Although the Skintastic I've poured on me is keeping the bugs from biting, a whining mosquito circling around my ear wakes me as I haplessly try to swat it away. I actually yelled at it to just bite me already and shut up about it, since I already have dozens of welts. That outburst wakes me up, and I'm outside at 6 a.m., watching a brightening sky and listening to the roar of the ocean in the distance.
On sailing trips, or days begin and end with the rising and setting of the sun. This Monday sunrise over Baker's Bay show that this is no hardship at all.
I manage to get dressed and cleaned up, apply sunscreen from head-to-toe (other than my back, which is Rick's job), eat breakfast (Pop-Tarts), and write in my journal before I decide to wake Rick up at 7:30. We listen to the Cruiser's Net at 8:15, but get an incomplete weather forecast because the power is out in various spots on Great Abaco. Nevertheless, we decide that we will tackle the Whale Cay Passage today so that we can visit Green Turtle Cay for the first time.
To those who aren't familiar with this area, the cays offshore of Great Abaco are like a broken string of pearls running roughly north to south. The area between Great Abaco and the cays is referred to as the Sea of Abaco, which makes a delightful, protected and somewhat shallow cruising ground. At a point just north of Great
Guana Cay, roughly opposite Treasure Cay on the "mainland," the Sea of Abaco becomes extremely shallow, an area of shifting sands which most boats cannot traverse because they will hit bottom. As a result, in order to go north from Great Guana Cay, boats with deeper draft must exit the Sea of Abaco through a channel between Great Guana and Whale Cay (the Loggerhead Channel), pass along Whale Cay on its ocean side, and re-enter the Sea of Abaco between Whale Cay and No Name Cay (the Whale Cay Channel). This is a pretty straightforward passage, but can be complicated by the fact that the "outside" waters are relatively shallow (for the Atlantic Ocean, anyway) as well, and prone to a sea condition referred to locally as a "rage," heavy breaking seas that may have no relation to local weather conditions. Crossing the Whale in a rage in a small boat is not advisable. Even if a crossing is not afflicted with rage conditions, there is no guarantee that the return trip will be equally calm.
Happily for us, there is no rage in the Whale. Once we leave the anchorage at Baker's Bay, we raise the sails and start to make our way offshore. The ocean had a 2-3 foot low-frequency swell running, but no breaking seas, so we were in good shape. However, there is not much wind either, so after attempting to sail, we ended up motoring part of the way. Once we crossed back in to the Sea of Abaco, the sun and sandy bottom gave us a water show worthy of photos and fantasies, and the gorgeous beaches off No Name Cay and Green Turtle Cay were calling our names (they would have to wait). By lunchtime, we are anchoring outside of Settlement Harbour in New Plymouth, Green Turtle Cay, which we'd not visited in our past travels.
New Plymouth is a sweet little town, built around the water, with tidy pastel-painted saltbox houses for homes and businesses. It's not unlike Hopetown in some respects, but the "streets" (really, glorified sidewalks, and not much wider) seem to occupy more space here more concrete and less greenery. We stopped at Laura's Kitchen for lunch of conch and grouper; it felt like eating in someone's living room, with the service just as cozy. Since it was hot and steamy outside, the air-conditioning offered a welcome break.
The business hours posted at the Barclay's Bank branch in the tidy little town of New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay have led many visitors (including me!) to consider an immediate career change.
Fortified with lunch, we hit the trail, looking for a beach. We hit the jackpot when we found Gillam Bay at low tide. The electric blue water and dazzling white/pink sand were almost painful to behold, and it was shallow -- no more than waist deep -- yards and yards away from the shore. We strolled and waded for an hour or so, and my only regret was leaving my camera in a heap with our clothes at the starting point of our walk, so pretty is this beach. Eventually, we had to turn back in order to complete our errands and be at our evening's anchorage by early evening.
One of the joys of the Abacos is that, in addition to old favorites, there are always new places to find which delight and amaze. And so it is with Gillam Bay on Green Turtle Cay, a dazzling stretch of sand and water worty of further exploration.
One of those "errands" was a stop at the legendary Miss Emily's Blue Bee Bar, birthplace of the Goombay Smash. Miss Emily's daughter now serves the drinks in these spare rooms whose walls are encrusted with glued-on business cards and other artifacts. The Smashes are STRONG, and we gulp them down just a little too quickly on this hot day. While at Miss Emily'', we meet a couple from Colorado visiting on a motor yacht (whom we might run into on Manjack, our intended next-day's anchorage), and a pair of newlyweds who'd just been married by Vernon Malone at the church on Elbow Cay and who were honeymooning at the Green Turtle Club. We leave them behind to go about our remaining chores.
Our chores include a stop at the post office (stamps for my scrapbook), a boutique (something fresh to wear to dinner), a grocery store (yogurt, bottled water, block ice), and the hardware store (cube ice). By 3:30, we are leaving Settlement Harbour and heading slightly north to White Sound. We overshot the entrance to the channel (it didn't seem like we'd gone far enough), but found it on our return and entered the very narrow channel into a snug little anchorage, surrounded by the picture-perfect resorts of Bluff House on the west side, and the Green Turtle Club on the east.
On Mike Houghton's recommendation that the Green Turtle Club is the "less stuffy" of the two, we made dinner reservations over the VHF.
We then showered and enjoyed a pre-dinner snack of cheese and crackers, washed down with Painkillers (this is the first time we've had ice!). Once ashore, I was glad to have bought a clean new sundress to wear, because everyone here was dressed up. However, I drew the line at shoes -- we moved our reservation from the inside dining room to the outside dining room so that we wouldn't have to worry about shoes. The resort is very attractive and well-groomed, in a low-key Abaco kind of way, with a clubby atmosphere (dark wood, wide plank floors, stonework) not unlike the Abaco Inn. While we enjoyed pre-dinner cocktails, the newlyweds returned, apparently not having left Miss Emily's til just now. The bride wanted a few turns on the dance floor since the groom was not willing, she hijacked Rick for a few spins.
Dinner was served promptly at 7:30, and it was an elegant and delicious affair (grouper for me, Abaco crawfish tail for Rick). It was expensive too, at over $100 including bar tab. Oh well; it's vacation. We were back on the boat at 9:30, and asleep by 10.
