We are no longer dock queens. Hurrah!

We left Hope Town at 0930 this morning and motor sailed to a development called Schooner Cove just outside of the Sea of Abaco. It was a bit of an adventure getting here, dolphins came out to play around us and then we got to Little Harbour at the south end of the Sea of Abaco and Barry aboard Troubadour called the Dockmaster here and asked him about conditions at the entrance and got the response that, "Perhaps tomorrow....." So we began to circle Laynard Cay looking for a spot to anchor but then he called Barry back and said that he had driven down to the water and had a look and thought it was doable. Meanwhile a 54' sloop named Dragon which was following us along decided to not head through the Little Harbour cut and stay at Laynard since there were 6' swells out in the Atlantic. No matter how much I tried to encourage him to continue with us he was adamant. He didn't like the size of the swells along with no wind. His boat is shoal draft with a centre board so he would roll a lot under those conditions but after we got through the cut, which was exciting to say the least, the seas turned out to be very much like what we are used to at home. He was mistaken in one thing - every tenth swell exceeded 11' so every once in a while Troubadour would disappear to the spreaders which is fun to watch.

Then the wind piped up and there was no more rolling. Huzzah! One more reason Dragon would have liked to have been with us.

After three hours in the Atlantic we cut in to Schooner Cove. The entrance was the most exciting part of the trip. The marked entrance had breakers to the left and breakers to the right and breakers dead ahead, but then there was a green lateral buoy and we turned to port. Whew! Or maybe not. As we approached the entrance which has lateral markers as well as a set of range markers the swells coming in hit Nelleke as high and higher than our cabin top. I can remember Barb shouting, " Holy crap! Look at that!" just before the breaking swell hit us and put water aboard, in the companionway and the port lights, as well as putting us over on our beam ends. Barry told me later that he deliberately got Marcia to sit down facing away from us so she couldn't see what was happening.

Then, suddenly, it was over. We came through a narrow cut and were in the man made harbour of schooner cove. The dock master, a friendly cuss, was there to meet us and help tie up which was a bit of a chore since although the water was calm there was a significant rage induced current running in the habour and even after we were tied up Nelleke bounced back and forth like a dog on a leash.

This is a nice, albeit incomplete, place. We will come back. It is a modern village, designed to look like an old Bahamian community. There is a really nice restaurant and snack bar and the marina faculties are good if incomplete. There is no laundry or showers as yet but there are nice clean washrooms and at $0.10/gal the water is the cheapest anywhere we have found it in the Abacos. I can't make it with our water maker that cheaply. The power is not too expensive and is metered even for an overnight stay. On the down side they don't have a credit card machine. They will accept cheques or cash, which is weird. They do have a great wifi service so I guess it all rounds out. While they are waiting for everything else to be built in they have what amounts to a reduced dockage rate of $1.50/ft. It says $2.00 on the website. They tell me the surge complications that we are experiencing are rare so we will definitely look at this place as a stop over in future.