A Visit to Hope Town

We took the ferry over to Hope Town yesterday. Its a beautiful little town located at the north end of Elbow Cay. The harbor is completely protected from all sides but it is small and very crowded. The town, like most of the Abaco Cays was settled circa 1780 by Loyalists from America who did not want to leave British rule. There are no cars in the town. Golf carts are the means of transportaion on what amounts to 10 foot wide sidewalks. Today a waterfront lot sells for almost a million dollars, and with a house can easily exceed 2 million. A two bedroom beach house rents for over 2100 dollars a week. A large number of Americans, Canadians and Europeans spend the winter there. I still cannot upload pictures so I cannot share a beautiful picture of the Harbor and lighthouse.

Nothing is Easy

We are in the Conch Inn Marina in Marsh Harbour awaiting delivery of a new inverter. The original failed after 16 years. Since the refrigerator / freezer operates on AC power we cannot anchor or move the boat unless we throw out all frozen and refrig food. We expect to be here until next Thurday at least, and that assumes that Xantack delivers the inverter as they promised. By then it will be time it start home. To add to frustration the weather continues to host high winds and a uncrossable Gulf Stream. To further complicate matters, Dixie's sister is very ill with a staph infection . More later as the situation, hopefully, resolves itself.

Moving on, we expect (hope)

The Internet has been down here for two days, and the wind is just dying down after three days of gale force or near gale force winds. The Whaleback Channel has been in a rage condition for three days; impassable for recreational boats. We expect to leave tomorrow after a week here that was supposed to be two days. The water maker hose project succumbed to Island Time so we'll get along without a watermaker for a couple of weeks. We will work our way down the Sea of Abaco and eventually get to Marsh Harbour. We don't expect to have an internet connection until then. We'll be back eventually.

Mother Nature is not Nice; Unforecasted Gale

We were going to leave for Marsh Harbour today but there was, and still is, an unforecasted gale going on. The anchorage was a circus last night; too many boats too close together.
We'll be here at least another night since Whaleback Channel is dangerous if not impassable. The current forecast is for another gale later tonight. Its very late in the season to have these kind of storms. The objective in waiting until March to come over was to avoid most of the winter storms. Didn't work this year. We have a ruptured high pressure hose on the watermaker so this delay gives us time to get it fixed. In Ft Lauderdale the problem could have been solved in 2 hours; in the Bahamas its days.

Good Samaritan, through incredible circumstances

We rented a golf cart for a tour of the island. Several hours after we started we took a wrong turn and before we got back to the beaten track we found in the middle of the dirt road a leather wallet full of credit cards, ID and I suppose money though we never opened the money compartment. We continued on for an hour or so, planning on leaving the wallet with the hotel. As we were returning to the Green Turtle Club we were passed by three carts going in the opposite direction and Dixie shouted "that's the guy in the driver's license photo". We turned around and caught up with them and sure enough they had been searching for the wallet. I will leave it to the statititions to calculate the odds of this happening. The guy who lost his wallet was, as you can imagine, astounded and very grateful. Dixie did it again.

Lucaya to Green Turtle

We left Lucaya on Tuesday morning and entered Dover Sound from the Grand Lucayan Waterway. The trip to Great Sale anchorage was a bit bumpy. The next day trip to Manjack Cay was very bumpy. Poor Samson was very sick. The Manjack anchorage is very beautiful. We tied up at the Green Turtle Club this AM. We'll be here until Monday; longer if the incoming front has as high winds as forcasted. No pictures because the blog site cannot seem to handle them at the moment.

Moving on

We plan on leaving in the AM for the Abacos. The internet facilities in the Abacos are not universal so there may be gaps in the blog until we can catch up. Don't give up on us; we'll be up as we can.

Best Laid Plans .....or NWS is unreliable

At least another day in Lucaya. The forecast changed dramatically from last night to the high winds and heavy rain going on as this is being written. The National Weather Service seems unable to accurately forecast 6 hours ahead. Stay tuned.

Kitties at Rest

The cats continue to sleep about 90% of the time and "rest" the remainder of the time. Samson likes to curl up in the catch all basket in the main cabin and Delilah seems to prefer one of the chairs in the aft cockpit or one of our laps. Not a high stress situation.