Dinghy into town of Staniel Cay
Clark started the day with Chris Parker’s Weather Report
provided by “Stormy” this time. He almost slept through it because our clock
decided during the night to return to EST. When the alarm went off at 6:30, he
thought it was only 5:30 because the clock tricked him. (I used my phone clock
for the alarm). Finally I asked him why he wasn’t moving, and due to his
confusion, he told me it was too early to get up. I shoved him out of bed and
fought with the clock to get it back on DST. I hate the time changes!
We mapped out our plan for the day around the wind. Clark
said we should wait until it had died down a bit to head into town. That was
fine by me because I am really into my current novel about a town full of
witches in Maine.
Clark said we had some choices on laundry 1) do it ourselves
on board, 2) do it ourselves at the town laundromat, or 3) leave it at the
laundromat and pick it up tomorrow. Since we were at anchor, option 1 surprised
me. I did not know we could do that. We had to have the generator running, and
we could only pick and choose the clothes to wash, but of course I chose that
option! I hated the idea of dragging my laundry to town.
After waiting for the laundry to be done and having eaten
lunch, we got in the dinghy for exploration. We did not visit the town of
Staniel Cay in 2016, so it would be a totally new experience for us.
Before leaving, Clark took a picture from the chart of the city streets.
Our first stop on our trip, before heading into town, was to our neighboring / Canadian boat where we met Al, Helen, and their 10-month-old puppy. They seemed thrilled that we came by to say hello. Clark wanted to let them know we would be away from the boat and gave them our contact information should our boat decide to swing into theirs while we were away. They invited us to play a card game with them called “Help me”, but we had places to go and things to see today.
The distance to town seemed a long way by dinghy from the anchorage. It did not feel that far when we were looking around for a safe place to drop anchor. With a mostly fast ride, it did not take long to get to the fuel dock and ask where we could tie up. He said there was a “bay” around the corner to use.
We followed another dinghy in to help find it. We saw dinghies beached
on one side of the “bay”. Since we cannot do that we looked to see what else
was offered and found the “dock”, which is basically a rock wall / jetty that folks
attach their dinghies to any which way they can. A new one for us!
One of the men from the dinghy that showed us where to find
the “dock” climbed out of his dinghy and grabbed my line to show me how to secure
the boat by tying a knot in the line and shoving the knot down between the
boulders. I would never have thought of that solution.
I had Clark climb out first, so he could give me a hand climbing
up out of the dinghy onto the jetty. I managed it with no problem, but I told
Clark I could not move once I got up there. My legs had turned to jelly and
were shaking so hard I could not move. Pure fear! I have a strong fear of
falling, and it must have kicked into high gear. With a death grip on Clark’s
arm, we walked across the jetty together to safety.
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| dinghy dock! |
Clark’s first priority for our visit to town was to locate Bahamas Tel Co and talk to them about his phone. He had tried to call a number in town and got a message that the call could not go through because the account was over due. That confused Clark because we just loaded up the phone recently.
While in town, Clark also wanted to find the hardware store to look for a replacement bolt to repair the winch bolt that sheared off when the chain got stuck several days ago.
We brought garbage off the boat with us, so we asked at the marina office where to get rid of that as our first plan of action. $7.00 later, we had instructions on where to find the dumpster. From there we found someone to give us instructions to BTC to discuss the phone issue. They pointed to the huge cell tower and said, “In the building under the tower!” Duh! It was only a few feet up a hill to get there.
Our two-stop agenda took us on a 2.5 miles exploration though town. On the way to find BTC, we passed an interesting cemetery.
After that we walked along the water until we came to some cottages for rent.
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| "Swimming Piggies" Cottage |
We turned at the cottages to head up the hill towards the cell tower.
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| Clark heading up to the yellow buildings near the cell tower |
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| Colorful balls - easier to care for than flowers |
As we walked around town and saw work trucks everywhere, it became apparent that the whole island was having power issues with generators running all over town. We saw a pole going up, lots of work crews, and a few guys on trucks with power tools trimming back trees and foliage along the streets of town. Another bucket truck was pulling new wires on the poles.
We also saw a lot of signs in town
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| Isles General Enterprise |
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| Big Dog's Bar Serving SANDS brews |
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| Laundromat Sign for future reference |
On our walk to and from the hardware store, which happened to be a ways out of town and past the airport, I kept busy with the camera!
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| Clark walking towards the airport |
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| Airport |
From the airport, we continued on our way to the hardware store.
We passed over an interesting and colorful bridge with not much under it in terms of water.
At the hardware store, they had a lovely shell display on their porch.
The bolt he needed is metric. When we got there, we found out they do not sell metric hardware, so he was out of luck. Instead we bought some American Cheese for him. It cost almost $10 for the cheese - actually $8.50 + 10% VAT.
On our travels, we passed a beautiful Baptist Church. I loved the view where the water could be seen through the building.
We thought of stopping into one of the other grocery / convenience stores in town, but they were all closed. Clark's speculation was that they were closed probably due to the power problems in town.
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| Sign for "Pink Pearl" Supermarket |
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| "Pink Pearl" driveway |
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| Roosters at Pink Pearl |
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| mini garden |
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| Cactus at private house |
Clark got a chuckle out of the splicing job done on the overhead wires.
On the way back to the dinghy, we saw more beautiful views along the water.
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| Painted Rock / Cornerstone @ Town Pavilion |
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| Mermaid mural at beach |
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| St. Luke's Clinic |
The young girl shown on the left in the above picture passed us several times today on her bicycle. Then she stopped here to hang out and relax.
While I enjoyed the beach views, Clark made one last hike up the hill to visit BTC before heading back to the docks. He's in the picture at the entrance to the building. He later figured out with the help of MrSimCard, that it was the called number that was overdue and that his phone worked fine for off island calls. The overdue messageq2 may have been related to the power outage and the local phone system not working.
After that we strolled back to the docks and looked around a bit before we left.
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| Walkway back to docks |
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| Big boat at the dock |
We had seen everything we hoped to see and more, so it was time to brave the jetty and climb back into the dinghy. Approaching the dinghy "dock", we saw that at least one of the dinghies tied to the dock was no longer floating. Even though I hated the walk out to the boat, I was very glad that our dinghy was away from shore and still afloat.
We faced an extra challenge getting back to our dinghy as another dinghy had just tied up. A man, woman, and two large dogs managed to climb up onto the jetty from that dinghy. One of the dogs was less than happy to have been shoved up onto the rocks.
For some unknown reason, the man had to climb back into the dinghy (he had clearly forgotten to do something), and his wife was left holding the leashes of both feisty dogs. She apologized to us as she held the dogs to one side as best she could. In response, I said, "No worries. I'm just terrorized." She answered, "I know how you feel as the dogs are dragging me here and there!"
We managed to climb back into the dinghy with no mishaps. Clark had his hands full getting us out of the "bay" as the water had receded. As we wiggled out from between the other dinghies watching the depth, I told Clark that another dinghy was coming into the "bay". Clark blasted the horn, and the guy backed off to wait for our exit.
On our way back to "Sunset Delight" we passed a spot where a new house is under construction. Instead of digging a foundation, they had carved the space out of the side of the cliff.
All told today, according to my phone, we walked about 2.5 miles exploring Staniel Cay. Clark only took 14 of the many pictures we captured today.
After stowing the dinghy, I sat down to work on the blog while Clark serenaded me with some guitar music.
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| "Mag-Ali" at anchor at sunset |
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