We went in to the settlement of Salt Pond today. That is the biggest area of development along Thompson Bay and that is where the government dock is, which means it's where the mail boat comes on this side of the island. Long Island is 80 miles long (and only about 4 miles wide), and I think there are only two government docks and one government basin; here and Clarence Town, which is just a bit south of this and on the eastern side of the island, have docks. Simms, north of here and on the western side of the island has a "Government Basin". I assume the mail boat comes there and anchors and they use small boats to offload goods.

Salt Pond doesn't have a lot. It does have a very nice resort with a restaurant and WiFi, so I'm not even going to try the Sailmail postings while we're here. Bud also went into Harding's Supply and Grocery Store and tried (again) to get a large funnel to replace ours that has a tiny crack. No funnel. He did find non-stainless hose clamps to use in an emergency (no stainless available) and batteries. The last two times we've anchored we had no communicators. I thought the salt water was already getting to them, turns out to be the batteries. We also decided not to keep our batteries in the freezer. Since the temperature in the freezer goes up and down a lot we found the batteries we'd stored there got wet and had started to rust. We also got new batteries for our dive light, so now we have an underwater light that works.

After the shopping we went back to the Long Island Breeze and had a drink and conch fritters (nice dip here) and used the Internet. Like most places down here there was an area of outdoor seating where we could take Fuzzy. Bud took this picture off the deck near where we sat looking out over the government dock and some of the local fishing boats. A cruiser who's been here before told us that the biggest fishing fleet in the Bahamas used to anchor here, but there are few boats left. This may be because they are out fishing, or it may be because the fishing industry has hit hard times with high fuel prices and the economic downturn. The Bahamas really feels any downturn in the US because tourism is the number one industry.

The whole of Salt Pond is about a mile dinghy ride from where we are. I took a picture of the bay when we took Fuzzy ashore. It shows Earendil and way off in the distance, too far to really see, is where we went today. Anyway, Bud and I plan to stay another couple of days and actually do the tourist thing and rent a car and view the island. More in future posts.