Author: Juan

In between bouts of strong west wind we spent several days in a cozy anchorage between Manjack and Crab Cays. We had nature trails to hike, mangrove creeks to row, sandy beaches to comb, sunken barges to explore, a swimming pig to feed, bucket loads of rain to collect, and thousands of mosquitoes in alliance with other blood-sucking critters to fend off.

We took Oliver to the beach, and, as usual, his curiosity took over his fears as he slowly came out of his carrier.

He got more and more confident and explored, sniffed, and rubbed every new thing he discovered, until he started showing signs of discomfort. “Can we go home now?”, he seemed to be saying.

We put him back in the dinghy, but he was so impatient that he preferred not to go into the carrier as usual; instead he took position on the dinghy’s bow as a figurehead.

We were approaching the big boat and then the unexpected happened. We were still two dinghy lengths away but Oliver apparently couldn’t wait anymore, and he just jumped into the water! He disappeared underwater for a couple of seconds, which was enough for Kathy to jump overboard as well, with hat, glasses and all. By the time Kathy reemerged, Oliver was swimming towards Ñandú’s transom. Even though it’s the lowest part of the boat, he was unable to climb and looked terrified until Kathy pushed him up.

I didn’t react fast enough to take pictures, so the next day we brought Oliver back to the beach hoping for another cat overboard drill. We wanted him to learn how to climb back to the boat by himself, and we had previously hung a net from the swim platform to see if that would help. I had the camera ready… but Oliver preferred the standard way of disembarking this time.

Yes, some posts are going to be short.

Hope Town, on the northern end of Elbow Cay, is a picturesque little town with narrow streets where only bicicles are allowed, and meticulously maintained, pastel-colored old houses.

The most recognizable feature is its kerosene-fueled lighthouse. It’s one of the last two (or three by other accounts) manually operated lighthouses in the world. Its mechanism has to be hand-cranked every few hours, as it has been for over a century and a half. It’s interesting to note that back then the population of Hope Town opposed, and even tried to sabotage, the construction of the lighthouse, because they benefited from the frequent wrecks in the treacherous Elbow Reef.

 

The well-protected small harbor provided a great respite to our hectic life of lately. We just grabbed a mooring buoy and relaxed without even looking at the weather forecast for several days. Of course, those where exactly the mellow days when no protection was needed, and the good spell ended the day we left.

Perhaps the only downside of Hope Town is that it’s too pretty and accessible, attracting not just cruisers, but resort-dwellers and day-trippers from other islands. Still, I could imagine ourselves living here and increasing the population to 460.

Hope Town is in the northern end of Elbow Cay. On our way there we stopped at Tahiti Beach, at the southern tip of the Cay. The beach ends in a sandbar that gets covered at high tide.

The Sea of Abaco is the body of water sheltered by the Great Abaco Island to the west, and a chain of barrier islands known as the Abaco Cays to the east. As the crow flies, Great Abaco is 50 nautical miles of open ocean north of Spanish Wells. However, the recommended route takes you first about ten miles almost southwest around three islands before heading north, in order to avoid the coral reefs just north of Spanish Wells.

Our mooring neighbors decided to recruit Bandit, a local guide, to do the shorter north route that threads through coral heads. We accepted their offer of joining them and split the cost of the guide, who turned out to be the only grumpy Bahamian we’ve met. So there we were, departing Spanish Wells in a tight dawn caravan of a cat following a cat following a skiff at seven knots when Bandit radioed after a turn. “Pump it up, Ñandú. You can do it.”.

“Er… this is about as fast as we can motor, Bandit.”

“Ok, we’ll slow down, then”, he replied bluntly. There was of course no need to reduce speed, but he nevertheless slowed down. To four knots. To make some kind of statement, I presume. Fine by us.

A few minutes later, before turning around to head home, Bandit directed us to continue with the same heading until we saw a depth of 100 feet; then we could alter course however we wished. When we reached that depth we set full sails and had a quintessential downwind run in company of several other boats that were also taking advantage of the perfect weather to reach Abaco.

By late afternoon we were lowering sails and dropping the anchor in The Bight of Old Richardson, in the exact same spot we had anchored three years ago on a charter boat.

Nearby was Little Harbour, a very special town. In 1950, Randolph Johnston, a renowned Canadian sculptor and college professor set sail from Massachusetts with his family to run away from the hectic pace of modern life. They settled in Little Harbour, which by then was home only to a lighthouse. The Johnstons settlement expanded from a cave to a thatched hut to a foundry to an art colony to a whole off-the-grid and still remote town. Johnston’s artistic legacy is pervasive, with the foundry still working, an art gallery run by one of his sons, and bronze sculptures all over the place.