We left First Edition in Fowl Cay on Friday April 2nd and headed north to Manjack Cay. It was a glorious day for a sail and the 15 miles went all too fast as we knew this would be Celebrian's last sail of the winter. On our way we sailed by the boat you see in this picture.
Spring is the time that the mega yachts come to The Bahamas and this one was at least 200 feet long. Doesn't it make you wonder who might be on board?
Manjack Cay is a favoured anchorage for cruisers and up until recently it was the source of a very powerful free Wifi signal and has been for the past 5 years. Bill and Leslie who have lived on the island for 17 years have been very cruiser friendly since they were cruisers at one time themselves. The sign on the shore says welcome rather than come ashore only if you have an invitation. I met Bill one day on one of the trails and he said that he had been asked to shut down their signal by the local service providers in Green Turtle Cay. Understandably the Wifi companies want the cruiser's business so in all fairness to them Bill did what they asked. I had planned on getting lots of blog updates done while we were in Manjack; however I did get a jump on lots of boat "summerizing" jobs while Rob put on five coats of varnish.
In the afternoons we tried to take some time off. All work ...no play makes the crew grumpy. Bill and Leslie have made trails all over the island.
They are happy to share them with the cruisers who stop here and the cruisers try to give back by picking up garbage along the beach and putting it in the bins and garbage bags that Bill and Leslie provide. You wouldn't believe what the ocean washes in? The amount of plastic is staggering. On the Sea of Abaco side of these islands once finds more glass but the ocean side is primarily plastic. Garbage is a big problem in The Bahamas and unfortunately much to our chagrin they are still not instituting much in the way of recycling. The Bahamian way is to burn but as you and I know burning glass is not too effective a way to dispose of it.
Lynn and Peter joined us in our favourite Coconut Bay Beach anchorage on Easter Sunday.
The admirals put together a potluck Easter dinner of tenderloin, sweet potatoes, asparagus, bean and tossed salad and the captains co-BBQ'd. Since Peter is Jewish he does not eat much in the way of pork but he had agreed to give the tenderloin a try and he quite enjoyed it. Lynn is delighted because this gives her another food group so to speak for meal planning. Meal planning is a little more of a challenge on a boat as one has to have all of the ingredients on hand. IF you don't have what you need for a recipe you don't just pop out to the convenience store to pick it up!? Lynn and I did some shelling one morning together collecting sea urchins. We have great craft plans for these very delicate but pretty skeletons.
Seabear is busy deciding what urchins should be wrapped carefully in paper towels and flown home. It is a challenge to get our shells home without breakage as we can't carry all of them in our hand luggage. The sand dollars and urchins are especially delicate.
All in all it was a good week at Manjack and now we are at the dock at Abaco Yacht Services. We went out to dinner at Emily's Blue Bar for a fabulous lobster dinner...the best restaurant meal we have had all season. We asked Bruce, a fellow dock mate to join Peter, Lynn and ourselves for happy hour and dinner.
It turned out that Bruce and his wife have sailed much of the Caribbean so we picked his brain about his travels.
We have spent the weekend folding sails,doing inventory, cleaning and packing, and today Rob is taking our hot water tank out. We only have hot water when the engine is running but we have had to shut the tank off because it has developed a leak. It looks like we may either have to have it welded or buy a new one. There is always something to fix or buy when you live on a boat. In between uploading pictures to the blog I am bleaching lockers. Scott provides a signal here for ten dollars a day so I bought the signal for the weekend. Tomorrow I will be too busy doing laundry so today will be the last update until after we get home.
We fly home this Wednesday April 14th and look forward to a busy and pleasant spring in Ontario. As always we will miss our cruising friends but if all goes well First Edition and Celebrian may sail to the Western Caribbean next season. If we do go west we will likely leave Celebrian in the Rio Dulce in Guatamala and fly home from there.
A sailboat is a magical vehicle and we can go wherever we want to.....the honeymoon sail continues.
I am sent up in the bosun's chair to retrieve a wayward halyard.
The captain gives Mr. Johnson some tender loving care.
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