Wasting Time in The Abacos

March 24, 2022

Before I left Marsh Harbour, I did some riding (mentioned previously I believe), here are a couple of pictures of the landscape. It looks like one of those apocalyptic movie sets, but this is what Abaco island looks like and it goes on for the entire span, at least everywhere I went. The only thing that breaks up this bleak landscape is the odd house or commercial building and it s about 50/50 if it is habitable. There are a lot of destroyed buildings everywhere.

On Sunday, I took Home Free back across Whale Cay Cut and went back to Rat Cay/Manjack Cay to hang our for a few days. There were a LOT of boats there although they changed a lot over the last couple of days. Around 15 boats, were in the bay and we were all seeking shelter from the STILL strong winds.

Unfortunately my davit (crane) to launch and retrieve the dinghy has failed. I am lucky that the dinghy is aboard when this happened, but it has now petered out until I get new parts. I will wait until I return to Florida and just work with the kayak and swim off the back of the boat until then. The debugging and attempts at repair have taken a lot of time, but Jake from Steelhead Marine has been a fantastic help.

At Rat Cay, I was able to dinghy into the mangrove areas with the kayak. It was pretty cool, but I was there at low tide and there is almost zero depth at that time. I had to pull the kayak in a few places. The turtles are still there in the deep parts, and there were a lot of fish as well. My goal was to go swimming and get some underwater photos, but with very shallow waters, this was not so realistic.

Here are a couple of photos just to share some of what I saw.

I am now riding my bike on the deck a bit. I am appalled at how bad my fitness is, so that is another motivator given I can’t go to shore ‘easily’. Perhaps I should ride my bike rather than watching Netflix (hint: Netflix has abducted me, it’s winning)