Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Green Turtle Cay and Hopetown

 We are spending a little time in Hopetown.

We spent several days at Powell Cay doing some beach walking and hiking.  I must have gotten into something poisonous because I had what felt like small bites on my leg and it progressed to a series of itchy bumps that turned red and took several weeks to get back to normal.  Otherwise it was a good time.  While walking the beach I recovered a piece of rope that had washed up and I had plans for it.  We left Powell and moved back to Manjack Cay.  While walking these beaches I recovered several more ropes with plans for them also.  It seems that fishing boats lose nets and lines fairly often judging by the debris on the beaches.  We planed on spending Christmas at Green Turtle and after several days we moved back and tied up on Donny's dock again.  Our new neighbor at the dock was from New Bern and we found we had many friends and acquaintances in common.  

New Plymouth, the settlement on Green Turtle, was decorated for Christmas and were about to start their traditional morning caroling.  They have a tradition of welcoming the Spirit of Christmas by gathering before sunrise and go about the town singing Christmas carols accompanied by several drums.  We, along with several other cruisers joined them in the festivities.  I went the first and last day, Cori went every morning, I'm not much of a morning person.  While sitting on the boat at Manjack I started weaving a rope into a rope rug and finished it at the dock.  It now greets you at the door of the showers at Donny's docks.  We helped Donny with several projects around the yard and docks, they are still recovering from hurricane Dorian two years ago.  There are a lot of changes to the town and island from the hurricane and recovery will take a long time.  It was interesting hearing their stories.  Christmas Eve we did a few projects on the boat.  I made a rug from an old line Donny was going to throw away.  Christmas Day we took it easy.  The next day Cori was able to go deep water fishing and I had a lazy day on the boat.  We went to several of the beaches while here and are somewhat disappointed that we are not finding as many shells as we had previous years.  We did find the ice cream shop which is very reasonable priced for the largest single scoop cup we have found.  Several trips were made.  We also attended several fundraisers put on by people trying to raise money to rebuild after the hurricane.  We also attended the Christmas Festival where Santa Claus makes his appearance.  New Providence is a sister city to Key West, Florida.  Their is a foundation formed that helps support the community.  The citizens for Key West send presents for the children and this year there was supposed to be a group of children from Key West that were coming over to present the presents.  Due to the Pandemic that was canceled but the presents were sent.  At the end of the festival Santa arrived on the back of a firetruck donated by Key West, their firetruck was destroyed in the hurricane.  Santa handed out presents to every child there and the looks on their faces as they showed off the packages was priceless.  We also noticed that the presents were not unwrapped but taken home to be unwrapped at Christmas.

On Monday, the 27th, we left catching the high tide to move down to Hopetown on Elbows Cay.  To get there we had to go out around Whale Cay into the ocean then through a pass back into the Sea of Abaco.  If conditions are not good it can be a very uncomfortable ride.  We stopped at Spoil Cay for the night and went beachcombing in the morning.  Later we moved down to Man O War Cay and anchored off the north end of the island.  We dinghied into town to check it out and compare it to our memories from pre-Dorian.  They are making headway on recovery but have a long way to go.  The next day we moved down to Hopetown and anchored outside the harbor near the lighthouse.  We hung out here for several days taking the dinghy into town to act like tourists and visit with friends there.

New Years Eve we pulled anchor and on the high tide we moved into the harbor and took a mooring back in out favorite corner.  We have been hanging out here visiting with friends and other cruisers.  Our friends Lee and Cheryl from Martha's Vineyard are here and we have been spending a bit of time with them.  We have been wandering about the island, spending some time on the beaches and checking out the changes.  We have had several days of high winds and are due for several more this week.

Once the cold fronts let up we are planning to continue further south.












Line and nets washed up on shore, There is a lot of this.



Asking the eternal question: WHY?




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