February 15, 2016 Day in Hopetown with friends, Bahamas

We wanted to go to shore between 8:30 and 9:30 to drop off our garbage in Hopetown.  So we decided to meet Gary Krieger for breadfast. He is a sailor from California that we met in GA this summer.  He had a slip at the Hopetown Inn and Marina, so we met there for a wonderful breakfast. 

Afterwards, we wanted to use the wifi at the marina to upgrade some things on our computer.  So while Dave did that, Gary and I pulled out the navigational charts and I showed him where we went last year.  And I pointed out a couple of our favorite spots.  He came here with 3 crew members.  One was a friend from CA, but there were 2 women that joined him through a connection called Work to Stay.  They came along as crew, paying their own transportation to the boat and home again.  Then they all negotiate what work will be done, and what will be paid by Gary.  One of his crew was still with him.  Niamh is a woman from Ireland and probably in her 50’s.  Her name is Gaelic and pronounced Nee-uf. It was interesting to hear where she had been with her travels through Work to Stay.  She has circumnavigated the earth  with Work to Stay.

We finished our computer work about 4:00 and decided to have dinner with Gary and Niamh.  We took the harbor shuttle to Captain Jacks.  They were setting up for Monday night bingo and didn’t make us feel very welcome.  It was windy today and our table felt like it had sand or salt on it.  So we asked them to wipe it off for us, which seemed to be asking too much.  Then Gary asked if he could taste the soup of the day and the waitress just gave him a flat “No”. 

We decided to move to Wine Down Sip Sip.  It was much more relaxing and we liked the menu much better.  Plus we discovered their great happy hour last week.  We had fun visiting and sharing menu items starting with Conch Flitters, which are traditional and more like a crab cake.  We had two of their flatbreads.  And then we  still wanted to try their pork sliders.  They usually serve 3 for $14.00.  But the waitress and manager figured out a way to give us four and just charge us $5 for a fruit skewer in the computer.  They were very accommodating.  We were so glad we came here for dinner.  Plus they have a big table with cushions and pillows to sit and relax. 

Dave had brought our dinghy over to the “lower dock” which was close to the restaurant.  So Gary and Niamh met the shuttle there and we headed back to the boat in the dark.  We had a light with us, but we hadn’t turned on the anchor light on our boat.  We have a light in the cockpit that comes on when it gets dark, so that helped us find our way back to the boat.  We had no idea when we left at 9:00 am that we wouldn’t return until 8:00 pm.