Sunday, April 15, 2007

Back in Jax

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After 10 weeks in the Bahamas, Kokopelli and Stannie have returned to Jacksonville. It was a great adventure spent mostly in the Abacos of the northern Bahamas. Our last update was sent about two weeks after we arrived in the Bahamas when we'd gotten as far down the Abaco chain as Green Turtle Cay. The map shows the layout of the land. We crossed from the West Palm Beach area (Lake Worth) to West End at the west end of Grand Bahama island. From there we'd gone to Great Sale Cay, Grand Cay and Double Breasted Cays. These are shown on the insets of this map. You can click on the map to enlarge it.









I didn't send this picture on my previous update, but it really tickled me so I'm posting it now. It was taken while we were in New Plymouth, the main settlement on Green Turtle. This is an example of island security -- look closely at the lock on the church door. Click to enlarge if you need to.


Yup, it's a plastic fork.











After Green Turtle we next went to Treasure Cay to visit with Looper friends, Dave and Polly Brown, who had rented a villa there for several months. The beach at Treasure Cay is just like a picture out of a tourist brochure--white, white soft sands and incredible aqua water.















We were at anchor in Treasure Cay for almost a week, so we got to do a lot of shelling and socializing with Dave and Polly.

While we were all in Treasure Cay, Betsy and Jimmy on Simply Southern decided that they wanted to be in a marina for the duration of their Bahamas trip, taking day trips to explore the area. That way they could be connected to electricity and enjoy the social life and ease of provisioning that marina life offered. So they joined the Royal Marsh Harbor Yacht Club and left for Marsh Harbor (the 3rd largest town in the Bahamas at 5,000). The rest of us were interested in doing more extensive exploration and anchoring out, so the Eclectic Elite disbanded. We knew we'd be seeing them when we passed through Marsh Harbor so it wasn't a bitter-sweet parting, even though we were really sad that they were parting from us.

Before Koko and "R" Enchantment left Treasure Cay, Jacque and I had one last thing we wanted to do. We'd been eying a deserted spit of land that had lots of coconut palms on it and we wanted to collect a coconut to eat. So we all dinghied over to the spit and found coconuts both on the ground and in the tree. But we didn't know which ones were the good ones--the brown ones on the ground, the brown ones still on the tree, or the
yellow/green ones in the trees. So we ended up



getting one of each, using our extended boat poles to retrieve the ones in the trees. Then came the challenge of getting into them. We borrowed a machete from the Browns and set Chuck to hacking away. We really didn't know how to do this properly and ended up loosing all the coconut milk on the ground, but we did end up with a coconut with good meat.


Later Jacque and I spend an hour or so getting the rind off of the meat and grating it. We managed not to eat it all and had lots left over for island recipes.

We spent most of our remaining time in the Abacos exploring the area known as The Hub of the Abacos--Great Guana Cay, Man-o-War Cay, Elbow Cay, and Marsh Harbor. So below are pictures and explanations.


Curly Tails are lizzards and everywhere in the Abacos. A well-known restaurant/bar in Marsh Harbor is even called Curly Tails. They are cute little critters with their curly tails so I had to take a picture.





Our next stop after Treasure Cay was Baker's Bay. When we went ashore to walk the beach and look for sea shells, Stan found a really pretty star fish but we couldn't tell if it was alive or not. They have hard shells so poking at it didn't tell us anything. So we decided to put it back in the shallow water and mark the spot with a rock to see if it had moved when we came back from exploring down the shore. Well, we were gone for about an hour and when we came back, the starfish was a few feet away from the rock. If you look closely, you can see the "polka dots" in the sand where it had walked away.



And of course, here's the obligatory sunset picture with Koko in it. This was taken at Baker's Bay.


Guana Cay was the next stop. There are two well-known restaurant/bars there--Nippers and Grabbers. We went to Grabbers to celebrate Jacque's birthday and got a kick out of the rules posted for using the pool. We weren't there after 10 pm.....



Nippers is on the Atlantic side of the island so you have to walk there. It's only 1/2 a mile or so and well worth it. Nippers is quite colorful and is the site of the Abaco Barefoot Man concert each year. Nippers is known for its Sunday pig roast buffet, but we missed that. The view of the Atlantic from the bar is a sight to behold.
























After leaving Guana Cay we made our way to Marsh Harbor. As I mentioned above, it is the 3rd largest town in the Bahamas with about 5,000 people. They have actual grocery stores there about as well-stocked as small-town groceries here in the states. There were also lots of shops and hardware stores and the like. We ended up staying in Marsh Harbor for over a week, first because we were reprovisioning and visiting not only Betsy and Jimmy but other Loopers we'd met on our Loop in 2005 that were now spending time in the Bahamas. There are three main marinas in Marsh Harbor that have lots of Americans and Canadians staying on their boats in the marinas for the winter. Then we ended up staying longer in Marsh Harbor because the winds kicked up for several days and a protected harbor was a good place to be. At one point a squall went through and the winds got up to 49 knots, even in the harbor.

This is of crepuscular rays at sunset in Marsh Harbor. That's a term we learned in our Weather Class taken in Boulder through our US Power Squadron before we left. (Thanks Ron!) Nifty, huh?

One evening in Marsh Harbor we walked out of the restaurant to get in our dinhy when I looked up toward the west and said to Stan, "Gee, look at that funny contrail." In the next instant I squealed "I'ts the space shuttle!" We were seeing it from over 90 miles away. We watched as it flew overhead and even saw the shock waves around it. We watched it until it suddenly disapeared in the eastern sky. What a treat that was. We never would have guessed we'd be able to see it from so far away or that it's track would be over the Abacos.





Man-o-War Cay was next on the agenda. Our first trip to Man-o-War was a day trip by ferry from Marsh Harbor in order to attend the annual Flea Market. Stan and I were able to pick up some used wet suits so we could snorkle in the waters that weren't really warm enough yet for bare skin. We were quite taken with Man-o-War so when we finally left Marsh Harbor in our boats, that's where we headed. Like so many of the villages on the Abaco cays, the streets were narrow cement roads barely large enough for small cars. Who needs a car on such a small island anyway. Everyone gets around by foot or golf carts. We'd heard about the little old lady that made sweet rolls and went around town in her golf cart selling them out of the back. So we anchored the boats and dinghied to town. When we asked in one of the shops where we could find her, they said, "just wait on the road here and she'll find you." And she did! Once we were "found", we explored the town.
Stan came upon this dinghy that was so small we could hardly believe it. Notice the bag he's carrying in his hand ever so carefully. Yup, 4 nice hot cinnamon rolls.


Our next stop was Hope Town on Elbow Cay. We didn't anchor in the harbor but in the Sea of Abaco since the anchorage in the harbor was crowded and the winds were good for anchoring out. Hope Town is the home to the Elbow Cay Lighthouse. This is a picture of Koko with that lighthouse in the background. Hope Town was one of our favorite towns--a small (several hundred people?) but pretty settlement.





Our first day there we went to the lighthouse and climbed the 90+ steps to the top. That was well worth the trip. As we were going up the stairs inside, we came to a small landing with a highboy built to the curve of the wall! What a concept.







Once we got to the top, we went out a small door to the catwalk around the base of the light. It was a beautiful clear day so we could see really far--Hope Town below, Marsh Harbor, and south down the islands. We loved the door handle on the trap door to get out onto the catwalk.









This is the inside of the Fresnel lens of the light.











Each night the lighthouse keeper has to climb the steps every 2 hours and refill the kerosene. This is the only kerosene lighthouse still operating in the world. It uses 2 1/2 gallons of kerosene every night. On the way back down the stairs, Jacque took this picture of Stannie--can you see us?











The next day in Hope Town was the annual fund raiser for the volunteer fire department. While at the fair we all had a traditional Caribbean meal--Chicken Souse, baked macaroni and cheese, and Johnny Cake. Souse is a soup made from chicken, potatoes, onions, sometimes carrots, and the key ingredient is an acidic one--either vinegar or lemon juice to give the souse a piquant taste. Five of the area restaurants made up pots of their version on souse so we got to choose which one to try. Each of us got souse from a different pot and it was interesting to share tastes and taste the differences in each souse.




Another thing Hope Town is known for is Vernon's Grocery. It is a really little grocery with a small bakery attached--actually the bakery is just a little room next to the store. But what the bakery is known for far and wide is the Key Lime Pie. Stan and I'd first heard about it when we'd gone to the Chicago Boat Show in 2000. The bakery makes other things too--cinnamon rolls, coconut bread, coconut custard pie--but it is the Key Lime Pie that is famous. We'd heard you needed to order them ahead, but we hadn't done that and took our chances. And good luck we had. When we got to his store, it was closed until 2pm. So we went to a few other shops and were just sitting on the curb watching life go by when we saw Vernon come out of the bakery and go into the store. As soon as he flipped the Open sign, we went in and low and behold, there were a couple of fresh, still hot from the oven, merangue-topped Key Lime Pies. We got one right away and I still don't know how we made it all the way back to our dinghies and to our boats without opening that box and scarfing it down, but we did. It was soooo good, that when we ended up going back to Hope Town later in the month, we bought two of them!








The flowers on the islands were very pretty, even though there weren't as many blooming as I thought there'd be. Nevertheless, I did take quite a few flower pictures. This is of multi-colored bushes of bougainvilla.





We got as far south as Little Harbor on Great Abaco island before we realized we were beginning to run out of time to get back to the US in time for prior commitments. So we turned back north and revisited Hope Town for more Key Lime Pie, and back to Man-o-War for more cinnamon rolls, then back to Marsh Harbor. There was a mini-rendezvous planned there for any and all Loopers in the area that we wanted to attend and we also wanted to go to the Jib Room at Marsh Harbor Marina to see the limbo dancing.


Among the activities at the Looper rendezvous was a tug o war. All the participants were divided into two teams and our team decided on the QT that after we all got pulling hard, our side would let go on the shout of "Looper". But before that could happen, the rope broke and both sides ended up sprawled in the sand.






The trip to the Jib Room coincided with Chuck's birthday and also Dave Brown's, the friends in Treasure Cay. So we planned to celebrate by partaking in the BBQ rib night at the Jib Room. The Browns rented a car and drove down from Treasure Cay and we met up with Betsy and Jimmy and lots of other friends for a night of celebration. Jacque was the only one of us brave enough to try the limbo, and wow is she limber. She got pretty low on the bar but finally had to give up because the drinks she'd had were making her lose her balance when she leaned over backwards to go under!





The real limboist went really low and we were surprised that he wasn't exactly a slender reed of a guy! On his last pass he lit the bar and put a cigarette in his mouth and as he slowly worked his way under, lit the cigarette on the burning bar.





After we left Marsh Harbor, we worked our way north along the island chains, returning to some anchorages we'd been at on the way down and going to a few new ones we'd missed. When we were ashore at Powell Cay, an uninhabited island, Stan came across a "living thing" in the water. It was so strange looking it was creepy. It looked like a cross between a frog, a fish and a bird, with a few things thrown in that weren't like anything else we'd ever seen. It had a horned snout that stuck up to the surface of the water, it had a vivid red mouth, it had an orange underbelly that had two 2" long bony legs. It looked like a fish body but had a wing on each side that looked more like a checken leg. It swam like a fish, but also walked along the bottom on the bony legs. Wierd, wierd.













It wasn't until a week or so later that we finally came across a fellow boater that had a fish identifying book on board and found out that this thing is a batfish. Still think a better name is "the missing link".


We continued on to Allens-Pensacola Cay (an uninhabited island which used to be two until a hurricane changed it into one)and ended up staying there for a week because of winds that were too high for comfortable sailing. After the winds finally lessened, we moved on to Great Sale Cay, another uninhabited island. We were there only one day before we started our long crossing back to the US. We decided to go in at Cape Canaveral, and it took us 27 hours to sail and motor/sail from Great Sale Cay to Canaveral. We left about 9 in the morning on Wednesday and got to Canaveral about noon on Thursday. It was a reasonably good crossing of the Gulf Stream. We had following swells 6-8 feet with a long period so it wasn't choppy, thank goodness. We started out the night each doing a 3 hour watch while the other slept, then we went to 2 hour watches because it was so tiring having to hand steer in following seas. Our tiller pilot doesn't do well in following seas. The above picture was taken about 7am on Thursday. Two other sailboats were passing us by and if you look closely you can see just their cabin tops and masts behind the swells. Kind of gives you an idea of the size of the swells.


After staying overnight in a marina in Canaveral (and doing laundry at only $1 per load each instead of $4 per load for a washer and $4 per load for a dryer in the Bahamas!) we left Friday and headed up the ICW toward Jacksonville. Our son Jake and his wife Corri drove down from Jacksonville, where they live. It is an hour and a half drive by car. Jake then went with us the rest of the way to Jacksonville--a two day trip by boat. One of the sights we saw on the ICW that tickled our fancy was this giant yacht parked in front of a small, very unpretentious brick house. Hmmmm.







The first day we followed the ICW up to St. Augustine, where we anchored out for the night right outside the fort. The next day we went out the St. Augustine inlet into the Atlantic and sailed in the ocean up to the Jacksonville inlet. It was another 4 hours to downtown Jacksonville and we arrived just after sunset with the moon rising in the east.

We are now at Green Cove Springs Marina, about 20 miles south of Jacksonville. Koko is on the hard while we give her new bottom paint and do other fix-ups in preparation for leaving to do our second Loop around the eastern US. We will be meeting up with Bob and Trish on Pogopelli, their 23' Jeanneau; Paul on Snappy, his 26' Snap Dragon; and Ned on Rosenate, his 25' Catalina. We plan on leaving around the 1st of May headed north up the ICW.