Water rip-off!

Valentine’s Day!! We awoke in Hope Town to a beautiful sunny day. We were supposed to leave our slip at the marina by 10:30 (so the sign said) and so we scurried around getting ready to leave.

Doug got the dockmaster, Francis, to bring him the water hose and we filled up two of our 3 – 50 gallon tanks. Francis told Doug that we used 560 gallons on water!! Doug and I said, that’s impossible, our tanks only hold 50 gallons and we only filled two of them. He said the meter said it was 560 and that the meter is correct. We asked him what the reading was before we filled up and he quoted an amount that Doug said wasn’t what he heard him say before. I watched Doug put the water in because I have to watch to make sure it doesn’t overflow in the cabin. It had to be wrong….but what do we do? They charge $.25/gallon and it should have been about $15 but he wanted to charge us $130. We kept telling him it was impossible and then he said we could split the difference and just pay him (personally) $70. He said his boss would be mad if he didn’t collect the whole amt and so he’ll just keep it off the record. We knew we were being ripped off, but we didn’t know how to avoid it. We didn’t have $70 cash, so I wrote him a check for $70. He also told us that he and his wife has 6 children. I said we had to wait in Hope Town Harbor until 5:00 pm after we left the dock because he had to leave at high tide to get out of the shallow harbor. He said we could stay at the dock until 5 and that we could take showers and take free ice. He was trying to make us feel better about the rip off.

So, we went into town in the dinghy and had lunch at Capt Jack’s and then went to the beach and snorkeled. The beach was absolutely beautiful – quiet as it was on the leeward side of the wind, although the snorkeling wasn’t much to write home about, it was still interesting. After getting back to the boat, we took long showers (trying to get our money’s worth of water!); Doug got a bunch of ice. I almost stopped payment on the check, but Doug reminded me that Francis had our credit card info and so we just grinned and bore it!!

We left Hopetown at 5 pm (high tide). We didn’t see any depth shallower than 7’5” on the way out. But when we left the protected harbor, the wind was blowing and the water was churning. Luckily it’s only an hour across the water to Marsh Harbor, where we arrived about 6:00 in twilight and anchored out in the harbor. We had a cocktail and relaxed, changed into our festive clothes and dinghied to The Jib Room in the glow of a burnt orangey-red sky.

The Jib Room was offering their special Wed night dinner. I had ordered fish for me and ribs for Doug on the VHF radio earlier in the day from Hopetown. The place was hopping, the food was good and not that expensive. $25 each which included potato salad, cole slaw, beans and rolls. It was very casual – you got your food at a buffet table and then carried it to picnic tables, which were all outside under tropical trees. There was a band and dancing; and a limbo contest. The guy who won went under incredibly low with the top of the rung on fire – he lit his cigarette on it. He looked double jointed.

We went back to the boat in the dinghy and happily enjoyed the rest of our Valentine’s Day.

Wind and rain

Hopetown in the wind and rain.

Close encounter with a ray

I awoke in Sandy Cay in such beautiful aqua water only 10 feet deep and we could easily see the entire sandy bottom and everything in the water – plants, etc. After breakfast, at 9 am, the water was so still, like glass and it was already 72 degrees and not getting warmer than 75, we took the dinghy around to the other side of Sandy Cay, which is part of the Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park here in the Abacos. We hooked on to a mooring ball, that the Friends of the Environment had placed there, and went snorkeling.

I went into the water first and before I put my head in the water, I could see something brown kind of coming toward me, but wasn’t sure if it was just seaweed floating under the water, but when I got fully in the sea and looked through my mask I realized that it was a ray coming directly toward me!! I yelled and practically jumped back in the dinghy. If it had been a shark, I would have been back in the dinghy but I just hung on with my body flattened against the bottom of the inflatable dinghy!! I don’t know why I was so scared except that it was the only thing in the water and coming directly to me! I was thinking about the Alligator hunter being stabbed in the heart by one of these unusual looking sea creatures. Then Doug got in the water and I looked again and it was gone!! I kind of wanted to see it again – going the other way.

We swam a very short distance to huge coral formations that we had seen under the dinghy as we went over them to the mooring ball. The coral formations and garden was the best we have seen anywhere.

There were huge elkhorn coral formations and many other types of coral, some of which we had never seen before, along with a variety of fish. There was more coral than fish. We went back to the boat for a break and to get the underwater camera so that we could document some of the beauty.

After lunch we went back for a 2nd snorkel. This time we took EcoAdventurer around since it was deep enough but there was a strong current and so we also rode over to another one of the mooring balls in the dinghy. I tried swimming to the mooring ball from the big boat but wasn’t making any progress because of the current and so we got in the dingy and motored over a short way to the mooring ball.

For some reason the current was absent (luckily) and we dropped down in the water to find a completely different coral garden – just as beautiful as the other but less Elhorn and more delicate coral – still rising about 20 feet up from the bottom. There were more fish here too and we took a lot of photos. There were many blue neons – small florescent fish – very cute and lovely to watch darting here and there among the green and yellow coral. We also were swimming with the usual array of yellow fin snapper and parrot fish.

We spent the night on the hook at Lynard Cay with the little boat with red sails and a catch with two children and a dalmation with a red life preserver!! We had sailed to Lynard from Sandy Cay without using the motor, which was nice for a change. We could have gone further south but we didn’t have any protected anchorage to speak of and so since we saw these other sailboats, we decided to join them.

Today we had breakfast, lunch and dinner on board. Doug does almost all of the cooking and I have started doing the dishes. He’s been making me fried egg sandwiches on dense Bahama bread with thin slices of fried turnkey – yummy! I have tea and him coffee. For lunch we usually have turkey sandwiches or cheese and tomato sandwichs with Pringles and pickles. For dinner, he cooks something good!! We have been eating well.

Coral gardens, sea anemones, sea slugs, turtles…Wow!

This morning after breakfast, we set out in our dinghy with the video camera, binoculars and bottled water for the nature tour. We somehow missed the entrance of the creek, so we went further along and entered in a shallow creek while we turned off the motor of the dinghy and floated along with the current to hear and see better. The water was very still and shallow, so we just leaned over the sides of our dinghy and it was as if we were looking down into an aquarium!!

We didn’t know what to expect, but I never thought there would be coral gardens, sea anemones, sea slugs, and lots of fish here. You didn’t need to get in the water to snorkel, in fact, doing that would have disturbed the environment – fish, etc. This was perfect. The sides of the creek were mangroves and there was just enough current in the water to keep us moving slowly along without disturbing the water so that we could see through it easily.

At one point we saw a turtle swimming up to us while we were almost stopped. I stood up in the dinghy and started filming the turtle. It came even closer to us. Sure enough it was a fairly small – 2 feet in diameter – hawksbill turtle, which is endangered. Fantastic. I’m hoping the film of it turned out as we haven’t finished the disk yet, so we haven’t seen the film of the turtle or of all of the other underwater creatures we saw that day.

After we got back to the boat, we had lunch and We sailed to Sandy Cay this morning from Snake Cay. We had to motor a little through narrow channel. Sandy Cay was our anchorage – wide open behind a small island with no other boats nearby. This is because there are ocean swells that move you all night. I moved to the aft cabin because Doug said it was very rolly in our usual bedroom under the bow of the boat. We watched a lovely sunset with our rum drinks and relaxed.

Friendly locals, “no-seeums” & beautiful fish

After a leisurely breakfast aboard EcoAdventurer, we sailed from MarshHarbor to Snake Cay. Snake Cay was just an accident as we were going to sail to the other side of the Sea of Abaco but it was too shallow over there and so we ended up stopping at Snake Cay after I read that you could do a kayak or dinghy tour through the small creeks just insde the Sea of Abaco.

When we got there, we realized that we didn’t have much gas for the dinghy to do the nature tour but we saw a couple of native Bahamians in a skiff going into the small harbor, which we were anchored just outside of. So, we jumped in the dinghy and motored toward them and the dock. They were just getting into a pickup truck when we called to them. One guy came back to us and he said he would take our gas can into town and fill it up with 2 gallons of gas. We gave him $10. He said it would be about ½ hour and that he was taking the other two guys home to town and he would be back because he lived nearby.

We waited for and hour and 15 minutes and were about ready to go back to the boat because the sand fleas or no-seeums as they call them were really biting now that it was dusk, when we heard the sound of a vehicle coming back down the road. Luckily it was him with our gas. He brought us our $2.00 change, which we gladly told him to keep and that was all we had to offer. He said he was glad we waited and that he was sorry it took him so long. Our faith in human nature returned.

There was a sunken boat of good size just inside the small harbor and as we waited for him on the shore, we saw the reflection of hundreds of good-size fish swimming in a bay of the wreck. Wow – if I had wanted to catch some fish, this would have been the place. But, the fish here are so pretty and colorful, I don’t have the heart to kill them. I’d rather eat soup and sandwiches. We spent the a very quiet night just off Snake Cay with another sailboat fairly near us – but they stayed by themselves as we did.

Taking care of details

In the a.m we went into the harbor to go grocery shopping, marine parts shopping, etc. we went to dinner at the bar at Curly Tails in Marsh Harbor.

Not feeling well

Left Green Turtle because I woke up with a bladder infection and was feeling lots of pressure and some pain, too. I went to the medical clinic in a fellow boater’s golf cart and met with a nurse who was the only staff. She didn’t have the right meds for me but she wrote me out a prescription for Cipro and the little pills that make you more comfortable with this problem. So, we left Marsh Harbor in a hurry to get the prescriptions filled. We arrived at 5 but got to the pharmacy by 5:30 – it closed at 6 pm. We stayed outside of the entrance to the channel because it was low tide when we arrived.

More bad weather

Green Turtle Cay – the weather was crappy today – stayed on board all day out of the wind and rain.

Anglican Church

Green Turtle – we went to the Anglican church with Carin and Bill, in their rented golf cart. We drove to the town of New Plymouth to the Church. We got there for the 11 o’clock service which last two hours – about an hour longer than we thought it would last. It was a very interesting service – we interacted with 3 little children in the pew in front of us – sang songs, and worshipped along with everyone else. It was very similar service to an Episcopal service. The ride into town and back was interesting too, as we hadn’t done that before.

Bad weather

Green Turtle – moved into the marina because the weather was going to be bad Monday and George, the Diesel mechanic was coming to the dock to fix our starter. We went to a wine tasting and dinner fundraiser at the marina restaurant along with Sandy and Tom and two other couples who were on a boat across from us.