Absolutely Abacos

Well, it’s been big doings on the SS Lollipop. We finally broke loose from our chain of bad luck, and escaped from Nassau, up to the Abacos Islands. 

On our way north from Nassau, we made a brief stop at Royal Island, just at the northernmost tip of Eluthera. We only stopped there to catch our breath and get a good night's sleep before shoving off in the morning for the Abacos. I'm not sure what we might have missed there, but at least now we can say that we've visited all of the main island groups in the northern, or so-called "near" Bahamas. Bragging rights are important, you know.

Unfortunately, our bad luck from Nassau came along for one last attempt to thwart us. In the middle of our passage to Marsh Harbor, we got ambushed by a sudden rage, an unexpected twenty-five to thirty knot wind that tore our mainsail. It was pretty hairy for a bit there, as we were in a very narrow spot and could easily have ended up on the shallow shoals nearby, and could not safely get the sail down until we had passed it. We had to motor through with the already reefed sail flapping and ripping, flapping and ripping. Just add this episode to our already long list of calamities. It's a very old sail, and luckily the fabric didn't rip, just the stitching. I have good needles and thread aboard; it's not hard to guess what I'm going to be doing the next couple of days...

Hand sewing the mainsail

The Jib Room in Marsh Harbor

Rib Night!

While here, we got to know some wonderful people. David and Lori are the owners of Ubuntu, a forty-foot French-built catamaran. They do adventure and experiential learning charters in the Bahamas for young people and adults. David is also an artist, and he very imaginatively painted their mast and spreaders, making their boat a very cool floating objet d'art. We spent a very enjoyable evening with them aboard Ubuntu, along with their charter partners, Jean Claude and Ellen. Jean Claude is French and speaks no English, while David and I were the only non-French speakers in the group, which made for some very entertaining charades-type moments. Even so, they are all very experienced Bahamas sailors, and they had great suggestions that helped us in planning the rest of our trip. 

You could arrange for your own Ubuntu visit here or here.  

Ubuntu  

David and Lori

After a couple days laying in groceries and resting up (repairing the sail), we ventured out to visit some of the more famous Abaco spots for cruisers, all short hops of only an hour or two away. Lady Luck finally came along with us, great weather and no equipment failures. Hopetown is a big destination for cruisers, according to the guidebooks, but those books don't really say why, except that it has a much-photographed lighthouse. What they do say is that you can't anchor in the little harbor. There are a limited number of inexpensive moorings, but you can't reserve them ahead of time; there are few nearby alternatives if all the moorings are taken. We were afraid to go there and get skunked, particularly in a bad blow. Who needs to see another lighthouse anyway? But David and Lori spoke about it so enthusiastically, we decided to backtrack south in order to give it a try, and boy, am I glad we did. On our way we snorkeled at Mermaid Reef, outside of Marsh Harbor, and then walked on Tahiti Beach at Elbow Cay. Beautiful white sand beach, and lovely palms, but perhaps a bit too touristy for us. It was pretty crowded.

Kabuki (zinc, for snorkeling) sunscreen - be very afraid.

Floating snack barge on Tahiti Beach

EVERYONE drives these things here

Hopetown turns out to be a lot like my favorite place - Block Island! Except more compact, and with palm trees. And everyone is on a mooring, so no dragging worries! We had no problem getting a spot, and even had a great view of the lighthouse from our boat. The beach is, if I may say, even more beautiful than the one at Block, and we had it almost completely to ourselves. Good restaurants, charming pastel-colored cottages, laid-back vibe... The only bad thing about our stay was that it was too short. 

"Reef Wreck" - a version of a rum punch

Next we went to Man-O-War Cay, a small island community made up mostly of descendants from British Loyalists. It's a boat-building town, famous for the William H. Albury Ship Yard, and its namesake, "Uncle Will". A good two-thirds of the island's residents can trace their ancestry to the first Albury settlers. The place has a pleasing blue-collar feel, with real salt-of-the-earth types, hard-working but friendly people. To continue a bit with my New England analogies, if Hopetown is like Block Island, then Man-O-War is like Rockland, ME. Of course, there's one major difference; the sale of alcohol is banned on this island. Don't worry though, the drinking of alcohol continued unabated on Valkyrie.

The first night on Man-O-War, we got to help out a couple of fellow sailors who found themselves aground near the entrance to the little harbor. Larry and Amy, owners of a big forty-five foot Beneteau, had misread a confusing channel marker, and ended up on a shoal, plowing onto it at maximum high tide. Usually when you find yourself hard aground (I say "usually" because it's an embarrassing, but common mistake, which we know well), you wait for the tide to come in, and then your boat can simply float off. But if you get stuck when the water is at its highest, no tidal cavalry is coming to rescue you. Rick tells me that typically, high tides come in pairs, one slightly higher than the other. The best you can do is wait for the next high tide - twelve or so hours - and hope to then be blessed with the bigger one.

Larry and Amy's Beneteau, the bow completely out of the water!

We happened over there in our dinghy when Larry and Amy were in the middle of their vigil, and we tried to make them feel better by making boat jokes and offering to help. I'm sure we weren't the only ones to do this though, and I could tell that Larry in particular was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by their situation, and probably by us too, so we dinghied back to our boat for our sacred cocktail hour. Sitting up on the foredeck with drinks and munchies, Rick kept bringing the conversation back to Larry and Amy and their predicament. We had helped them put some lines around the nearby navigation post earlier, but even so, Rick was very worried that if they managed to get slightly off the sand at high tide, the current and wind would push them further on to that shoal. If that happened, they would be out of options, and could very possibly lose their boat. The standard procedure in such a situation, Rick says, is to set an upwind anchor so that you can winch yourself off as the tide comes up.

We only have about an hour of daylight left, if that. "Let's do it!" I exclaim. After a gin and tonic, anything seems possible. Rick dumps our heavy fluke-style anchor into the dinghy, along with it's two-hundred feet of heavy rope rode, and we speed off. 

After announcing to Larry and Amy that we are there to bother them once again, we set to work trying to set the anchor off of the Beneteau's stern. The water is a bit murky, and we can't really tell what's going on down below. Has the anchor caught or not? Rick jumps in with his snorkel mask and dives down to check, leaving me on the dinghy with the motor on idle. "Keep the dinghy nearby!" he yells over to me. 

Up until now, I had presented a fairly good impression of someone who knew what she was doing around boats. I had been helping with the rope lines, and offering suggestions, just as if I were Rick's equal partner. And I loved it. How great to pretend I was a real sailor around people who didn't know any better! Alas, within only a few moments of taking over command of the dinghy, my cover was blown. I knew how to work our smaller motor, the one we left in our garage in Baltimore. This was the newer, bigger one, the one that I had let Rick deal with exclusively for the past four months. All motors are alike though, right? I couldn't get the thing out of idle, and with Larry and Amy looking on, I helplessly drifted into the corral of lines that now streamed out from the stranded boat. I bet I was squealing in an embarrassingly girly way too. Rick had to swim over to get me. I'm no sailor; I just play one on TV.

We never did get the anchor to set, due to a deceptively rock-hard bottom. But we made use of the long line we brought by running it around a fairly distant channel marker piling. Completely soaked, we returned to our boat in the dying light. Amy phoned at a little before ten-o-clock to tell us that they had gotten off the shoal and were safely on a mooring. They claimed that our last efforts had totally done the trick, and seemed sincerely grateful for our help, even rewarding us with a thank-you bottle of wine the next day. They never mentioned my snafu on the dinghy, and neither did we...

We are totally enjoying the Abacos. Unfortunately, we have only one more week before we need to cross over to Florida and head back north. Bad luck or good, makes no difference now. We're headed home.