Baby It’s Hot (Humid, Oppressive) Outside

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May 25, 2023

Ok, I know those of you who live in humid areas would laugh at us, but both Jim and I are having a hard time adjusting to the heat. It’s only (mostly) in the mid-80’s, but with humidity in the mid-80’s, it is crazy hot for us! I just can’t drink enough water. In New Mexico, I understand how much water I need but here, I sweat constantly and it just sucks it out of me.

And then there is the sun. One wants to wear as little clothing as possible. But then, you get in the sun and you have to have sunscreen so you don’t cook too quickly. As soon as I put the sunscreen on, my pores just feel so clogged and they can’t breath. And then I sweat.

If, we can stay/get enough breeze, it is usually bearable and moving on the boat, the big boat or dink helps immensely, or being in the water as well. But, that can’t happen all the time.

Ok, ok, I’ve complained enough. So, what have we been doing?

Treasure Cay

I believe we left off at Great Guana. There we got our flopper stoppers working and perhaps they helped with the strange swells that occasionally appeared.

We are over the rainbow with having the flopper stoppers installed and being used! There is one on either side.

The wind direction was going to change from the north/northeast to the south and west, so we wanted to move. And we’d done what Great Guana had to offer. We decided to move to Treasure Cay in the harbour. We have moved to the part of Abaco where everything is close together, not more than an hour or so run, even on our big boat. Very strange as we were not used to these short runs.

There was a mixture of repaired and not repaired buildings. The entire harbour at Treasure Cay is surrounded by a concrete seawall as it is not an natural harbour. Some spots, the wall is in good shape, others, have clearly been breached. As it is so protected, one might think it would have fared well in Dorian. But it is not the case. Straight ahead in the distance was the marina. Dorin was a small but very intense hurricane that destroyed some places and hardly touched others. Much like lots of tornades.

Treasure Cay was hit pretty hard by Dorian and much of it has not recovered, including the marina. But, they have several mooring balls (or we could have anchored) and the gas dock was up and running so we could get dinghy gas. But the lure of Treasure Cay is the beach. What a site to see. And basically all ours!

If one dinghys to the marina dinghy dock (rebuilt or survived it is not clear, but the only piece there), you can take a 5 minute walk across the spit of land and then you see this gorgeous beach on the Sea of Abaco. We saw 5 other people in our couple hours of walking on the beach.
Yes, we did walk in the water but were not in our swimming clothes so just enjoyed walking the beach.

Sadly, we were tucked in to avoid the wind, but we were so tucked in we basically had no breeze and hit was…. HOT!

On To Marsh Harbour

Marsh Harbour is the hub of the Abacos. Although not very large, it has several big grocery stores, multiple marinas and quite a few restaurants. The recovery is going better here than Treasure Cay; I’d say maybe 1/3 of the homes are back (mostly seeming to be wealthy folks), but as you ride through town, perhaps not more than ¼ of the businesses. Much of the business has consolidated and it seems there is a lot of “try this store or that store, maybe they will have xyz.”

We were happy to be tucked into a marina in Marsh Harbour. This cloud was headed towards us bringing LOTS of rain. We are to the right in the row of boats.

Most people seem pretty happy but this is the first place where we saw people who seemed very unhappy. Who knows the reason, but some locals suggested that many of the very unhappy folks lost lots of family and most everything. We did talk with several locals about their experiences during Dorian. A resilient people.

For every restored or rebuilt building, there was one like this, or one in partial repair.

We spent 4 days here, snorkeling, shopping, getting caught in the rain, eating at various restaurants and going on a bird outing with a local. We’d wanted to bird here, specifically to see the Cuban Parrot, but the other birds as well.

The goal of the birding day, seeing the Cuban Parrot. It is not a given you will see them. We managed to see 5, and very close to us. My Mom would have called that “clean living.” So far in the Bahamas we have seen 44 species of birds which is a pretty good count. I imagine we’ll pick up a few more. 12 of them are birds we’ve never seen before which is an extra fun plus!

We had a very productive morning, seeing 18 species. Plus, we visited a blue hole, similar to a Mexican cenote. Turns out much of the Bahamas is on a limestone base and thus there are lots of underwater caves.

The Sawmill Blue Hole. There used to be a sawmill close to here. The Abacos have been logged twice in the last hundred years. I don’t believe there is any logging at this point.

If you remember one of my earlier posts, I showed the pine forest destroyed by Dorian. The southern part of Great Abaco’s pine forest was spared! What a beautiful site to see.

Pine forest in southern Great Abaco that escaped Dorian’s wrath.

By the way, the Cuban Parrot nest deep in the limestone caves, some time as much as 4 feet deep. Most parrots I am aware of nest in holes, but holes in trees.

One day we did go snorkeling out of Marsh Harbour. A small reef called Mermaid reef just outside the harbor. We did see a nice variety of small fish, some butterfly fish, a parrot fish and a small skate as well. This is a natural reef as opposed to the one in Manjack which was old human debris.

Hope Town

We had planned to go to Man-o-War Cay next, just across the Sea of Abaco to the north, but the winds were not favorable for anchoring so we decided to head farther south to Hope Town first, and catch Man-O-War on our way back north. We are now in Hope Town. A very protected harbor and probably the most touristy spot we’ve been in the Bahamas. This area has recovered with lots, and lots of rental homes and a few good places to eat. I believe this was mostly rental and touristy before Dorian and that has not changed.

The areas around the harbour seems to be mostly vacation rentals although I imagine a few locals live there, or a few have them as 2nd homes.

The claim to fame in Hope Town is the lighthouse. It is apparently the only remaining kerosene, Fresnel lens lighthouse in operation. Hand wound and the light floats on a tub of mercury.

There are two lighthouse keepers who share the night shift of rewinding house. There are cloth panels that are removed at night and the kerosene lamp is relit.
We were able to climb the 100 steps to the top of the lighthouse. A view looking into the Hope Town Harbour, then part of Hope Town and the Atlantic in the distance.

We tried hard to rent a golf cart. They were EVERYWHERE and not many on the road, but they were apparently ALL rented. Really? So, one day we took the dink down to Tahiti Beach. About 4 nm south still on Elbow Cay.

What is not to like about this scene. Some people come by golf cart, others, like us bring a gig boat and anchor off the sand bar or drive their dink to shore. One has to be careful or your dink will get caught on the bar.
This pretty light green will all become dry at low tide. In the distance, a boatable cut to the Atlantic.
The woman running the refreshment boat. The boat makes the trip down from Hope Town most days. I imagine it depends on smooth seas on the Bay of Abaco.

We also stopped at a Resort called Firefly on our trip down to Tahiti Beach. A bit to “shishi” (the people) for us, but the drinks were good as was the food. Must be folks from Charleston that distill Firefly liquors as that is the basis of all their drinks.

Rinconsito with the blue top in the foreground. Looking into the Sea of Abaco from the Firefly bar. Not a bad view!

Yesterday we took a long bike ride to another resort called Seaspray. Another Charleston connection to Elbow Cay. Our friends in Charleston know the folks rebuilding this resort and said we should check it out. Docks rebuilt and lots of homes being built, but no resort there yet. But, we did stop at a Atlantic beach restaurant on our way down for a beer and fish tacos.

At On Da Beach, one of those “famous” places you are supposed to visit. Not my favorite restaurant. View was nice, but the food was just OK. That is the Atlantic in front of us.

Today? Cleaning and boat projects. We had our Sunday breakfast today (Thursday), Jim replaced a toilet seal and cleaned the heads, I cleaned the kitchen and salon, …. Oh, and we joined a Zoom call related to our engine type. A very lazy day, inside with the AC on quite a bit. Giving ourselves a respite and we needed to recharge batteries anyway as one of our 3 solar controllers has gone belly up. Dang, We need all 3 to keep up on the power needs.

Crowded Moorages

The harbour here in Hope Town is not very big and one cannot anchor, you have to take a mooring. There are LOTS of them and they are pretty close together. It is tight, but OK. Over the past couple days several catamarans have come in and basically surrounded us. They are as long as us. We swing a bit differently in the wind, but all seems/seemed to be OK. Then, the rains began and the winds started.

The guy who owns our mooring (not the one in the pic which does not look very inviting) speculated we got about 3 inches of rain this day. Almost every home has a cistern under the house. Most are around 1000 gallons. As the rainy season is just starting, they all excited for rain as the cisterns are nearly empty and they are having to buy water which is quite expensive.

We were mostly seeing 10 – 15 kt winds which is not too much, but we all started swinging lots. We started getting very close to one of the cats.

We were not thrilled by the winds blowing us this close to this boat. We saw one gust to 37 kts but our mooring held. Often moorings are not really meant for boats as heavy as Rincon. But, we held tight. We did have an anchor alarm set and can monitor the movement of the boat as well with a little read line that tracks where the boat has moved.

Then the one in front of us was getting pretty close also. Some additional fenders out and we moved Rinconsito to our hip to give us a little more room on our stern where we at times were within jumping distance to the other boat. The folks from behind us were not on the boat, out at dinner, so we just waited it out. All calmed and there was no bumper boats. Yeah!

Always something new to experience.

Visiting Cemeteries

I do have one more story to share, well, really two.

Story One: One of the things we’ve learned down here is that after the American Revolution, many Loyalists (those who supported the Crown which was about 1/3 of the population of the Colonies) were not or did not feel welcome in the new Republic. Many went to Canada or back to Britain, but a number of them came to the Caribbean. Jim has a 5th Great Grand father (Jacob Hoover born ~ 1775) and his son Jim’s 4th Great Grandfather John Hoover (born 1790) both apparently born in Jamaica. I’ve not been able to trace anything of them before this time and basically nothing beyond their statements of being born in Jamaica. I started wondering if their father had left the newly formed United States, gone to Jamaica, not done well (many families from the Colonies did not fare well there) and returned to the United States a generation or two later. They both lived and died in Georgia which could make sense as South Carolina and Georgia is where most of the Caribbean immigrants arrived from. No data yet, but an exciting new idea to explore.

Story Two: My friend Meredith on hearing we were in Hope Town told me her Aunt Myrtle married her 3rd husband and lived in Hope Town. She had visited her Aunt here and believed both the 3rd Husband and her Aunt were buried here. There are not many cemeteries around Hope Town (we found 3, one being from the 1850 cholera epidemic) so we went in search. We found them in the first cemetery! It was so nice to find the grave of Meredith Aunt, chat with Myrtle for a bit (I do this sort of thing) and send a photo to Meredith.

It was so nice to find this grave stone for Meredith. Meredith told me Myrtle gave her her fist sailboat , a 14′ Oxford Sailer when she was in the 5th or 6th grade. Given that Myrtle’s stone has a sailboat on it, she must have loved sailing.

And to end out this post:

An upside down jelly. Apparently not as stinging as some types. I’ve seen a few off various Cays and Islands. Very cool looking. We also are seeing lots of turtles and a daily visit by the dolphin here in Hope Town Harbour.