TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Our trip from Royal Island, Eluthera, across the Northeast Providence Channel (Eluthera to Great Abaco) consisted of 11.5 hours of washing machine time. The 15 knots from behind us was fine except that it took a nap in the afternoon, so our speed dropped to 4 knots. The Atomic main increased our speed. BUT the 6-7 foot swell on the beam was unrelenting. Given the wing on wing sail position we had no way to stop rolling between 20 degrees on one side then tossed over to 10 on the other. I’m still looking for my left eyeball. We came in the Little Harbour cut and anchored at Black Point Cat, near Pelican Harbour. We moved on to Hopetown, a very quaint, well kept town that appeared to consist mostly of small houses converted to vacation cottages that are a potpourri of pastel shades punctuated by the occasional explosion of brilliant red, pink or yellow flowers. We moved to Man-o-war Cay to attend its “historical day”. Loyalists arrived here circa 1780 to escape harassment by the republican mob. Now many well kept homes (no garbage, everything painted, flower or shell gardens, a few well stocked stores, a functioning economy – boat building, fishing, tourists) border the concrete roads. Golf carts, the usual conveyance, leave you little room, but courtesy is common so “no problem mon”. Most noticeably everyone is white. A few Haitians work at the more menial jobs. But they ferry to their homes in Marsh Harbour for the night. They are highly regarded as hard working folk who likely departed Haiti on a less-than-seaworthy boat to find employment to support their family back in Haiti. This is a strongly religious community with about four fundamentalist churches for the 150 residents. Alcohol cannot be sold here. We attended an award ceremony for two outstanding citizens. In addition to the speeches, three hymns and prayers were included in the agenda. It reminds me very much of rural Ontario about 60 years ago. It is the most economically viable community in the Bahamas. Half of the island contains the local fulltime residents. The other half is dotted with cottages/mansions, all nestled into the vegetation. Picturesque describes everything you see here. We snorkelled on the ocean side and were surprised to see many larger fish (14" rather than 6-8") than we see on the bank side.