We’ve finally decided to head farther south.

We’ve had such a nice time in the Abacos that we repeatedly asked ourselves whether we wanted to stay for the remainder of our time here or move farther south to the Exumas. On the one hand, we’ve covered a lot of miles over the past six months and it would be nice to stay in one area for a few months. On the other hand, while Jeff continues to do well, we can’t just assume that we’ll be able to come back again in the fall, so perhaps we shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit the Exumas. If we went to the Exumas we could finally see our friends on S/V Lone Star, and deliver the chocolate, almond milk, and whey powder that we picked up for them in Lake Worth. But if we stayed we would see them as they passed through the Abacos.

Back and forth, back and forth. We literally would change our mind a few times a day. Every time we decided to stay, we would think that maybe we should go. When we decided to go, we thought it was lovely here so why don’t we stay? Finally I decided to put our dilemma on the Facebook Bahamas Cruising group. The responses were overwhelmingly in favor of going to the Exumas. With the decision made, it was time to start making some tracks south.

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Junkanoo!

After enjoying several lovely days in Hope Town, we backtracked to Marsh Harbor for the Junkanoo event. According to the Bahamian government website, a Junkanoo is a Bahamian national festival with roots that can be traced to West Africa. Participating teams spend months working on a theme, developing costumes, musical compositions, and choreography. Judges roam throughout the groups, scoring them on a page-long list of categories. The Marsh Harbor Junkanoo is on a much smaller scale than the annual event held in Nassau on Boxing Day, but we still very much wanted to see it.

The posters in town said that the Juniors event would be held at 6:00 on Friday, with the Adults the following night at 7:00. So being typical Americans from the northeast, we showed up slightly before 6:00 on Friday evening. This being the islands, the fencing was just going up when we arrived. Looks like we were a little early!

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Moving into the southern Abacos.

On Friday the weather had calmed down and we saw a good opportunity to go through the Whale on Saturday, so we said goodbye to our hidey hole for a welcome change of scenery.

The plan was to anchor at No Name Cay for the day and night, but as we approached I looked over and was entranced by the beach on the southern end of Green Turtle Cay near Gilliam Bay. Jeff asked if I wanted to go there instead, but I said that we had already decided on No Name so we stayed the course. I couldn’t stop looking over at the other beach though, which really did look much nicer, so we made a U turn and anchored by the prettier beach instead.

We had the anchorage all to ourselves, and it was lovely.

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Our introduction to the Abacos.

After a good night’s sleep at Great Sale Cay, we shoved off again bright and early for Green Turtle Cay where we planned to check in with immigration and customs. After getting our obligatory “rip roaring argument stemming from not putting the sails up in a long time so we’re rusty* (*Trademark)” fight out of the way, we had the sails raised and motorsailed the 57 nautical miles to Green Turtle. It would have been nice to turn the engine off, but we wanted to have the anchor down before dark. Now that we know how casual the check-in process is, next time we’ll sail as far as we can and simply arrive in Green Turtle on day three. Continue reading “Our introduction to the Abacos.” →