Marsh Harbor is the third largest town in the Bahamas, after
Nassau and Freeport. It’s not a Cay (island, pronounced “key”). It’s on the
mainland, Great Abaco Island, a big island, which also includes Treasure Cay (a
town, not really a Cay) and a few other places. Marsh Harbor is the place to go
to get things fixed, and to get groceries, for a good selection and better
prices. A lot of cruisers spend a
considerable amount of time here in the well protected harbor, and do short
trips to other Cays that are close by.
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On the way to Marsh Harbor
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On the way to Marsh Harbor
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Friends
We arrived here on Thursday afternoon, April 9. The first
boat we saw in the anchorage was that of our friends, Helen and Stan, on s/v Voyager. We were hoping to see them, and they were happy to see us. We had met
them in Vero Beach and we had a lot of fun together. They decided to leave in
February to cross over to the Bahamas with other friends, Joan and Tim, on s/v Head over
Keels. Since they arrived at West End, Helen and Stan began to have trouble
with Voyager’s diesel engine, which had now reached a very serious and
unfortunate stage. Stan is a very competent and confident
sailor, so they made their way across the Little Bahama Bank to Green Turtle
Cay, through the “Whale” and then to Marsh Harbor, with sails alone and no
auxiliary engine except the one in their dinghy, which they used to maneuver the
boat in close quarters. They were waiting for parts, so that “Basil” (aka “Bah”),
the local mechanic, could rebuild their engine before he was to leave for vacation on
May 1. Parts might get here just in time. Meanwhile, they were stuck in Marsh
Harbor.
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Dinner with Helen and Stan, on Summer Wind
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Cruiser’s Net
Marsh Harbor is where we started listening each morning to
the “Cruiser’s Net”, a structured informal program from nearby Hope Town that
airs over the VHF radio, channel 68, at 8:15 AM. The program begins with a weather
forecast recap, then reports on all of the nearby ocean passages (the Whale and
3 or 4 others), followed by advertisements of services (“Yoga class this
morning in Hope Town”) and restaurant specials. Then there are the announcements
– which is a free-for-all of requests for info or assistance (“Does anyone have
any 2 part epoxy for fixing a hypalon dinghy?”, “What is the racing schedule
today?”, “Does anyone know who can fix a Westerbeke generator that is
overheating?” “We have visiting Canadians, does anyone know the hockey score
from last night?). Sometimes this also includes stolen or missing boats, or
people searching for people. The next section of the program allows cruisers to
introduce themselves as newly arrived or leaving. We announced on Saturday that
we arrived on Thursday, someone else announced their arrival and plan to stay
for a few months, while someone else announced that they were leaving. The
Cruiser’s Net program can be heard in other areas, but some of the conversations
cannot be heard because of the distance. Sometimes they are relayed. Mostly
it’s restricted to Elbow Key (Hope Town), Marsh Harbor, Man-O-War Cay, and any
smaller Cays that are very close by.
Town
There is one traffic light in Marsh Harbor. Traffic is very
frightening and confusing to us, because they drive on the left side of the
road here. We have to look both ways, several times, before crossing the
street. We are accustomed to looking again to the left just before crossing.
Here we have to remember to look right last! There are a lot of cars. And here
they drive full sized cars, whereas in Green Turtle Cay it was mostly golf
carts. Many streets have no sidewalks, most have no shade and it’s dusty. Town
is sort of depressing to me. A lot of the storefronts are empty. There is no
center, no order. It’s hard to find anything we expect, even though there is a
lot here.
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The one traffic light, at Marsh Harbor
(Note: these cars are not
parked, they are driving on the left!)
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Phone service
There is an odd arrangement of businesses here in Marsh
Harbor. My HTC cell phone had stopped working and could not be charged or
turned on, and we had no service with Verizon, so our first stop was the
Batelco (Bahamas Telephone Company) store, to see if they could help with my
phone or with providing service. The Batelco
store had a security guard who opened the door, an unseen cashier off to the
right side, a small display of phones in the middle, and “Customer Service” on
the left, with a waiting room that held about a dozen chairs. The message was
clear, “Be prepared to wait.” Two people were ahead of us. Eventually a woman
(Not Customer Service, Security or Cashier) came over to see what we were
looking for. If our phones were not locked, they could give us service. She
looked at each of our phones, and removed the batteries to check the sim cards.
No conclusion. They don’t fix phones, for that we have to go across the street,
walk past the car wash to the ”All Mart”. So if we could get mine working, we’d
be able to see if it’s locked or not, and if it’s not, we can get service from
Batelco. Chuck’s did not have a removable Sim card, so no Batelco for him.
We walked down the street to the All Mart, which was also a
pawn shop. The door was locked. We rang the bell and we were buzzed in. The
person who can fix phones, Wayne, was away in Nassau, expected back the next
day. Moses, the very helpful and bright young Bahamian-and-American guy who was
working at the counter, was able to charge my battery externally, overnight, with
a device that they sell. My problem could be the phone’s charger, or any of
several other parts. They do all of the repairs for the Batelco phones. Batelco
only sells them, they don’t fix them. He said if they did, he’d be out of
business.
We came back the next day to see Wayne, who was still not back
from Nassau. Ryan, Moses’s counterpart, checked the phone with the charged up
battery and said it was a software problem. Wayne doesn’t do software. We’d
have to go further down the street, to another business, Epyon Technologies.
We found Epyon, and the door was locked but the outer
security door was still open. We rang the buzzer, nothing. Too late in the day,
on a Friday afternoon? Rang it again and we were buzzed in. A pretty young
woman with very strange hair – white in front and dark brown everywhere else –
who knew a LOT about phones helped us. She and her husband run the business and
write software for phones and anything else. If my phone were working I would
have taken photos of her, and of the shop, with its interior door (to the room
that contained her very tall husband) covered with circuitry. She tried the
recovery process on my phone and proclaimed it DEAD. We asked why Chuck’s
seemed to be stuck on 1980 all of a sudden, and she said that was because the
Batelco lady removed his battery. “She should know not to do that with these
phones!” His is CDMA, the towers here no longer use that. He might be able to
reset it in Hope Town, they have CDMA there. She said Apple phones reset to a
different date, December 31, 1969.
We went back to Batelco to see if we could buy a local phone
that we could use as a hotspot. The guard was letting someone out, and she said
they were closed. It was 5:15 and the door said they close at 4:30. So I guess
it’s like some restaurants, where you can enter before closing and get served,
regardless of how long it takes.
Maxwell’s Supermarket
So we continued on, and walked to Maxwell’s Supermarket, the
big grocery store. They had a terrific assortment of fresh fruits and
vegetables, all at ferociously high prices. We hadn’t planned on shopping, but
we picked up some bananas, eggs, sausage for our friend, 2 limes and a small
piece of blue cheese, $17.40. This includes 7.5% tax on everything.
The next day, we returned for a few more things, chicken and
lamb, and some fruits and vegetables, $70, which again included the 7.5% VAT
tax on everything.
We did not get any of the cereal for $8-10 per box, or beef
for $10 per pound. I was tempted to get some goat and try to cook it, but it
was over $8 per pound, so I decided against that experiment.
Harbor – no swimming
There is no swimming in this harbor. Chuck and I like to
swim everywhere we go, unless we are specifically told not to. Maybe it’s
allowed, the local kids do it. But one of our cruising guide books advised
against it. One of the locals described it as “muddy”. The real reason is there is no pumpout here,
and we hear that boats just dump their holding tanks in the harbor.
Unfortunately, I think I’ve seen some evidence of that floating by. We did not
swim there.
Mermaid Reef – or not
Because we can’t swim in the harbor, and it’s really hot and
we’d really like to swim, we took the dinghy around to the outside of the
harbor, to Mermaid Reef in the Sea of Abaco. Mermaid Reef is a man-made reef,
with small moorings for dinghies. We stopped at the first place that looked
like a beach. We didn’t see any moorings, so we landed the dinghy on the beach,
put on our masks and fins and entered the water. A very kind man called out to
us from a nearby house. He pointed out an eagle ray in the water. I saw it, it
started to come toward me, I backed away, and it left before Chuck could see
it. Chuck had a similar experience with a barracuda. We both saw sea cucumber
and various small and tiny fish. I collected a few shells, nothing special. Chuck
played with his underwater video camera. We never saw a reef.
Picnic at Mermaid Beach
The next day, we decided to go to land, see the southern
portion of the harbor, and find a place for a picnic. After a very long and hot
uphill walk, we found Mermaid Beach, complete with snorkelers and tiny dinghy
moorings. The sky was strangely dark over the water. It might be rain, or it
might be because of some brush fires in the distance. We had our lunch and
decided to return to the reef another time, by water, in the dinghy.
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Mermaid Beach
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Swimmers at Mermaid Beach
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Mermaid Reef, from land, with signs of impending rain storm
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On the way back, we wanted to stop for ice cream, but we
wanted to sit inside, in air conditioning. We stopped at one place that looked
like it might have ice cream, but Chuck didn’t want to stay because it didn’t
have AC. It did, however, have the white and dark brown haired phone-fixing girl
from Epyon & her very tall husband, as well as the sweets shop girl from
Green Turtle Cay, “Momo,” who has equally strange very long hair that is bright red in front. They seemed to be
together, with a few kids, so maybe the two girls are sisters. (I think they
each mentioned that they are originally from Nassau.) There is a very small
population here, and everyone seems to know everyone else. We saw other people
we knew from Green Turtle while we were in Maxwell’s. They come over by ferry,
visit family, and shop over here.
Unfortunately the next ice cream place was closed, and then
we heard thunder. So we got our exercise for the day, making a run for the dinghy dock, after our very
long, very hot walk, with heavy backpacks. Whew!
Rain laundry fail
We heard a few more thunder booms, but no rain yet. We got
back to the boat and closed the overhead ports in time. I scrambled to do “rain
laundry.” I grabbed all of my essentials (= underwear) and tossed them in some fresh
water with Woolite. Then I wrung out each piece and hung it on the lifelines,
so the rain could rinse it. I also put out a large plastic bin to catch (and
measure) the rainfall. Unfortunately,
there was only a little rain. So I now have dry, soapy clothes. I added some of
our precious tank water to the plastic bin to rinse the clothes, and hung them out the next day to dry.
Dinghy racing in the harbor
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
On Saturday morning there were dinghy races in the harbor – opti’s
for the little kids and sunfishes for the adults. We were anchored just on the
edge of the race course so we had a good view. Other small spectator boats with
family members and pets were also floating around and inside the race course.
This went on for quite a while and provided some good photo ops, now that I
managed to resurrect my 11 year old digital camera, after replacing the
batteries.
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Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor
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Sandy, watching the Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
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| Dinghy races in Marsh Harbor |
Electronics
Salt air is not good for electronics. My phone was dead and
Chuck’s was acting up. My handheld radio, our “2nd backup” stopped
working. We left batteries in it too long and they leaked a little. There is
another small business that might be able to fix it, the person who fixes
things is away in Nassau and expected back on Monday. We’ll see... Marsh Harbor seems to be a good place to get things
fixed.
Leaving Marsh Harbor
The weekend evenings were very noisy, with loud music playing
from the bars until late at night.
On Sunday we returned by dinghy to Mermaid Reef with our
friends, Helen and Stan. We snorkeled above the manmade reef and saw lots of
tiny and little fish. (Sorry, the UW camera was on the wrong setting, so no
decent pictures.) Then we went out to dinner together at one of the local
restaurants.
We stayed through Monday, 4/13/15, to revisit the
electronics store. The fixing person didn’t come back from Nassau. The girl at the desk
advised us to try the marine store across the street. We did. He didn’t fix
things, and he told us that the electronics guy across the street is never there, he’s always in
Nassau. She sends people over all the time and he sends them back.
I'd had enough of dirty, dusty Marsh Harbor. We decided, at
mid-day, to pull up the anchor and head over to little Man-O-War Cay, less than
5 miles away, but a world apart.
Sandy and Chuck on s/v Summer Wind
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