Always sunny?? Nope!!!

Right now we're hunkered down, anchored with 140' of chain out just off Sand Dollar Beach in Georgetown, Exumas. We'll be here for a few days as a front blows through.  Often these are short-lived, but this one's kind of stalling over us, so the rain and 30-40 knot gusts are forecast to last about 4 days. Yuk.  Here's the little teeny hill we're trying to hide behind...

 Took this a minute ago through the dodger

 This big power boat to the right behind us has 250' of chain out.

Well, it's a good day to send a blog post, read, cook, paint, clean things and nap.

Sooooooo back to the sunny Bahamas!! I'm going to back-track a couple of days. Below is amazing Fernandez Bay on Cat Island where only three boats were anchored on a stunning 1-mile beach. Neverland, and our friends Radeen and Hayden on Island Spirit and Wendy and Jim on Patty Jean. Pretty nice!!

Fernandez Bay has a little resort on the beach with a few "cottages", some for rent and others privately owned. Here are a couple of the cottages. Not shabby and not inexpensive, we're told.

 

There's a main lodge with a great room, a restaurant, a little boutique, tiki huts on the beach, water sports equipment and an outdoor bar.

The best news is --- the resort is open for business to cruisers!!! The owners and staff are super friendly and accommodating. We had a great and very affordable lunch in the restaurant, I bought a pretty swimsuit on sale in the boutique (Anne Cole - $30!!! Crazy!), and the outdoor bar is an honor system bar. You make your own drinks and keep a written tab and pay at the end. Awesome.  I guess that's what we get for having romantic-looking sailboats as part of the scenery for the resort guests as they kick back in their lounge chairs on the beach. We didn't see many resort guests, and there is no ferry or anything, but there's a little airstrip nearby to fly in. We heard that pilots often stay there.

Here's Jim drinking a rum punch at the bar

The indoor part of the restaurant with a beautiful palm-frond roof

 Another view of the bar next to the beach

 View from the bar

 The restaurant at night

Well. Fernandez Bay is an amazing place and I'd go back in a heartbeat. But it isn't well enough protected to anchor there in non-easterly wind, so we left the third day in a stiff breeze and beam-reached doing 6-7 knots an hour for the whole 50+ miles across Exuma Sound to Georgetown in the Exumas. Because Exuma Sound is open water, it was a very spirited sail with a steady 14-18 knots of wind and sizable waves smacking us on the beam. You get a bit wet sometimes! We were heeled over about 30 degrees and really romping along. We crossed the Sound with our friends on Island Spirit and on the way Hayden caught a huge tuna! We had a line out too and had a couple of bites but no luck catching any fish. Hayden and Radeen had to slow their boat down to about 2 knots to be able to even reel in the tuna. Hayden gaffed it and bled it over the side, with the fish hanging upside down from a line around the tail. Then the really tricky part - fileting the fish in the cockpit while under full sail. A big knife, a slippery fish, and you're heeled over and going up and down.....I think I'm not at all ready to catch a fish if it's under conditions like that. But Hayden succeeded in getting it all prepared and was kind enough to give us tuna for a couple of meals - what a treat!!  

Georgetown was quite a shock after the quietness of Cat Island. It's Regatta week here and there are about 350 boats in the harbor. Yeah, it's a big harbor but that's a LOT of boats. Here's a photo of the main street in town. Almost no one in town because everyone was occupied with Regatta activities on the beach and the boats.

Jim working on the jib furling line at anchor. Proof of the truth in the expression "Cruising is fixing your boat in exotic places".

A little swimsuit shop in G'town

The public library, largely funded and run by volunteer cruisers. This is an unusual addition to a Bahamian town of any size, and it's a very popular place to trade and borrow books.

The anchored boats off the Chat 'n Chill Beach

Chat 'n Chill beach bar. This is the hub for cruisers in G'Town. In the morning there's a cruisers net on the radio that goes on forever, informing anyone listening about weather, local services, new arrivals and departures, cruisers' events (volleyball, yoga, bocci, regattas, etc, etc), anyone needing or offering help with anything, stuff cruisers want to buy, sell or give away, and on and on. And on.

These are just some of the dozens of dinghies on shore near Chat n' Chill. Some people arrive in Georgetown and stay for weeks or even months. Others pass through, like Jim and me. It's a huge and amazingly stable community of boaters.

Ok, back to reading, cooking, watching we don't drag anchor (which we've already done once) in these high winds.