Well, the boat did not want to move. She would rather
stay in her slip for the next several days. So we obliged her and took
the ferry to the the neighboring cays. We went to Hope Town on Elbow
Cay on several occasions. This was the most 'touristy' of the cays
that we would visit. Still, we liked it very much. There are lots of
restaurants, trinket stores, and people. Very clean town with a British
flavor.
There were more boats crammed in the harbor then we
could have imagined. Marinas and mooring fields were filled or nearly
so. Quite impressive considering the skinny waters found on the route
to Hope Town. Jule is glad that we did not subject her to such
distress. We took the local ferry to get a better view of the lighthouse.
If you look really hard, you can see Capt. Ann near the
top of the lighthouse. Of course Bob was guarding the base of the
lighthouse as he does not 'do' lighthouses or other hight things. Even
from the base, the view was quite impressive. It is a shame that it was
so overcast. Of course, the weather was not very conducive for
cruising or photography. Of course.
On our first ferry voyage, we met a gang of cruisers from
the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club (RMHYC) based in Boat Harbour.
They 'adopted' us during our first Hope Town visit so we accompanied
them everywhere from restaurants, to marinas, to the local flea market.
Lucky for us as we would see these folks often. Here we were having
morning Bloody Marys. Bob was at home!
Our next ferry passage was to Man-o-War Cay which is the
boat building cay of the Abacos. Ferry ride was a bit longer than the
Hope Town trip but is was enjoyable nevertheless. This cay is entirely
different than Hope Town. It is a working island with few attractions
for tourists. There is only one restaurant and one or two trinket shops.
The community was friendly and the roads and byways
immaculate. Everything was as it should be. There is a marina and a
mooring field. Most of the balls were occupied. We walked around the
island and found a seaside cemetery, a Batelco tower, many well
manicured homes, a grocery store, boat building facilities, a canvas
shop, and of course the Dock N Dine restaurant where we had delicious
hamburgers.
Ann finally had a chance to do some shelling on the
Atlantic side of the cay. The beach was beautiful but the shells were
scarce. Ann was not happy. There was a community cemetery near the
beach with a placard describing its history. It had a sad history due
to many destructive hurricanes.
A few days later we headed for Great Guana Cay via a
longer ferry ride. Guana is between Hope Town and Man-o-War on the
'touristy' scale. The big draws are Nippera and Grabbers, two
restaurants/inns one on the Atlantic side, the other on Sea of Abaco.
Weather still was nasty (actually it was nasty 90% of the time) so there
was quite a surf from the Atlantic.
We had our lunch at Nippers but perhaps we were too
early. Service was not what we expected. The food was good but it took
us 15 minutes to find a waitress. It was so windy the day we had lunch
that Bob had to hold the umbrella in fear that it would fly out of the
table. It made many valiant tries but it was no match for Bob. Still
it was hard to eat a hamburger with one hand.
We felt that was only fair to also visit Grabbers, a
competing facility. They had a nice sandy beach overlooking Fishers Bay
where many cruisers were anchored. We were not hungry as we had just
come from Nippers but is appeared to be a cruiser friendly place. Next
time. We had planned to come here in a couple days for the Barefoot
Man concert but we got lazy again.
;
