June 5 - Leave for snorkeling at Sandy Cay and then on to Conch Inn Marina at Marsh Harbor. Winds are predicted to be light but they pick up to middle teens early on. There’s too much swell to make snorkeling at Sandy Cay much fun for us, so we continue on to Marsh Harbor. Top off our fuel (49 gallons at $6/gallon) and get into our slip where the marine electrician I contacted is waiting for us to trouble shoot our battery charger/generator problem. Turns out problem is not battery charger but broker breaker wire in generator. He "hot-wires" it for us and helps us try to order a replacement breaker. Everything’s working again and we go to local restaurant "Mangoes" for dinner. Food is excellent and reasonable.
June 6-10 - It’s summer weather all of a sudden. Very light winds if any and strong thunderstorms and rain on and off, mainly in the afternoon. We hang out on the 6th, and on the 7th we try to go to Hope Town by small "ferry" on the 7th, but there’s too much rain all around and we don’t go. The next day (the 8th) we go diving with Dive Abaco (Keith) to the Fowl Cay Preserve. Water is dead flat in the ocean, which is quite different from anything we’ve experienced on this trip to date. First dive is "punctuated" by a large "tame" Nassau Grouper that follows the dive master around and is petted by him and some of the other divers including Kryss. He’s not being fed by us, so I guess it’s just familiarity with the dive master and the fact that it’s a protected preserve and he has learned not to fear divers. We also see a large hogfish at a "cleaning station" and a few good sized barracuda hanging around the boat. It’s an interesting dive, but I haven’t used the camera since the Caymans and my pictures do not come out that well. The second dive takes us through an extensive series of pass throughs. Interesting to some I guess. No big thing for me. Find a bolt and some washers at the base of the mast at the end of the day on the 8th (not a good thing), so plan to go up the mast for the first time the next day to find out where it came from. We meet John and Marlene on a 42 ft. Beneteau called Errantry. He’s a retired trauma nurse and she’s a behavior therapist. They’ve rented a car and invite us to drive down to Pete’s Pub in Little Harbor for dinner. We go and the food is very good again, but the bugs make it less than ideal to say the least. The next day (the 9th) John helps me go up the mast and we find that the one of the bolts holding the ring that goes around in front of the radome to keep the jib from snagging on it is missing (the one I found at the base of the mast) and that the other three are loose and cannot be tightened adequately. Only temporary solution is to take the ring down until new holes can be tapped and larger bolts fitted. More tiring than I expected working up there and I don’t do much except read the rest of the day while Kryss practices the piano. Realized I should have taped the open holes in the mast where the bolts go, so tomorrow Kryss will help me and I’ll go up the mast again to tape them. June 10-Got back up the mast in the morning, this time with Kryss handling the halyard and all goes well. Now we know we can do this together if need be. Take the ferry to Hopetown on Elbow Cay. Hopetown is famous for having one of the last kerosene lighthouses that are manually operated. It’s a small harbor with a cute town. We walk to the top of the lighthouse and then start off for lunch at Papa Nasty’s Barbeque at the other end of the island by White Sound. We’ve been hearing about Papa Nasty’s on the Abaco Cruiser’s Net that we listen to each morning on the VHF radio to hear about what’s going on with and for cruisers in the Abacos. Turns out Papa Nasty’s is in a little trailer with picnic tables at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere, but the pulled pork sandwich was awesome. We then continue our walk to White Sound and then back to the main harbor to take the ferry back to Marsh Harbor.
June 11 - We make the 9 nm trip to Great Guana Cay in the morning and pick up a mooring in Fisher’s Bay, which is just around the corner from Settlement Harbor where "town" is. The 2010 census reported 197 people living on Great Guana Cay, up from 97 in 1999. We "chill" the rest of the afternoon as passing showers and thunderstorms cause us to keep having to "close up" on a regular basis. Sun comes out in the late afternoon and it’s a very pleasant end of the day and evening, but we find ourselves in the midst of a strong thunderstorm around midnight. No harm done and the sandman visits us both.
June 12 - 80% likelihood of rain today. Put the dinghy in the water and got ready to go to Settlement Harbor just as rain came. Water got rough and so we diverted to beach where we’re on a mooring at Fisher’s Bay right in front of "Grabbers" (well-known small lodge and restaurant). Rain stopped and turns out it’s a one minute walk from Grabbers to Settlement Harbor, so better place to be after all. Harbor is very small. Walked up the hill to Nippers (small lodge with restaurants, two wading pools, etc., famous for Sunday pig roast and general revelry-it’s perched on a bluff on the ocean side. It’s raining again, so nothing else to do but have a couple of special Nippers rum punches and eat lunch. Rain abates and we take a long walk along the beach. Beach is pretty much entire length of ocean side of the island. It’s very calm and quite pretty and ominous black storm clouds stay to the South. When we get back to Nippers we have a nice swim in the ocean and dinghy back to the boat. Most of the rain seems to have passed South of us today after the initial spritz and it’s a very nice day all in all. Kryss swims again from the boat when we get back and I just chill.
June 13 - It blew pretty hard for a few hours last night. We rocked quite a bit and I was up for a while checking our mooring, but no big thing. It’s sunny and clear in the morning with next to no wind and it turns out to be a picture perfect day, weather wise (it’s finally acting like summer in the Bahamas) and otherwise. Also Kryss’ birthday, which I forget until she reminds me (whoops). We take our time getting ready this morning and then go to High Rocks on the ocean side to snorkel. It’s a good walk South from Nippers. The reef there is very close to the beach and and quite nice and the water is as smooth as glass. Along with all of the usual suspects see a turtle and an odd resident either barracuda or some kind of needle fish (couldn’t be sure which). Had very long snout for a barracuda but the mouth full of teeth makes me lean in the direction that it was some kind of barracuda. Pretty much the whole East side of the island is one broad fine sand beach on an Emerald ocean, and it’s really beautiful. The sun is blazing and you have to be careful, but that should be our worst problem. We go to Grabbers on the Fisher Bay side where we beach our dinghy for lunch as Kryss has her heart set on pizza, and we try their "famous" Guana Grabber rum drink which is a slushy and very good. Kryss has her pizza which is fine and I have their special with is Bahamian stuffed land crab, which is also good. They’ve cut down a bunch of coconuts from the fringing palms (apparently to keep them from falling on guests) and a young man offers to give us some coconut water and coconut jelly. The coconut water is different from coconut milk which I think comes from the processing of the coconut flesh. The coconut water is basically clear and very mild flavored. The "jelly" is the membrane that holds the coconut water and is between the center of the coconut and the flesh and husk. It’s smooth and white with a semi-soft consistency and it too is mild flavored. We take the water and jelly back to the boat where we try to find some shade as the sun is really hot for almost the first time the whole trip, in large part because the sky is so clear and in larger part because there is no wind. I guess I also have to give some credit to the fact that it’s getting further into summer. We go for another snorkel from the boat to Delia Cay which is immediately adjacent and although the bottom is basically weed and "dead" there are a few really small patch reef sections that have an abundance of fish, particularly a surprising number of Queen Angelfish. On our way back to the boat Kryss sees a good-sized shark which hastens our return to the boat. She’s not sure what kind, but from what she has told me I surmise that it was a Caribbean Reef Shark. After we’re on the boat for a while we hear and see a large splash in the vicinity where she saw the shark and we surmise that it may have caught dinner.
Not too many pix for this area. Will try to post what I have at next post.
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