After 4 days at Treasure Cay, it was time to get moving again. Even a top 10 beach loses it’s edge!
Bouganvilla everywhere! Pink, Purple, Orange, Red ...
We pulled into the marina where they let us tie up to a T dock to take on water. $9.00 flat fee so we decided this was a good time to hose off Maja as well as fill every container we had on the boat, in addition to our 100 gal tank. We also figured it wouldn’t be good form to leave Treasure Cay w/o visiting Florence’s Café for her oft-mentioned cinnamon rolls. I was seriously debating that they could be worth $4.00 until I entered the café and was overwhelmed with the delicious aroma of cinnamon and warm bread. And the size of these bad boys sealed the deal! So coffee and cinnamon rolls was a great breakfast at the dock and a great way to start the day (not to mention, celebrating our first unassisted docking at a fixed pier ... you should have seen me lasso the piling from 5 ft out!)
Then we were off to island #5, Man O War Cay. This island is bordered by two channels you can use to get to the Atlantic Ocean. From a distance, watching the breaking waves over the distance was a bit intimidating, but the north channel is reputed to be wide and deep (17ft). Maybe another day we’d go trolling for fish in the ocean, but today we had no wind so we just motored over to Man O War Cay, giving our batteries a chance to get a good charge and getting some hot water on board.
We hunted around for an anchorage and settled on a spot where several other boats were anchored, figuring that had to be a good sign. Plus, we could see signs of a small beach on shore so we could easily take the dinghy in to do some exploring.
Looks like good territory for a snorkeling excursion.
The island is dotted with several resort developments. And many rental units active this time of year, judging from the number of people we met on the beach.
Yard art Bahama style!
After exploring by land, we dinghied over to the main harbor. We had read that the entrance was shallow and narrow … "two large boats should not attempt to negotiate the channel at the same time". From our perspective, not even two dinghies should attempt to be in the channel at the same time! And the depth looked sketchy even from our inflatable! So, we were glad we checked it out before bringing Maja in pick up a mooring ball for a few days. The harbor had about 7ft of water, and it was also quite deserted … full of boats, but no people. Man O War Cay is far different from any other island we've visited. More industrial than commerical. All black people must leave the island by sunset. And then we learned that they don’t serve alcohol on the island …. phish …. no signature rum drinks to sample? Not my kinda of town!
So, we’ll stick with our peaceful anchorage for a few days as the winds are predicted to be “Light and variable” (aka. None) till the end of the week.
Wednesday March 23
Day #2 of snorkling and beach walking at Man O War Cay. We also had plans to walk into town and check it out ... it may be alcohol-free, but it's also a real working harbor so it has some interesting boat-building shops to visit.
However, we learned a few lessons today that altered our plans ...
Lesson #1: Always check the weather forecast, every day. We don't have internet here in the anchorage, and we were a tad lazy about getting up for the morning cruisers net that always covers the weather. Hence, we weren't expecting the change in wind direction from NE to SW, and the increase in wind speed to over 16knots.
Lesson #2: When the guide book says that an anchorage does not provide good protection for winds from a certain direction, believe it! We knew our little patch of perfection was exposed to S/SW winds, but how bad could it really be???? Very Bad as we came to learn overnight. As the winds shifted and increased, our anchor held just fine, but it felt like we were sleeping on a bucking bronco... honestly, I was hanging on to the side of the mattress to keep from repeatedly rolling over Dan. And the noise from everything clanking and shaking assured us of a minimal night's sleep at best.
Lesson #3: We bought that motor lift for a reason ... so use it! Every night! Again, we got lazy about raising the dinghy because we figured we'd be taking the dinghy into shore in the morning for our excursion to Man O War harbor. However, when morning came, all we wanted to do was get outta dodge as soon as possible because of all the rocking and rolling. And when the boat is a'bucking and the white caps a'sloshing, that is not the time to try and raise the motor and then the dinghy. So, as we took off underway to Hopetown, with a protected harbor and abundance of mooring balls, we were forced to tow the dinghy thru the bouncing sea. What could have been a delightful beam reach sail ended up being a slow, anxious motor because we were worried about how the dinghy would tow behind us as it jumped around on the white caps in our wake.
Hopetown Harbor ... famous for it's striped lighthouse.
All went well, and we arrived at another narrow, shallow entrance to Hopetown Harbor at high tide where we met a couple in their dinghy who guided us down to a mooring ball and even picked up the line for us! Such hospitality.
So we'll hang here in Hopetown for a few days. VERY cute town and a good stopover for Dan to equalize the batteries in hope of getting better holding power out of them after they are charged up. Over our morning cup of coffee once we got settled on the mooring, a couple that we meet in Brunswick last summer came over in their dinghy. What a small world! They were on Dock 10, directly across the dock from us, Bev and Claude on s/v Summertime. They have been here since December and are on their way back to GA, so we'll have drinks tonight on their boat so we can go over the maps and get tips from them on where to go (and what to avoid).
1 comment:
Sounds like you were getting into vacation mode a little too much. But at least you had rain and not snow.
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