Staniel Cay, Exumas, Bahamas

Today turns out to be another dull overcast day and we pay for the local Satellite Wifi link up to catch up with the world while we wait for the rain to clear. Ironically on Facebook everyone in the UK is saying how sunny it is back there.

Staniel Cay main street – golf carts are the only traffic here

When the rain clears we make a quick sortie ashore, we are mostly in search of the Island Store as they apparently stock propane. We walk round the attractive looking Staniel Cay Yacht Club, the bar of which is full at 1pm, they obviously have all decided there is not much else to do in the rain but we don’t like drinking in the day time and leave them to it. Staniel Cay is one main street along the waterfront with a few residential roads stretching back. The town beach is very pleasant white sand and there are some brightly coloured holiday rental cottages, an art gallery, school, police station, the ubiquitous Battleco tower and offices. We reach the church at the end of town and have found no store, we get directions from a local guy back to one of the side streets and find two stores which are like outhouses on people’s homes, but these are not the Island store. We ask inside the bright blue store (as opposed to their competitor the Pink store) and we are told to go back to the church, along the shore and over the bridge. We step outside the store and see a huge black ugly looking squall heading this way and decide to go back to the boat.

Happy People marina

The rain is in for a couple more hours and we wait it out on board. Around 4pm, the rain stops and the sky clears and the bay is a buzz with little skiffs and tenders. Kevin ventures across the bay in our dingy and pull up at the Island Store, which from the name we are anticipating to be the main one in town. When Kevin walks in there are only two shelves, obviously not. The lady behind the counter on seeing our small Camping Gas cylinder immediately says, “European Gas cylinder, nope, we don’t have any fittings for those, even if we did we have no gas until next week. You need to go to Nassau for that”. Kevin returns to the boat to report the news, we debate how hard can it be to make up a metric connection when they obviously get enough enquires for them to recognise it instantly. We discuss our travel plans and decide to get to Nassau slightly earlier to get our refill – as a good First Mate I realise the importance of the Skipper’s cup of tea in the morning, not to mention our daily espresso.

Invincible at anchor off Staniel Cay under black clouds

We have another evening on board, as we are reaching the end of our DVD collection now, Kevin has persuaded me to watch the Band of Brothers series (I’m not a bombs and bullets kind a girl). I surprise myself by rather enjoying it though – we have both learned to enjoy each others films on this trip.