Little Harbour - 2017

Mar 29 & Mar 30

--Blogpost written by Bob

Today, Wednesday, March 29, was supposed to be our last full day in Little Harbour (we originally paid for a 3-day stay on our mooring ball which ends tonight) but we decided to stay a little longer.  We're not exactly sure how much longer but we've never been to a simplistically and thoroughly beautiful place like this before.  

We've given a lot of thought to the types of situations that would force us to move on from Little Harbour:

(1) We have enough fresh water onboard for about 3 weeks PLUS we have a water maker we haven't even used yet.

(2) We have enough clean clothes for maybe 3 or 4 weeks, considering the 5-day plan for underwear.  (There are no laundry facilities here.)

(3) We have enough food onboard for at least two months but we might get tired of eating SPAM before the two months are up (just kidding about the SPAM).

(4) We don't have much space onboard to store garbage BUT we understand that Pete's Pub will accept garbage bags for disposal at $5 each.  (We produce a bag full of garbage about every 3 days.)

(5) We would run out of rum in about 2 weeks BUT we still have at least a dozen bottles of wine, a case of beer, and various bottles of other alcohol onboard.

(6) Of course, any type of health problem would cause us to move on immediately.

(7) BREAD may be the limiting commodity--we currently have 3/4 of a loaf of whole wheat bread.  (We don't have enough flour onboard to make homemade bread again and there is no grocery store nearby.  Somehow, our planning and provisioning department missed this little detail while we were on Man-O-War Cay.)

So, just before we run out of BREAD (and/or money for eating out at Pete's Pub) we have to move on.  

This is a photograph taken of Pete's Pub after sundown last night from
our dinghy.  Pete's Pub certainly gets a lot of business in the
evenings from cruisers in the harbor to people who
drive down from Marsh Harbour,
about 45 minutes away.

Most of the morning was spent just chilling.  The big excitement of the morning was watching a patch of sargassum come into the harbor on a rising tide and watching it leave again on the outgoing tide.  The patch of sargassum was about 50 feet in diameter.

This is the edge of the patch of sargassum as it neared our boat.

We went into Pete's Pub again today for lunch.  This is a
view of the harbor from the upper deck.

This is one of the newest cottages along the road into Pete's Pub.
It is very small as far as living space and has a
cistern under the raised living area.

This is a beautiful little turquoise cottage a little further down the road.

Residents of this little bit bigger yellow cottage proclaim
that they are "living the dream."

This creature was watching us walk down the
road--I call her Sally Float Face.

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Today is Thursday, March 30, and I think our boat has been here in Little Harbour longer than any other cruising boat (during the time we've been here at least).  A number of boats left the harbor this morning just before high tide.  The wind is blowing at about 12 knots out of the south and it is cool (around 73 degrees) but it will warm up to near 80 degrees by this afternoon.  The forecast for the remainder of the week is pretty much of the same but with a 40% chance of rain showers on Saturday.  We will probably leave Little Harbour (somewhat reluctantly, remember that we are low on bread) on Saturday morning an hour or so before high tide (which is at 12:28 PM).  (The timing of high tide moves ahead by about one hour each day.)

I just finished reading Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan--it is a riveting true story of his survival in a life raft after his sailboat sank in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  I was particularly amazed at the relationship he developed with the dorado (typically sold in restaurants as mahi-mahi) that sustained him--they hung out in schools below his life raft.  He was able to spear one from his life raft whenever he needed food, though it was always a challenge.  He would then cut the fish up into one-inch strips and dry the fish strips on a line (like a clothes line) inside the life raft.  After exhausting the batteries in using his EPIRB unsuccessfully and failing to get attention from seven ships who passed him, he was finally rescued by three fisherman from Guadeloupe after actually seeing land.  I highly recommend this book to anyone with "saltwater in their veins."

Now, this is my idea of an office!

For the fourth straight day in a row, we went to Pete's Pub for lunch. After lunch, we went out to the nearby reefs in the dinghy and Maggie did some snorkeling.  Even though we were in the Sea of Abaco (Maggie always calls it the bay) there were big swells coming in from the ocean inlet from the east but the wind was blowing from from the south.  She saw a lot of fish but nothing shows up on our attempts to film them with our GoPro--was there really any fish there?  We'll have to try again tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more craziness and adventures...

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