Green Turtle Cay

Mar 12 thru Mar 15

--Blogpost written by Bob

Monday, March 12

This morning is overcast and dreary. A 10-knot breeze (occasionally gusting to 20 knots) is coming out of the southwest—first time we’ve seen that direction in quite a while. We are well protected from southwesterly winds here in Black Sound. A light rain is just beginning to fall but thunderstorms are in the forecast (100% chance) for the day. It is almost 8 AM and there is still no sign of the sun—it’s completely blocked out by the cloud cover.

Donny's Marina on a dreary Monday morning.

During an interlude in the day’s rainstorms, we went into town and bought some groceries for the next several days. They were out of eggs and pizza—so, they said they would have them for us by tomorrow. The teeny-tiny Lowe’s Grocery in New Plymouth is so accommodating!

On our way back to the boat with four plastic bags of groceries in tow, we filled our blue jug with 5 gallons of fresh water at the dock and headed back to the boat.  We dumped the 5 gallons of fresh water into our starboard tank.  (Again, there was no room at the dock to accommodate s/v Rainy Days to get fresh water but it’s no big deal.)  

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Later in the afternoon (about 4 PM) a thunderstorm came through the mooring field packing winds from the northwest up to 30 knots.  We watched the storm coming through from the cockpit and then went below when the rain hit.  Because of all the cloud cover today I ran the engine to generate some power--I may not have had to but I like keeping the batteries ini the upper half of their charge range.

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We did a lot of reading today and some creative cooking.  Maggie sewed a lot of triangles together for her quilt.  In some ways it seems like time is standing still here and that’s exactly what we want at our age.  Hopefully I will get more photographs in my blog tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 13

The wind finally subsided, the sky cleared, and the sun came out this morning. It was luxurious having breakfast (coconut muffins made with fresh coconut) while sitting in the cockpit. Today, it looks more like those glossy travel brochures (remember those?) or the vivid colors on photographs of travel websites!

Our modest goals for the day are: (1) to pickup eggs and frozen pizza at Lowe’s Food Store, (2) to find another coconut or two to chop up, and (3) to get another 5 gallons of fresh water for our onboard tanks.  By keeping our day’s goals modest, we may actually accomplish all three. We’ll be doing a lot of walking today in pursuit of our goals, maybe three or four miles total.

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Early this morning while I was still in the v-berth I was thinking about some way of counting the daily cycles of our bilge pump. It would really be nice to have this data so that we could measure the impact of our fresh water system leaks since they all go into the bilge and eventually get pumped overboard. So, this morning, I did an online search and, sure enough, electronic bilge counters are readily available. I’ll have to look into this more carefully when I add the masthead light selector switch to one of our electrical panels. (I’ll be removing our Xantrex LinkLite battery monitor because it is simply not that valuable to us—I use the battery bank voltage reading from our Watt Wizard to tell me the charge state of the battery bank.)

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Around mid-morning, we docked our dinghy at the public dock on Black Sound, about 150 feet from our mooring, while we went into town to Lowe's Food Store.  We picked up two frozen pizza's, a dozen eggs, and a few other things.

This is the small settlement of New Plymouth from the
road into town from the north.  Parliament Street
is one way in on the left side of this image and
Bay Street is one way out on the right side.
The Sea of Abaco is in the background.

Lowe's Food Store
on Parliament Street

I call this image "Painted Pastel Porches."
It is a "painted" photograph of an area
along one of the side streets in the
settlement of New Plymouth.

This is the wall along Parliament Street,
next to the cemetery. (I call this
image "Vanishing Point.")

After our little excursion into the settlement and after having lunch at the Leeward Yacht Club, we walked toward Gilliam Bay in search of more coconuts.  We ended up finding two acceptable ones--this is one of tomorrow's projects.

Palm tree along the beach at Gilliam Bay.
(We happened on this spot off a dirt
road--it was pretty far off the
beaten track.)

After our successful coconut hunt, we came back to the boat to relax for the remainder of the afternoon.

Wednesday, March 14

A gorgeous morning awaits us, with plenty of sunshine, clear skies, and very little wind (the wind picked up as the day progressed). The SSB reception is excellent this morning, as we listen to the Caribbean Weather Forecast on 4.045 MHz USB. There’s a lot of conversations with subscribing boat’s because of the upcoming weather window. We will be using this weather window for our trip to Man-O-War and Marsh Harbour, leaving Green Turtle Cay on Friday morning and returning on Monday morning.

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Our simple goals for the day are (1) to do laundry and (2) to butcher the two coconuts we found yesterday.

These two coconuts look older than the previous one I
butchered, judging from their outside appearance.

This time around, I removed the husks on the public dock (it was easier with the older coconuts), drained the coconut water on board, and then put them in our oven to crack the nut covering—this proved to be a lot easier than smashing them with a big hammer. After cracking, I pried open the cracks with a big screw driver and removed the thick nut covering but it broke into many pieces. Then I removed the thinner nut covering with a vegetable peeler for all the pieces—this was still a lot of work!

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During the afternoon, the wind was blowing out of the northwest at 15 knots. In the late afternoon, I finished reading Robin Knox-Johnston’s book, “A World of My Own: The First Ever Solo Non-Stop Voyage Around the World.” It amazes me how far we have come in weather forecasting and navigation since the late-1960’s. Not that I have any interest in sailing around the world, I find the story of his voyage fascinating. It does make me want to push my limits a little by sailing offshore part of the way back to the Chesapeake Bay. By picking a favorable weather window, we could sail or motor from Fernandina Beach to Charleston, a 30-hour trip offshore that would eliminate the 4-day long Georgia ICW passage. In addition, an offshore passage from Charleston to Cape Fear would also cut out a lot of ICW travel. We’ll see if that still seems reasonable when we are traveling up the ICW in over a month from now.

Wednesday, March 15

This morning, the wind has died down but it is still cool. What wind we do have is still from the northwest. I can hear the heavy surf on the ocean side of the island. There are lots of white puffy cumulus clouds floating around the beautiful blue sky. The warmth of the sun in the cockpit feels so luxurious.

My head feels kind of foggy this morning—lots of boat noises (one of our flags whipping against a shroud or backstay, and some splashing of some sort) kept me from sleeping soundly last night.  Of course, my brain was disturbed too from reading Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat”, before trying to sleep—he must have been such a tormented individual.

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We still have no internet access this morning. This knocks out most of our sources for weather information plus I got up too late (9 AM) to hear the Caribbean Weather Forecast on our shortwave radio. It’s a good thing that I worked out our upcoming travel schedule two days ago!  (Later, I figured out that our 15 gigabytes of data were all used up.)

We plan to leave our mooring tomorrow morning for, first, Man-O-War and, later, Marsh Harbour. Our upcoming travel plans are as follows:

3/16: Leave Green Turtle at 6:30 AM (1.5 hours before high tide)

         Arrive Man-O-War at 10 AM (before mid-tide), mooring

         (Top off fuel and fresh water tanks & get more fabric)

3/17: Leave Man-O-War at 9 AM (1/2 hour before high tide)

         Arrive in Marsh Harbour before 10 AM on Saturday, anchor out

         (Spend Saturday and Sunday in Marsh Harbour)

3/19: Leave Marsh Harbour at 7:30 AM

         Arrive back at Green Turtle at 11 AM (1.5 hours after high tide)

You can see by the above schedule how we work around the tides—this is important for the channel leading out of Black Sound on Green Turtle, as well as the channel leading into the harbor on Man-O-War. The tides have little impact on us for Marsh Harbour, which has plenty of water depth for us even at low tide. (We draw slightly over 5 feet.)

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Around half past ten in the morning, we took off on a walk to the ocean beach—this time north of Gillam Bay. We walked about 2 miles before reaching the beach but the followings photographs show its value:

Looking north from on the beach.

Looking north on as we approached
the ocean beach.

There were a lot of large rocks on a
section of the ocean beach.

Looking out at the beach from
behind an uprooted tree.

A massive root system on an
uprooted tree by the beach.

On the road to the beach there were a number of homes
under construction or in a state of disrepair.  I thought
it funny that a toilet was stored by the front door.

We had lunch on our way back to the boat at
Lizards in the Leeward Yacht Club.

S/v Rainy Days (in the foreground) on a mooring
in Black Sound on Green Turtle Cay.

By the time anybody reads this blogpost, we’ll already be in Man-O-War or Marsh Harbour (because of our temporary lack of internet access here on Green Turtle Cay). Our next blogpost will be published from Marsh Harbour before returning to Green Turtle Cay.

Thanks for following our blog!