June 13-14, 2017 Grand Cay

Tuesday
We took about 6 hours to go 40 nm north to Grand Cay today.  We want to go to a remote island, Double Breasted Cay, but will go into Grand Cay for fuel and a few groceries first.  Our sailing friends, Mike and Gloria Peters, have been coming to this anchorage for years and highly recommended it.  Sadly, they sold their boat this year after 20 some years of living aboard and won’t be here this year.  Great couple!  We loved picking their brains about the cruising life.

Wednesday
This morning, we went into Grand Cay for breakfast, fuel and groceries and take in a bag of garbage.  We took the dingy to Rosie’s.  Everything in this town is centered out of Rosie’s.  It was about 10:00 when we made it to the restaurant.  The place was empty and there were a couple dirty tables and a couple clean ones.  We could hear someone in the kitchen.  Dave stuck his head around the corner and asked if we could get breakfast or lunch.  A lady said she didn’t have the lunch menu ready yet, but she could make us an omelette.  So omelettes we had. 

A lady, Raquel, came out of the kitchen with her purse and headed for the door.  After we all said hello, she decided to sit and chat with us.  We had a great discussion about hot peppers.  She told us she generally will dry them in the oven.  Then she can crush them into a powder and add them as needed to dishes.  That’s something we hadn’t tried.  We have put some in lime juice and frozen some to help preserve them.  She also told us that when you pick a pepper, you have to take the stem part, too.  Otherwise the plant tries to continue to feed the pepper and waste it’s nutrients.  Hadn’t thought about that either.  She ended up serving us our meal, too.  She may have worked there and decided to hang out to help serve us.  Or she could just be another local and was helping out a friend.  Last time we were here, the custom’s agent ended up serving us our meal.  We had the fluffiest omelette and 2 pieces of homemade bread, toasted with butter.  No one offered us a drink or any jelly for the toast.  Welcome to the Bahamas.

While we were in the restaurant, there was a TV on with a Miami station.  There had been a shooting that morning in the states wounding some Republican congressmen.  We have been away from the states for 6 months and get only a fragment of the news from the states.  Most of our news comes from what we read online.  So we haven’t been bombarded by the TV station’s media.  It almost made us embarrassed to be Americans in front of these people living such a simple, peaceful life. 

While Dave filled 2 diesel and 2 gas jerry cans, I checked out the grocery store.  Our friend, Gloria, said to say hello to Inez in this store.  BUT Inez wasn’t working that day.  I was hoping to get some milk, fresh vegetables and jelly.  I found tomatoes and carrots, no jelly, and the milk might be in that afternoon.  Welcome to the Bahamas.  Oh, and Dave forgot to bring shoes with him today.  No problem, mon.

We decided to make water for a few hours and stay at this anchorage.  We’ll go back in tomorrow for more fuel and check on the milk and say hello to Inez. 

June 11-12, 2107 Manjack Cay

Sunday
We have been wanting to explore the islands north of Green Turtle in the spring before we return to the US.  When we come through here in the winter, the water is still cold.   We have 2 weeks before we have to be back in Marsh Harbour to meet friends.  So we decided to do a little exploring.  That way, after they leave July 1, we can either return or explore further, or head back to the US.  After all, hurricane season did start June 1.

We anchored at Manjack Cay.  Everyone that has been here really likes this island.  There is no town, so not a lot of traffic by speed boats.  We anchored in a bay that had 2 wrecks along the shore.  I decided to snorkel over to see them from the boat.  Dave’s medication has been making him tired, so he declined to join me. 

Once in the water, I could tell there was a slight current heading out to sea.  So I angled against it as I swam to shore.  I found one of the wrecks.  There was some fish, but nothing like the wreck off of Egg Island.  The unique thing that I did see was a pair of huge angelfish that were white with black stripes.  Maybe not angelfish, but shaped like them.  I was hesitant to swim further to find the other one.  I didn’t know if it was left or right.  I headed back to the boat just as a dinghy came by to look at the wreck.  I asked them where the second one was.  I would have had to swim quite a ways against the current, so opted not to.  I made it back to the boat just fine, and even checked the anchor before deciding to float off the back of the boat.  The water temperature is perfect this time of year.


Monday
Today we did some exploring around Manjack Cay.  We think we will bring our guests here in a couple weeks, so we took a dinghy tour and didn’t stop to check things out.  First we went into the rivers in the mangroves.  We didn’t go too far since the tide was going out.  We took the dinghy out onto the ocean side to circumnavigate Crab Cay next to Manjack.  We found a nice beach on the east and the north sides.  We had read in a comment on Active Captain to watch for feral pigs on the north beach.  We didn’t see any come to the shore when we went in closer. 

We checked out the other wreck along the shore.  If you look close, you can see a little of each wreck above the water, so it will help to find them in the future.  From the dinghy, it looked like even fewer fish at this wreck.  But it is in shallow water and interesting to check out.

Now we headed north along the Sea of Abaco or west side of the island.  We found another nice bay to anchor in.  And around the north east end of the island, there was a beautiful bay.  There were 3 boats anchored here and 3 power boats on the shore.  I think it would be rough here if the wind was blowing in off the ocean.  From the beach, it looked like there would be some great rocks to snorkel.  Looks like another nice spot to explore when we return.

odd catamaran

From our anchorage, you could see a home on the island.  All the Active Captain reviews of this anchorage talked about how cruiser friendly the people were that lived there.  I remember a friend coming here for a big Christmas gathering.  I guess there is a path through their property that is about a mile long and leads to the beach on the ocean side.  May have to check that out later, too. 

No need to stay here if we plan to return.  So we moved north to Allens Pensicola Cay.  I guess it used to be 2 cays before a hurricane rearranged things.  There were about 6 boats anchored here when we arrived around 4:00.  I decided to check the anchor and spend happy hour on a float with a couple beers.  We watched 6 more boats into the anchorage that night.  And we were worried about crowding when we came.  The new boats all came from the north west, which means they must have just crossed over from the states.  There’s nothing else in that direction.  I guess lots of people come over in the summer once school is out. 

The mosquitoes must have come with them.  Starting to get bad.  Glad we have screens.  We decided to go further north tomorrow and check this place out when we pass here again.  Too many boats and mosquitoes for our liking.

June 8-10, 2017 Marsh Harbour to Water Cay to Green Turtle Cay

Thursday
Happy Birthday to my brother Don and brother-in-law Jim!

We’ve had a couple stormy nights.  Heavy wind and rain.  Should be better by this weekend.  Dave’s medication is helping!!  He said he can even feel it doing something under his skin.  He was having intense pain, especially during the night. 

He headed in to get fuel late morning.  The fuel tankers were there filling tanks, so he came back empty handed.  You don't want to get fuel right after it’s been stirred up on the water anyway.  Too many particles to clog your filters.


Friday
After another squall passed through, we moved to Water Cay, just north of Marsh Harbour.  We wanted to get out of the harbor to make water.  This is a beautiful bay with protection from the south.  It used to be pretty isolated.  But now we are seeing some activity on shore.  They are building something big.  They even have a couple channel markers to get into the place.  We decided to anchor north of the action.  That way we avoided the boat traffic that is probably going in and out of Marsh Harbour with workers or supplies.

 
Our niece, Dena, on Dave’s side, lives in Minnesota with 3 kids.  Her oldest son graduated from high school today.  Would have loved to be there.  Beautiful family.

 

Saturday
We had a late morning start to head north today.  We have to go outside of Whale Cay and back in to go north.  The center of the Sea of Abaco is too shallow.  Today was a nice calm day to go through those cuts.  Once we were on the outside of Whale Cay, we decided to spend some time fishing in the ocean.  Stephan from Canada gave us some advice about fishing in 150 feet of water to catch tuna.  And Dave tried his new cedar plug lure.  We burned up some fuel, but didn’t catch anything.

We headed in to anchor at Green Turtle Cay.  We had talked about going to shore, but were pretty lazy once we arrived and stayed on the boat.  Later that night, we had music entertainment from a bar on the shore.  It started out with some oldies that we enjoyed.  But, by the time we wanted to go to bed, things changed.  Thank goodness for ear plugs.

June 7, 2017 Marsh Harbour

Dave slept much better last night.  He could feel the medications doing their job.  I didn’t even take a picture this morning.  When I woke up, Dave said he wanted to go to his favorite fishing tackle store, which happens to be above a restaurant.  So we headed out to hit both places. 

I made him at least order before he went to the store.  When the food arrived, I asked the waitress if she had the phone number for the store.  I called and they sent him down.  Pretty funny.  And Dave found what he needed, or should I say wanted.

Again, we stopped to visit with Natalie and Stephan.  Their friends were in the air on their way to March Harbour.  Word to the wise:  the couple had a copy of Caribbean Breeze’s cruising permit.  They only had a one way ticket to the Bahamas because they are returning by boat.  The Miami airport wouldn’t accept that.  They had to buy a return flight ticket, which they could cancel within 24 hours.  Now if they were really some kind of terrorist or drug dealer, don’t you think they would have had the return ticket just to not draw attention to themselves.  I guess other airports aren’t as picky as Miami.  So avoid Miami if you are having crew fly in to help you sail back.  Or buy the return ticket that day and cancel it within the 24 hours.  Crazy.

June 6, 2017 Dr in Marsh Harbor

There are 5 clinics in Marsh Harbour.  So we decided to put out a call on the VHF to the cruiser’s net on channel 68 to see if anyone had any recommendations.  Caribbean Breeze came back with a cheery hello, but no information on the clinics.  It took me a minute, then I asked if we had met.  Natalie reminded me that we had met outside of Spanish Wells a few weeks ago.  So we decided to stop by their boat after we went to the clinic, if Dave wasn’t contagious. 

We needed to drop off our propane tank at the local hardware store.  We decided to ask the woman working there where she would go.  She recommended Abaco Medical Clinic.  They take walk in patients.  And she liked the doctor. 

On our way to shore, we visited with Natalie and Stephan on Caribbean Breeze.  So it was almost 11:30 by the time we made it to the clinic.  They didn’t close for lunch, so Dave signed in.  It was after 2:00 before he was seen.  The doctor was very nice and she was thorough.  She didn’t think it was shingles, one of our fears, because she said it doesn’t generally itch.  But she prescribed acyclovir, an anti viral medication, just in case.  She thought it was a contact dermatitis.  She prescribed prednisone, a cortisone cream, and recommend he continue to take 50mg of OTC Benadryl for a week.

We left there in search of the pharmacy.  The lady at the desk was really soft spoken and hard to hear her directions.  It was about 2 minutes down the road and on the right.  We figured we’d ask again.

By now, we were both hungry.  And Dave needed to eat before taking the meds.  So we stopped at a little cafe near the store with our propane.  We had to pick up the propane by 4:00, which was close now.  In the cafe we asked about the pharmacy.  We had to turn left at this corner and go about 2 more blocks.  Now I remember seeing it in the past.  Not sure where the clinic lady was sending us. 

We were there before 5:00, picked up everything and headed to the grocery store.  We only needed a few things.  Then we walked back to the dinghy dock with propane, groceries and meds in hand.

We stopped to visit with Natalie and Stephan.  They shouted to us to find out if Dave was contagious before we could tie up to their boat :)  They were expecting guests to help them move their boat back to the US, but their flight was cancelled in Miami.  I guess we missed the squall today while we were in the clinic.  They said the boats were swinging all over the place again.  Kind of scary to think our anchor could have moved when we weren’t on the boat 

They were going to Snappa’s for pizza and happy hour and asked us to join them and one other couple from another boat.  We weren’t hungry, since we had such a late lunch.  But we decided to join them, just to visit more before we go our separate ways.  Peter and Patty from Maryland on Serendipitous joined us.  Nice couple in their 40’s.  They took off a year to sail.  They left Maryland with a group and sailed to the British Virgin Islands early winter.  They have been working their way back north and plan to head back to the US after this weather clears.  Everyone has unique stories. 

June 2-5, 2017 Weekend near Hopetown

Friday
Today is the Bahamian Labor Day.  So medical clinics were closed.  Now the rash is moving into his scalp and sideburn area and eyelid, and swelling under his eye.  And it is starting to look fluid filled.  He took the Benadryl regularly and used Benadryl cream.  Didn’t help his energy level or his disposition.  That’s all I am going to say. 

We had porgy for dinner.  It was one of the frozen fish we bought in Spanish Wells at the dock.  It was very good, similar to grouper.  We are going to look for them while we are spearfishing.  Hopefully Dave’s rash will clear up and we can get back to snorkeling again. 


Saturday
We stayed at anchor outside of Elbow Cay again today.  I spent some time baking bread and chocolate chip bars.  We have room in the freezer and time on our hands.  We decided to stay here so Dave could see a doctor on Tuesday.   This morning was the worst.  The swelling around his eye did diminish through out the day. 

We had an afternoon squall pass through that moved our boat 360 degrees before it passed.  Sounds like it will be stormy for about a week.


Sunday
Dave wasn’t seeing a lot of improvement in his rash with taking the Benadryl, so he decided to stop taking any medication.  He didn’t like the way it was making him feel.

I took the dinghy into Hopetown for church this morning.   The priest from Marsh Harbor comes over on the ferry.  They have benches in the park and mass is outside, weather permitting.  There were more people here today than I have ever seen before, about 30.  We’ve been told that this is their busy tourist season, when school is out.  Now I believe it.  There are a lot more boats in the area, too.  We are seeing a lot of charter boats and fishing boats.  Many of the cruisers head back to the US by now.  We’re staying, just because we have no commitments until late July.

We decided to move the boat over to Matt Lowe Cay, nearer to March Harbor.  There was a lot of boat traffic rocking our boat at Elbow Cay. 


Monday
Dave didn’t sleep well last night.  I guess the Benadryl had been helping with the symptoms.  And today his throat felt swollen.  Since he planned to see a doctor the next day, he still didn’t want to take any medication.  He didn’t want to mask any symptoms. 

We made water before moving into Marsh Harbour.  The water is cleaner out here.  We waited for another squall to pass by and swing us 360 degrees before moving into Marsh Harbour about 3:30.

June 1, 2017 Sandy Cay snorkel

Today, Dave’s rash was looking worse.  I suggested we head to Marsh Harbor to see a doctor.  There will be a 4 day weekend holiday starting tomorrow.  But he didn’t want to go :(

We headed north, but made another stop for me.  I have always wanted to snorkel Sandy Cay.  It is in a protected Land and Sea Park.  There is a strong current here unless you can time your snorkel with slack tide, about an hour after the high or low tide.  In the past, timing has never been right, or we had to be somewhere on a schedule. 

Today, we anchored the boat on the west side of the island.  Then we took the dinghy to the east side, where there were mooring balls for small boats and dinghies.  Dave didn’t want to snorkel because of the rash on his face.  So he waited in the dinghy.  I started at the south end and floated along with a small current along the beautiful reef.  It was probably 20-30 feet deep in front of the reef, but parts of the reef reached the surface, it was just after low tide.  I saw spotted eagle rays with about 8 foot wingspan, stingrays, turtles, huge grouper like fish, schools of fish and many small fish.  Loved it!!  One pass through took about 45 minutes.  Dave ended up following me with the dinghy so I didn’t have to swim back.  I was wearing a yellow blow up tube on one wrist for boats to see me.  My underwater camera was on the blink, so no pictures :( 

We then moved the boat to Elbow Cay by the lighthouse and the cottage that friends had rented last year.  Good memories of them and family visiting last year. 

Dave decided to start taking Benadryl before going to bed.  The itchiness was making it hard to sleep.