Okay. We are now in Hope Town, Abacos, Bahamas. You might have seen photos of this place in magazines, travel brochures, or on the Internet. It has a candy-cane striped lighthouse sitting on a low hill above the harbor, as you can see from these photos :-) Cute little town, not a lot to offer, but definitely cleaner, neater, and less depressed-looking than Bimini or Great Harbour Cay.

When left Great Harbour Cay, in the Northern Berrys, we crossed over to Sandy Point, on the southwestern tip of Great Abaco Island. We spent one night at anchor there. We were going to buy fuel, but the water was too shallow at the one fuel dock, so we were unable to do so. We almost grounded trying to finesse our way to the dock. Consequently, we had less than a full tank when we started the open ocean part of the trip around the south end of Great Abaco. There were some fairly big rollers coming out of the Atlantic, but as the wind had been reasonably calm for a few days, that long fetch across the Atlantic had not turned into huge breaking waves, heavy chop, or anything else that would have been far too daunting to a couple of elderly novices at the art of cruising.

We had a fairly smooth sail up to Little Harbor, on the southeast side of Great Abaco. Entering the harbor required sailing (motoring) through a cut in the reef, past some rather large breakers. It was a little hairy, as the following seas were picking up the boat and running it forward. Steering through and keeping centered between the breakers, we made it into calmer waters. There is a small protected harbor there with some moorings and a very small space for anchoring. We chose a mooring.

There is nothing much there. Just a foundry were a local artist produces some bronze castings. I’m not sure whether any of them are his or if they are actually reproductions of works his artist father, who founded the community, created years ago. I do know they were priced higher than I expected, based on the quality of the works. $4200 for a lamp made from a bronze casting of a Ridley’s sea turtle seemed a bit much to me. The turtle was attractive, but nothing special. Pete - the son - also owns a pub where you can buy a Bud or Corona or Heineken or Kalik (the local Bahamian brew) for $5 a bottle. All the same price. I think they serve lunch as well, but we ate on or boat.

We spent two days there, resting after our long run from the Berrys. We then headed north. We passed Lynyard Cay, where there were some good anchorages, and continued north until we got to Tilloo Cay. We tried to anchor north of Tavern Key, as small key on the west side of Tilloo, in an area the charts recommended for anchoring, but the water was too shallow, and the holding poor, so we turned around and anchored for two days just a little bit south of Tavern Cay. Then we left for Hope Town,which is where we are now. On the way to Hope Town, we lost another alternator belt. Not wanting to risk shredding our last spare, I put it on the alternator, but shut down the port engine, planning to use it only for docking and maneuvering. We used it when we got to Hope Town,to motor slowly into the harbor and to dock at the fuel dock, but by the time we picked up our mooring in the harbor, it was starting to smell like it was getting ready to go too. I have since realigned the Balmar alternator for what I hope is the last time.

There is wifi here, so I am going to try to sign up with Skype and then call Balmar tomorrow (Monday, March 16) to see what they might say. I have heard they are very helpful, with good customer service, and I hope they can solve the problem. I already de-rated the alternator output to try to put less strain on the belt, but as that didn’t work, I am currently at a loss for what else to try, beyond removing this $1000 addition to my boat and replacing it with the old Hitachi alternator that came with the Yanmar engine. That will mean losing the ability to charge my house bank of batteries while motoring, but I would rather have a reliable engine than charging output that stops when the belt shreds anyway.

Now. Have I mentioned that boats have holding tanks? These are polyethylene (or some similar plastic) tanks that hold the effluent that travels from the heads (toilets). Sort of like a septic tank. From there, in most places in America, it is pumped out through a fitting on the deck of the boat into either a pump-out boat’s tanks, or dockside at a fuel dock or in a marina. In the Bahamas, there are no pump-out facilities. Perhaps at the more exclusive club marinas there might be, but I don’t thin so. My guide books for the Bahamas don’t mention any. Consequently, mst boats have what are called “macerator pumps”, which are like water pumps except that they have special cutting blades inside to shred and macerate any solids that might be present (sorry to get crude here.)

Have I mentioned that neither of my two macerator pumps work? If I disconnect them from their holding tanks and try to pump out a bucket of sea water, they both seem to work just fine. Hook them back up to their respective holding tanks, and - nada. The hoses appear to be open, not plugged, the valves switching between the macerator and the pump-out fittings work (I had to reverse one that had been improperly installed), but they still won’t pump out the holding tanks. So, armed with one of two spare macerator pumps the previous owner was nice enough to leave on the boat, I rigged a portable pump-out device of my own. Armored with black nitrile gloves, Shirley and I were able to empty both tanks out at sea with this device, pumping through a hose draped out of a porthole. Since we didn’t have the proper size hoses and had to improvise, this device leaked a bit. Are we having fun yet?

I hope you folks that bother to read are getting the picture. At this point, if Reggie could wave a magic wand and return the $192,000 we have spent to our bank account, he would. Armed with the knowledge he now possesses, he would buy a new Toyota crew-cab pickup, a nice fifth-wheel or straight-pull trailer, a four wheeler that would seat two, and head for the Southwestern United States, pocketing the $80,000+ difference to use for staying at RV parks and dining out regularly. That would have made my sister, Paulette, extremely happy, as she feared for or lives on this adventure. If she only knew it wasn’t dangerous, simply dirty, disgusting, frustrating and disappointing, she would have been more accepting of our choice ;-)

As the economy sucks right now, we probably couldn’t sell this boat even if we were ready to do so, but as it is we plan on sticking with it until we get a chance to try New England in the summer. If things get worse before then, or when winter starts to loom again, we will more than likely put this boat up for sale and take our losses. Unless a miracle happens in the meantime, everything starts working reliably, and we stumble onto some gorgeous locations that make all the pain worthwhile. If it weren’t for some of the terrific people we have met, it would have been a total loss so far.

Which brings us to the owners of JilliQ, another Lagoon 37 here in Hope Town, David and Gillian Hough. Very nice people who spent several hours showing us their boat, the neat modifications they have made to it, and giving us pointers on how to make some of the cruising tasks easier. Delightful people who we hope to see more of while we are here. We just might stay a month at Hope Town, with local trips to Marsh Harbor and Man-O-War Cay while we are in the area. I hope to get to one of the Hope Town wifi spots to upload this tomorrow, along with some more photos of places along the way.