Blog 12: The eleuthera chronicles continues

Blog 12 – The Eleuthera Chronicle Continues

In preparing for the replacement head gasket, I recall spraying some engine cleaner on the piston tops and giving them a gentle swabbing. All except piston number one. Instead of puddling on top the spray liquid had disappeared. When I looked again  “Ahah!” was followed by “Oh Crap!”

Everything is a lot clearer now. 

More days are spent at Ronnies’ Hi da Way, our favorite bar on Cupid’s Cay, using the WiFi to locate pistons. It took weeks, and in the end some friends from the CR4 forum were able to steer me to a good link for online suppliers in China and India. My previous attempts to use Alibaba.com had been thwarted by bandwidth problems, but the excellent WiFi at Ronnies connected me with Ms. Ace at BeeAuto, who quoted both price and availability.

She was the first to be able to do that, beating out all sources in North America – all of whom except Sansom Equipment in Fredericton have yet to so much as quote a price. Sansom could not quote a delivery date so I was delighted to contract with Ms. Ace at 10 % of Sansom’s prices. Westerbeke, as usual, was absolutely lame. The parts arrived last Friday at our forwarding address in Ft Lauderdale 5 days after date of payment, by DHL. The forwarding address is ours for a two dollar fee from X-Press-It, and we cannot say enough good things about this Bahamian company. They are a product of the new thinking in the Bahamas – mainly on the part of government – whereby goods and services flow much more freely than before. It may have a lot to do with an attempt to move taxation to a ‘sales tax’ basis from a tariff/duty basis.  

In countries where the taxation has been based on tariffs and duties, the flow of goods has historically been ‘bloody slow’. The Bahamas has been no exception, as most Bahamians will tell you. This appears to be changing, with a broad-based Value Added Tax having been implemented to provide a more solid tax base. Bahamians do not pay income tax and they do not pay property tax. The high duties on things like building materials and automobiles were tolerable for outsiders like Canadians/United States citizens (“CanUsans”), and a seeming bargain to Europeans, who may pay up to 125% of the value of a vehicle in surtaxes, but I would surmise that it exacerbated a rich/poor barrier in the Bahamas and retarded economic growth at the same time.

The VAT will be a success, especially after it is raised to a level adequate to cover needs. They introduced it at 7%, which only meets half of current income needs. I only hope that the Bahamian government does not become ‘junkies’ to unrestrained taxation – but they will particularly need realistic VAT to bring in their recently announced intention to provide universal health care within 5 years.

[rant ends]

It was at the time of my initial contact with Ms. Ace that we were beset by serious surge issues in Governor’s Harbour. Strong Southwesterly winds always turn the harbour into a washing machine. After a couple of nights of being knocked around, and doubling and redoubling broken docklines, we accepted the offer of Duncan and Dorothy on Hunda of a tow to Hatchet Bay, which bills itself as the best harbour in Eleuthera.  . The sail would not be a challenge to us, but we decided to go with the tow because the channel to Hatchett Bay looks really narrow on the chart.

In fact, we were met by a flotilla of tenders, and our tow was dropped outside the cut. We might as well have sailed. Jack from Toucanna rafted on  our starboard side to push us to a mooring ball. Tom and Rose from Sojourn rafted on the port side to provide extra push, and in no time we were shackled to a mooring ball. To everyone who gave that help so freely – our thanks!

We went to the government dock right away, where we met Francis, manager of Da Front Porch, a restaurant and marina. He advised that we could use the mooring for free tonight since we were suffering from a breakdown, but that we should move to the old government moorings as soon as possible, or begin to pay to use the one that we were on.

He offered us an excellent rate so we pre-purchased a month on a mooring ball. That way the parts could arrive and we would have time to install them. Delays have been exacerbated by our (again) poor internet connectivity.

The laptop died in Governor’s Harbour, only to come back to life days later, after I flushed the cooling fan out with NAPA electronics Spray Cleaner.

We lost it again for a week before I was able to uncrush the display cable. The most recent problem concerns the failure of Firefox to load, and similarly of MS Internet Explorer. The blogs cannot go out until we solve this one. (Editors note: the computer shop in Saint John, NB declared the machine unfixable in July – but a second opinion in November saw the machine restored to its former glory- resulting in these blogs getting finished and posted)

As a result of the laptop problems, most of our communication is happening with an old i-pod. We do not expect the laptop to survive for much longer.

Eleuthera is the greenest of the family islands that we have yet encountered. We rented a van with two other couples and visited Spanish Wells, Dunmore Town and Current Settlement...always exploring. Several locals had advised me to check in Spanish Wells about parts for our engine, but when I spoke with a marine mechanic there, he told me that to find the part there would be “absolutely hopeless”.

I had put the large pond in adjoining Russell Island on my list of places to check out. As we walked the length of George Island, which Spanish Wells occupies, it became apparent that the Explorer chart and the Google Earth image from 2007 are both very much out of date. There were at least a dozen 80 foot lobster boats against a seawall inside the largest ‘pond’. Others were tied up at wharves in man-made cuts. When asked, a local fisherman verified that the big pond (called ‘Muddy Hole’) is their ‘hurricane hole’ of choice and he told me that depths run to 12 feet, except at the shallower NW side.

A subsequent look at Google Earth showed a new satellite image dated 2015. The changes in ten years are phenomenal for both islands. Something which we did not see on our walking tour is a well marked sub-division of building lots on Russell Island with their own harbour carved out of the coral.

We had a lovely afternoon there before catching the return ferry.  Late in the day we visited Current Settlement to find yet another harbour that has been passed over by the Explorer Charts. Current harbour appears to be somewhat silted at the entrance, but we noted that the 80 foot Current Pride , a coastal freighter, uses it as home port.

This looks like an alternative to Royal Island as a stopover harbour  - for yachts staging to or from Abaco and Grand Bahama. It has concrete dock facings all around, with concrete bollards reinforced by embedded steel streetcar rails to tie-up to.

The weather has improved and the anchorage has emptied out again. The only boat that has been here for a longer time than us is a ninety foot cruiser, Anna Maria, owned by an Australian couple - Geoff and Jennie – who, like us, are not in any particular hurry to leave.

Every day we try to find something new about the community.   One day recently we were talking with some people at ‘Da Spot’ and I asked what became of the Masonic Lodge in Hatchet Bay. They were quick to advise me that it had “burnt down”. It turned out that most of the officers of the lodge hang out at ‘Da Spot’. The WM advised me that they have bought a lot of blue paint and were in the process of re-painting what I mistakenly heard to be a former church. After I wrote those words, we went ashore to help out on that project. After looking at every church in town over a period of almost a week, we again ran in the WM, who corrected me. They had a painting contract to paint a ‘church-owned building’ (blue), but not for their own use.  I had heard so much more than he had actually told me! Duh.

We did not waste that week in any event, daily travelling along the shore to the South and East of the graveyard, to a place where the Aussies had tipped us off that we could swim and sunbathe in privacy. In addition we explored across the Queen’s Highway to the Atlantic side, where we saw vine covered silos nearly as lush as the overgrown round towers of County Clare. On that trek we were met part-way by a very large herd of ‘free-range’ goats and we decided that we might try this trip to the Atlantic shore another time, as they came crowding toward us. 

We had s glitch in paying for the new parts. VISA reversed the transaction to in order protect our ‘security’, LOL. “What else is new?” Susan said to me when she saw the email from Ms.Ace. Visa has pulled this before – but the required phone call to VISA, or us to set their minds(?) at rest was a new challenge. We made it to the King’s highway at 10:00 and had hitched a ride to Governors Harbour by 11:00. The nice folks at the Bahamas Telephone Company invitede us to use their ‘courtesy phone’ to call the 800 number and a few minutes later  we were standing by the road to Cupid’s Cay, thumbing back to Hatchett Bay.

Our ‘ride’ was with a Bahamian guy who sent me to the truckbed of his Ford Ranger so that he could give the front passenger seat to Sue, who rapidly concluded that he was drunk. I figured out that we might have a problem when we turned off the King’s Highway and drove to the Atlantic side without slowing. It turned out that we were to be the guests of this bar-tender at his newly opened ‘beach bar’ perched on the sands of the Atlantic side. We had a beer, although 11 in the morning was a bit early – even for us in holiday mode. Our host had tended for an all-night party and apparently, he was determined to drink the profits as soon as possible. A drinking buddy arrived and Susan and I wandered away to explore the beach. We returned after a wonderful walk interspersed with several skinny-dips. We showered and towelled-off, ordering a hamburger lunch.

Our host had started a concert for his drinking buddy, in which he was the star RAP singer on his Karioki unit. When he brought the burgers he scowled and told me that he had wanted to come swimming with us....

We settled accounts with a total bill of $80.00 for 4 beers, two burgers and two beach towels.

Grumbling, we walked across the island and set out up the highway, only to be picked-up by the only other luncheon guests, a Methodist couple who ran the nearby campus/retreat. They had hurried their lunch to get away from our hard-drinking bartender. They filled in a lot of the blanks in our knowledge of this part of Eleuthra.

A friend from St Patric’s Lodge whom we often talked with at Da Spot filled me in further two days later, taking me to meet a few mason’s in Governor’s Harbour and then giving me a tour of the former US Navy installation where he is employed with the public works department. He told me that the USN’s most significant legacy was leaving a state of the art Reverse Osmosis water plant in service when they closed the base. This plant solved the problem of a diminishing aquifer.

We have continued to survey the harbour at Hatchet Bay, checking depths and holding conditions. The remains of a marine railway and a seaplane ramp occupy one cove, which, although shallow, would be adequate for most catamarans. It is good to have this information written in the chart book, because on the occasion when you might find yourself needing it, others might be thinking the same thing and the choicest places will get taken first.

We finally have news that our new pistons, rings, gaskets, con rod and bearings (these last two items – were ordered ‘just-in-case’ we need them) are in Nassau. We will hitch to Governor’s Harbour tomorrow morning to get them. Hurray. It is the eighteenth of May and the contract for our mooring expires in twelve days. Another ‘test’ for Derwick of the Carwibbean.  Thank you Ebedeen, the name seems to be sticking like glue! And I hope that you had a Very Happy Birthday too!

In twelve more days, there will be no more mangos picked straight off the tree, no more snapper still flipping in the pail from the young fellas fishing from the covered dock, and no more Sands Beer at Da Spot. The trek back to a world of traffic and tan lines will begin in earnest.   

We are already sad that we will have to leave this place.