Sunday 24 May 2009

Flying Fish Marina, Clarence Town, Long Island, Bahamas

On Sunday we caught up with a few internet jobs as we had Wifi, trying to get the blog up to date etc. As I had yet again managed to go out without the camera the night before I made Kevin come for a walk with me in the heat of the day to get the photos we’d missed of Clarence Town the day before.

Clarence Town contains two churches designed by Father Jerome a famous local figure who also built a hermitage on nearby Cat Island. The Saints Peter and Paul Church sits on a hill in the middle of town and is a beautiful building with its twin towers and stark white walls. The town itself is quite spread out but nicely kept and is obviously not Seventh Day Adventist as about 50% of the buildings seem to be bars. There are a quite a few derelict small hut type houses which appear to have been deserted to build the larger replacement alongside and left to the tropical vegetation to regrow. It reminded us a bit of the Highlands of Scotland where the crofts have been deserted and the less attractive concrete bungalows built alongside.

 

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Saints Peter & Paul church

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Second Father Jerome church

The view across the bay is stunning and we were pleased to get good sunlight for our photos as we’d had rain and dark clouds again in the morning.

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View across the Clarence Town bay

In the afternoon I went to the laundry whilst Kevin did some boat jobs. In there I got talking to a nice young Canadian couple who had arrived shortly after us to anchor in the bay and were the ones we’d heard on the VHF. We were talking for the full duration of wash, dry and another wash as we exchanged experiences having travelled the same route almost. They have also visited some of the places in the States that we are planning and gave us some tips. I invited them to our boat the following evening to meet Kevin.

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View from Flying Fish Marina wall to channel

We decided to head out to the Grill again for a couple of beers to enjoy the local atmosphere. Tonight was mostly locals and they were playing dominoes, it could almost have been any local pub back in the UK – especially when the rain started outside!  

DSC05815 (1280x960)  View across the Clarence Town bay

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