Friday, April 10, 2015

Georgetown in Review

It's hard to believe that we've been here just over 3 weeks.  I never thought we’d stay so long but I’ve really enjoyed our time in Elizabeth Harbour. We’ve been snorkeling, diving, driving, exploring, exercising, eating, drinking, dancing and even fishing!  Here’s what we’ve been up to with a lot of photos...

Sean & Louise at Chat & Chill

Chat & Chill is the closest beach bar to us. There’s a volleyball court set up and lots of picnic tables. We ate there a few times, enjoying sunset drinks, their Sunday afternoon pig roast and Wednesday DJ’d evening where we had a blast and danced for hours.

 Poison wood sign

Marten and I aborted our first hike when we saw this sign and realized that the narrow trial was lined with poison wood.  (My last brush with poison oak landed me in the emergency room and on prednisone for weeks, I need to stay clear of such plants!)  

View from top of Monument Hill



View to the east, Exuma Sound
Beach on the Exuma Sound

A few days later we went for a hike up to the Monument (a stone structure on the highest peak of Stocking Island) and back down to the eastern side of the island.  These trails were much wider and I saw very little poison wood. Absolutely stunning views.

We spent a couple of afternoons snorkeling the harbor – from a blue hole (that was rather disappointing) to several reefs along the eastern shore. There are mooring balls placed along the way so we were able to tie up and explore. The hard and soft corals were beautiful. There were fish, but not as many as I’d hoped to see. Our favorite was the southern most mooring where we were greeted by a school of sergeant majors.

Heading to snorkel mooring


Beautiful corals and purple sea fans

A trunk fish


Invasion of the sergeant majors

One afternoon I went out snorkeling with a woman from the sailboat Spiraserpula.  She named her boat after the sea worm she discovered and named. How cool is that!  It was awesome to go out with a marine biologist and ask questions about what this and that is.  While snorkeling I also found two lionfish. Martin and I returned a couple nights later and Martin speared the big one.  He became a "fish finger" appetizer for happy hour the next day. We missed the smaller fish, a minor wound but not fatal. I feel badly that we left him there, hopefully someone will come by and take him. They were the only ones we saw – I’m surprised and happy that we didn’t see more.

Lionfish
Lionfish fingers

We rented a car from Thompson’s car rental and spent a day on Great Exuma Cay.  We started off going north and circled the entire island (it's about 37 miles long). We found two beautiful beaches, one which is named for the meridian that crosses through it - Tropic of Cancer Beach.



We had lunch at Santana’s Bar & Grill – amazing fried lobster.

Tail of a plane, yard art?
 
Tropic of Cancer Beach

 
 Un-named beaches


Fancy frozen drinks at Turquoise Cay Boutique Hotel

We had dinner at Catch a Fire restaurant on the west side of the cay. That dinner proved to be our favorite in Georgetown. We met the owner, a Brit named Tony, and chatted quite a while. It was the first time we’ve been out and saw a restaurant that was packed, children were dancing to the band and the sunset was amazing.

Martin at Catch a Fire restaurant

Sunset seen from Catch a Fire


One afternoon a sailboat grounded on a reef at low tide. Ouch!  Several cruisers went out to see if they could help. We went out in our tender and were able to help a bit by giving some readings from our depth sounder. He floated off later that evening when the tide came up.

Dancing at Eddie's Rake & Scrape (Louise is center photo!) 

We enjoyed a Monday night Rake & Scrape at Eddie's with Sean & Louise and a few dozen cruisers. It was a true rake & scrape with one guy playing a saw. The cruisers organized a water taxi across the harbor so there were lots of people there despite the choppy harbor. (We were able to cross in our tender, Petal is just big enough to not get too wet in choppy water with the aid of towels and blankets). It was a great evening of dancing, drinking and meeting people.

 

Hanging on the beach playing Molkky

While at the rake & scrape, we met a couple from a boat that we had followed down the ICW. We had heard them calling at every bridge “boat name is Saltine, like the cracker”. It was fun to actually meet them!  They invited us to a small gathering on the beach the next day. We met a few other couples, played a great beach game called “Molkky” (which we just have to get now – it’s a kind of Finnish version bocce ball).


Martin at Volley Ball Beach

We went out a couple of days on our SUPs and kayaks.

View from Latitudes Restaurant

Dinghy dock in Georgetown

Heading home from town, crossing the harbour, not a bad commute!

We’ve also attended cruisers happy hours on Sand Dollar Beach and aboard Vector. Had dinner at a restaurant called Latitudes and attended numerous water aerobic classes.  I feel like we’re starting to meet people in the cruising community just as we’re getting ready to leave but I’m looking forward to bumping into them elsewhere in the Bahamas and up the east coast.

Sean & Louise started north ahead of us, leaving yesterday. We’ll be meeting up with them at Emerald Bay Marina tomorrow where we’ll take on some diesel for Blossom and fill up on gas for Petal. We hope to be doing lots of exploring in the dinghy as we wind our way up through the Exuma chain over the next several weeks. 

We’ll be spending at least another 2 months in the Bahamas since a possible trip to Cuba in May/June has fallen through. So after exploring the Exumas, maybe we’ll check out Andros and go back to the Abacos. From there, we can easily head north to Charleston where we plan to be for July.


Boat Business

There’s not much to report which is good, no news is good news. Martin tackled a couple of projects.

  • Radio. Verified that everything was working, cleaned the contacts and treated it with anti-corrosion spray. We’re set to run from the fly bridge now.
  • Fans. Installed a voltage regulator so they’re at 18.5 volts now so we have enough rpm that we get a breeze without them rattling and driving us crazy.
  • Cleaned the engine room.
  • Replaced the collar zinc on the wing prop.
  • I sewed up our American flag which is starting to rip apart.
  • Tested our air conditioning!  We haven't used the system since we heated the boat in St. Pete's. Just wanted to make sure it's working well in anticipation of calm, warmer weather to come.


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