Ken and Karen’s travel adventures
Yes, we are back in southeast Florida, with all of it’s traffic, hustle-bustle, and wealth. The Atlantic ICW on a Friday is a crazy waterway! Boats everywhere. Most are in their own little world, take their half out of the middle, and don’t even wave. “Don’t these people work?”
We had been watching the weather, and looking for two things: a good day to leave Hope Town and head north around The Whale; and a good day to cross the Gulf Stream back to Florida. This is a sample of one of the reports that navigator Karen kept her eye-balls on anytime we were going to move. This one shows a crossing to Florida looking good on Friday 4/21, and then looking not so good after that. So, we decided that we better plan to go in that window, because the way the weather had been, we could end up waiting another week or two for another good weather window. And THAT wouldn’t be good – our daughter Janea will be getting married in a few weeks in Florida, and we need to be there! In the meantime, we were a couple of days travel away from the West End. So we knew we better get moving.
We’ve been in Hope Town for over a week, waiting for the wind to lay down so that we can start our venture back north. They say it calms down in April. It’s after 4/15. We’re still waiting. At least it is cool enough that we don’t need air conditioning while we’re floating on a mooring ball in the middle of a harbor. 🙂 The highs have been upper 70’s to 80, lows around 70. And a swift cool breeze. I’ve actually had my fleece jacket on some evenings.
We discovered that being Easter week, there are no golf carts available. A 7 day minimum rental is required the weeks prior and after Easter. So we’ve done local adventures by foot and by boat.
I promised more about the lighthouse. It is one of the last kerosene-fueled, manned lighthouses in the world. “The lamp burns pressurized Kerosene oil with a wick and mantle. The Fresnel lenses concentrate the mantle’s light into a beam directed straight towards the horizon. The lenses and burner equipment, weighing 8,000lbs, float in a circular lubricated tub. This reduces friction so that the 700lbs of weight, when wound up to the top of the tower by hand, smoothly rotates the 4-ton apparatus once every 15 seconds. The lighthouse keeper on duty must wind up the weights every 2 hours in order for the red and white candy-striped lighthouse to be seen from 17 miles away. “ Read more
Elbow Cay is not itself shaped like an elbow. But it is in the elbow of the Abacos. The cays we have travelled so far have run from the northwest to southeast. Now we are at the elbow, Elbow Cay. The cays start to run more in a north/south direction following the coast of Great Abaco. We are at the furthest point east in the Abacos.
This is also the farthest south that Island Girl will go. We need to be back in Florida by early May. With the windy weather that we have the majority of the time over here, we better seize the first good window of calm to start heading back. We have travelled 512 miles since we left Sarasota 45 days ago. Read more
We said our good-byes to One Eye Dog and Rising Tide. 🙁 We will sure miss them! They need to head back to the states, and we are not ready to do that yet. So they headed out early to cross the Whale and go north. We headed farther south to Man-O-War Cay. I cannot find out why this cay is named Man-O-War. It is so contrary to what we found! It is a small island – only about 2.5 miles long and quite narrow. It is inhabited by about 300 of the nicest, conservative, devout people we’ve met! It was one of the earliest Loyalist settlements in the Bahamas-those loyal to England who fled the U.S. to the nearest Crown Territory during the American Revolution. Shipwrecked Benjamin Albury married local farmer Eleanor Archer in 1820, and most of the current inhabitants are their descendants. You see the Albury name everywhere. And EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays, except the churches.
I found this plaque at the cemetery quite interesting.
Our One Eye Dog and Rising Tide friends need to head back north, so won’t be able to explore some of the places south of Treasure Cay by boat. Since we are on the “mainland” of Great Abaco, the six of us took a van on a road trip to Marsh Harbor and Little Harbor. I didn’t get a picture of the van, but it was a Honda with a right hand drive. Kimbob did a great job staying on the left side of the road, and flipping on the turn signals instead of the windshield wipers! Ellen had purchased some watermelon radishes at the farmers market, and arranged to purchase more from the vendor. They would arrive on the 3:00 ferry in Marsh Harbor, so we could pick them up there. Gotta love this small town vibe!
We swung through Marsh Harbor to see where we needed to go, then we continued on south another several miles to Little Harbor. The roads were fairly good, with lots of tall slender pine trees on both sides of the road for many miles. We didn’t see any farm land or much development. Then – we turned down a dirt road to find our way to Little Harbor. This was an inverted bump (small gully/ditch) across the road… and upsidedown bump which the sign correctly indicates.
After bumping through the night in the waves, we pulled anchor in the morning and headed to the “mainland” Great Abaco Island and Treasure Cay. With all of the sand that blasts around the Whale creating the huge sand bank, there is a breathtaking 3 mile white sand beach at Treasure Cay. There is also a very nice and protected marina (follow the yellow line).
We had a really calm night on the anchor. Such a nice little breeze flowing through the hatch. With this weather, we don’t need air conditioning.
Great Guana Cay is about 5.5 miles long, and maybe 1000 yards wide. The north end of the island was originally developed by a cruise line, including a deep channel. However, it is just south of the Whale which too often created unfavorable conditions, so they abandoned it. Now it is Baker’s Bay Club, which is a members-only exclusive area with fancy homes, golf course, and marina. That is where that fancy yacht was moored.. Apparently celebrities like to escape and go there. Since we forgot to bring our celebrity credentials with us, it wasn’t an area of the island that we explored. We didn’t do an golf cart tour of this island since most of what is available to see is in walking distance.
We took Patch-the-dinghy to shore to go to the grocery store and to explore on foot. Kimbob & Ellen picked us up, since Stuart’s motor was in pieces on our table. Kenny & Kimbob explored a little with us. The wind was picking up, so they went back to the boats with all the groceries. They needed to check anchors, and Kenny wanted to finish working on Stuart. Ellen & I stayed on shore to explore, and we walked all over the place. We had the VHF handheld radio, so we could call them to come back and get us when we were done. (The radio is great, since using the cell phone costs international rates!)
This is the local dive shop. I thought the cement bench was cool.
I’ve been mentioning how the weather has been dictating our progress for going farther south in the Abaco chain. The ‘obstacle’ is Whale Cay. It is an uninhabited cay that creates the most challenging navigation in the Abacos. It creates a shallow sand bank all the way across the sea of Abaco to Treasure Cay, so boats that draft more than 3-4′ need to go out into the Atlantic ocean and around the cay. We draft just over 3′, but any big wave up swells, also have big down troughs, and that could drop us down suddenly finding bottom. “No Bueno” as my boys would say. So if the weather is too rough to go around, it is too rough to go across on the inside, too. An additional challenge is that the narrowest portion of the channel to go out and around is only about 12′ deep, and susceptible to rage sea conditions, (which is waves breaking all the way across the passage). There are various rocks and shallow areas that create big swells and can make the entire route extremely dangerous. We need to go parallel to the cay for about 1.5 miles, which means the waves most likely would be hitting us on the side. We check the weather and sea conditions every day, looking for the opportunity to go around. One of the best ways to find out information is by listening to the VHF radio. Boats will call out asking other boats about the conditions at The Whale. And there is a daily morning radio show on VHF channel 68 that provides weather, tides, passage conditions, local events, and so on. We also talk with the local fishermen and boaters to get their thoughts. The Whale is a big deal around here, not to be taken lightly.
We want to go from Green Turtle Cay “GT” at the top left, to Guana Cay “G” on the far right. Treasure Cay “T” is at the bottom. The yellow line is where we need to go, because you can see the white sand bank blocking the way to go straight across. The red arrows show where some of the rocks are.
There is a navigational challenge called Whale Cay that requires good weather before we can move farther south. The weather forecast was beginning to look like we’d be able to go around it in a couple of days. We were going to have a couple of pretty calm nights, so we decided it was time to leave Green Turtle Cay and go anchor out for a couple of nights. The winds would be calm, and this would give the Atlantic ocean a couple of days to calm down before we go out into it to move south. So – Island Girl, One Eye Dog, and Rising Tide went north just a bit, back up to Manjack Cay where we previously anchored for one night. Manjack is pronounced Munjack or sometimes Nunjack due to changes over time. The cay only has a few houses on it.
Right when we were getting ready to set our anchor, a sea turtle popped his little head up and said hello to us! (Well, I’m assuming it was hello, since I don’t really talk turtle.) He was only a few feet from the boat. It was such a great greeting!
