We were up early cleaning the boat ready for our visitors and getting ready for our trip to the Blue Hole with Zoe a nice local lady who had offered us a lift. Unfortunately Claudia from the marina arrived at 8.30 with a note from Zoe to say she’d had to cancel because something had come up but she could take us the next day. We had already planned to make tracks the next day – I have a schedule for us now to make sure we make it to Nassau on time. We weren’t keen on a four mile walk in the searing heat with not a breath of wind to go ourselves and no car hire or public transport locally, we decided we’d have to miss that one.
We watched in amusement at the stream of large sports fishing boats / cruisers pulling up alongside us on the fuel dock. Last night a 65ft Betram Fishing boat – 1500 US Gallons, 60ft custom build sport fishing boat 1300 US gallons, Motor cruiser 2000+ gallons, then another sports fishing boat, then another motor cruiser called Enterprise (complete with spaceship logo). Although the marina has four very large fuel tanks each larger than the two that the local petrol station has and one tanker delivery during the afternoon, by the evening they had run dry. We agreed that we could both live comfortably on the profits just for the fuel pumps here. It’s hard to conceive the scale of fuel usage of these boats, but as the only marina between George Town and the Turks and Caicos they obviously get a large proportion of the cruisers passing. I like to amuse myself with counting out the fuel bill in the seconds as these boats zoom by us (£5…£10…) but we sail by for fee, especially as they seem to like to pass very close for a look leaving us 2 minutes later with their wake as beam on swell.
We tried in the afternoon to get beer as we had visitors due, it is obviously a precious commodity on the Bahamas. There are plenty of bars, but the shops don’t seem to stock it and are surprised you’d even ask. We’d been directed to a small hut type bar with no seats on Friday who’d assured us if we came back on Monday when he went to the wholesalers we could get a case from him. On Monday we arrived, someone else was there who looked very dubious about getting us a crate of beer but took our number to call us back. We weren’t too sure about this and didn’t want to be inhospitable so called in at the Winter Haven to get some take outs and goggle at the novel TV whilst we had a beer ourselves.
Ruth and Geoff arrived on time and we had a very pleasant evening sharing cruising experiences – disappointed with the Caribbean compared to the idyllic notion before leaving mostly due to unfriendly locals, really enjoying the Bahamas, very pleased with having a catamaran but also idealising cities and other future treats in the states such as well stocked supermarkets. Geoff and Ruth have a 38ft Prout catamaran and have been cruising 2 years but are on their way back to Canada now to start work again. We found we had lots in common and agreed we’d sail the next leg together to the north of Long Island.
Whilst they were with us, someone from the bar turned up with our crate of beer, delivered directly to the boat, what good service!
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