Well, the bugs came back in Great Guana and my wonderful husband decided that it would be best for me to sleep in some AC and see if we could treat the bites once and for all. Also, the Skin So Soft from Avon seemed to be the very best treatment for the current bites and warding off new bites. That all worked and we woke up to a beautiful day but the wind had freshened even more, so we were kind of stuck at the marina for at least today. What a place to be stuck, though! We had a great lunch at the restaurant in Orchid Bay Marina and then took a stroll through Great Guana, stopping in all the shops. We stopped into Dive Guana to replace a part of our fishing sling and met Maria. She noticed all my bites and said if I came back tomorrow, she would mix me up a concoction that would prevent the bites - that was enticing to say the least. We then went back to Grabber's for a '"Guana Grabber" and to enjoy the beautiful beach and breeze. We ended up back on the boat for dinner and another wonderful night in the AC cabin. We determined we would be able to leave in the morning and head to Man-of-War Cay.
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We woke up to an impending weather change. A front was coming through and we had to watch the weather carefully depending on where we would go from Great Guana. But first we had lunch at Grabbers with Brian, Julie and Kylie before they left and started to head home at the end of their trip. We walked to Grabbers and had a beautiful table overlooking the beach. Grabbers is a really fund place and they have a great drink called the Guana Grabber. However after having so many frozen Nippers yesterday, all of the adults settled for water. Kylie had some frozen Mango slush. Lunch was great - I had the fish tacos that were to die for - perhaps even better than Aldo's in the Santa Cruz harbor! We headed back to the boats and stopped for ice. Then we had to say farewell to St. Somewhere as they headed out for Green Turtle Cay as they make their way back to Ft. Pierce, Florida. It was sad to see them go, but we had made new friends and will certainly stay in touch. Brad and I meanwhile had to decide what to do - if we left, we would anchor out and head to Man of War Cay tomorrow. If we stayed, then we might have to stay until the weather front goes through which could be Friday. We decided to stay and see what the weather holds for us tomorrow. So we cooked dinner aboard and settled in for the night at Great Guana. We took a leisurely morning getting ready to head out of Hope Town. Rich and LInda were kind enough to take our garbage to the dock as they were heading out as well. While preparing to leave, Pat and Augo from Second Wind came by. We had met them in Spanish Wells and they were now on their way to Marsh Harbour to spend some time with their son in a fishing tournament. So we said good bye and headed out for Great Guana Cay with a stop by Man-of-War Cay on the way there. The trip was uneventful as we docked at Orchid Bay Marina. I promised to give you some history on the Hope Town Lighthouse, so here goes. It is actually called Elbow Cay Lighthouse. It is a red and white striped lighthouse in Hope Town and is a noted local landmark. It was first constructed in 1862 and became operational in 1864. The tower is conically shaped and has a balcony and lantern. It is painted in red and white bands, white lantern and grey dome - it looks like a candy cane. It is one of the last operational kerosene-fueled lighthouses in the world. Its light can be seen from 23 nmi (43 km) away. The Elbow Cay Lighthouse is one of only three manual lighthouses left in the world. It has a weight mechanism that has to be hand cranked every several hours to maintain the sequence of five white flashes every 15 seconds. The lamp burns kerosene oil with a wick and mantle, at the rate of 1 gallon per night. The light is then focused as it passes through the optics of a first order Fresnel lens which floats on a bed of mercury. So enough with education and more about the really great time we had with Brian, Julie and Kylie at Nippers. After we all arrived and tied up at Orchid Bay Marina, we headed over to Nippers in the "nippermobile" - a golf cart that can hold 10 people. On Sundays, NIppers is famous for it's pig roast and the harbour is just full of boats - people coming for the pig roast. Since it is Monday, things are very quiet on the island and the harbour is almost empty. But Nippers is still fun. We all had some frozen Nippers (except Kylie who had some lemonade - someone has to watch out for the adults!). We swam in the pool and went in the ocean. We ended the day with some dinner and headed back to the boats. We spent the evening watching Captain Ron aboard the St. Somewhere. This movie is really funny - Kurt Russel and Martin Short. It was the perfect way to end a really fund day. The photo today is sunset at Orchid Bay Marina. Happy Mother's day to all. We woke up to a stormy day in Hope Town, but we didn't let it dampen our spirits. We had a Mother's Day brunch at the Hope Town Harbour Lodge and then a stroll down the beautiful beach it overlooks. During brunch, Stephanie and Grant FaceTimed with us before they started their day. Glad to hear that everything in San Jose is fine and that they are spending time with Hollis while I am away. We headed back to the boat and waited out the rain storms. We had invited Rich and Linda from Side by Side to join us for some wine and cheese. They had stopped over earlier to ask about the boat and had learned about the build from friends and online. Linda is from Kent, Ohio and Rich is from Minnesota. They met at Kent State and sailed Lightenings together. They bought their first cruiser from our good friends at Harbor North in Huron, Ohio and kept that boat there for over ten years. We had a great time catching up on the Roberts - Jim, Bruce and the rest of the gang. It just goes to show it that it truly is a very small world. We really enjoyed happy hour with Rich and LInda - it was actually happy two or three hours! Later that evening as we were eating a very late dinner, we FaceTimed with Jill, JP and of course our cute little JB who was very animated. Sounds like they had a great first Mother's day! Tomorrow we are heading out to Great Guana Cay to meet up with St. Somewhere - Brian, Julie and Kylie. Turns out their friends had to cancel at the last minute. So we will have a last visit with them at Nippers and Grabbers before they head to Green Turtle Cay and back to Daytona Beach, Florida. We have been blessed to meet so many wonderful cruisers on this trip! Here is a photo we took of Side by Side sitting at anchor. Farewell to Hope Town for another year! Today we said adios to St. Somewhere. They have friends from Atlanta joining them on Sunday and wanted to get to Marsh Harbour to get ready for them. We hope to see them again as they will stay in the area with their friends. I am posting a photo of their boat with their cat - Abaco - you can't really see him very well as he was roaming on the deck while they were in the harbour. After lunch, we decided to do the laundry. It is amazing how much laundry one accumulates while on the boat. It never seems like you wear a lot of things during the week but the laundry sure does pile up. So we loaded the dinghy and headed to the Harbour Inn Marina for the two hour job. After loading up the two washers, we sat by the pool and waited. Of course we had some delightful boat drinks - they have a bar in the pool - that was kind of fun. It was fun to just sit in the pool and enjoy the weather. Went to dinner at Harbour's Edge and enjoyed the sounds of live island music. All in all a great prelude to Mother's day! Friday morning was just another lovely day in paradise but the wind has definitely freshened. Brad went for a morning paddle but I chickened out and waited until the afternoon and hoped the wind would die down a bit. So I spent time finishing up a book. I have been able to read the first two books in the Travis McGee series - Travis McGee is a fictional character, created by American mystery writer John D. MacDonald. Unlike most detectives in mystery/detective fiction, McGee is neither a police officer nor a private investigator; instead, he is a self-described "salvage consultant" who recovers others' property for a fee of 50%. Travis McGee lives aboard a sailboat in Florida and the settings mostly happen in Florida and the Bahamas, so kind of appropriate for our trip. And they were written in the sixties. I have read Deep Blue Goodbye and A Purple Place for Dying. Thanks to Steve Carter who mentioned them to me - I am now kind of addicted. I am reading the third now - Nightmare in Pink. I also spent some time catching up on our blog as I hope you can see. So it was a lazy day aboard Bazinga. I did venture out in the afternoon to paddle board. Stand up paddle boarding is really a matter of being able to balance on the board first. So I always start sitting and then go to kneeling and then standing. Brad, he just steps on the board and paddles away - I guess those years of skiing have given him really good balance. Me, not so much. But I was standing and paddling into the wind (the hard part) and went from our boat to the end of the anchorage. I was turning around to go with the wind (the easy part, ha!) and leaned too far to the right and into the water I went. Getting back on the board from the water is not an easy task for me - I kind of look like a whale beaching itself! But I did it and got back to standing to arrive back at Bazinga safe and sound. Even though a bit wet. One thing that is different this year in the harbour at Hope Town is the amount of Turtles we have seen and they don't seem frightened at all by the paddle boards. They just pop their heads up like little periscopes and then dive. I haven't been able to catch a photo yet as they are pretty fast. We ended the day with a lovely dinner in the Hope Town Lodge. I tried Bahamian lobster and it was delicious. On the dinghy ride home, we stopped to say see you later to Brian, Julie and Kylie on St. Somewhere as they head out tomorrow. Because of my malady, I probably forgot to mention that yesterday was election day here in the Bahamas. I am not sure of the politics here, but because of the U.S. politics, we decided not to get too involved. But the biggest thing with Election Day for us was that no alcohol could be served until after 6:00pm. This dampened our plan to have a drink at the bar after we checked in and our trip to Marsh Harbour. But we made it through. We knew it was 6:00pm by the church bells that ring every day at noon and 6pm, this time they were playing "Kumbaya" - only seems fitting - maybe an idea for us back in the states? This morning we woke up and I had slept wonderfully. We decided to dinghy in to lunch at Harbour's Edge restaurant and then explore the island on foot. Our first treasure was in the Hope Town canvas shop where we found actually two treasures. One was a new Bahamian courtesy flag. Ours from last year did not weather our crossing well as was kind of tattered. We felt it would only be "courteous" to get a new one, but every where we looked previously they were out of them. But the canvas shop had one. The canvas shop also had a full stock of Avon's Skin So Soft. Why is this a treasure? Everyone knows that Skin so Soft is a wonderful bug repellant and I had forgotten to get some before my trip from my Avon Lady - Pat Grow - another bad decision on my part. But thanks to the store owner's wife - who is also an Avon Lady - they had some for us. We then went to Hope Town Lodge's sand bar for Brad to get some Ice Cream and I had a Goombay Smash - it has become a favorite of mine and I have to try one now at every place we stop. Here is a great link to get the full history of the Goombay Smash: talesofthecocktail.com/history/goombay-smash-bahamas-most-famous-drink-no-ones-talking-about. Brad enjoys a Goomaby but his drink of choice is called a Dark and Stormy - made of Gosling's Dark Rum and Gosling's Ginger Beer. But unlike me who will drink a Goombay most anytime, Brad reserves his Dark and Stormy's for on the boat, right before retiring. We had agreed earlier with Brian, Julie and Kylie to go to Sip Sip for some wine an flatbreads. Flatbreads are pizza but no one in the Bahamas calls them that. But as a special treat, we had a pre dinner gathering on Bazinga for Brian's homemade Apple Wine, bottled under the label Screaming Cat. I think you can only get this special vintage in Alpharetta, Ga. It was very good wind and we toasted to new friends. At Sip Sip, we ordered flatbreads and some house wine called Show. Then we ordered a bottle of 19 Crimes Cabernet. This is Australian wind and each bottle has different crime. I guess the story is that there were 19 crimes that would send a person to the penal colony of Australia. And as you drink the wine, you try to collect all 19 corks - hopefully not in one sitting. We got cork #3 - buying or receiving stolen goods. The waiter had 18 of the 19 and was looking for Crime # 19 Embeuling Naval Stores, in certain cases. Read more about 19 Crimes here. We finished up and headed back after another great day! Well, because of some bad decisions on my part and also remembering that last year I didn't have this issue, we were on a motorboat ride to Hope Town and then a ferry ride to Marsh Harbour. Thanks to Brad who came with me, we got right to the pharmacy and consulted with the pharmacist on treatment. The pharmacist wisely asked what I was going to do to prevent more from happening. He recommended Aveno anti-itch cream and some stronger antihistamines as well. We took his advice and headed back to catch the next ferry back to Bazinga. Well, he was a very wise pharmacist and the cream worked wonders to stop the itching and as a result help the hundreds of bites on both my calves begin to heal. We caught the 3:30 ferry back to Hope Town with many school children and workers. It was quite fun to see one of the school children get off the ferry and head to a skiff and race off home. When we returned to Bazinga, St. Somewhere was at the mooring as well. I had thought we would eat aboard tonight since I wasn't feeling well, but by dinner I was feeling a lot better. We all agreed to meet at Capt'n Jack's for dinner. We headed back to the boats about 9 and went to bed - this time for me, I slept below to avoid any more issue with bugs - once again, thanks be to God, mischief was managed. I would post a photo of my calf but it is way too gross, so I post a classic photo of the Hope Town lighthouse. This is not our boat or St. Somewhere, but just a great photo of the lighthouse. More on that tomorrow... After another great sail from Schooner Bay we arrived at Little Harbour, the home of Pete's Pub and Gallery. Both St. Somewhere and Bazinga took a mooring and settled in for the afternoon. While Brad was getting the dinghy launched, we had a visitor - Mark, who had rowed over from his boat. He was very anxious to see Bazinga and had started to prepare his dinghy ever since he saw us come into the channel. Mark had owned a Wharram Catamaran and had built one as well.
He was very excited to come on board and be given the grand tour. Brad and Mark had a great conversation and Mark showed us photos of both of his Wharrams. Mark is French but immigrated to Canada and now spend most of his time in the Bahamas creating lovely wooden creations that look like fish but are storage boxes. Some of his stuff is even displayed in Pete's Gallery. We then headed over to Pete's Pub for dinner - via the dinghy. Julie, Brian and Kylie joined us. We had a great dinner with great company. But the bugs were back, even though they lit things to keep them away. I was really bitten up and even the coconut oil did not help. I made a bad decision to sleep on deck again and let's say I didn't have much sleep. I woke up early and we decided we need to make our way right way to Marsh Harbour and see the pharmacist for some remedies. So we hoisted anchor and agree to meet St. Somewhere in Hopetown. So needless to say no photos from Little Harbour.... Happy Birthday to my first born - Jillian Laura!!! She is enjoying this birthday with her firstborn - JB Walsh and husband JP in Disney World! Things on Bazinga are not rushed in the mornings. Listen to the weather, have a few cups of coffee and before we know it is 10:00am. We were not in a big hurry to leave Spanish Wells, but the winds were favorable for sailing and our friends on St. Somewhere were willing to voyage with us. St. Somewhere is Leopard 39 and a good traveling partner for us. So about 10:30 we bid farewell to Spanish Wells Yacht Haven and started out for Schooner Bay. It was a lovely trip - I think we even turned the engines off for a while and just sailed. We arrived about 4:00pm and after some jockeying around with slips were tied up at the dock. Schooner Bay is a lovely little community on the south end of Great Abaco Island. It has some beautiful little homes surrounding the harbor and a lovely restaurant that serves dinner, lunch and breakfast. We had hoped to enjoy dinner but it was closed that night. We had dinner aboard and settled in for the evening. And settled in for the night. While it was a beautiful community, unfortunately the bugs were pretty bad. I woke up the next morning after sleeping on deck - which was a big mistake - with a lot of bug bites and scratching. We went to breakfast at the Inn and had a lovely time and good food. The irritation from the bites subsided and Julie gave me some Coconut Oil to use to keep the bugs away. It seemed to work as we set sail for Little Harbour and Pete's Pub. |
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