The skies somewhat cleared late yesterday and we finally left the marina after 10 days there. We motor sailed over to Hope Town and anchored off the candy-striped lighthouse. It felt so good to be out moving on the water again! The lighthouse was built in 1863 and still uses a kerosene fueled mantle and a huge rotating glass Fresnel lens to send a beam of light out for about 20 miles-very old technology, but seems to work! It was decorated by volunteers with long strands of red and white strings of lights. Shortly after we anchored, we were serenaded by what sounded like a bell carillon playing Christmas music coming from the lighthouse.
We thought we had fixed everything on the boat while we were in the marina, but when we tried to anchor, our windlass wouldn’t work (motorized winch that raises and lowers the anchor)…sigh. It was too pretty an evening to worry about fixing it then so we took our comfy folding chairs and cold drinks up on the deck and watched the sun set and the full moon rise.
The lighthouse was quite a sight lit up with the full moon above it. We started out the night sleeping in the cockpit since it was such a beautiful evening, but both of us moved below at some point. The moon was too bright to sleep!
Given our many opportunities to practice trouble shooting over the last few weeks, we have gotten quite skilled at it! In the morning, we quickly found and fixed an electrical cable for the windlass that had come separated from the heavy ring terminal lug at the battery. We pulled up the anchor and headed off to Snake Cay where we were the only boat in the anchorage. In the afternoon, we took the dinghy over to a shallow natural canal that winds its way between a bunch of small rocky islands and has all sorts of water life that fellow cruisers had told us about. We saw a ton of sea turtles, star fish, smaller fish and one giant ray. I always have thought of sea turtles as slow lumbering creatures, but these guys were so fast. They accelerate like rockets and don’t even look like they are trying. They are remarkably graceful swimmers. There were also starfish everywhere-all colors and sizes. These guys were fast too! The big ones can scurry over the bottom almost too quickly for us to keep up in the dinghy. There was not a soul around and it would have been easy to get lost in the maze of islands. Parts of it were very shallow (shallow enough to ground our dinghy!) and parts were probably 15 feet deep with lots of current. Luckily we brought our iPAD and a picture of a “route”. We cooled off with a quick swim when we got back to the boat. We also saw our first Bahama dolphin in our anchorage this evening. Very cool day!
