Marsh Harbor

Hey gang, We are here enjoying a windy day in Marsh Harbor in the Abacos. The wind is blowing about 20 knots with gusts up to 26. The weather report says there may be some squalls with winds up to 40 knots. We re anchored so that we are away from other boats. Everything is closed up although we have not seen rain yet.

I was thinking about why the Bahamas are so popular. There are several reasons. 1. They are easy to get reach from the US. If you are careful to cross the Gulf Stream when the wind is not blowing north it is an easy sail. It's a day sail. We Went over night to Nassau but we passed a bunch of islands where we could have stopped. Most sails are easy and within the sight of land. 2. The weather is fantastic. We are in the northern Abacos now. Today, even with the wind the temperature is 75 degrees. We get very little rain and the humidity is low. Last night I heard the first mosquito in over a month. 3. Everyone speaks English and the people are wonderful. Two major groups settled the Bahamas. Slaves who had either been freed or escaped and "Loyalists" who left the US during the revolution because they wanted to remain a part of England. They are very religious. Most of the islands or cays are Anglican. Some like Spanish Wells where John and Charles Wesley spent several months are Methodist. Spanish Wells is almost all white and it's against the law to sell alcohol. Most of the restaurants will allow you to bring your own. It's rare for a business to be open on Sunday. 4. There is almost no crime. In Annapolis, MD everyone is warned to lock up your dingy when you go to shore. No so in the Bahamas with the exception of Nassau. Routinely the large boats that brings supplies to shore will leave things on the dock to be picked up later buy local businesses. 5. The people are delightful and very polite. One of the things we have had to learn is when going into a business you need to take time to say hello and visit before telling them what you want. They are not in a hurry and appear to genuinely care about us. 6. They are in not hurry. Our windless is not working. I took it in to the local guy to fix it. He's had it three days and I have not heard from him. He will get to it.

People fly into the many resorts as well as come by boat. For the most part it's a 3rd world country. There are very few grocery stores like we have at home. It has been an adjustment. Tomorrow we will take our two 6 gallon water jugs in the dingy and start bringing water to the boat. We will add to our tanks and then get more on our next trip with Moose. We have to pay for water in most places. We pay from 15-45 cents a gallon. We have learned to taste it first so we know it's not salty. Most islands have desalination plants to turn drinking water from sea water. We are told here it is from wells. Although we haven't done it yet some people collect rain water for their boats. On our prior boat we would take our soap and go on deck in the rain to wash. Hopefully it wouldn't stop raining until we had rinse off.

Our plan is to return to Florida the first part of May and head back to the Chesapeake. We are hoping to sail most of the way in the Gulf Stream and avoid the Intra Coastal Waterway until we get to North Carolina.

We have had a couple of lazy days where we read and hang out. Yesterday I read a book from cover to cover. We have bags of books. I think this summer we will buy and Ipad and or a Kendal and download our books on to it. Most marinas have places where you can trade books.

Life continues to be good. We continue to meet and catch back up with some wonderful people. I think next week our friends on Fellowship will leave and return to Australia. Others we hope to catch up to along the way.

We love hearing from you about your life. You remain in our thoughts.

John, Elyse & Moose on Spunky

Spanish Wells

Well looks like the squalls will last through the morning tomorrow so we are going to put off our departure until Friday. We will hire a pilot to lead us through the reef in the Devil's Backbone. The advice is that one should not try it without local knowledge. It will save us miles and allow us to have a better angle on the wind. We have to time our arrival so that we go through the cut to Little Harbor with a slack or flood tide so as to not encounter what is called 'a rage' where the current goes against the wind and can be quite dangerous. Our windlass is still not working. John is working up the courage to take it apart. Our contact in Annapolis tells us the problem is in the gear box and it will require a $200.00 part being flown in. We will not do that now but wait until we reach Marsh Harbor or Green Turtle. That means we will be pulling up the anchor by hand. Picture two old folks on their butts pulling up a 73 lb. anchor plus chain onto the deck of Spunky with a little black dog racing back and forth. That will be us.

Spanish Wells

We have been in Spanish Wells since Sat. afternoon and have done laundry, filled a diesel jug and done some grocery shopping for produce. We rented a golf cart for the day yesterday to tour the island. It is a lovely settlement. The homes and yards are all well cared for and most citizens ride golf carts along the narrow streets. It seems like everyone is related by family ties here on the island. We are on a mooring ball east of the harbor and take our dinghy in for shore trips. There are a couple of boats here from Rock Sound as well. Our windlass stopped working in Hatchet Bay. John is trying to figure what the problem is. He has cleaned all of the electrical connections and thinks it may be a jammed clutch. To unjam it would require disassembling the entire thing and we are not sure we are up for that so we will be hauling our 73 lb anchor plus chain up by hand. That will be quite a challenge.

We have changed to Daylight Saving Time and are the same zone as the East Coast.

Today we have to decide which way we will go to leave here. We can hire a pilot to lead us out through the reefs on the East side or take a day to go to the West to the Egg Island Cut and leave at the crack of dark at 2 a.m to head north to Abacos. Several boats left today but we were not ready and so will be on our own.

Spanish Wells

Hatchet Bay was not what we hoped. Our friend had the flu and there were bugs in the anchorage. We walked through town and there was not much going on and the grocery store was not great so we decided to leave early the next morning.

We were up early and did our chores and took Moose ashore for his walk. As we attempted to haul anchor the windlass decided to have a power problem and John had to raise it by hand. It delayed us but we were on our way in no wind at all. We motored to Current Cut and through the cut at ebb tide with our speed over 9 knots. Then we made our way up to Spanish Wells asking two other boats to lead us in as our draft was too deep. They called the depth out to us as we went since our depth exceeded the minimum low water depth. We made it in and found a vacant mooring ball to catch and settled in for the evening.

Spanish Wells was settled by Loyalists from the states during the Revolution and English Puritans who were seeking religious freedom. It is a Methodist community as the Wesley brothers landed here before landing in Georgia and founded their church. It is a charming well cared for community. We hope to explore it on Monday. Everything closes down on Sunday so we will just relax and plan to rent a golf cart on Monday to explore. Tues. we will head for Royal Is. to stage for our departure to The Abacos on Tuesday night just after midnight. We plan now to sail over night to Little Harbor to time our arrival well.

Spanish Wells

Hello from Spanish Wells,

We sailed to Spanish Wells this morning from Hatchet Bay. We didn't think much of Hatchet Bay. If I wasn't such a nice person I would call it a dump. We had no wind and motored the whole way. The sail to Hatchet Bay was one of the best of our time here in the Bahamas. We only made minor adjustments to the sails and probably averaged close to 6.5 knots.

Spanish Wells was settled by English Loyalists and people from England who were looking for more religious freedom. John Wesley stopped here for 6 months and the area has a strong Methodist background as opposed to most of the Bahamas which were Anglican. The island is prosperous and they think of themselves as primarily Spanish Wellsians rather than people from the Abacos or Eluthera. The island is very prosperous. Because of weather we plan to be here a couple of days. I think Monday we may rent a golf cart to tour the island.

Elyse has instructed me to limit my reports. As soon as I mention something is working well it breaks. Suffice it to say, we are having a good time. Life continues to be good. We continue to meet great people. We followed a boat in today who called out the depths to us because it got very shallow. We walked around this afternoon with Moose. We are on a mooring ball in place of an anchor.

We plan to spend the next month in the Abacos and then cross back to Florida. We will probably sail up much of the East Coast and avoid some of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Hope your life is good. We love hearing about your life.

The gang on Spunky, John, Elyse and Moose

Hatchet Bay

Left Rock Sound early Friday a.m. and had an awesome sail up to Hatchet Bay. Not too impressed with the harbor here so we have decided to leave early tomorrow for Current Cut and then Spanish Wells to find a mooring ball or marina slip. If that doesn't work we will try to find an anchoring spot in Royal Island. The town here did not have much to offer. Another front is moving through Sat. night and into Sunday. It looks like we may be able the cross the Northwest Passage on Tuesday for Little Harbor in the Abacos. We would have to time that to enter at high tide. Looks like more research before we leave.

Rock Sound

Well we are still here in Rock Sound. There are now about 20 boats here all waiting for the front to pass. The days have been full with boat chores, trips into town for fuel, water and provisions, reading and watching old movies.

We have been fortunate that we have been able to take the dinghy ashore for Moose even with the high winds. The NE winds have blown all the water out of the little area where we dock our dinghy. We had to tie it to the rocks and carefully step across the rocky shoreline to get to the ladder up to the restaurant area which leads to the highway through town.

Yesterday a group of 8 of us plus Moose walked across the island to the Atlantic side to watch the breakers. It was beautiful and awe inspiring to see the waves crashing onto the beach. The sand from the dunes was blowing into our eyes and I put Moose under my jacket to try and keep the sand out of his eyes.

The winds have been pretty steady in the 20's gusting to 30 every now and then and we have had some rain squalls over the past 2 days. John is below listening to Chris Parker's 6:30 a.m. weather broadcast to see if we can finally leave tomorrow morning for Hatchet Bay. Many of the boats will be leaving some going on farther to Current Cut which is a narrow cut in the island to pass through to the north side in preparation to cross the open ocean to the Abacos. We are hoping to meet up with friends in Hatchet and then travel on through Current Cut. One has to catch it at slack tide as the current is very strong and makes it difficult to travel through so we will have to time our arrival to hit the slack ebb or flood. Once through we will wait at Royal Island, a small sheltered harbor, for the seas to calm enough for us to cross.

Rock Sound

Hi All, We are still in Rock Sound Harbor, Eleuthera waiting out the weather. Looks like we may make a run for it tomorrow. It is about 37 miles to our next stop in Hatchet Bay where we may have to wait out another weather front.

It is squally here today interspersed by sun with a good amount of wind, however, we were able to get Moose ashore this morning and got back to Spunky only slightly damp. The wind generator is keeping our batteries topped off even though we've had cloud cover which limits our solar.

This afternoon we will go in to fill a diesel can at the gas station and then we will plan on taking off fairly early. We are ready for some new sights.

Love, Elyse, John and Moose

Heading North

Friends & Family,
We have turned the corner and are heading back north. Following is Elyse's update that is always better than what I write.

As she says, we are sitting in Rock Sound waiting out the weather. We think we are in a well protected place. We will see.

Life continues to be good. No pressure. Elyse was ready to sail on to our next spot but I felt there was no hurry and with bad weather coming it was best to stay were we know we are good. We continue to meet interesting people who are also cruising. Some like us live on their boats and others are able to travel for months at a time and then go to a "home". We have met a lot of Canadians. We are really getting into the islands. No hurry mon.

Elyse is pretty excited that I am growing a mustache. When I wear my straw hat that I bought in George Town she thinks I look like Tom Selleck.

We continue to learn about the boat and there are always things to fix. Today I cleared a blocked drain line by hooking up our air pump and blowing it out. I had Elyse with her head stuck in a cabinet under out bed looking for bubbles. I was in the engine compartment shouting, asking if she could see them. Tomorrow the project is removing rust spots on the stainless.

For our water we have to take jerry cans to shore. The restaurant near where we are anchored is going to allow me to fill my two 6 gallon jugs to bring back. Did you know that water is heavy? Elyse is always worried we will run dry. We carry over 200 gallons and have always been able to top off with no more than 3 jugs. Most of the time we have to pay for water. It is very dry here and in most places the water is desalinated from the sea water. In Long Island the owners of a resort rationed the people using their laundry mat. We may add a water maker this summer.

Our plan is to spend the next couple of months working our way back up north and to cross back to Florida the first of May. The sights are amazing. Yesterday when we were getting into our dingy to go back to the boat a small manta ray swam by next to us.

I hope your life is good and your dreams are coming true. I encourage you to pull up your anchor and cast off. As they say no one ever complained about having not spent more time in the office on their death bed.

Today has been a lazy day. Late yesterday a boat named Airborne came into the harbor and called to ask if we were comfortable with their anchor position next to us. We invited them over for drinks. They are living in Cape Coral, FL and have been cruising the Caribbean since 2002 and lived in Arlington, VA for several years when he was at the Pentagon. It was nice to visit with them. They are headed on south to Cat Island before turning back to head home.

It looks like there are about 8 boats that will ride out the front here with us. Some others could still arrive late today or tomorrow but much after that it will be batten down the hatches.

I am sending this along with our most recent Spot location. I hope you will all let us know how you are doing. We greatly enjoy hearing what is going on out in the real world.

Rock Sound

The tour of Cat Island was fun. There is not much to see between New Bight where we were anchored and the north end of the island. I had completed my continuing ed for my Florida real estate license and had faxed my answer sheet that morning to FL. We missed a call on our cell phone on the ride up north and needed to stop at a Batelco office as we couldn't figure out how to return the call on our phone. We stopped in Arthur Town at the north end of the island and found out how to make the call. The fax had been fuzzy and they wanted me to fax it again. I asked if I could just read my answers to them over the phone and they agreed and told me I had passed. We drove on to the far end of the island on a dirt road past Orange Creek and had lunch on the deck of a lovely resort overlooking the bay. The resort is owned by a German couple who came to the island on vacation and decided to stay. They told us that Irene had done major damage to the island which we had noticed. There are many abandoned buildings missing roofs and walls with the windows boarded up. On the drive back we took a winding dirt road about 5 miles to the Atlantic side and walked the beach looking for hamburger beans, heart beans and sea glass. This was our first hunt, although the couple from Maverick were experts, and we found two beans and some sea glass. We were told that you can polish the beans and make jewelry out of them as well as the sea glass. We got back to our dinghies after dark and the next morning returned the car got diesel and water in our jerry cans as well as some produce and hauled it all back to Spunky and took off by 10 a.m. Since we had seen the island by car we decided to sail directly to Little San Salvador where we arrived early afternoon. It is a small island owned by Holland America Cruise Lines and is where the cruise ships come and drop their passengers for a few days of organized fun on the beach. Cruisers are allowed to walk the beaches with permission but are limited as to where they can anchor when the ships are in port. We arrived as a huge ship was departing. The staff for the most part comes in by boat when the ships are there to man the resort and most all leave as soon as the ship leaves to return to their homes on other islands. The night was very rolly and uncomfortable which upsets Moose so I slept with him in the cockpit and we left at first light to sail on to Rock Sound in Eleuthera. The first 10 miles of the 42 mile run was like sailing in a washing machine. The ocean swells were off our port quarter and the wind was coming from the starboard side, but after we turned north into the lee of the island the seas settled down and we had a great sail almost all the way to Rock Sound dodging coral heads and sand bars.

Rock Sound is a nice big bay (about 4 miles long) with protection from wind in most directions. It is a cute town, the largest on the island with a population of about 400, with good groceries, diesel at the gas station and a laundry. We heard on the weather report that another front would be moving in by Sunday and we would have to find shelter from the NE winds 25 to 35 knots. After much discussion, we have decided to remain here for what could be as much as 10 days or more rather than race to the next protected bay which would be quite a distance away in Hatchet Bay or farther up in Royal Island. We have boat chores to take care of like changing the oil and fixing our stern ladder steps and we would miss the opportunity to leisurely explore the island if we left tomorrow. We are not in a rush so we will stay here through the front. Several other boats are making the run to Royal Is. and Maverick had already gone on ahead as they were meeting company in the Abacos and needed to hurry along taking advantage of the weather window between Wed. and Sunday when the next front will hit.

Last night we had drinks with some other cruisers at the open air restaurant across from where we are anchored. Moose was welcome and allowed the little boys(5 or 6 years old) who belong to the staff to take him for walks around the grounds until I "rescued" him and then he sat at the bar on a bar stool while we visited. It was a long day and we all were very tired.