Emerald Bay Marina and Children's Cay

Mindy and Jim were up early on Sunday to make their early morning flight out of the George Town Airport. Luckily, we remembered the time change Saturday night. We heard others here in the marina were not so lucky. We heard Jim and Mindy got home OK and we were so happy to hear that.

We did our laundry on Sunday in the “free” laundry at the Emerald Bay Marina. That is a first down here in the Bahamas, or at just about any marina. The weather was ugly on Sunday and was projected to be a little nasty on Monday, so we stayed in the harbor till Tuesday morning. It gave me a chance to post to the blog using the Internet service at the marina.

Bob listens to Chris Parker on the SSB radio every morning for the weather. It is free, but if you want the ability to ask him specific questions (like “I’m here and want to go there, when I should go?), you pay a small amount for that service. Everyone on the boaters listens to the service and appreciates what he does.

We met a nice couple, Bill and Betty, on Tortuga Verde and went to dinner with them at a local restaurant – Big D’s. After all our concern about the time change for the flight, we had forgotten to change our watches and the taxi was waiting for us when we came back for the shower. Needless to say, we dressed fast. Bill and Betty own a marina in Kentucky that is on the route of the Great Loop. I suspect we will see them again when we finally do the loop. We had then over for dinner on Monday night. We had the Grouper and they brought two steaks and combined we had “Surf and Turf” that was delicious. We waved to them as we passed in the morning as we began our next leg of the trip. They were going farther North than we planned to stop as they need to be home sometime in April.

Bill and Betty Underway

The Emerald Bay Marina was very well protected, with land banks protecting the boats from wind, but that also meant that it cut down on air flow as well. It was rather hot as a result. We also noticed that the marina staff was spraying for mosquitoes. That was our first encounter with flies and mosquitoes here in the Bahamas. We had been surprised to find overall that there are few bugs here. Most of the time the wind drives them away. We had heard that after the last hurricane that came through the Bahamas, there have been fewer mosquitoes.

We dropped anchor for the night around 1 in the afternoon near Children’s Cay. This little cay had once been owned by Hume Chronyn and Jessica Lange. They sold it to the Heinz family. We are not sure who owns it now, but it appears to be under development of some type of community. We saw surveyors out marking areas. Although it is a private island, we did go over and explore a couple of small beaches. (The Bahamian government owns all the beaches up to 15 feet beyond high tide.) One beach appeared to have been the dumping ground of some conch shells. Tuesday had been a nice quiet day and the beach, being protected, had few waves. Bob tied the float up to the boat and sunned while contemplating the world, while I read on shore.

Rock near Children's Cay

Last night, we decided to see if we had TV again. We had lost our TV coverage somewhere between Staniel Cay and George Town on the way down. We found that we did have some coverage, although the system would stop and start like it did sometimes at home when there were storms. We are evidently on the edge of the signal.

Sometime during Tuesday night I woke up to stronger waves than they were when we had when we went to bed and they lasted till about 3 on Wednesday. We made one attempt to cross the bay to Barraterre for lunch on Wednesday, but decided that it was too rough and turned back. We were able to make the trip later in the day when the waves calmed.

We dinghied over to the Government dock (most towns on the coast have a Government dock. Most of those are rickety and hard to climb, but usually serviceable.).

Unfortunately, there is not much in Barraterre. We walked the town and saw two children and one old man. We never did find the little grocery store that was supposed to be there, but did see the BaTelCo (Bahamas Telephone Company) Tower which is the common sight in the towns we’ve seen, besides a rickity Government Dock.

Back in the dingy, we spotted another dock that looked like it might have been the restaurant that was supposed to be in town. Turns out it was The Bonefish Lodge and Restaurant. We were met by a friendly local man who helped us tie up. It was a steep climp up the ladder from the dingy to the dock. We had a couple of beers. The two Bahamian beers are Kalik (pronounced Ca-lick’) and Sands. Both are made with RO (reverse osmosis) water. We also had some conch fritters, also a staple of the Bahamian diet here.

The restaurant had a large screen TV tuned to CNN. We’ve found that most Bahamians are rooting for Barak Obama. We’ve been surprised at how interested the Bahamians are in the affairs of U.S. politics/Government. One man’s comment was that what happens to the U.S., affects them too.

Oh, have I told you about Bonefish? Bonefish fishing is an avid sport here. Although the bones in the fish make it pretty much inedible, they are a great fish to catch. There are more bonefish in the Bahamas than anywhere else in the world. We have heard that locals can “snap” the fish in such a way as to move all the bones to one side, leaving the other side edible. We haven’t caught one, so can’t vouch for that.

We came back in time to take our chairs up on top the pilot house with a bottle of De Bortoli Sirah, and watch the sunset. It was one of the best sunsets yet. Often, a group of long clouds come in at the last minute and steal our sunset.

We often hear the sound(s) of a horn(s) at sunset. It was most noticeable in George Town where there were almost 300 boats in the harbor. We found out in George Town that it is the sound of a horn made from a Conch Shell. They’re not too easy to make unless you have an angle grinder on board.

An Unusual Sunset

We are cruising on our own since our friends, Grant and Brenda, moved farther South. This year, Hog Cay, near Long Island, that we went to with Jim and Mindy, was our “turnaround” point. Next year, we plan on getting an earlier start and moving faster through places we have been to point’s farter south. Whether we make it to the Caribbean next year or not is yet to be determined. Our goal is the Turks and Caicos and other Southern Bahamas islands at any rate.