Ken and Karen’s travel adventures
Most of the vehicles on the island are golf carts. In the Abacos, the VHF marine radio is used like a telephone. Even the golf carts list a phone number, along with VHF channel 16. You can hail just about anyone on the VHF. (This wasn’t our cart… our’s was from “T&A” 😕 )
We have discovered that while boating in the Bahamas, one must be quite flexible with one’s schedule. The wind here is a factor on where one can go, and when going is advisable/safe/comfortable. Our local friend Mary Anne said that this winter has been very unusual for wind – ever since hurricane Matthew. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us. After all, it’s been a strange winter all the way from the West coast of the U.S. with snow in Seattle how many times? And in March? No wonder winter cold fronts keep blowing through here. It seems like we only get one, maybe two calm days a week. And there are some places you just can’t go when the wind is blowing like crazy. And other places you don’t want to go!
Anyway, we have spent several days just hanging out at Green Turtle Club marina, in between our excursions. Here is a little tour. This is the building that houses reception, gift shop, and fine dining. The Club has several hotel rooms in little cottages around the property. It is really a cute place. They also have a nice little library, a lounge and a game room. A separate building hosts the marina showers, laundry, and small grocery store- where a half gallon of milk costs $7.5o. (A gallon in town was $8.50. Yep – prices are high here!)
Tuesday 3/21/17 = another fun day with Brendal’s Dive Center. This excursion was to dive or snorkel, see and feed sea turtles and stingrays, and have lunch on the beach. It was a really fun day! First we went into a cove where there were turtles. This is the best shot that I got. They were fast little buggers! We had two boats, and the other boat got there first, so they had all the excitement. The water in the cove was open to the ocean which was really rough, so there were lots of swells and waves. We didn’t stay long.
Next stop was snorkeling. Read more
There is a dive/excursion shop here near the Green Turtle Club, so of course we scoped out what adventures we could do. Even though we’re here on our own boat, we don’t know the best places to go. We learned from our good friend Rick back home, that sometimes you just want to pay the locals for a trip and then pick their brains for local knowledge. And we all know that a party is usually more fun with a bunch of people! So we signed up for a trip to the famous Nipper’s Bar & Grill on Sunday. It is on Great Guana Cay, which is a couple of cays south of us. In between here and there is a navigational challenge called Whale Cay. We planned to get the scoop about going around it from our new local friends.
First stop on our adventure was at the next cay south of Green Turtle called No Name Cay. They have swimming pigs! Of course I had to get in the water and join the fun! The boat skipper had a 5 gallon bucket full of bread for them. They actually did swim out to us to get it. But if it fell in the water, they wouldn’t eat it. But little fishies came in for those scraps.
The wind shifted to the north, and we had a more restful night finally. Thursday 3/16/17 looks like a great day to move! Once again, it doesn’t look like the calm will stay long. What is with this crazy windy weather? I guess it is the left overs from the crazy winter weather in the U.S. If Western Washington can get snow in March, I guess the Bahamas can get wind. The wind is actually the cold front pushing down from the northern U.S. First wind, then cool, then calm, then warm, then it does it all over again.
We originally hoped to spend a couple of nights anchored at the next two cays on our way south from Spanish Cay. Powell Cay and Manjack Cay are great deserted islands to throw out the anchor, dinghy ashore, and enjoy beautiful Bahama beaches. But alas – the wind doesn’t want us to do that yet. So – our destination is set for Green Turtle Cay. It’s only 16 miles south.
We head out about 9:00, and we are there before noon. And OH BOY does it looks wonderful!! It looks all paradisey tropically perfectly great!
We had not planned to stay at West End this long. We have a long ways to travel to get to the Abaco Islands, and we need good weather to get there since it is nearly 90 miles to the next marina. Most boaters stop half way at Great Sale Cay and anchor out overnight, which we planned to do. But we aren’t seeing two good days for travel. The wind direction has been from the south- southwest, which Great Sale Cay does not provide good shelter for, and we sure don’t want to be on an anchor in big wind. Monday is looking promising, but windy again by Monday night. So, we decided to make a run for it all in one day. Our One Eye Dog friends decided the same. They have much more limited time in the Bahamas than we do before they head north, and they are anxious to see more than this.
So up-and-atum on Monday 3/13/17 with the sun. We pulled out of Old Bahama Bay at sunrise, as did several other boats with this good weather travel day. The sunrise was so pretty. So long West End! We had to go west, then north, then northeast, then southeast to get to our destination: Spanish Cay.
Sunday 3/12/2017: Kimbob rented us a 6 passenger van. Pretty sweet that it was delivered to the marina for us. It was an island vehicle; the entire headliner was sagging and laying on our heads! We loaded up our beach chairs, cooler, snorkel gear, and headed out. Ellen had a high level map so we could sort of figure out where we were. Kimbob did a good job driving on the left side of the road. The van was normal left hand drive. Kenny was in shotgun, and therefore in the sacrificial sideswipe seat closest to on-coming traffic. We drove down to Freeport/Lucaya, and went to the Lucayan market where all the cruise ship passengers go. There was hardly anyone there.
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Friday, March 11, 2017: We got up around 5:00 (we didn’t really sleep a lot with anticipation of what was ahead of us). We double checked everything, made coffee, filled up the water tank, and cast off the lines right at 6:00am. It was just a short little easy idle out of the marina into the ICW. It was just barely getting light enough to see that there were some clouds on the eastern horizon. But with all the boat yards and marinas around us, and a very easy channel, we could see just fine. One Eye Dog would be just a few minutes behind us. The channel was well marked with lighted buoys & markers, since this is a primary inlet along the coast. (In fact, right after we left, a container ship came out, and a passenger cruise ship went in!) As we neared the Lake Worth Inlet to EXIT to the Atlantic, Mr. Sunshine was starting to wake up to light our path.
Thursday, 3/9/17: We’ve been watching the weather closely, and as it turns out, Friday will be a better day to cross to the Bahamas than Saturday. So – we are very glad that we came across the state and are in a position to make that change! Here is what Friday looks like…. doesn’t get much better. We’ve talked to several people that will be making the crossing on Friday.
This morning, we left Stuart and headed south, just about 38 miles to Lake Worth. This is in the North Palm Beach area, where there is a good channel out into the ATLANTIC OCEAN! Read more
We woke up early Tuesday morning, and the boat was not sitting on the bottom. YAY! Captain measured the depth at the stern, and we had over 4’. Good to go!
We pulled out of Ft Myers and headed east. The wind was pretty calm so far. We saw this paddlewheel river boat coming down the river.
