Man-O-War to Marsh Harbour

-Blogpost written by Bob

This blogpost covers our one night anchored in Corn Bay (December 27) on the northern end of Man-O-War Cay, visiting the settlement of Man-O-War during the day, and our short trip to Marsh Harbour in the afternoon of December 28.

Corn Bay, Man-O-War Cay

When we anchored at Corn Bay, on the northern end of Man-O-War Cay, we found hard packed small rocks covered with a shallow layer of sand and our anchor would simply not bury itself in the sea bottom in three tries.  Finally, we found an area of loose sand where the anchor buried very deep.  (I remember running into this problem in the Berry Islands twenty-six years ago on my very first trip to the Bahamas.)

A road only suitable for golf carts separates the Sea of Abaco
from the Atlantic Ocean. Both sides have a nice beach.
Our Corn Bay anchorage is on the Sea of Abaco
side of the cay. The catamaran in this
photo is from Falmouth, Maine.

We went to the beach in our dinghy and took along our snorkel gear. We snorkeled near the Sea of Abaco beach but there wasn’t a lot to see. I came back to the boat to scrub off our rudder (we seem to be accumulating some light marine growth) and Maggie swam back for the exercise.

Man-O-War Cay to Marsh Harbour

Today started out with a nice 10-knot breeze out of the northeast and a temperature of 73 degrees F.  Our anchorage in Corn Bay was very calm and peaceful last night but we could hear the rhythmic roar of the surf on the ocean side of the island. Our boat flags are flapping in the cool breeze and our solar panels are picking up energy from the rising sun.  As I sit here in the cockpit, I’m watching a small ship (to the northwest) heading into Marsh Harbour--they come into the Sea of Abaco through the North Man-O-War Channel and follow a straight line to the small ship channel in Marsh Harbour. (As we were coming to Man-O-War yesterday we crossed in front of a small container ship on a similar course.  I got a little closer to the ship’s path than I intended because I misjudged the ship’s speed--I should have paid more attention to the AIS!  It was the first time I noticed a ship using this relatively narrow unmarked channel and it surprised me.)

Throughout the last week or so I’ve been thinking how vital our chart plotter/GPS has become and the fact that I have no spare in the event of a failure. During the summer, I’m going to look into getting an identical (completely independent) chart plotter that I can mount below in the navigation station.

Our chart plotter is the most valuable tool we have on board,
followed closely by our below-decks autopilot.

Around mid-morning we took the dinghy into Man-O-War harbor, opting to leave Rainy Days at anchor in Corn Bay since we have good protection from the northeast wind.

s/v Rainy Days at anchor in Corn Bay on the
north end of Man-O-War Cay.

If there is one cay in the Bahamas that I can identify with, it’s Man-O-War. The original loyalist settlers were shipbuilders and sailmakers. They are hardworking and have adapted to the changing times.  About one-half of the homes on Man-O-War are owned by foreigners.  All of the homes were built by people that live on Man-O-War.  The homes’ roof rafters (and probably other structural members) are bolted together, like timbers are bolted together in a wooden ship.  The people who built the homes maintain them for their absentee home owners.  Boats are still built on Man-O-War but they are 20 to 25 foot long custom fiberglass fishing boats, built one or two at a time and costing more than $100,000 each.

At Albury Brothers Boatyard the newly formed fiberglass deck
of a new boat is in the foreground while the
hull is in the background.

Albury Sail Loft now sells bags made from Sunbrella fabric.

A boat house right across the harbor from
the Man-O-War settlement.

A view of Man-O-War harbor from a railway which is
used to pull large boats out of the water.

Another view of Man-O-War Harbour.

Because of high winds forecast for tomorrow morning, we decided to leave our anchorage on Corn Bay, top off with fuel and water in Man-O-War Harbour and head to Marsh Harbor in the afternoon.  

We arrived in Marsh Harbour at around 3:30 PM and after anchoring we took our trash into to the dumpster at the Government Dock and then motored our dinghy to the Jib Room to make reservations for "steak out" on Saturday night.

More on our visit to Marsh Harbour will be included in our next blogpost.  Stay tuned...


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