Marsh Harbour – 1 mile in dinghy, 6 kilometres walked
This March weather is starting to get to me. Since arriving in the Abacos we have been pinned down 75% of the time seeking shelter from weather fronts. You get two decent days then it’s four or five of crazy high winds where you can’t do much in the water and are left to either stay on your boat or explore land if it’s possible to get there by dinghy. And with the west and north-west winds we’ve been getting, protected anchorages are limited and usually already filled with with cruisers who were quicker and smarter than us. This is why we’ve been stuck in Marsh Harbour for a few days.
Here’s how bad it’s getting. We did another big walk into town today and my goal was to find a pencil eraser and pencil sharpener. I’ve been using a knife to sharpen pencils and we have approximately one millimeter of eraser remaining on the end of the one of the nubs. This boat job had been so far down the list, it wasn’t even on the list. But boredom had driven it to the top. I was successful in my mission and purchased four of those little eraser condoms that slip over the end of the pencil, plus a beautiful sharpener for $1.47 at a small variety store called Junkanoo Tricks. I also considered purchasing a bamboo tostonera compressor, thinking that frying and flattening plantains could wipe out a few hours on the boat while we’re stuck here, but the $12 price tag was decided to be too damaging to the finances.
Besides that, Ana and I walked a good distance (nearly getting attacked by an angry dog along the way) to a busy shipyard and snuck through it to find a small beach on the south-east side of Great Abaco Island. Along the way we were also stopped by a guy in a small, white, compact car with emblems proudly advertising “Gordon’s Homemade Ice Cream”. He motioned for me to come over then showed me a sheet of paper with the ice cream flavours as he pointed backwards towards the boot of the car, all without saying a single word. I don’t know if he wanted to sell us a 10 gallon drum of ice cream, or just a cone, but the whole thing was a bit weird as we stood there on a dusty, deserted road pantomiming with a mute dairy hawker.
The beach was full of shells and we spent a while collecting a handful of the best. I also found a good stick to beat down the mean dog on the return trip if he took another run at us. With nothing else to do, we spread out a towel and kicked back to absorb some sunshine and enjoy a break from the wind on this perfectly sheltered beach.
After a while a guy from one of the boats anchored offshore motored up in his dinghy. We recognized him from the other night at Wellington’s bar in Hopetown where he and his wife had been talking to Kate and Ben. We introduced ourselves and learned they were Sam and Jane from sailing vessel Scoot and were into their seventh year of cruising the Caribbean and beyond, but based in Portland, Maine. We had a very nice chat with him and we walked together back to the commercial area where we parted ways, but I fully expect we will run into them again somewhere down the line.
Ana and I were both getting a little hungry and we couldn’t bear returning the boat quite yet, so we stopped at a bayside restaurant called Colours, which we’d seen full of people most afternoons. It was a great place with views over the bay, standard Bahamian menu with comparatively low prices, cool servers, and an interesting crowd. A grizzled sailor with a trimmed, grey beard and captain’s hat sat at the bar, squinting through raccoon eyes at the television. A pack of loud talking locals, hair coiffed and clothes matched, gathered at one end, laughing and drinking. Four American women sat on the outside deck, getting an uncontrolled blow dry from the wild winds, spending most of their time gathering their hair. A mentally challenged local man sat alone on the deck, with posterboard paper, crayons, scissors, and a deck of adhesive letters, smiling at customers, occasionally bursting out in laughter, and cutting out letters and shapes, throwing the paper backings into the air and watching them blow away, then sticking the letters onto the poster board. Three American powerboaters (you can tell) sat in the corner, guffawing, chugging Sands Light lager, and talking about football and fishing.
We enjoyed a platter of Happy Hour conch fritters, two orders of chicken wings (only managed one), Kalik, Sands Radler, and a singular rum punch then checked off both “lunch” and “dinner” from our Things-To-Do-Today List. After a bouncy and splashy dinghy ride back to SeaLight, Ana did some yacht club work while I crafted my Princess Concholopolous shell into a fine musical instrument using a coping saw, Dremmel, some swear words, file, drill, and sandpaper, then blew a mighty note as the sun dropped into the horizon.
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