Bright Sky

Marsh Harbor
N 26 32.845 W 077 03.485

The other night we sat at anchor off the eastern shore of Grand Abaco Island. It was fairly calm and a warm night, so we stayed up on deck long after sunset. As we looked up that night the stars were brilliantly bright. It was such a pleasure to look upon them. We spotted all the major stars, constellations and planets that we know. Then I grabbed the binoculars and tried for the umpteenth time to see the Andromeda Galaxy. Even though I know exactly where to look in the sky, I never succeeded
in seeing it before. Well that night, I saw it. It was just a faint smudge but it had the right oval shape, so I'm certain. What a delight, after all those years, to actually see it. In a few billion years, Andromeda will start to collide with the Milky way, so it is a critically important object in the future history of our galaxy.

Only once before have I seen the stars so bright. The other time was in 1994 on a sailboat in the Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden. That night we were only 200 miles away from an intensely low pressure storm. We theorized that the thinning of the air above us near the low made the stars brighter. The morning after we woke to terrifying news on the radio. 200 miles away, the ferry Estonia had sunk in 100 foot waves with the loss of about 850 lives.

First Experience

Marsh Harbor
N 26 32.845 W 077 03.485

We had our first exposure to Marsh Harbor on Monday. I can't really say what it reminds us of. Parts look very quaint, parts look modern, parts look like the haphazard kind of development we saw in Alaska. The Bahamians are polite and friendly, but the proprietors of most shops seem indistinguishable from their American counterparts. Probably, as we have more contact, we'll see beyond such superficial impressions.

There is a super market here. It is a really big store. They do offer things that we never see for sale in the USA. Things like burnt sugar, beef tails, New Zealand butter, and New Zealand lamb. That doesn't mean that we can buy all those things. The lamb was priced at $16 per pound. Anyhow, we have to go back on Tuesday to buy vegetables. The supply boat comes only once per week, yesterday was 6 days after the last boat and most vegetables were sold out, and the remaining ones were the rejects.
Today, there should be fresh vegetables again.

Our masthead VHF antenna appears to be broken. I noticed that we were picking up transmissions on the hand held VHF that the fixed VHF didn't hear. Looking up, I can't see the antenna at all. Perhaps it fell off. Tomorrow, I'll go up the mast to investigate.

Last night we had dinner on board a nearby Westsail 42 (not 32 but 42) with Leon and Kim and Ron and Jethro. Ron is the skipper of the 42, and Jethro is his son. Ron refitted the W42 himself and he single hands her most of time. His wife doesn't go cruising with him, but she does give permission for him to go away for months at a time. Ron's son Jethro, recently quit his job and he decided to join his dad as crew for this winter. I think Jethro is going to have a hard time going back to the
working drudgery after sampling the cruising life.

Our Olympus underwater digital camera is giving trouble. The very first time we used it in the water, it leaked. Now it seems to work on odd days and not work on even days. If it fails, we'll be without pictures for a long time. After returning to the states, and after going through the cycle of mailing it back for warranty and having it mailed back to us via Jennifer, it could take more than four months to get it fixed. In any case, Marsh Harbor is not very photogenic. I walked all around
the town today and I didn't see one single thing that I wanted to take a picture of.

First Experience

Marsh Harbor
N 26 32.845 W 077 03.485

We had our first exposure to Marsh Harbor on Monday. I can't really say what it reminds us of. Parts look very quaint, parts look modern, parts look like the haphazard kind of development we saw in Alaska. The Bahamians are polite and friendly, but the proprietors of most shops seem indistinguishable from their American counterparts. Probably, as we have more contact, we'll see beyond such superficial impressions.

There is a super market here. It is a really big store. They do offer things that we never see for sale in the USA. Things like burnt sugar, beef tails, New Zealand butter, and New Zealand lamb. That doesn't mean that we can buy all those things. The lamb was priced at $16 per pound. Anyhow, we have to go back on Tuesday to buy vegetables. The supply boat comes only once per week, yesterday was 6 days after the last boat and most vegetables were sold out, and the remaining ones were the rejects.
Today, there should be fresh vegetables again.

Our Olympus underwater digital camera is giving trouble. The very first time we used it in the water, it leaked. Now it seems to work on odd days and not work on even days. If it fails, we'll be without pictures for a long time. After returning to the states, and after going through the cycle of mailing it back for warranty and having it mailed back to us via Jennifer, it could take more than four months to get it fixed.

Our masthead VHF antenna appears to be broken. I noticed that we were picking up transmissions on the hand held VHF that the fixed VHF didn't hear. Looking up, I can't see the antenna at all. Perhaps it fell off. Tomorrow, I'll go up the mast to investigate.

Last night we had dinner on board a nearby Westsail 42 (not 32 but 42) with Leon and Kim and Ron and Jethro. Ron is the skipper of the 42, and Jethro is his son. Ron refitted the W42 himself and he single hands her most of time. His wife doesn't go cruising with him, but she does give permission for him to go away for months at a time. Ron's son Jethro, recently quit his job and he decided to join his dad as crew for this winter. I think Jethro is going to have a hard time going back to the
working drudgery after sampling the cruising life.

Hiding Out

Marsh Harbor
N 26 32.845 W 077 03.485

Marsh Harbor is the biggest town we're likely to encounter in the Bahamas. We were in no hurry to get here. However, there's a blow scheduled for Tuesday/Wednesday and Marsh Harbor is a secure place to sit for several days. Besides, we can go ashore and explore. There is also a slim chance that our friends Reggie and Terry may still be here. If so, we'd like to see them.

We had a great sail today. The winds were about 15 knots and the weather was warm and mostly sunny. Boy this is a nice place.

One tough part of today's passage was going through "The Whale" "The Whale" is a bit of complicated navigation that leads one around some shoal waters. Using a GPS, the navigation is not hard, but in the days before GPS, it would have been a real challenge in coastal piloting. For us, the hard part was a 2.2 mile leg that took us up in to the wind, and out toward the open sea. The seas were 4-5 feet hight and right on our nose. Tarwathie doesn't do well motoring in to a stiff wind on the
nose, especially against waves. She porpoises too much (meaning that she rocks forward and aft). As she rocks forward, the propeller lifts out of the water and cavitates. It took us a whole hour at full throttle to motor those 2.2 miles.

After that tough passage, the rest was easy. We rolled along doing 6.5 knots or better most of the time. A few places we crossed have pure white sand bottoms, which makes the water appear to be extra shallow. That was scary, but in reality, we never saw any depth less than 9 feet the whole passage.

We entered the harbor on Man O War Cay, but it was too crowded and we left. Our second choice was Marsh Harbor, and we arrived here just in time for sunset.

Snorkel Adventure

Manjack Cay
N 26 49.202 W 077 22.068

This morning, the weather was fine, as forecast. We set out in the dinghy to go snorkeling on the reef. We packed, a dinghy anchor, fins, masks, snorkels, towels, fuel, camera, and a bottle of water, and off we went.

It wasn't easy finding a way out to the ocean side. The tide was low and many places were blocked by shallows less than 6" deep. We had to row. Along the way we were treated to the view of numerous starfish and colonies of conchs in the shallows.

Eventually we gained the sea, started the motor and set off for one of the two mooring bouys put out there for snorkelers. A volunteer organization

www.reefrelief.org puts out moorings so that visiting boats won't damage the reefs trying to anchor. We had the coordinates for two of the buoys programmed in to our hand held GPS.

The bad news is that we couldn't find either of two buoys we looked for. We went to the exact GPS coordinates and looked around, but there was nothing in sight. In any case, the waves were 2-3 feet high. We thought that was a little too rough for snorkeling in water less than 3 feet deep. One risks getting scraped on the coral.

We returned to shore, and we found a delightful beach. The beach had lovely white sand. Also, there were no people, no man made structures and no vessels in sight. We were totally alone. What a treat. We snorkeled from the beach, and a few hundred meters off shore, we found some coral and some very pretty fish. I'm sure it wasn't as colorful an spectacular as the big reefs, but it was enough to enchant Libby and me. We had a marvelous time.

After snorkeling, we combed the beach for treasures. We found some lovely shells, including two magnificent conchs. I also found 200 feet of 5/8" polypropylene line that I untangled and brought back. The line is too big to carry on Tarwathie. We have no place to store it. Perhaps I can give it away to a larger boat.

On the way back, we picked up a big, fully mature, conch. It had a beautiful red shell, and the resident conch was alive and kicking. We took it back to the boat with the intention of eating it. However, when it came time to kill it, we chickened out and threw it back in to the sea. Libby never forgave me for throwing two live lobsters in to boiling water on our honeymoon; the conch reminded us of that.