More Tropical Fun
White Sand Beaches and Clear Turquoise Water of the Bahamas
We’re still here anchored at Man-O’-War Cay waiting for our solar panel mounting velcro to be sewed into our bimini. Finally got the call this afternoon that it was ready, but the waves are rocking a bit too much to get in on the dinghy at the moment. Weather is nice, temps in the 80s but there’s a westerly wind that’s giving us waves today.
So what’s it like living on a boat in the Bahamas? This was today’s agenda:
Wake up, make coffee and breakfast: Scrambled eggs with melted cheddar on toast. Sit out in the cockpit and eat while listening to the morning cruisers net on the VHF radio. After breakfast I jumped in the water for a quick swim. Shelly needed to speak with some customers of our fledgling computer consulting business, so I took the dinghy in to go for a run on the Cay.
This is the low season for tourism in the Bahamas, if you can believe it, so there wasn’t much activity in town or on the island. I ran along the main road, called “Queen’s Highway,” for the entire length of the island. The roads are about as wide as a concrete bike path and most people drive either a golf cart or a tiny vehicle. No sidewalks. The only part of the road that is paved is the section in the little town here.
This island is long and narrow, one section being only about 30 feet wide at best. I took a pic of the narrow section below. The Atlantic is on the right, the Sea of Abaco on the left. Not somewhere you’d want to be in a tropical storm, I’m guessing.
After my run, I dinghy back to the boat and take shower. I crank up the generator for a couple of hours over lunch, do some reading and take a nap. Later in the afternoon, I crack open a Kalik, the Bahamas beer. Dinner and more reading, then hit the sack early. It’s surprisingly easy to fall asleep shortly after dark here.
Sounds great, right? It is, but not always that fun. Yesterday I spent about 5 hours designing our solar panel electrical hookup, went into town to price out parts (which were far too expensive to buy here), bought some groceries and came back to the boat to research our future destinations. We both stressed out for a while trying to find a harbor in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands that would be an appropriate hurricane refuge. Many of the marinas either didn’t call back or were not appropriate for storm protection. We considered completely changing our sail plan to not go to the Caribbean in summer. Turned out we got a couple of good responses to Shelly’s inquiries this morning, which was a great relief.
So life alternates between quite a bit of hard work and tropical ease. Turns out it’s a great combination for us, we like it.
In the future I’ll describe the whole hurricane refuge problem, it’s an entire story in itself.
Narrow Section of the Queen’s Highway
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