Saturday, February 8 to Friday, February 14
When we arrived at George Town, we had no plans or ideas as to how long our stay here would be. This has been a nice change in pace after hurrying to get fairly far south in our first year in the Bahamas. It appears that we will end up with a full two weeks here, as we are currently waiting for a nice weather window to head over to Long Island.
Our activities for this week are fairly similar to those reported by Jimmy last week. Like taking our dinghy over to George Town a few times. It is about a mile away from our anchorage, and sometimes the ride back and forth is a bumpy and wet ride. I’ve learned to dress in quick-drying clothing for these trips to town.
Trash
The trips to town are primarily for stretching our legs and running errands. One such errand was to find a way to dispose of trash. We learned through the daily cruisers net that there is a pickup truck often parked at the dinghy dock where we could leave our trash and slip a payment of $5 (per bag) into the cab of the truck. There is another option to pay someone (Go For / Jamaal) to pick it up directly from your boat. Rare in the Bahamas are recycling options, but a church in town has a barrel labeled as “Cans for Kids.” Since aluminum cans have sharp edges after getting crushed, we keep them in a plastic bin away from the rest of our garbage, so it was easy to drop our cans into the barrel.
Hiking
Across the harbor from George Town, where we are anchored, is Stocking Island. If we don’t have to go into town, we will head to this nearby island for exploration on the numerous trails. Well, perhaps “numerous” is a slight exaggeration, since we have walked nearly all of them already, some twice. This has become my favorite activity here. Since I spent most mornings doing remote work, we’ve developed the habit of heading to a beachside trailhead after lunch on the boat to walk and hike. Some of the trails are over very, very sharp rocks, so often we wear our hiking boots. Other parts of the trails involve walking through soft beach sand, where sometimes I’ll take off my shoes and walk through the crystal-clear waters on the harbor side. The eastern side of the island faces the Exuma Sound, where a lot of the coast has very craggy, sharp rock formations with large waves crashing onto them.
A bit of caution is needed when hiking the interior, slightly elevated wooded areas for there is a tree called Poisonwood in the area. I first heard of this tree when reading a Houseboat Hermit by Marvin Cook and did not realize it was here until seeing a footnote on an old trail map. Since we did not exactly know what it looks like, we avoid anything with scaley or colorful bark.
For anyone interested in learning about it, here are links to a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfwe_17r6u8
and an article https://www.imagineourflorida.org/poisonwood-tree/
about this tree.
Dinghy Outboard
One sort of funny story has developed during our stay here. It has to do with me and the dinghy outboard. It may be possible that I have not started up the outboard motor since the summer of 2023, back in St. Petersburg and this is something that just really didn’t cross our minds until the day I went by myself to a yoga class on the beach. Jimmy talked me through how to set up the gas to the outboard and start up procedure. I knew the starting cord needed to be pulled quickly with a lot of force, so that is what I did. However, the cord would come to a hard stop mid-pull. Eventually I was finally able to get the cord all the way out and the motor cranked up.
I was able to beach the dinghy and get the painter tied to a tree while letting the dinghy float in the water so that I did not have to drag the dinghy back into the water by myself after class. Feeling good and relaxed after the yoga class I wandered back to the dinghy, removed the painter from the tree and walked it out into deeper water and hopped inside. I pulled on the cord and it stopped a few inches out, so I tried it again, and again, and again as I drifted away from shore. Sometimes the cord fully extended out, but the motor would not turn over. I tried it with the choke on and off. I was starting to get a little too far from shore and knew I would soon have to attempt to row against the wind to get back to shore.
Thankfully a dinghy full of people leaving the yoga class saw my predicament and came to my rescue. By now my hand was bruised from so many hard stops on the starting cord, so when the guy offered to try to start it, I was very grateful. It took him several tries to get it started, although he never suffered the hard stops that I did, which Jimmy never encounters either. When I got back to Utopia, the good feeling from the yoga class was completely eliminated.
Jimmy watched this whole ordeal through binoculars aboard Utopia and expressed concern about how I drifted so far from shore. We have decided that I need a lot more practice at this, and I have become the dinghy starter. When I am alone and starting from shore, I will start the motor before hopping in to avoid floating away from safety.
I think that the hard stop has something to do with technique and not strength as I seem to have better luck pulling the cord with my non-dominant left arm. Over the past week the hard stops have been happening less often. Oh, by the way, my hand, arm and shoulder hurt for a couple of days after that first solo-dinghy day.
Weather
The weather here has been absolutely wonderful. Temperatures have been consistently perfect with lows and highs in the 70’s with humidity in the 70’s and even the water temperature hovers around the mid 70’s. It appears that the upcoming days we'll see highs in the low 80’s. The winds are usually around 13-15 knots out of the east, sometimes with a southern component. The currents are not strong enough to swing the boat around however, the waves will sometimes come from the south causing the boats to rock and roll. There has been some rain, but it comes lightly and usually is over by the time we get the hatches closed.
We plan to leave our mooring on Monday with very little wind from the east. Our destination is nearly due east crossing over shallow waters, so a windless day is okay for this trip. There is a chance that we might return to Elizabeth Harbor if the winds shift from the west and set anchor close to Great Exuma Island. So, we don’t know exactly where and when we will be going, but we are okay letting the weather be a part of those decisions.
Post # 25-7 | See link below for previous post, # 25-6.
Enjoyig your travels in The Bahamas! - And a big thanks for the mention of the book. So humbled you read it. If you are in a restaurant in Georgetown, look for Matvey reconnecting with the crusing family that saved him. 😂