A single stop-light marks the junction of the two main roads in Marsh Harbour, this being unofficial capital of the Abacos and the third largest city in the entire Bahamas! But the shopping and services are more pervasive then anywhere we've been in the Bahamas, Nassau excluded. The grocery stores are larger and well stocked. Liquor and Duty free stores are everywhere. Shops and restaurants cater to the tourists. A few American chain restaurants have found their way into this area, including Subway and KFC and even a Pizza Hut until Hurricane Floyd decided that he wanted to eat in and wreck the place. Florida style development is just about everywhere you look. Sadly enough, it's much more Americanized then we would have expected.
But it is a good place to entertain guests, as we are welcoming Joyce's parents, Marcy and Ed Herring to the Bahamas on Thursday and Joyce's brother Chuck on Sunday. (Ed and Marcy are staying at the Conch Inn in Marsh Harbour, while Chuck will stay on the boat.) What makes it so good it that the attractions are close together, the transportation is excellent, the services are at least fair and the sailing is comfortably easy. Within a day sail are the distinctly different but all interesting attractions of Hope Town, Great Guana Cay, Treasure Cay and Man-O-War Cay. As for the weather, we would have expected that the cold fronts would stall to the north giving us pleasant fair weather. That is until IT hit. Did we ever have one hum dinger of a storm... lightning and thunder, wind, rain, more wind, horizontal rain, more wind, and driving rain. All this in the ‘wee' hours of the morning.
The evening started out pleasantly enough. Seaquel, Starlight, Fiddlers Green and ourselves had finally gotten together on Monday night to enjoy the dorado that George had caught on the way to the Abacos. A real feast to be sure that began with a fresh garden salad and ended with the key lime pie I had cooked up while underway the previous day. (Did you ever try separating egg whites while bouncing around on a boat. It got a little messy, but that's another story for Joyce to tell.) Anyway, the wind had blown hard all day but thankfully it let up for a while, just about the time George grilled the fish. As the evening darkened, flashes of heat lighting ranged around us but no wind, no rain and no thunder. The fireworks died off as we all made our way back to our boats and to sleep. To back up and make a long story longer, we'd had plenty of activity in the anchorage all day. A power boat had inadvertently snagged the anchor rode of a small sloop nearby and the mess ended up getting sorted out about a boat length from Seaquel, with a very nervous George looking on. Then another nearby charter sailboat spent the better part of the afternoon trying without much success to get their anchor set. Still later, I bloodied my shin racing up the companionway steps to investigate a banging noise along our hull. So, when a Chesapeake-summer type thunderstorm rolled through Marsh Harbour at 4 in the morning, we were certain that nothing but chaos would result. We heard later that there was plenty of trouble elsewhere, but the flashes of lighting revealed that Starlight, Seaquel, Fiddlers Green and everybody else around us were staying in place, even as the 40 knot gusts heeled the boats and strained at the ground tackle. Behind us, a ketch rigged sailboat's roller furling main and mizzen had become partly unfurled, the sails flogging hard in the breeze. But all else was well and we remained snug and dry until the storms fury died down an hour later.
The rain continued as daylight approached, but I couldn't take the flogging sails any longer. Donning my foul weather jacket, I hopped in our water logged dinghy and motored over to lend a hand getting the unruly sails back under control. The job got finished not before getting drenched through and through, but much too late to save the sails some serious damage.
All would have been well if that had been our only storm. But later in the week, another front was making its way through Florida and on to the Bahamas threatening to put a damper on our plans with our guests and giving us pause to wonder if we came to the Abacos much too soon.
After finding such good snorkeling areas in Exumas, we were expecting to be disappointed with our choices in the Abacos. Somehow, the water didn't seem as clear nor the possibilities as good. But as the weather settled down for a day before everyone's company arrived (in addition to our company, George and Brian were both expecting their mothers to visit at the same time), we left our dinghy with our anchor in Marsh Harbour and towed both Starlight's and Seaquel's dinghies out to Johnny's Cay to see what we could see. As I said we were not expecting much and were quite surprised to see large masses of thriving scattered coral heads teaming with fish. The adjacent grassy patches also proved more productive with conch then we could have believed given the pressure of the nearby populations of Marsh Harbour among others. But we came back with two lobsters and five enormous conch. The conch fed four us that night with enough left over for Ed and Marcy to lunch on the next day.
Yes, the parents did arrive safely on time and we were much appreciative that all of the necessary spare parts for the boat were accounted for. Ed and Marcy mentioned that airport security could not figure out for certain that the egg-shaped shaft zincs were not in fact hand grenades. But all was well otherwise. In addition to the boat parts, they brought with them a hefty load of provisions, mail, and to Joyce's delight, tax information. Our box of supplies was so expertly packed such that even an extra molecule of air had trouble finding a spot. It was wonderful seeing things we had run out of and was too expensive to buy here. And yes, it's true, you can't escape to paradise without paying your taxes...Uncle Sam still wants his share. Joyce's unfortunate task was to go through the last 3 months of mail and figure out our taxes; all while our company was here so it can be mailed back in time.
For the first couple of days of Ed and Marcy's visit, we put Watermark in a slip for the first time since checking in at Chub Cay in December. At the off season rate of 50 cents a foot until April 1, we figured we could splurge. Not only that, we went all out and took a long stand up shower in their motel room. After bathing in a bucket for five months, you can only imagine what a luxury running hot water really is. But as the boat was very clean, basically pressure washed from the storm only a few nights ago and the tanks relatively full of water, we didn't even venture to get out the water hose and the power cord stayed put as well. It was strange staying in a slip after all this time. We found after a few days we were anxious to get back on the hook as the breeze was better, there were less mosquitoes, and we didn't have to worry constantly about Atlas jumping ship as he looked longingly at the dock.
To welcome both Joyce's parents and George's mother Marge to the Bahamas, we all joined together for a dinner at the pricy Conch Inn Restaurant the evening of their arrival. And just to prove that it's really a small world, we quickly learned that Marge's grand-daughter lives directly across the street from Marcy and Ed and that she would be visiting her on the following Sunday in Salisbury.
Okay, here's a tribute to the power of the net. Ed has been researching information on the Abacos since planning their trip mostly on the web. To be sure, he knew more about the local places of interests then we, even though we've essentially lived in the Bahamas for the past 5 months. Of particular interest to Ed was Nipper's Beach Bar and Restaurant on Great Guana Cay. Overlooking a beautiful pink sand beach, the club has kind of a snorkel, shower, swim, eat and drink thing going on. All in a tropical setting. Unfortunately, the best day for us to go turned out to be unusually breezy such that a small sandstorm was blowing off the beach and into the bar and filling the pool inches deep in sand.
The previous day, the wind proved better for going the ten miles east to Hope Town. Probably the apple in the eyes of the Abacos, Hope Town features a candy stripped, kerosene fired lighthouse overlooking row after row of neatly painted beach cottages lining narrow hilly streets. For lighthouse buffs, the lighthouse here is only one of three manual kerosene lights in the world. Built by the British in 1863, to this day it is still keeping ships off the treacherous reefs fringing the north side of the Abacos.
During our short day visit to Hope Town, much to Ed's delight he enjoyed swimming and floating in the beautiful turquoise water off the beach. We also reunited with our friends Rick and Sandy on Changing Channels and snorkeled off the beach.
We give lots of credit to both Ed and Marcy for managing the tricky maneuvers and agility required to get on and off the docks from the dinghy. More then once have both Joyce and I nearly landed in the water doing this very thing. But Ed and Marcy managed well getting from the bobbing dinghy and up the ladders on the docks and onto our boat without mishap. It takes most folks a while getting used to it, but they both were troopers.
Joyce's brother Chuck arrived on Sunday bringing with him even more provisions and the all important resupply of cat littler. Of all things that would force us to leave the Bahamas early, oddly enough, it turns out that cat litter is the hardest to get in supply here. We ended the week with a family happy hour enjoying the colorful sunset in Marsh Harbour (which is displayed at the top).
