Today we finally got a break from the wind so with high tide at 11:15 we decided to get out and do some dinking up Hill's Creek. It was still a bit breezy in there gettng the surface all rippled up but we still managed to see a number of Rays, turtles, a baracuda and yes, another small Hammerhead. We played a bit of tag with the hammerhead and caught this photo.

If you click on the photo and zoom in all the way you might make out a bit of a lump on the left side of the head sort of almost enough to indicate it's a H-head. It was pretty quick so we could not get a better shot of it.

PS. Don't try this at home with the fully grown ones.

We also were able to snap a photo of a relatively small turtle. This one was a bit lazy today soaking up sun in the shallows. This reptiles normally shoot away from the boat at good speed. You'd never think they could move that fast but they are in their element.

Updated the GPS log with the TCDink path.

Carleton Point

Hopefully you can read this. It would make walking 5 miles round trip worth while.

Ok cheap shot.

Actually the weather was great and the walk was fun. We walked all along the beach at Treasure Cay in a northerly direction until we came to the path through the brush that leads to Carleton Point. The plaque is fixed into the rocks on the point in a place above high water but certainly not out of harms way of the water.

If you did not know where to look you would probably never find this spot. Interesting to see that this is where the loyalists landed. Sort of like Plymouth Rock I suppose.

Anyway, along the way back there were all of these lumps in the sand. Not very high, just a sort of bump that easily collapsed when stepped on. Probably a couple of inches in diameter. Anyway, moving along the beach on the way back, all of a sudden Deb screams and I wonder if Russia has launched an invasion or if Fidel's brother has decided I've had too much of his rum.

One of the bumps in the sand emptied out and ran across her foot as she walked by it. It was a crab about 3 inches wide. Woooo Whhhoooo...

As to the webcam, I had it cranked up pretty good until roadrunner decided I was hitting the server too hard. Sixty bucks a month. I can get web hosting with unlimited (they say anyway) bandwidth for 10 bucks a month and 1000 email addresses. Tack on an air card and why would someone want Roadrunner?

Taking a Break

It's been so busy down here with the warm sunny weather that well, the blog slipped my mind. So where was I....
When last I updated this we had finished a really good dink into the shallow spots around here. We hope to get one more in before we shove off next week. We'll head to Bluff House or Green Turtle on Green Turtle Cay. But since that dink ride we've been busy cleaning and waxing along with some minor repairs.
It seems the undersink water filter decided it reached the end of it's service life and started a slow leak that pooled up a couple of gallons of water in the cabinet. Cleaning up that mess and driving down to Marsh Harbour for parts facilitated the repair which was to jumper out the filter.
We went over to a protracted happy hour at Tipsey's here on the "resort" and settled in to perhaps do some dancing. As it turned out about the only people that showed up were some 15 or 16 year olds that literally had money falling out of their pockets (shades of Natalie Holloway in Aruba) and a couple of guys here for scuba. They mingled somewhat and the guys realized the situation was untenable and moved on to drink and start telling everyone "I love you guys".... We never did any dancing and managed to escape the hugs.
As may be obvious with the Navy Jack I've started messing around with Javascripts and HTML. At some point we will have an "air card" and be able to drive a webcam non-stop. Given verizon is non-existant here this will wait until at least Florida. However once we get to a location that offers wi-fi without all the firewalls I may actually be able to FTP the images up to roadrunner and link them to the blog. Could be fun.
I just have to get a cheap pair of sunglasses for the webcam. It refuses to handle the excessive UV we get down here in the warm sunlight. Not only that but the glare from the clear water also has a negative impact on the camera. Since I held up a pair of sunglasses to it I know this is a good temp fix until we can locate a viable alternative.
But hey, I hear it's Spring now in the US. Even up in Alaska. I hear that the snowfall up there is down to 8 inches a storm now, and with the volcano perhaps things will warm up a bit more, and the ash should help keep the roads from getting too slick.

By the way. You can't get Havanna Club Rum in the 'States. Cigars aren't the only thing they do well in Cuba. This can be had in a snifter and one might think it was a Cognac sort of drink. A little on the "dry" side but for the money it beats spending 60 bucks on something else!

Dinkin' around Treasure Cay

We've had some good weather lately although today it's bad. But anyway, I've loaded a few more photos into the bucket and I've updated the gps tracks with the data. The track labeled DinkingAroundTC within the Northbound + Southbound2 folder is probably a fun one to run as a tour within Google Earth. We almost (accidentally) found a second opening back onto the Sea of Abaco. All we had to do was continue a bit further. However with the tide situation about to change direction to a falling tide we elected to turn around and get out of the shallow water.
Along the way we ran into a group of 9 spotted rays, various other fish and turtles. It never ceases to amaze us how fast the turtles can move when swimming. There's no way we could catch one.

Crown Haven via car

Yesterday we rented a car and drove up to the northern tip of Little Abaco. There were less interesting places to see along the way which was a bit of a let down. Up north of Treasure Cay there are a few towns but it seems that people are not as well off as they are down south. There are actually some ports on the main island North of Marsh Harbour and we visited them by car since they are not large enough to accomodate Freedom.
There are a couple of shanty towns and people are less friendly looking than they are down south. But we went to Marsh Harbour and restocked on food and ran into some folks we'd met and had a good time with them over lunch.
The internet connection has been severed from the marina here so this connection I have has no Skype ability and it is very slow. We heard something about upgrades being performed so perhaps this will be restored shortly. We've seen some trucks around all weekend.

Yo Ray? What're you doing out here?

Today we took an early dink ride before the tide went out and the sun got too hot. Along the west shore south of Treasure Cay there are some small bays, etc. that you can go into with a dink. The first one we went into had a strong tidal current running out and smack in the middle of it was a group of Rays. If you click on it you may be able to see their spots.

Along with the Rays we saw schools of fish, snapper, angles, grunts, rass's, and at one point, a young hammer head shark.

Quite the nature trail this morning.

Dinkin' round Don't Rock

Today provided us with some photos that made it difficult to choose which one I'd imbed. So instead of going for lots of content I went with this one. Every where we went in the dink today it was like we were suspended in a perfectly maintained pool of crystal clear fresh water. This particular image is looking South East towards the Southern tip of Whale Cay with Guana Cay off in the distance.

The dink ride today took us out to Sand Bank Cay where we did some shelling. This was a great stop and just south of the rumb line around the Don't Rock passage. In fact several center consoles zipped by while we were walking around on the Cay. But Freedom will never see this route going back North. While high tide might provide safe passage, I'm thinking no way. It's too risky. We saw a catamaran hung up using the route on the lee of Whale Cay when we got out there. They were smart enough to try it on a rising tide and so it was not long before they were under way again. Given the conditions at the Whale I wonder why they bothered to cut it short and use the inside route. I hope we have conditions like this when we come back around the Whale.

So we spent some time at Whale Cay and it was great but we could not find a path to the Atlantic side. Perhaps another day. From here we went over to Don't Rock and this shot was taken as we left Whale Cay. After having a look at the rock in the middle of no where, we shot back to the marina and took a dive in the pool.

Life's tough. Hope it stays that way. Don't Rock is the first image, and the second is the shot of leaving Whale Cay.

Back To Treasure Cay from Orchid

We spent Saturday on Guana Cay at Grabber's and enjoyed a local band. For three pieces, one of which was a saw, they did a great job. They almost got me up to dance. Don't tell Deb ok?

While we were at Grabber's we had lunch and it was one of the best we recall having on the whole trip. It could be we had a few frozen drinks along the way therse inffecting our jurdgement but I think not. The lunch was really that good. Seared tuna and a blackened grouper burger. The price was right and we had free entertainment to go with it!

The other photo is different story.

We have satellite tv on the boat and it's been fine until we got to Marsh Harbour at the Harbour view marina. That was where the reception started to act up. We pulled in and as part of settling in I went to align the dish. It refused to get signal. I looked over the dish and saw that a sailboat mast was perfectly lined up with the dish (from my weary eye's point of view). When I moved the boat forward a couple of feet by adjusting the lines the problem was gone so I figured that I had it shot.

When we crossed over to Treasure Cay from Marsh Harbour and went through the alignment the process once more it was a royal pita to align the dish and it would wink out every once in a while when the boat was still. But it was not bad and we had heard rumors of satellite reconfiguration affecting reception.

Over at Orchid bay where the docks are subject to surge from the Sea of Abaco and ferry wakes, the reception was bad. No news in the morning. And Gawd forbid no Nascar in the afternoon. Given it was so rough we ignored it.

And then we came back to Treasure Cay today and the dish refused to connect with the satellites. Looking at the photos one might conclude that the connection had soured.

That would be correct.

I suspect it was due to the rough ride we had going into Little Harbour. I kid you not, we had a mess of spray all over the boat when that ride was a done deal. Some of it found its way into that connector as well.

Fortunately I had spare connectors and my coax tools. Nascar is back online, Biffle has been dismissed and Stuart is well, holding his own.

Barefoot Man concert at Nipper's

The water on the way over to Orchid from Treasure was choppy but Freedom handled it very well. In fact since we had not opened her up in quite a while we took her up to 14 knots for about a 1/2 hour. Heck it probably scrubbed a mess of growth off her bottom. Now all I have left is the trim tabs which remain quite furry.

Once here we realized that time was of the essence and that Nipper's was calling. Over at Orchid bay we could hear people cheering and we could sense the show was about to start so we hustled off the boat and up to Nippers.

It was definitely worth while in a frivolous sense. Is that an oxymoron? We don't care. We all laughed quite a bit and really enjoyed the show. The man has a good sense of humor and has many parody style songs that all have a punch line. Since there was no cover charge we considered the day well spent even tho, well, we did nothing. Fun none the less!

And yes, he also has a problem identifying Alice.

Treasure Cay Beach and Orchid Bay

The Barefoot Man is having a concert at Nipper's. It's perhaps a 10 mile trip across the sea of Abaco from Treasure cay so hopefully this goes smoothly.

While we've been here, we've walked the entire leght of the beach and this photo is of the other end of the beach. The marina is behind that other end. Along the walk a couple of fun things happened.

We paused to look out towards Whale Cay for a couple of minutes and towards the end of the gaze a spotted eagle ray jumped clear of the water right in front of us! It was about 10 yards off shore but right in front of us. Deb must have thought it was going to land on her. Next and a little further on we saw a couple of small turtles swimming in the small waves. So in spite of the fact that there were no shells to be found we had some interesting breaks along the walk.

Marsh Harbour To Treasure Cay

Today we moved her up north a bit to Treasure Cay. As you can see from the photo the water looks choppy. The wind was blowing a sustained 25 knots and occassionally it hit 35. Since it was out of the SSW it amounted to a quartering following sea thus the ride was about as smooth as it could have been under the circumstances.
It was only two feet of chop but it had a short wave period so we popped quite a bit of spray up onto the bow. It hit the bridge enclosure a couple of times but over all the ride went well and we are now in the Treasure Cay marina where we intend to stay for a month to capitalize on the reduced long term rates. GPS data updated.