer and fewer boats. In the winter with unsettled weather it is hard to find good harbors in this area. We had great fishing and were especially excited about a place called Moraine Cay. There is one house on the island and currently no one was there. There are shallow and deep reefs that are beautiful. Chris caught a 5 pound hogfish here that fed us for dinner and 2 lunches. With the winds at the time we were unable to stay anchored there for the night but were just a short 10 miles from Crab Cay. We anchored there for 3 days and saw only 4 sailboats sailing by in that time. We had a full moon at night and light, light winds. It was spectacular being able to see the bottom at night. We checked out many a diving spot in this area and ate extremely well. One other notable spot was Manjack Cay. There are 2 houses on the Cay. One of the couples invites all the anchored boats ashore regularly to explore the island. They have created a path to the ocean and ask only that you keep the place clean. In response the boaters regularly clean the beach of debris and help out with the many projects around the house. They have a lovely garden and have begun doing hydroponics. They have a huge generator for their energy needs and a very large cistern for their water needs. They have a sign as you walk up their dock that says, "Yes Tresspassing". What a lovely philosophy. We befriended the couple on one of the boats there and we believe they will spend their whole time in the Bahamas anchored here. It is a short dinghy ride to Green Turtle for supplies and there are so many good fishing spots you never need go hungry.

We sailed down to Marsh Harbour to pick up our friends Jan and Mike. The weather started off badly with a rare all day rainstorm. The predictions were ghastly, 45 knots of wind! Lucky for us it never did materialize, and also lucky for us, friends of ours held on to a mooring at Man-o-Way Cay so we could comfortably ride out the bad weather. We got to know this island and its residents a little better and enjoyed our stay there. We then headed off to Hopetown which is a favorite destination for Chris and myself. Hopetown is never disappointing and we enjoyed our stay there as well. We dinghied out to Johnny Cays to fish and Chris caught 3 lobsters! One was the biggest lobster we have ever seen let alone caught. What a feast we had. While in Hopetown we also tried Vernon's groceries famous Key Lime Pie and it was a winner. We also were able to get to the shell beach at the northern end of Guana Cay and walked the famous Treasure Cay beach. This beach was voted one of the top ten beaches in the world by National Geographic. This was some time ago and while it is still a beautiful beach, it was definitely affected by the hurricanes this summer.

So back to Marsh Harbour, we said goodbye to Jan and Mike and began doing some repair work on the boat. We had to install a new thermostat for our refrigerator, Chris had some engine work to do involving solenoids and a few other things. It's like doing repairs in a house but many times it's critical and needs to be done immediately. Luckily none of these projects were of the critical nature. We're back in Hopetown. We bought another Key Lime Pie and we plan to go to a place called Tahiti Beach today. It's south of here and it's a place we have never visited. We'll let you know how we like it. Till next time, we wish for fair winds and following seas.

Pam and Chris