Chapter 8, "As the Blog Thickens"!

We spent 5 days in Marsh Harbor while we waited for the weather to improve.  It was still pretty warm every day but beginning on Thursday the wind howled.  The wind blew at 30+knots and the seas were up at about 16+feet.  We rocked in the slip but we were safe and sound.  We found a slip at Mangoes Resort.   Ray the Dock Master worked to help get us tied up.  The dock was full of others that were waiting out the weather like us. 

Captains notes:

So, the cold front that passed and pinned us down in Marsh Harbor the last five days with 30 Knot plus winds has gone down north of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico and is trying to organize into a tropical storm and potentially develop into a Hurricane.  This has only happened once in the month of March since record keeping began in 1851 and that case was in 1908. We are still over two months from the start of hurricane season!!! If it truly develops, it will be the first named storm of 2017 and the name will be Arlene. This will happen as soon as the wind reaches a sustained speed of 39 MPH. It is already causing 15 foot seas and flash flooding in the mountainous island nations. We should know in the next 48 hours what is happening and how it will affect us. It is doubtful that we will be affected at all but certainly something to keep our eyes on. Our local forecast as of right now is the best 10 day forecast we have seen since the trip began. We still plan on leaving Marsh Harbor tomorrow and continue south. The forecast a week or so from today looks promising to pop out into the Atlantic and make the run down to Eleuthera Barring any problems with Arlene.

We decided to make the most of it and get provisioning done.  We were pleasantly surprised at how readily available in Marsh Harbor, everything was.  Things were not that terribly expensive either.  We found a fresh seafood store right in the harbor called Skaggs distributors.  The locals call it “The Fish House”.  We bought Lobster tails, Stone Crab claws, Mahi-Mahi and Grouper.  Everything was very reasonable.  Maybe we can increase our fish intake one way or another?

We found beer at $41.00 per case?  We bought Kalik, and High Rocks, both Bahamian brews.  Rum is still incredibly cheap.  We paid $8 a bottle for some pretty good stuff.

We took care of all of our work while in the slip.  We re-fueled, filled our water tanks, got rid of our garbage and did some laundry.  Steve did all of his Captain work to check the Engine, fluids, rigging etc.

We met some of the others on the dock.  There was a Pot Luck scheduled on Friday night that we attended.  We met people from all over the world here with different stories and adventures.

Hope Town on Elbow Cay is a place we wanted to visit, however the depths on the chart show us that it is much too shallow there for our boat.  We would have to anchor way out of the Harbor and the Seas are not good for that. 

   There is a Ferry system that the locals use as well as visitors to get around to other Islands called Albury Ferries.  We took a Ferry and went to Hopetown.  It was a very beautiful little settlement.  They have the last functioning Kerosene Lighthouse in the world.  It was built in 1864 by the Chance Brothers of Birmingham, England.  The Brick tower is 89 feet high.  We climbed the stairs to the top and what a view. 

We walked to the Atlantic side of Elbow Cay and the Dunes to see the ocean.  Today the Ocean is still quite angry with seas about 15 foot high!  We also saw the memorial for those that died due to Cholera many years ago, perhaps from not enough Rum or something?

As Captain Steve mentioned, we will leave here in the morning.  We have pretty good internet so I am blogging and posting as many pictures and maps as I can.  I don’t know how good the service will be as we move further South.