Stay Over Days in George Town
—Blogpost written by Bob
Feb 1 thru Feb 3
This blogpost covers our first three days in Elizabeth Harbour. We expect to be here for quite some time before heading back up the Exuma chain of cays.
Saturday, February 1
When arriving yesterday we anchored near Monument Beach, a beautiful white sand beach behind which is a very high hill with a stone monument on top (an image appears later in this blog). However, not everything was fine in this “promised land” for cruising sailors—our dinghy engine became overheated during our search for ice cubes in the late afternoon of our arrival. No cooling water was coming out the discharge tube. So, will we be boat-bound until we could get the problem resolved?
There was a nice cool south-southeast (13-knot) breeze early in the morning. Our Canadian cruising neighbor was weighing anchor at 7 AM when I poked my head out of the hatch. They proceeded to put up their sails as they cleared the anchorage.
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| This was the scene in front of us as the sun came up on our first morning in Georgetown. Monument Beach is to the left. |
As is the custom in Georgetown, we listened to the Georgetown Cruiser's Net at 8 AM on Channel 72 to find out what was happening around the anchorage. I was surprised to hear about beach church (complete with choir) on Volleyball Beach at 9:30 AM on Sunday morning. There was an announcement about practice for the upcoming softball game during Regatta (late in February, I think). The time for water aerobics at south Monument Beach was announced. The net was quite entertaining, to say the least.
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| I found this "rats nest" of lines on the cabintop this morning. |
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| A white stone monument is atop the 120-foot high hill and a beautiful white sand beach is at the waterline. This is Monument Beach, a primary anchorage area in Georgetown. |
It is difficult to believe that we have been in the Bahamas for a month already. It seems that a significant part of the month was spent dodging very high wind conditions, sitting in a marina for multiple days at a time in West End, and then, in Nassau.
Our late morning and early afternoon were completely frustrating. Our BTC phone account was running out (fully ending on Sunday, February 2) and we couldn’t get it to “top up” via the phone or the BTC website. Also, we couldn’t get attention to our overheating dinghy motor until Monday, February 3. We tried getting a water taxi into Georgetown where we could at least get help with our phone but no water taxis were answering our VHF calls—did they not work on Saturdays? This was like a catch-22 with a downward spiral into a “twilight zone” kind of experience. (OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration but you’d have to be here in our well worn flip-flops to understand.)
A fellow cruiser advertised two small outboard motors (a 2 HP and a 4 HP, both of them four stroke) for sale on the morning’s Cruiser Net and we considered buying one and selling it when we leave but I couldn’t get a response from the seller on the VHF later in the day. So, we were stuck on our boat in a beautiful harbor on a sunny afternoon with no way to resolve any of the situations we were facing. As Maggie so correctly pointed out--we had plenty of food (though canned), water, and liquor.
Sunday, February 2
We had our third major blow while anchored last night—it wasn’t quite as severe as the previous two (26 knots out of the northwest according to WINDY and a 36-knot peak wind gust according to nearby cruisers). Again, we were caught off guard with our outboard motor still attached to the dinghy (for the third time now!). (Very strong wind could flip our dinghy upside down, posing a significant risk of loss of our outboard motor.)
I had to get up in the darkness of very early morning and pull up our swim ladder—it was clanking against our stern. Certainly, we are gaining a lot of confidence in our 20 Kg (44-pound) ROCNA Vulcan anchor with the all-chain rode and the use of our nylon anchor bridle. (I don’t worry at all anymore about our anchor dragging since our recent high-wind experience anchored off Highbourne Cay.)
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| From our anchorage looking northwest into the wind. |
We’ve decided to buy one of the two small outboard motors if we can reach the guy who is selling them this morning and if one is still available and if we can arrange delivery to our boat. This seemed like the easiest way of solving our immediate problem of not being able to use our outboard motor until it is repaired. (I can always sell the little outboard motor to someone else before we leave or take it home with us and sell it there.)
We finally reached the seller of the two small outboards and the seller agreed to deliver one (a 2 HP Honda, 4-stroke) to our boat this afternoon after the high wind dies down a little. (The 4 HP motor was a Mercury but I preferred the Honda, even though it won’t push our dinghy quite as fast.) The cost was a mere $200. Things are looking up!
After a couple hours of navigating the BTC cell phone “top up” procedure online this morning I was finally able to keep our BTC phone working for the next 30 days. I felt this was a major accomplishment. What is unusual is that, first, you have to deposit money (from a credit card) into your BTC account and, then, to “top up” the phone you have to draw from that account balance. Why this can’t be like all online credit card purchases in the U.S. is beyond me. Things ARE looking up!
With lots of time on our hands (being boat-bound and all) I recently finished two audio books: The Way I Heard It by Mike
With lots of time on our hands (being boat-bound and all) I recently finished two audio books: The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe and Break Shot: My First 21 Years by James Taylor. Both were excellent audio books and I highly recommend them!
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| Mike Rowe has had a long and varied career but is perhaps best know for his hosting of "Dirty Jobs." |
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| I've always love James Taylor's music and his audio book has some of his music and the stories behind them. |
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| Our new little Honda 2 HP dinghy motor for use while our 6 HP Yamaha is out of commission. |
Surprisingly, we were able to watch the Super Bowl on our onboard TV with our masthead antenna—we can get three U.S. affiliates rebroadcast out of Miami plus one or two native stations. (There was an ongoing discussion during the past two days on the VHF radio about the FOX affiliate station not being available for the Super Bowl broadcast—I think this was a rumor started by the local bars.) It was great NOT to have the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl for a change and to see Andy Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs get the prized 31-20 win—they deserved it.
Monday, February 3
The post-Super Bowl morning was beautiful, sunny and with a light easterly breeze. It was cool—in the low 70’s.
By 7 AM we were already producing some solar power, albeit less than 1 amp—it starts out very minimally. (By the way, the Watt Wizard has fully recovered from its recent brush with the electricity gremlin—I still think that moisture was the culprit.) By 7:30 AM the solar power generation was over 2 amps and steadily increasing. It’s not uncommon to produce upward of 10 amps in the afternoon in this nearly tropical sun. (Technically, the tropics start about 25 miles further south.)
It was announced on the Cruiser's Net that there are currently 247 boats currently anchored in Elizabeth Harbour!
We made it into Georgetown in the morning--it took us 1/2-hour with the new little Honda 2 HP outboard motor. It was really slow going but the little Honda started on the first pull and steadily hummed along toward its destination. (We had to purchase a plastic 1-gallon gas can with a spout so that we could add gasoline into its little 1-liter self-contained gas tank since it didn't have the ability to draw from our existing gasoline tank.)
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| The entrance to Lake Victoria. |
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| The dinghy dock behind Exuma Markets. |
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| An abandoned house on the southeast part of town. I was really disappointed with this section of town. |
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| A typical house on the southeast part of town. (Note the junked car sitting on the front lawn.) |
We went southeast to find a pizza restaurant for lunch and once we found it, we decided to look for a different restaurant. The laundromat is on the southeast part of town. So, we turned around and traveled northeast on (I think) Kings Highway.
It was obvious that the northeast part of town was a lot more prosperous, judging by the church, shops, hotels and restaurants. We found a cute little restaurant called the Driftwood Cafe and Pizza where we had delicious pizza. (During lunch we decided NOT to fix our 6 HP Yamaha here in Georgetown but to take it home to be fixed during the summer since we had such as bad customer service experience with Brown's Marine and Boat Storage and since we have a reliable temporary solution in the recently acquired used 2 HP Honda motor.)
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| The sign outside the Drifrtwood Cafe and Pizza where we had lunch, |
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| Inside the air-conditioned interior dining room of Driftwood Cafe and Pizza. |
After lunch, we stopped by the Peace and Plenty, a very old hotel along the water. It was really classy as shown by the photos below:
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| The large dining room and friendly staff at Peace and Plenty. |
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| The pool deck overlooking Elizabeth Harbour at Peace and Plenty. |
Tomorrow, we intend to move to an anchorage closer to town to avoid the 1/2-hour one-way dinghy trips into town. Stay tuned for more of our adventure...
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