Everyone agreed that today was a day to do nothing but relax ... sleep in, read books, dinghy in for drinks at the bar at sunset. Honestly, that's all we accomplished!
February 26
Today was our day to explore what Green Turtle Cay had to offer. Mikel brought his fishing gear with hopes of doing some bone fishing. Bone fish are incredibly illusive fish, hard to spot and even harder to catch. But Mikel was up for the challenge, so Dan and I brought our books and watched from shore. One side of the island has a nice shallow bay (perfect for bone fish), and then we could hike over to the other side where we could see the Atlantic. Even though we brought our snorkling gear with us, the water was too cool to go exploring the reefs we could see from shore. Later mon ....
Mikel going fishing.
Nancy looking for sand dollars.
The Atlantic.
February 27
The Green Turtle Cay Marina offers an 'off season' special where they let you "eat your fees" ... so we could eat two meals in the restaurant for the price we paid for a slip. Since we hadn't been into a marina for about a month, we decided to take advantage of this great deal. Ahhhh, a long, long, long hot shower! Ahhh, some else is cooking tonite! Ahhhh, TV in the bar so we could watch the Oscars!
We filled our tanks with diesel ($4.89/gal) and our jugs with gasoline ($5.17/gal) and our water tank (25cents/gal). Of course, Dan also had misc. engine work to get done, so it ended up being a busy day at the docks.
February 28
We have had a hard time finding internet service (at the library, using the internet is 50cents/minute, so just sending out a half dozen emails with one line saying that we safely arrived cost us $10.00!), so we ended up subscribing to a Bahamian internet service for one month ($99).
Today, Dan and Mikel went off in search of the more bone fishing spots while I stayed on board to bake bread, get caught up on our mail, and work on the blog. The boys put in a long day searching for fishing spots, and they came back at 5:30 with only the usual share of fish stories .... as in Mikel was chased to shore by two sharks about 12 ft from shore!
March 1
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DAN DEVEREAUX ... LOVE YOU. MISS YOU.
We debated about leaving Green Turtle Cay today and doing some sailing on the Sea of Abaco. We have to cross through an inlet in the reef (called the Whale) and it can be treacherous if the weather conditions are not just right. Today would have been a good day to go except that another sailboat, leaving at low tide, ran aground at the entrance to the channel. It looked like a tight fit, so we decided to stay put. Usually people are fairly benign when talking on the VHS radio (after all, everyone can hear you) ... but not this wife! Boy, did she let it rip that her husband/captain did not listen to her advice when exiting the channel and the grounding was all his fault. She repeated this many times just in case someone missed her point! Note to self: don't use the VHS radio when pissed off at one's boat captain!
March 2
The wild winds are blowing now. 20-25 knots. and the seas outside our protected anchorage are 6-9 feet (with some reports of 12ft! yikes!). So, we aren't going anywhere for the next 3 days until this blows itself out. So far, we've had good luck with our anchor holding ... we were surprised this morning to find half the boats in the anchorage pulling up their hook and going into the marina. Not a comforting thought, but at least there are now far fewer boats to worry about dragging into us (and viceaversa!).
On the plus side, the sky is blue and the sun is shining ... and we're in the Bahamas!
March 3
As predicted, the winds and seas stayed high as the cold front passed through from Florida. The temps dropped to 70 degrees! (with a low of 66 degrees ... gotta love the tropics!). We dinghied over to the other side of Green Turtle Cay and hiked over to the Sea of Abaco (honestly, it takes all of 20 minutes to cross the island!).
Mikel did some more fishing ... with ditto the luck he's had before. We've come to believe that if you want to even see a bonefish (let alone catch one), you need to shell out the big bucks to get a fishing guide for the day. But Mikel is a trooper, and he takes his trusty pole with him everywhere, and he moves through the shallows while we read on the beach.
That's our fisherman out there!
4:00 pm marks the start of happy hour at the beach bar, so off we went to join the crowd of boaters who moved into the marina due to the weather. The bar was hopping so we had a couple of Bahama-Mamas and then decided to stay for dinner. Of course, by the time we rolled out of the bar, it was raining ... and combined with the chop in the marina, we were all wet by the time we finished the short ride back to the boat.
Friends, Hank and Carol (s/v Kismet) joined us for dinner.
March 4
Geezzzzz.... how many days in a row can the wind keep blowing over 30 knots? Every day, we listen to the Abacos CruisersNet on our VHF radio at 8:15am, and the main topic is always the weather. Today, the report was short and sweet: wherever you are today, plan on staying put, and hope your anchor doesn't drag. In particular, we are watching the conditions in the passage we need to make to get to Marsh Harbor, where Mikel catches his flight back to MN on Tuesday (3/8). The passage is called The Whale because it cuts thru Whale Cay and another small island ... it's a relatively narrow cut that is lined with reefs on both sides. The passage takes us from the Sea of Abaco to the Atlantic Ocean and therein lies the trouble. When the Altantic is rough and windy, you get breaking waves over the reefs, and the waves can form a continues line of breakers across the cut. You definiitely don't want to be out in those conditions ... which is why the locals refer to breakers in the Whale as "the rage". It doesn't take much convincing for us to know we want to avoid anything that goes by "the rage"!
Not much to do on days like this but read books and take the dinghy out and visit other boaters in the anchorage.
March 5
After the morning weather report, we're hopeful that conditions in the Whale Passage will be good for us to cross tomorrow. So we decided to make the most of our last day in Green Turtle Cay. We dinghied over to New Plymouth, the biggest town on the island, which we were able to circumnavigate in about 20 minutes! Did a little shopping, did a little eating, and walked into every open store in town ... all 7 of them! We found a ice cream store, and as we studied the list of flavors trying to decide what to get, the owner told us that the last shipment she got did not match any of the flavors listed on the blackboard. Gotta love the islands! Instead of Mocha Almond Fudge they had Mint Chocolate Chip. And I had my heart set of Mocha Almond Fudge ...
After making the rounds to our friends in the anchorage, we learned that there was a band tonight at the beach bar, so we dug out some clean clothes and our dancing shoes and went ashore for some reggae music and BahamaMamas! The whole crowd was there, so it was a fun night ... hopefully, our last in Green Turtle Cay.
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