O-Kay!

We are here in Hope Town in the Abacos. Quite a trip from Bimini. We left at 0730 Thursday and arrived here at 1130 on Friday. T'was a very pleasant trip albeit somewhat boring inter spaced with two or three occasions of head slapping stupidity, mostly on my part. Very little wind and what there was, as usual, came right on the nose, so at best, it was motor sailing. Sigh! More diesel out the exhaust.

What were the stupid things? Well first let me talk about something that wasn't my fault. In the stretch of water between the Berrys and Great Abaco, otherwise known as the Tongue of the Ocean, is a major shipping lane. No biggie, right? But most of that traffic is cruise liners and I had forgotten that they light themselves up like Christmas trees, white lights everywhere and coloured lights advertising themselves and the shipping line. There was even one with a big screen TV broadcasting a football game. The first one I saw I thought was the moon rising it was so lit up! Somewhere hide no in all that are the nav lights. Which was was it moving? Who knows? They move so slowly too so you can't even make it out on radar. They are only moving from Freeport to Great Stirrup Cay to Nassau and always moving at night so they have a short distance to go with all the dark hours to do it in. Hence, they look like floating apartment buildings until you get close enough to see the tinny little red or green nav light. The other stupid thing was me almost colliding with an anchored fishing boat in the middle of the day on the Bahamas Bank. It was screened by the jib and I hadn't gotten up for an hour or so to look around it and the last I had seen of this particular boat it was in the act of trawling. Who'd a thunk that he would choose to stop and anchor right where he did. Also, I guess he doesn't have a radio since there was no attempt by him to contact us to warn us off. Still, my responsibility to avoid him and I only just barely, by a boat length, did.

At the harbour we picked up a mooring and settled in. Barb and I have been invited to sing at Christmas for the local church choir directed by our friend Barry and they have graciously invited us to their house for some meals and showers and laundry.

Yumm!