Hope Town, Abaco, Bahamas

Holed up here in Freeport waiting for a while to wait for clearance to start our sail home, so I'm going to bring everything in this journal up to date.  I know this is supposed to be a blog, but I've gone way beyond that and it is now a journal; mostly for me, but also for my small cadre of readers.

I do not have the gift of brevity, so all the details that I remember are put down for me to do something with them later.  Could it be a sailing book?  Doubt it.  Maybe just a year in the life; we'll see.

Our next stop on this tour was Hope Town.  We snagged a mooring and, while a little close to the boats fore and aft, we felt we had a lot of room considering the space that was not in Man o' War.  I was still a little nervous and did not sleep well the first night.

View out to the Sound from the Hope Town Lighthouse

Hope Town is notable for its lighthouse, one of only three manual lighthouses left in the world.  It is operated by hand cranking every few hours to manipulate a spring that provides a 15-second interval of light in five turns of the lens, then there's a small pause, and it starts again.  As it burns kerosene with a wick and a mantle, the job of lightkeeper is a very important one on the island.  When we visited the lighthouse, Gary inadvertently touched the lens area and it moved so smoothly he almost didn't notice.

Harbor-side view on the way back down

The view from the top is absolutely breathtaking.  The harbor on one side, where we were able to see Elliott sitting on the boom of the boat and then the Abaco Sound on the other side.  The gradations of color in the water were incredible!  To get outside after climbing the many steps, you have to stoop low to get through the door.  The handles on the door are made of bronze and are sculpted hands grasping a rod.

Windy and high, it is an exhilarating experience.  One the non-wind side, it is breezy, but once you move to the other side, it is strange to breathe, the winds are so strong.  

On an excursion around town, we walked through a much-neglected cemetery to a dune where we met a nice woman and her dog, Sasha, a chocolate brown lab.  

Sasha and Elliott digging in the sand

While the woman and Gary stayed at dune top to talk, Elliott called Sasha down to the beach to play.  Elliott just has a way with animals and they both got wet and sandy and sweaty and happy.  It was a beautiful sight.

I explored the cemetery and the dead got me back for stepping near their holy place; I got about 50 sandspurs (if that's what they're called) all over my pants and legs and shoes and even IN the shoes.  Painful!  I apologized to the inhabitants and left quickly.

Beach view from Hope Town Harbour Lodge

We ate out several times, mostly because it is such a luxury now, twice at a place right on the water in the anchorage, and then we were told by the couple on New Passage about this amazing place that overlooked the beach.  An inn, restaurant, cottages, pool!, and beachside bar makes up the Hope Town Harbour Lodge.  There is such a great atmosphere here and even though we weren't staying at the lodge, we could come over and have a meal, swim, enjoy the beach, the bar, everything except a bed in a room.  Elliott checked out the beach and could have snorkeled right off the shore if he'd brought his gear.  

The beach had been the scene of a wedding we'd witnessed a day or so earlier, as I found bougainvillea petals that had lined the aisle for the bride, and then I found white roses and starfish decorations that had been missed by the cleanup crew.  I'm sure it was the perfect ceremony.

Speaking of which, we were witness to the Junkanoo parade that followed said ceremony while the guests made their way from the beachside ceremony to the city dock, where ferry boats awaited them to take them across the anchorage to the reception site.

Junkanoo-Style Parade for Wedding Celebration

We were on the boat and heard this live wonderful horn and percussion music and then got a visual of a parade going through the narrow town streets.  We got in the dinghy and zoomed over to the dock to catch the grand entrance as the dancers and musicians made their way onto the docks following by the wedding guests.   Colorful and fun, bodacious, and a true celebration that brought folks out from their boats which turned into a dinghy parade of our own as we followed the ferry to the other side of the anchorage.

Earlier in the day, we had noticed that there was a big pile of boxes laid out on the shore not 100 feet from us.  The boxes looked like fireworks!  Yikes.  Too close for comfort. When the time came to set them off, we did get quite nervous.  As beautiful a spectacular as they were, they dropped cinders and spent cardboard cartridges on the boat decking.  We picked up as much as we could find in the dark, but we should have washed the decking, even with salt water, as some of the black dots are looking permanent.  Still, it was quite exciting and we certainly wish the newly married couple well.