2022-12-10 Visiting friends on Scotland Cay, Moving south - nope - back North

We stopped at the marina at Scotland Cay - as we had friends who own a home there, and a slip at the marina we could stay at.  Scotland Cay is fairly small, with only homes, and no businesses.   We had a very nice day visiting with them and touring the island.  Sad to say, many homes were destroyed there during hurricane Dorian, and have not yet been rebuilt.

Beautiful view from our friends house 

Very nice private beach on Scotland Cay

House damaged in Dorian - still has clothes, kitchen ware, furniture inside - slowly being destroyed by time and the elements

We usually don't like to stay at marinas, as our main source of cooling on the boat is to face into the wind, with our hatches open.  Also, being anchored out, we get less bugs than at a marina.  Our night in the marina reminded us of this, as it was still, and hot, and we both got bit many times by the tiniest no-seeums we have ever not seen :)

Next morning we headed over to Marsh Harbor - as we wanted to get a SIM card for the Bahamas, so we would have data - and internet.  Marsh Harbor is a very protected harbor, but once again - suffered a lot of damage in hurricane Dorian, and is not fully recovered.   Its a bout a 3.5 mile round trip walk from the dinghy dock to the store to get a SIM card.  It is not a very scenic walk.

Walking up to get the SIM card - not very scenic

 

After the SIM card we stopped and got lunch out at a restaurant near the dinghy dock, then back to the boat and relaxed.  Next day we headed over to Elbow Cay, to visit Hope Town, which is a cute little town.  We anchored outside the harbor, and watched the boat traffic in and out, and in particular, a small catamaran that came in after us, and promptly ran his boat aground.   There was nothing to do to help the fellow until the tide came in, and he radioed a friend - so we did not run over to help.  Next day, nice walk through town, and then lunch out again, at Captain Jack's - which has excellent burgers and fries.

Hope Town has cute little streets, made for golf carts only.

The weather looked good for making a 56 mile jump south to the next island of Eleuthera, so we headed to a anchorage further south in the Abacos, in preparation to leave the next day.  Unfortunately, this was not to be.   A large tropical disturbance in the middle of the North Atlantic with high winds, was causing some very large ocean swells to be in the area.   The Abaco's were seeing this swell, and although it is quite calm on the bank, to get from the bank to the ocean requires navigating a channel, between islands and reefs.  The large swell was also navigating the channel, and with the shallow depths of the channels (less than 40'), the waves were breaking across the channel.    We like an adventure, but we are not stupid - and we were not going to try to go through a channel with breaking waves.

So - change of plans - looks like a week before the waves will subside, and the winds are once again favorable - so we headed back north to Marsh Harbor to wait it out.   The winds will be fluky coming from all directions for the week, so Marsh Harbor being protected from all directions seemed the best spot. 

Time to work on projects - so while Dean worked on cleaning rust off a screen frame and repainting it and putting on a new screen.  Kris finally got the stool project underway, after many days of mulling over the best way to proceed.  The old stool covers tended to slip around a bit - and you had to take the entire cover off to get into the stool.  Our stools are 5 gallon igloo coolers, and we use them to store food.

Old stool cover - always looked twisted

New stool covers are from a easy wipe clean vinyl, and are more secure so they don't twist, and you don't have to remove the covers to get inside to the storage.

New stool cover - easy wipe clean, and not twisted.   Fits tight over igloo cooler - which also makes it a bit bumpy looking - Oh well

Kind of a boring week with not many photos - but life is like that sometimes - cant be all fun and games all the time.