Mike
04/18/2008, Hope Town, Elbow Cay, Abacos

April 17th... Hope Town

We were going to leave today but the wind was still at 20 from the north outside so it made sense to stay put. I waxed the starboard side of the topsides this morning while Kathy worked on stainless. I feel better finishing the waxing. I started last week and didn't know if the job was ever going to be finished. It's not a great but better than nothing ... and looks clean. We have a couple
more hours to do on the stainless but things seem to be ship shape for the most part.

Steve and Kim came over this morning for a book exchange and we made a date for lunch a restaurant down the beach a ways. We hiked the road there and had a nice lunch on the beach... I had a jerked chicken sandwich and mac and cheese just out of the oven. Kathy had a grilled cheese ... her stock order in most places. As we were leaving Steve and Carol showed up and walked the beach back to town.... we did make the mistake of stopping at another beach place on the way back for an hour or so.

Back at town, we made a stop at the grocery before returning to the boat.


We will be pulling out of Hope Town tomorrow morning on the tide and don't really know where we're going but most of our options are only about 12 miles so it's not a real problem.




April 16th...Hope Town

Still windy and cool... During the morning Jim and Jean from "Estelle" stopped over for a visit. We invited them back in the afternoon for drinks along with Steve and Carol which meant that most of our morning was spent cleaning up the boat. We had leftovers for lunch and then went to shore for a walk and a trip to the store. We headed north from town along the coast on the only road . There were some older homes and cottages. Some were well kept but most showed some neglect.

Back at the boat we did a little more cleaning and put together a cheese dish that we got from Kris on "Tilt". They ended up being greasier that I'd remembered but tasted fine.

We had a nice time chatting with "Estelle" and "Restless" while the sun drifted under the horizon.

April 15th....Hope Town

We are safely on a mooring here in Hope Town and probably did less today that any day on the trip. It was windy and cool. I did track down a rattle that we have noticed lately when running the engine at low rpms. It did mean taking everything out of the Lazarette and crawling in... but finding and fixing the problem was a small task. The exhaust pipe which is 2 inch galvanized pipe was bouncing against the hull. A wedge solved the problem at least temporarily.

I baked a batch of peanut butter cookies to warm the boat up during the morning ... the temperature was hovering around 70 which is cool for we thin blooded folks.

In the afternoon we ventured to shore for a walk but returned shortly to get back to our books.

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Mike
04/15/2008, Hope Town, Elbow Cay, Abacos

April 14th...

After breakfast I worked on the dinghy...for the first time in a about 6 weeks. Yesterday I noticed that the fabric that the attaches the transom was coming unglued on one side. I cleaned everything, applied some glue, and then used duct tape to hold things in place.

The next project was to empty out the lazerette in search of a rattle at low rpms that we have heard lately. It ended up being the exhaust pipe on the hull. The problem was easily fixed but putting everything back took a long time. However, I will need to check out the motor mounts to make sure that nothing is loose.

We stopped by "Fine Lion" to get the lay of the land and then went to shore.

Hope Town harbor is about ½ mile in diameter. There is no room to anchor because of all the mooring balls. The town is old... some of the homes are circa 1850's. Like most of the Abacos, the building are painted in pastels and right now, flowers are blooming everywhere. In the old part of town the roads are wide enough for a golf carts with paved paths that are even narrower. There are lots of cottages so the area is busier that some of the towns here.

We wandered around and had a nice walk before stopping at "Captain Jacks" for a light lunch.

What was left of the afternoon was spent reading in the cockpit watching the boats come and go.

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Mike
04/14/2008, Hope Town, Elbow Cay, Abacos

April 13...Fisher Bay to Hope Town

As forecast, the wind piped up this morning to about 20kts and since we were on a lee shore Sapphire was rocking and rolling. Our anchor held well but walking around the boat was difficult. At about 9am a Sunsail boat came in (chartered sailboat) to attempt to pick up a mooring next to us. They looked ok heading up wind to the mooring with one of the girls on the foredeck with a dock pole. But things went south quickly from there. The Captain wasn't able to get the boat close enough to the mooring for the girl to grab the line with her dock pole. On the third attempt she was able to grab the mooring but couldn't hold it when the boat floated back over the dock pole which was attached to the mooring on one end and the girl on the other. She held on as long as she could, bending the pole and almost breaking her arm in the process, but eventually had to let go. The dock pole was still attached to the loop on the mooring line so on their next attempt she jumped in to rescue the pole.

At that point, with someone in the water in three foot seas, it ceased being entertainment so I jumped in the dinghy to assist. By the time I arrived the young lady was back on board with the pole but the pick up had caused them to drift into another boat behind. After some quick fending off they were back in the general area of the mooring. I took their line and ran it through the loop on the end of the mooring and returned it to the boat. By that time there were three dinghies on the scene to make sure that their boat was correctly secured.

Shortly after, we hauled anchor and with "Restless" headed south for Hope Town. We sailed on mizzen and staysail for about 8 miles and anchored behind some small islands for protection while we waited for the tide to rise enough to get into the harbor. At about 1pm we took off for the 2 mile run into Hope Town and picked up the moorings that Steve had reserved a few days ago.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon reading. Steve and I took a short dinghy tour of the harbor looking at boats but that was about it for entertainment. We will be here for at least 3 more days so there will lots of time to explore. Lots of our friend say that this is their favorite town in the Bahamas.

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