Another post from Hope Town
29 December 2014
• Hope Town Abacos the Bahamas
by Mike
Our second Sunday in Hope Town. We have been here a little over a week now and the allure is still there. This is a great place.
Last night we went to the standup and were presented with the Hope Island Sailing Club burgee which will be brought back to Shelburne in its pristine state to be hung in the rafters of SHYC if there isn't already one there. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the other members of the club and we were very pleased to have a number of people come up to us and say that they had visited Shelburne and had many happy memories of their stay.
We have had several people suggest that we might want to go to the marina and negotiate a rate to tie up alongside. Apparently the fact that the U.S. Government has opened access to Cuba is expected to have a big impact on this country, in particular the Abacos, as many of the people who were in the habit of coming here since Cuba was closed to them, will, at least for a while head on there. From fellow Canadian cruisers we have heard that things are very inexpensive there even staying at a marina. The figure that we had quoted was $1000. If you have a monthly income of $1000 you can live very well in Cuba staying at a marina and eating at restaurants almost every night. Here in the Bahamas I am inclined to believe that many of the prices are based on what they believe the market will bear. For instance, a bottle of dark rum will cost anywhere from $6-18 depending on where you are and if the store's proprietor thinks you would rather give him an extra $10 than spend $22 on a round trip ferry ride to someplace where you can buy it more cheaply. Here in Hope Town for instance there are three different places you can buy that bottle of rum and each has a significantly different price. Once they have to be competitive with outside nations such as Cuba and the number of tourists diminish the thought is that they will cut their profit margins to be more attractive. The marina advertises $2/ft alongside but we have found several people who pay monthly rates for the slip that are nothing like that. We are paying $350/month for the mooring and are thinking that an additional $100 or so for the convenience of being alongside would be well worth it. The water and power will be metered but our experience with metered power aboard Nelleke since we don't have an AC is very positive ie low cost, much lower than most flat rates which tend to be geared towards a maximum consumption. We will be asking the marina manager tomorrow what sort of deal he can strike. We are hoping that especially with the promise of us returning next year we will get a preferred rate this year for a month or two.
Barb and I warbled in church again this morning. I really had quite forgotten how much fun that could be, especially the working out the various parts on the fly so to speak. Barb is a master of it and I never was any good at it but perhaps after a month or two under the excellent tutelage of our friend Barry I might get better.
We have been breaking in Soshi slowly. Since it is a two stroke that means an extra rich mixture of gas for the first number of hours and initially only running it at low rpms gradually increasing over time. As of now we are at a point that we can occasionally rev her up but still only keep her at about 2/3 possible speed. We are really hoping to get the Suzuki back in operation within the next week but we will retain the Yamaha as a backup.
We are thinking of going to the big fireworks display down the shore on the 30th. Odd that they are not doing it on New Years Eve but we should be back here at the mooring for the fireworks that I am told they set of right here at the marina. Two New Years Eve fireworks! There will also be a number of boats from the sailing club who will be rafting up overnight for the shindig on the 30th.
Monday now. Two postings for the price of one.
Hurrah! Huzzah! Pip! Pip! We have gotten the water maker running! It makes a gallon of good fresh water every 7-8 minutes which if we are running the engine to power the batteries would be about a litre and a half an hour or .3 a litre of fuel. At current prices that would be something in the order of 20 cents or slightly cheaper than going in to the marina to buy water. However we will be running it only when we are mainly running the diesel to recharge the batteries so we are getting the water as a side product. It will take a few times of running the engine for two hours each evening to get the tank back full up so I am also supplementing it by buying water in the jerry cans and carrying it out to the boat. It's all a grand experiment, isn't it?
Took the opportunity to hook up our hooka system and clean off the underside of the boat including a couple of the transducers. We now have a much better functioning forward scanning sonar than before. Amazing how much the addition or subtraction of a couple of barnacles makes. The zinc was still in good shape but I will have to pull the waterwheel impeller to properly clean it. The growth was too far into the thru-hull.
We came ashore to buy a few groceries and to let Barb poke around in a store that she has wanted to for a while, Iggy-Biggies. We have also consulted the dealer about Yoshi and whether she is ready for grown up fuel. When we switch her over we are thinking that the occasional uneven running will go away as it will mean that her spark plug will no longer gum up like it is now.
We are entertaining the idea of coming alongside for the rest of our stay as I mentioned previously. Apparently there is a preferred rate if you are prepared to stay for three months of $500/month plus metered power and metered water. The showers which are now $5 each will be free, so with two showers a day for 30 days that alone is $300. We aren't taking that many showers now so people around us will likely be grateful if we go in alongside. We also get access to their several pools and hot tub to say nothing of the convenience to our son and daughter when they come to visit or to Peri for when it's time for his poopambulation.
The only small, and I do mean small, negative thing about the Abacos is that the Internet isn't always the most reliable, at least not by the standards that we are used to. Hence the number of times that we have posted two and sometimes three days info in one posting.
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