After leaving Green Turtle Cay, we intended to meander through the rest of the Abacos, maybe spending a night or two on Great Guana Cay, and Treasure Cay, and Man ‘o War, and then head south to Eleuthera and the Exhumas.

BUT

Winter storm Quinn, which pounded Cape Cod and brought widespread power outages to Washington DC and snow days to much of the East Coast was felt all the way east in the Bahamas. No snow here, of course, but the low pressure cell brought high winds from the north and crazy high seas. And we found ourselves waiting out a weather pattern with a new low following just behind the last one every two or three days; not allowing the sea swells to calm back down to normal levels. So we took shelter in Marsh Harbour, where one night turned into ten nights before we felt confident continuing south.

Marsh Harbour is the third biggest city in the Bahamas, and we each had a need for a “city”.

• SE of Disorder needed a new membrane for their water maker.
• Orion needed to repair or replace their dinghy, which no longer stayed afloat.
• And Sanitas needed to try again to repair our leak (see Tool of the Day … Life Calk)

Even after 10 days, I don’t have much of a good impression of Marsh Harbour. Probably because I spent most of the stay doing chores: walking back and forth to the bank, grocery store, hardware store, and liquor store in the hot sun. And I didn’t really love the Conch Inn Marina where we stayed for most of the time. They are the local Moorings charter base, and I got the impression they thought private boats were second class citizens compared to their charter boats. We did accomplish several boat projects, such as changing the compost in the toilet, removing the rust from much if the stainless steel on the deck, working on the bilge projects, etc. But we did manage to have some fun!

Happy hours at Snappas, where we showed Sharon and Drew how much we missed them.

Cookouts at the Conch Inn Marina pool, complete with Full Moon party, and swim-noodle-water-launcher contests

Whole fish and margaritas at Colors by the Sea

I was introduced to “my former co-worker Justin’s current co-worker Caroline’s parents” (phew) Rob and Sharron, who introduced us to the cruiser community at the Jib Room at the Marsh Harbour marina. We spent quite a bit of time there, enjoying the high speed internet (and the bilge burner rum punches), working on taxes, and celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary at Rib Night and with a limbo contest!

We crashed the beautiful, high-end Abaco Beach Resort one afternoon, and enjoyed a lovely beach day and a first attempt at stand up paddle boarding. And we took a ferry over to Hope Town for a day. But that’s another post …