Loving Harbour Island - Blog by Anja
We've been on the boat for about a week and during this time we've learned a lot about each other, doing all the shifts daytime as well as night-time sailing. We have seen sunrise and sunset, stars and other boats sailing like us at night-time – floating with lots of lights on the horizon.
In the Bahamas we visited three different islands, each one with its own characteristics. My favourite was definitely Harbour Island, while it had the best sandy beaches ever. That island was really alive: we even found a five star hotel with Wi-Fi, a view and Pina Coladas! We stayed a couple of hours on the beach – Ann and Gitte tried to spot where to dive to see some colourful fish, but without success. In the meantime, Dirk and I went to a bar where we drank a Bahama Mama. Yes it was a bit of bar crawling :)
We left the beach to meet the others at a restaurant in town. Ann had rented a golf cart in which we squeezed five people. Now we were ready for some serious sightseeing on the island. Unfortunately, Ann forgot that they drive on the opposite side of the road, thinking everyone was waving to us out of happiness. I tell you it was not!
At the restaurant we met the hard working beach chair lady, who now was our waitress. She was sister to the owner of the restaurant and by coincidence also sister to our water taxi chauffeur. All in all, it was one big welcoming family on this island. We ate conch (don't know what it is – only it is a type of shellfish and tasted really good). Leaving the restaurant we discovered that the whole town was in the streets dancing and playing music. They were rehearsing for their dancing parade on Boxing Day.
The next day on Eleuthera Island we enjoyed our last few hours swimming and snorkelling. Lacking our little rubber boat I had a rope with an inflatable blue ring around my waist. In spite of currents we succeeded in finding the coral reef with colourful fish. I feel I've seen the Bahamas from several angles. I just need to see the dolphins now. I might have to buy a postcard for that!
Report from Bosun Bertram:
Its 14:00 and we have now been sailing for exactly 24 hours since pulling up the anchor from outside Harbour Island. Yesterday we had great winds giving us an average of up to 8 knots, but over night the wind dropped to a dead zero, leaving us no choice but to put on Mr. Perkins, the main engine. Around noon the wind picked back up and we are now doing an average of 6-7 knots by the genoa and the main. The genoa we put up yesterday instead of the yankie to test the newly made repairs from our stopover back in Newport. We are about 35 nautical miles out of Fort Lauderdale expecting to be there late this afternoon to have dinner ashore.
Local time on board is 14:00 and our current position is 28.08'787N, 78.27'803W.