Marsh Harbour to Hope Town - 2017

--Blogpost written by Bob

During the night the wind howled at times, possibly up to 20 to 25 knots from the southeast.  This morning, Wednesday, April 5, the wind barely formed a ripple on the surface of the harbor.  The very light wind that did exist was coming from the south.

The complete lack of boat motion woke me up early this morning
as the sun was coming up over Marsh Harbour.

The reduction of the number of anchored boats in Marsh Harbour was very noticeable this morning.  I counted 31 anchored boats at sunrise--that's a reduction of about 10% from nearly three weeks ago.  When you consider that there is an influx of boats from the Exumas (south of here), it is quite a reduction.   I would imagine that Canadian boats lead the exodus since they have the furtherest to travel home. 

We left Marsh Harbour at about 1:00 PM after filling up our water tanks at the Conch Inn & Marina and having lunch at Curly Tails.  We arrived in Hope Town at 3:15 and we took our time getting here because we wanted a favorable tide condition to come into the inlet.  The harbor was still very crowded but I think we got the only available mooring buoy!

The candy striped lighthouse shows up in the background of
the very crowded harbor in Hope Town.

Rainy Days is safely moored in Hope Town for the week.

A sample of the waterfront in Hope Town harbor.
This place is simply beautiful!

We went for a dinghy ride around the harbor with no shoes and no cameras, just for the experience.  A sea turtle surfaced near us in the water.

It seems customary in Bahamian harbors to blow a Conch horn at sunset, Hope Town is no exception.  Even though the actual sunset was blocked by the land on the west side of the harbor, we still had a beautiful sunset tonight.

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Thursday, April 6, started out like just another beautiful day in paradise with a nice cool breeze out the the south.  

Hope Town was first settled in 1785 by Loyalists, as I learned this morning on the Cruiser's Net.  Compared to the other small towns and villages in Abaco, Hope Town is very pristine and gentrified, for lack of a better word.  The houses are very tastefully painted bright color combinations like mint green with pink shutters or peach with lavender shutters (as examples) and most of the houses have freshly painted white trim.

We looked at the listings from a couple real estate firms and prices seem to range from about $400k to $900k, not that we are in the market to buy another house anytime soon.  I was surprised at how many houses we saw are rental properties.

A large pink house with baby blue shutters looks
out over the ocean in Hope Town.

A beautiful yellow house with blue shutters
and colorful outdoor chairs.

A beautiful blue house hidden behind trees and bushes.

We stopped at a neat little coffee shop late in the morning and had freshly brewed iced coffees.  We thought it was the best tasting coffee we ever had.  We walked around the little settlement and eventually had a nice lunch at Harbour's Edge.  

This Bahamian shutters are actually on the street
side of Water's Edge restaurant.

A Hobie Cat sits on an open area of the
harbor-side beach in Hope Town.

The ocean-side beach on the other side
of the island from the harbor.

In the afternoon, it got very humid and cloudy (and 88 degrees) and a thunderstorm threatened rain but we only experienced a brief, almost unnoticeable, drizzle until late at night.  During the night, we had a brief downpour--just enough to clean the salt spray off our dodger windows.

We expect to be here in Hope Town until sometime next week.  Stay tuned for more of of cruising adventures in the Abacos...

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