As hard as it is for us all to believe, we are 5 weeks into our grand adventure. Since we last posted, we have moved on from Green Turtle Cay to Guana Cay. Getting from Green Turtle to Guana involves transiting one of the Abacos more notorious spots, the Whale Cut. The Whale as it is affectionately known, can in certain weather conditions become impassable. On the day we transited the area, the weather was moderate and although the boys experienced their first taste of sea sickness, the passage was well within acceptable safety limits and we were soon pulling into calmer waters to moor for the evening. While at Guana, we made the obligatory visit to one of the Abacos more celebrated beach bars known as Nippers. The grog was great and the food delicious but the view of the Atlantic reef off of Guana is what makes this spot a truly must see spot.
During our time in Guana Cay, we secured Pilots’ Discretion to a mooring ball in Settlement Harbor. Some of the reviews that we had read indicated that the mooring balls were too close together and poorly secured so we paid particular attention to our chart plotter and anchor alarm to ensure that we were not drifting during the night. In the end, we found no problem with the security of the moorings but we will acknowledge that had all of the moorings been taken, they would have been closer together than we would have been comfortable with. The good news for us is that it is still the slow season in the Abacos and as such, we have felt anything but crowded wherever we have been. Our stop in Guana Cay was capped, watching and celebrating the Giants win of game 7 of the World Series. I know for a fact, exactly where I was when the Giants won their first pennant in my lifetime and I am pretty sure that Ryan and Ronan will always remember watching the World Series on the big screen at Grabbers Grill in Guana Cay in October 2014.
We have had some technical issues pertaining to our battery chargers ability to replenish our ship’s batteries after a couple of nights at anchor. As a result, we modified our route plan to incorporate a stop in Marsh Harbor to seek out a qualified electrician to help us address our concerns. Originally, we had planned on proceeding from Guana Cay to Hope Town on Elbow Cay, entirely bypassing Marsh Harbor. Given that Marsh Harbor is the third largest city in the Bahamas and the largest in the Abacos, we elected to avail ourselves of the services that frankly would not have been available in the stops that we had planned.
Based upon the reviews that we had read, we stopped at the Harbor View Marina in Marsh Harbor and found the facilities and staff to îboth be first rate. It turns out that Troy, the owner of the marina comes from a family with deep roots within the same industry that I have spent my career is working in ( the airline industry) Troy has gone out of his way to to help address our electrical issue going so far as flying his own plane to Florida to pick up a new battery charger that I had shipped to a convenient location. To say that we highly recommend Harbor View Marina would be a gross understatement.