It’s been a few days since I last posted – we’ve been having a few wifi issues but mostly, we’ve just been relaxing and taking it slow! Our visit to Hope Town was fairly short – arrived on Sunday (March 19) and we left on Friday, March 24. It was a great stay and we had fun with Julia and Brad plus 2 new friends – Francois and Josee.
During our stay at Hope Town, Mark had the opportunity to participate in a race as crew on a large 45ft catamaran. Our friend Brad joined Mark aboard the cat and they raced against 7 other sailboats. They did 2 races in the Sea of Abaco. The captain of the catamaran was an avid racer but in the first race, he cut the corner too close and picked up the race marker (a very large float) and dragged it about 100ft!! They came in second last in that race!! But they redeemed themselves in race 2 by winning!! Mark and Brad had great time!!
On Friday, March 24th, Crimson Kathryn and Alizarin (Julia and Brad’s boat) left Hope Town and headed only 1.5nm south to anchor near Firefly Resort. There we met up with Rick and Sharon on Orkan. Orkan is another boat from our boatyard and they are from Ontario! We had a wonderful dinner at Firefly – good food and great conversation!!
On Saturday we all headed north – us and Alizarin went to Marsh Harbour while Orkan went to Great Guana Cay. We managed to get our laundry and shopping done quickly and we left Marsh Harbour just after lunch. We headed north to an anchorage called Red Bay. This spot gave us good coverage for the south wind that was predicted. Both Alizarin and eventually Orkan joined us in this lovely anchorage that was calm and wonderful!
Sunday morning we woke to find our wifi box (it’s a cellular device) dead!! No wifi for us! We tried everything to get it to work but the 4 year old device was done!!! It’s a super good thing that we were only about 1.5 hours from Marsh Harbour so we could easily head back there to get a new device on Monday (of course they’re not open on Sunday – it’s the Bahamas!!).
That leads me to today – Monday!! After 2 great days at Red Bay, we pulled up anchor early this morning (before 7:30) and headed back to Marsh Harbour. The Aliv store (Aliv is the phone provider we deal with here) was about a 30 minute walk from the dinghy dock so we were prepared to spend our morning in Marsh Harbour. We arrived by 9:30 and barely got off the dock when we saw an Aliv outdoor stand! Crazy! They were hanging out by the dinghy dock to help cruisers (and anyone else who happened to go by)! It was awesome!!! We had our new device and were all done in about 15 minutes!!! We thought it would take at least 1.5 hours to do this job – we got so lucky!!
We left Marsh Harbour just after 11am and immediately pulled out our main sail and jib. We had a fantastic down wind sail all the way to the whale cut. We even managed to have an excellent video chat with Evelyn and Caroline as we sailed through the whale cut! The wind direction and speed was great and we managed to sail the entire day, right up to our anchorage!
We are now anchored just west of Green Turtle Cay and it is so calm!! Alizarin is at Green Turtle Cay and Orkan is still on the south side of the whale cut at Great Guana Cay. I think we will all meet up again on Wednesday when we head to Powell Cay.
Our time in the Bahamas is quickly coming to an end for this season. In the next week or so we will be looking for good crossing conditions. For now we’re having fun exploring parts of the Abacos that we haven’t visited in the past!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 