Voyage 2012: Chapter 3

02 Mar 2013, A Lazy Jule III, 26 32.874 N/ 077 03.102 W

Well, the boat did not want to move. She would rather stay in her slip for the next several days. So we obliged her and took the ferry to the the neighboring cays. We went to Hope Town on Elbow Cay on several occasions. This was the most 'touristy' of the cays that we would visit. Still, we liked it very much. There are lots of restaurants, trinket stores, and people. Very clean town with a British flavor.

There were more boats crammed in the harbor then we could have imagined. Marinas and mooring fields were filled or nearly so. Quite impressive considering the skinny waters found on the route to Hope Town. Jule is glad that we did not subject her to such distress. We took the local ferry to get a better view of the lighthouse.

If you look really hard, you can see Capt. Ann near the top of the lighthouse. Of course Bob was guarding the base of the lighthouse as he does not 'do' lighthouses or other hight things. Even from the base, the view was quite impressive. It is a shame that it was so overcast. Of course, the weather was not very conducive for cruising or photography. Of course.

On our first ferry voyage, we met a gang of cruisers from the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club (RMHYC) based in Boat Harbour. They 'adopted' us during our first Hope Town visit so we accompanied them everywhere from restaurants, to marinas, to the local flea market. Lucky for us as we would see these folks often. Here we were having morning Bloody Marys. Bob was at home!

08 Mar 2013, More Ferry Rides, 26 32.874 N/ 077 03.102 W

Our next ferry passage was to Man-o-War Cay which is the boat building cay of the Abacos. Ferry ride was a bit longer than the Hope Town trip but is was enjoyable nevertheless. This cay is entirely different than Hope Town. It is a working island with few attractions for tourists. There is only one restaurant and one or two trinket shops.

The community was friendly and the roads and byways immaculate. Everything was as it should be. There is a marina and a mooring field. Most of the balls were occupied. We walked around the island and found a seaside cemetery, a Batelco tower, many well manicured homes, a grocery store, boat building facilities, a canvas shop, and of course the Dock N Dine restaurant where we had delicious hamburgers.

Ann finally had a chance to do some shelling on the Atlantic side of the cay. The beach was beautiful but the shells were scarce. Ann was not happy. There was a community cemetery near the beach with a placard describing its history. It had a sad history due to many destructive hurricanes.

A few days later we headed for Great Guana Cay via a longer ferry ride. Guana is between Hope Town and Man-o-War on the 'touristy' scale. The big draws are Nippera and Grabbers, two restaurants/inns one on the Atlantic side, the other on Sea of Abaco. Weather still was nasty (actually it was nasty 90% of the time) so there was quite a surf from the Atlantic.

We had our lunch at Nippers but perhaps we were too early. Service was not what we expected. The food was good but it took us 15 minutes to find a waitress. It was so windy the day we had lunch that Bob had to hold the umbrella in fear that it would fly out of the table. It made many valiant tries but it was no match for Bob. Still it was hard to eat a hamburger with one hand.

We felt that was only fair to also visit Grabbers, a competing facility. They had a nice sandy beach overlooking Fishers Bay where many cruisers were anchored. We were not hungry as we had just come from Nippers but is appeared to be a cruiser friendly place. Next time. We had planned to come here in a couple days for the Barefoot Man concert but we got lazy again.