Our spree of squall-ish days continued and we motored around the inner shallows of the Abaco Sound to Hope Town, Elbow Cay. En route Mike enjoyed programming down below as I, coated in foul weather gear, sang songs as loud as I wanted in the intermittent rain showers, I was in the zone. After a few hours he poked his head up and asked if I wanted a break, I smiled and told him to go back below, I wanted to keep singing in the rain. The sun finally began peeking out as we crept into Hope Town. Reviews of this harbor reported people running aground at depths of 4 feet near low tide…. For us, there was one worrisome instance where some skippy-little powerboat hogged the channel and we saw the depth sounder go from 4.7 to 4.0 to 3.7 (our aground depth) to 2.0 to 25 to 17. This indicated we muddled the bottom enough to confuse our depth sounder. Thankfully, we were able to power through the muck with no issue.

We were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief and take in the quaint harbor once we secured Gaia to a mooring ball.

We walked around town where bikes controlled the streets and every summer home seemed to be decorated by Martha Stewart….We admired the beaches and crashing waves and took in the midday sun and greenery. One of the small plots of land was a cemetery with a sobering past. The cemetery marks the resting place for over 100 residence who died in the 1850 Cholera epidemic.

We later went out to enjoy the nightlife and started at, bizarrely enough, a pizza and wine place….very unique  to the rest of the island and welcoming. We quickly began talking to the bartender and a local who was building a house around the corner. We learned that Abaco pine is extraordinarily dense. This also explains why we see so many homes built out of wood instead of stone and concrete. I learned from Bermuda that islands in hurricane locations build stone homes since it holds up stronger in the stormy weather and because pine is not as abundant. In the Bahamas there are four islands that still maintain and export pine: Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros, and New Providence. We continued to chat to the two locals who confirmed, everyone who lived on this island ‘are good folk’. After a glass of wine, we continued back to the main drag and had a blast at a bar where happy hour is from 12 to 12 and a live band kept rocking the house song after song. We danced to Wagon Wheel and chatted with the crew of a catamaran all night.

We also learned a few Bahamian phrases… thought I’d share a few:

Well Muddo! – exclamation of surprise

Spilligate – to go out and have fun

Kerpunkle – drunk

What da wybe is – what’s up

We spent longer than we thought in Hope Town, after all it had everything we were looking for, fun environment, cute town, friendly folks, and of course a coffee shop.

Marsh Habor, Great Abaco is located just across the Abaco Sound on mainland Great Abaco. It was our first introduction to traffic lights and multiple cars on the road since….. I can’t remember the last time I saw a traffic light to be honest, December in Bermuda perhaps? We were really hoping to get engine oil in one of the marine/car stores. When we found out the engine oil was $55 / bottle and it wasn’t even the brand we wanted… we kicked ourselves in the butt ….. again. We eventually sucked up the price and bought 3 jugs worth of oil. It was hot and we did boat work, we didn’t particularly like Marsh Harbor…. except for the grocery store….. the grocery store was amazing!