Debi
03/19/2010, Guana Cay

So, I've gotten lazy over the past few days. It's hard to write this blog, because I'm not sure anybody is reading it and those that do may find it very boring. We really aren't doing anything spectacular, but we are having great experiences nonetheless.
We headed out of the Jib Room in Marsh Harbor on Tuesday around 11 am and had a screamin' sail across the Sea of Abaco to Fishing Bay, Guana Cay. We anchored and immediately went ashore with Chuck and Stu for a frozen "Grabber's" drink and then on over to Nippers for a frozen "Nipper". Back at the boat, we brought our lobsters over to "Long Gone" (Chuck and Stu's boat) and they pulled out four tuna steaks. Stu prepared broccoli and rice to go along with the seafood. We had a fabulous dinner and an all round great time.
Tuesday morning we went ashore to a nice café and had coffee, breakfast and did some computer work. Around 1 pm we went ashore to "Dive Guana". The four of us (Chuck, Stu, Carl and I) went out on a dive boat into the ocean for a couple of shallow dives. The first one wasn't all that exciting and Stu and I got very cold, so we passed on the second dive. It was of course, the better of the two. Carl and Chuck had a great time. It was cold and raining, so Maria (the wife of Troy, the dive master) took Stu and I back to the government pier in her golf cart. We sent Carl and Chuck in their dinghies from one harbor to the next. Before Carl left, the dinghy anchor line got wrapped around the propeller and he had a terrible time trying to remedy that. Finally, back at the boat, we all showered and then braved the elements once again and went ashore to Grabbers where we all had giant hamburgers with Swiss cheese, mushrooms and onions. They were wonderful!!
Today, Thursday we had one of the worst half hours of our entire trip!!! Hanna had been lounging in our cockpit and about fifteen minutes later, I looked up again for her and she wasn't there. I searched the rest of the boat, no Hanna. "Carl, where's Hanna?" We're calling her name. No Hanna. She's not in the dinghy, she's not on the Bimini, and she's not anywhere below. Oh my God! PANIC! I am now freaking out and demanding Carl get in the dinghy and start searching the waters for her. At least twenty minutes later, I'm now crying and condemning myself for ever bringing her on the boat, but I think I hear a meow. It was so faint I was sure I was imagining things. I open anything and everything below that could open including the refrigerator. Carl was doing sweeps of the harbor in the dinghy. Again, I thought I heard a faint "meow". I opened the galley cabinet and out popped Hanna! It was the worst feeling ever! Anyway, Hanna was then smothered to pieces with love!

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Debi
03/14/2010, Marsh Harbor

Yesterday we decided we'd been at Treasure Cay long enough and that we wanted to move on, so even though the winds were up to 25 knots we left our anchorage and sailed south to Marsh Harbor. We'd heard a lot about the "Jib Room" so we were looking forward to checking it out. They didn't have any slips available, but they were able to let us tie up at the fuel dock. All tied up, we looked over at the boat in the slip next to us and surprise, it was "Big Toot" with Heidi, Hobbs, Lisa and Paul on board. We spent the next few hours just hanging out waiting to go up to the restaurant for "steak night".
Dinner was fabulous. They served one pound New York strip steaks. Carl and I split a dinner.
At the restaurant we ran into a fellow named Chuck Taylor who is a friend of our old neighbors, Pat and Sharon Morrison. They connected us up with him because he and his wife, Stu had been to the Bahamas before and thought he could give us some pointers. Several months ago we met him for dinner at Press 626 in Norfolk. Stu was out of town so she wasn't able to come. We also met a couple from White Stone, Peter and Ginny Clay. It really is such a small world.
Last night was the most fun night we've had so far. It was one big party. Everyone was doing the limbo and we danced and had a blast. Today I am suffering for having so much fun last night. 

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Debi
03/14/2010, Treasure Cay

We never made it to Guana Cay because the winds switched around and were coming from the west. The anchorages at Guana Cay don't have any protection when the winds are coming from that direction. We ended up going to Treasure Cay instead. There weren't any mooring balls, so we had to anchor. It took four tries to get our anchor to set. While sitting on the boat we saw three baby dolphins playing with each other. They were adorable. I got the best pictures I could, but they were so fast.
Later we went ashore and checked out the resort. It was very nice. Just across the street was the beach. We went for a long walk on the beach and found sand dollars, starfish and quite a few shells. The beach has been rated "One of the Top Ten Beaches in the World". It was beautiful. The sand was very white and powdery feeling between your toes. At lunch we went to the Coco Grill and Carl had a Conch Sandwich and I had Grouper. It was great.
The next day we were sitting in our cockpit reading a book and a couple stopped by in their dinghy. They said "we bet you bought your Hunter sailboat from Carolyn Scmalenberger in Deltaville". They were right. They had a 46' Hunter but now have it for sale because they bought a trawler. Their names are Bob and Shirley Cunningham, and they live in Brighton on the Bay in Virginia Beach. We met them ashore for "Pizza Night". We weren't expecting the pizza to be anything special, but it was really good. There must have been at least a hundred people there. Treasure Cay has quite a few condominiums.
Friday, the winds were strong once again and being on anchor we were afraid to leave the boat to go ashore. Carl went in once to try to send some business emails and I stayed with the boat. We knew rain was finally coming, so I scrubbed down the boat with soap and then we waited for the rains. It poured and rinsed all the salty crust that had been building for weeks on the boat. Water costs between 30 and 40 cents a gallon here, so we can't simply go into a marina and wash down the boat.
We sat around and read all day, it was very relaxing.
Bob and Shirley invited us to their boat for cocktails at 5:30. We weren't sure we would be able to go because of the wind and rain, but the winds let up and it was sprinkling, so we took the dinghy in with a big umbrella. We had a great visit with them on their beautiful trawler.

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Debi
03/08/2010, Man O War Cay

Saturday morning we went to the annual Hopetown craft show. I was surprised to see so many people on the island. Later in the day we brought our bikes ashore and rode from one end of the island almost to the other end (about 3 miles each way) up and down hills. Towards the end of the island was an area called "Sea Spray". It was absolutely breathtaking. The houses that were located at the top of a hill had views of the ocean looking out the front of their house and views of the harbor looking out the back side. We stopped at The Abaco Inn overlooking the ocean and enjoyed a beer. It was a little nippy, but gorgeous. That night, we feasted on lobster salad for dinner and once again turned in early. Every day we say we are going to stay up and go ashore to one of the beach bars, but we just never make it.
Sunday morning Carl did two loads of laundry while I cleaned the boat. We had to wait until noon for high tide to leave to get out of the harbor. We motored just an hour to another island named Man O War Cay. This is a unique island. The people are very conservative, and still hold deep affection and loyalty to the British Crown. The island is also known for its boat building and the family, who have been building boats for three generations, the Albury's. We got to see two boats in the process of being built. The islanders are extremely religious and the entire island is dry. Absolutely no alcohol is served, nor can it be brought in to a restaurant with you. They also don't have any cars on the island. We saw many golf carts and scooters.
Yesterday as we were leaving Hopetown, the fuse that runs our bow thruster blew so we were hoping to find a store here in Man O War to replace it. No such luck. You really get spoiled with that extra feature, especially on a sailboat.
We ran into our friends Howard and Donna on "Malolo" from Canada, whom we'd met in Elizabeth City, NC on our trip down the ICW (where we spent 4 days waiting out the remnants of Hurricane Ida). We went aboard their boat and had drinks with them yesterday afternoon and caught each other up and our sailing adventures.
On our dinghy ride to their boat we passed "Big Toot" from Kilmarnock, VA. More people we'd met along the way in Beaufort, NC. On board was Hobbs, his girlfriend Heidi, Hobbs friends Paul and Lisa. We all met ashore and walked the island, shopping, walking the beach and then we enjoyed a great lunch outside overlooking the water. The weather was actually warm today, about 75 degrees!! Back at the boat, Carl dove under our boat to see if something had jammed the bow thruster and then we went over to "Big Toot" where he dove and untangled fishing line and a lure from their prop. He was a hero. We did a lot of talking about fishing, so before we left, Hobbs loaned us two fancy lures and a nice fishing pole. It would be awesome to catch a big fat grouper!!! We've enjoyed that particular fish a lot on this trip. I forgot to mention, along our walk we stopped by Nola's bakery (which was simply a ladies kitchen in her home) and although all of her bread was sold for the day, we left there with five frozen lobster tails. You just can't get enough lobster! (They call them crawfish here). Tomorrow we are off to Guana Cay where the infamous "Nippers" restaurant and bar is. We are meeting up with Lisa and Raffi from Jensen Beach and they are going to show us around and take us snorkeling on the barrier reef. I will definitely wear my wetsuit as I believe the water temperature is only around 70 degrees.

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Debi, Sunny
03/05/2010, Hopetown, Bahamas

Back to the rest of Wednesday. We walked about a mile up a road to another beach on the leeward side of the island. We found sea glass and saw a turtle. We followed it for at least a half hour, trying to get a picture when it poked its head up for air. Whoever said turtles were slow? They never left their big heads out long enough for me to get the shot. This beach was cleaner than the last. There was a lean to with about two dozen single shoes nailed to it. It was kind of funny to think that many people lost one shoe. Wouldn't you notice if you left the beach with only one shoe on?? It was really quite comical. Come to think of it, I lost a shoe last year I think in my house, so I double checked to see if it could be in the collection. It wasn't. 
Back at the boat, stuffed shells and avocado for dinner. Another great day.
Thursday morning, when the tide was almost at its high, we were able to leave Little Harbor in 20 knot winds. We saw at least three large turtles on the way out of the channel. We had about a four hour sail/motor up to Hopetown. We put in about 12 waypoints, and then the last two coming in we had to improvise. The charts showed a deep draft route around a shoal that we had to plot out with dividers and a parallel rule. The normal channel was only 5'. We were successful came into probably our favorite place so far. The anchorage is very full of boats, but the town is so quaint. The houses are really close, but they are so cute, painted in pastel colors. We walked all around the town, in and out of the shops and then went back to the boat and had Terry's Chicken Tuscany. It was great!!! I then made turtle bars and accidentally put in a whole stick of butter instead of ½ stick. I couldn't figure out why it took so long to bake. After about an hour I took it out of the oven because I just couldn't bake it any longer. About a half hour after we'd fallen asleep the carbon monoxide detector was blaring for at least twenty minutes. We could not shut it off. I guess that was a good thing, because it took a good 30-40 minutes with several hatches open to get the blasted thing to quit alarming. If we'd been able to disable it, we would have gone back to bed and who knows if we'd have awoken the next morning. Well we did wake up, because I'm still blogging. 
Today was great. Carl went jogging, and then we climbed 101 steps up a working lighthouse that is lit by kerosene. The view was spectacular from the top! You can see the pictures in the photo gallery. We then we took our dinghy across the harbor and had a beer at a beautiful resort overlooking the ocean. While sitting at the bar, we could see out into the water a three plus foot long barracuda. We then walked around the town some and had lunch at Capt. Jack's. Carl had a grouper sandwich and I had a lobster roll. Delicious! It had warmed up a bit, so we went back to the boat, got our bathing suits on and went to a beach on the leeward side of the island. We stayed about an hour, and then went to the grocery store to get juices to make Rum Punches. Then we went to Aubrey's house where he sells fresh seafood and got four medium lobster tails. Tonight grilled lobster, with lime butter, brown rice and avocado. As I type, I am having a glass of wine, with blue cheese and fresh baked French bread. I could get used to this life. ;)

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Debi/38 knot winds
03/03/2010, Little Harbor, Abacos

We left Spanish Wells at 6:00 am in what was still night time to me. We anticipated it taking a full day to get to the island of Abaco. It was a nice day, but the wind was on our nose, so we motor sailed the whole way. It seems there is either no wind or too much wind down here.  We arrived just outside the entrance to Little Harbor at 4 pm and had to wait for high tide to get in. The channel is only about 3 ½ feet and we draw 5'. It was a bit scary, but we made it in. This was the best all round protected and nearest harbor we could get to in a day. They were predicting 35 knot winds once again. We picked up a mooring, but it was quite close to the channel entrance so we were being blown all around. I'd been cooking meatloaf in the oven during our wait outside, so as soon as we were secure we feasted on meatloaf, frozen cucumbers and scalloped potatoes. It was a wonderful dinner.
Tuesday morning we went ashore and walked across the island to the Atlantic Ocean side. The winds were whipping and the sea was raging. You'll see this in my pictures I posted today. Notice the photo with the giant telephone pole on the rocks. Now that is one of the reasons I find sailing at night a little disconcerting. Can you imagine if that thing impaled your boat?? There was a lot of plastic and trash on the beach which was quite sad. We then went to Pete's Pub (the only restaurant/bar around) and had their signature drink, Little Harbor Blasters. It was a concoction of five rums and several fruit juices. It was delicious, almost as good as the British Virgin Islands Pain Killers. Needless to say, I got very sleepy and went back to the boat for a nap. At 5 pm we went to visit Phil and Nikki on "Ajaya". They're from England and have cruised on their catamaran for several years. They actually sailed from Europe to the United States. CRAZY people. We had drinks with them and they gave us advice on where to go next and what spots we mustn't miss. They were very nice people. We had reservations at Pete's Pub for dinner and headed ashore. We ran into a couple named Martha and Michael whom we'd met earlier in the day and they joined us for dinner. We had a great time. I had grouper and Carl had tuna. It was all delicious! We went back to the boat around 9:30 pm and headed to bed.
Yesterday, we moved our boat to another mooring that was deeper in the anchorage, so that we wouldn't be blown around so much. Very close to our new mooring there was another mooring (which was a tire with a wooden board on top). The mooring didn't have a line that you could tie your boat to, so evidently they had decided it was too close to the other mooring, so they disabled it. We didn't think anything of it, but at 11:30 pm the wind turned around and we were awakened by this horrific noise. Our boat was running back and forth over the other mooring. It sounded like it was scraping the bottom of the boat and then popping out the other side, then banged into the boat, it would then go back the other way. We lay in bed listening, Carl said we couldn't do anything about it. Our spotlight isn't working and it was really dark, so moving the boat wasn't an option. About two hours later, moving seemed to be our ONLY option. The moon was a bit brighter, so visibility was a little better. I was in the bow with a head flashlight on, and a regular flashlight in hand. I had to remove the lines from the mooring and then shine the light ahead in order for us to see to cross from one side of the anchorage to the other dodging the boats and moorings. We made it, I hooked the mooring line and we were tied down back at our original spot!!! We had a very rocky/rolly rest of the night, but at least we got rid of that horrible scraping noise.
It's Wednesday morning and the winds are still 30+ knots. I think we'll be stuck here a couple of more days. Carl is getting ready to prepare bacon and pancakes for breakfast. Mmmmm. We're hoping to get to Marsh Harbor by Saturday, as there is a huge concert "Barefoot Man" happening. He plays twice a year. We'll see.

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