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Published: April 18th 2011
Georgetown, Bahamas 2010-2011
After arriving in Georgetown on December 5th, we quickly settled into our new routine of living at anchor in Elizabeth Harbor. This harbor is made up of 6 or 7 different anchorages, each with its own personality. We prefer Volleyball Beach anchorage because it is at the heart of the cruising activities. Because Double-Wide draws less than 4’, we are able to anchor very close to shore. Our life at anchor is strictly, “off the grid”. We must depend on our battery bank to power the electrical appliances we use, including radios, PC, cell phone and lights. We have several ways to replenish the batteries. Primarily we depend on our solar panels, then our wind generator and finally, we have a 4.2 kw generator that can power a battery charger.
The daily routine in Georgetown consists of waking at 06:30 to listen to our weather guru Chris Parker give his Bahamas forecast followed by cruisers calling in on their single sideband radios looking for weather routing advise for passages along the East coast and the Bahamas. Next we have breakfast and then try to do boat chores such as repairing things that have stopped working
or preventive things like oil changes and filter replacements. Next we take care of trips across the harbor to the little settlement of Georgetown where we buy groceries (mostly fresh fruits & vegetables) do laundry, and fill our collapsible jugs with free RO water from the tap at the dinghy dock. We have a watermaker and while we are traveling we make water whenever the engine is running. However, when we anchor at Georgetown for a prolonged period we need an outside source of electricity to run the watermaker. We rarely run the genset just to make water. It takes about 6/10 of a gallon of fuel per hour to run the genset and we were paying about $5.00 per gallon for fuel. Since we make 9 gallons of water per hour that equates to $.66 per gallon to make water.
The afternoons in Georgetown usually include socializing and playing volleyball from 2:30 – 4:30 each day. Most of the cruisers congregate on Volleyball beach, either near the volleyball courts or in the “Chat & Chill” beach bar. The entire area is entertained by the reggae music from Johnnie’s Conch Salad Stand. Besides the cruisers, the beach is also
a gathering place for tourists from the hotels in and around Georgetown & Great Exuma. Occasionally, celebrities show up at the “Chat & Chill” like Johnny Depp who owns an Island just north of Great Exuma or Al Roker who grew up in Roker’s Point on Great Exuma.
The evenings are when we have beach parties or bonfires, invite other couples over for dinner or take part in some of the organized activities like Texas Hold’em Poker and trivia contests at a local grill. Some nights are fun just to relax in the cockpit and watch the sunset. Just as the sun disappears there is always a chorus of conch horns blowing to signal the end of another day in paradise. Watching DVD’s of movies or TV shows is also very popular. Many cruisers enjoy playing a board game call “Sequence”. Usually, 3 or 4 couples gather and play men against the women. There usually are adult beverages being consumed during these games.
Our second week in Georgetown, we moved to the other side of the harbor to get better protection from an approaching cold front. After the front passed we were preparing to get under way. I
turned on the engines and went forward to raise the anchor. Just as I reached the bow I heard a bad crunching noise and heard Nancy yelling that something was burning. I rushed back to the cabin and as I opened the door to the engine room I found black smoke pouring from the space. I quickly shut off the port engine and went to survey the damage. The starter motor had shorted out causing it to engage the engine while running – hence the crunching sound. The entire boat smelled like there had been a four alarm fire inside. I was able to remove the bad starter after things had cooled down, but it was toast.
Our daughter Julie and her husband Dan were scheduled to fly to Georgetown on the 19th. I had just enough time to call Yanmar and get a new starter shipped to Julie before she left for the Bahamas. Once, they arrived with the new part we were able to get the port engine up and running again.
Another very popular activity is the hunt for the elusive Bahamian Lobster. Most days when the winds and seas are calm, there will be
a string of dinghies heading out to the reefs full of people in wetsuits, carrying pole spears. Spearing lobsters or group or snapper is probably the biggest single sport for cruising sailors in the Bahamas. Ollie from the sailboat “Dejarlo” is generally considered to be the best hunter in GT. He is a certified Master Diver and has been diving for many years. He invited my son-in-law Dan and I to go out with him one morning. It was quite an experience. He took us to a reef just off the north end of Stocking Island that was made up of beautiful gold Elkhorn coral. It was about 20-30 feet below the surface but you could see the gold color from the surface. It was all Dan and I could do to free dive down to the coral take a quick look for lobster and then swim back to the surface. In the mean time Ollie was able to glide around on the bottom for what seemed like minutes. Several times I made two trips down to each of Ollie’s turns. I guess that is why Ollie shot 3 lobsters to our none. Since Ollie almost always comes back with
something, he gave us 2 of the 3 so we could have seafood for dinner that night.
Christmas in Georgetown is always special. People run around in their dinghies dropping off gifts of cookies or candy. On Christmas Eve there is a bonfire on the beach and everyone sings carols and someone usually reads the Christmas story. This year there were several very good musicians that played their instruments as we sang. On Christmas day there was an organized Potluck Dinner at the picnic tables under the Casuarina trees at Volleyball Beach. We organized tables of ten people and those ten people coordinated the dinner for that table. Julie, Dan Nancy and I ate with our friends on “Nice & Easy – Bill & Sue from Annapolis, Star Gazer – Gary & Ingrid from Toronto, and Tilt – Chris & Craig from Michigan.
We found a restaurant called Augusta Bay that had a nice little TV room just off the bar and used that as a place for all of the Baltimore Ravens fans to gather and watch the football games that were available over the satellite TV. We were able to watch 3 or 4 very good
games including the playoffs. Unfortunately, our team could not find a way to beat the Steelers.
One of the fun things we did this season was take a couple of dinghy trips along with several other couples. We would pack a picnic lunch and load the dinghy with a full gas tank and head south from our anchorage along the shore of Great Exuma. Our course would wind through mangroves, past shallow Moriah harbor, and into several narrow shallow areas not accessible by deep draft sailboats. Finally, we would arrive at the very southern tip of Great Exuma. There we would land our dinghies on what is known locally as “Tropic of Cancer Beach”. This is a remote white sand beach at exactly, 23 degrees 30’. North Longitude. One of the highlights of swimming off this beach is a narrow channel between Great Exuma and Little Exuma that provides a very fast moving current. We all took turns floating through the channel much like riding a lazy river at a water park.
Besides all of the fun we have on our winter cruise, a lot of our time and energy is spent keeping all of our boat systems
Nancy Pam & Sue
All dressed in pink for a night of Sequencefunctioning properly. This winter we were faced with several challenges but the biggest problem we faced was when our battery bank began to fail. Since we are living at anchor and totally off the grid, our batteries were what made most things work. I knew that the boat was now nearing six years old and the original batteries were coming towards the end of their life. However, it is hard to spend the money for new batteries while the old ones still seemed to be working fine. This proved to be a bad decision. Once the batteries began to fail, we had to scramble to order new ones from a dealer in Miami. Then we had to have them loaded on a small ship and delivered to Georgetown. Once they arrived, we needed to get them cleared through customs, loaded on a boat and delivered to our boat. Luckily, the timing worked out perfect with our order arriving at the Port of Miami just hours before the cut off time. We had a our new batteries installed in just 7 days after I ordered them. It proved to be an expensive lesson on when to replace batteries.
One Saturday
on the morning radio net, it was announced that there would be a bus trip to the small village of Barraterre where they were having their annual festival. We joined this group for a very interesting day. We left the Exuma market about 10:00 AM on one of two busses full of cruisers. The 45 minute bus ride was very interesting since it went through the north end of Great Exuma which has several colonies of vacation homes and scattered small farms that produce most of the produce sold locally. As we departed the bus we could smell the grill on the waterfront that was already cooking ribs, chicken, lobster, and conch. Also, the local sailors were rigging their Bahamian sloops for the days racing events. We were treated to performances from the local high school band as we waited for lunchtime to arrive. The excellent lunch was followed by the first of the sloop racing. Despite the light wind , there was some spirited racing. The boats start at anchor with sails down and then have a Lemans type start. The crew uses long wooden planks as hiking boards to keep the small boats from flipping over.
After
the races we boarded our bus and suddenly realized that the colorful character at the bar during lunch was our driver “Bahama Obama”. On the way back he kept us all entertained with stories as he constantly turned 180 degrees from his seat to talk to us. This was while he was negotiating the winding 2 lane roads. Somehow we made it back in one piece to end a memorable day.
One of the things we like about Georgetown is that one never knows what might happen next. One Saturday morning as we were eating our breakfast, a couple of small launches pulled up to the beach just in front of us and began unloading all sorts of camera equipment and people with lights and other props. Suddenly, we were practically right in the middle of a photo shoot, complete with super-models. We never did find out what magazine was doing the shoot so if you see a swim suit article with Double-Wide in the background please let us know.
We had several musical sing along nights aboard Double-Wide during the winter. One time we had as many as 16 people aboard with Doug from “About Time” and
Gary from “Star Gazer” playing guitar and Ukelele. On calm nights the music could be heard over much of the anchorage.
The end of the year Regatta was fast approaching and we were making final plans to head back North through the Abaco Islands as we end up our fourth cruising season.
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