Lazy Sailing and Meeting Friends in the Abaco

Lazy Sailing

Spoil Island  - near Bakers Bay

In terms of length of sails - we have certainly slowed down in order to enjoy our time in the Sea of Abaco.  For the past few weeks, 10
miles in a day has been a big day........and do we really need the "main"......when we can go almost as fast and more comfortably on Jib alone?  Wow - are we sailing lazily or have we just become real cruisers?  either way, I have to say its not a bad thing when we get totally off a schedule and don't worry about making 50+ miles in a day.

Meeting Friends

We have had the great fortune to be able to catch up with friends in the last couple of weeks,  First off, we were joined for a week by great friends Ron and Julie from PYC.  We enjoyed sailing with them and enjoying some of the areas we had already seen in the Abaco together with some spots that were new to us all.

We visited Noname Cay to see the Abaco version of the swimming pigs!  Wow seems like everyone is trying to copy the success of the Exumas famous swimming pigs at Big Major's Spot.  Well it seems to be working out - there is a beach with a bunch of little pigs and mamma pigs running around.  They did seem less aggressive than their Big Major counterparts, and have not quite figured out how to beg for food.....or well....even how to swim. 

Piggyville!  Really????  Some farmer has got a good thing going.....tourist fatten up the pigs for free!

Kelley, Jason and Zoe join us for a ride in the Mangrov

We were also able to meet old friends from our last Bahamas trip here at Noname.  We had arranged to meet up with Jason and Kelly from "Sailing Chance" with their new crew member Zoe.  it was so great to be able to catch up with them.  Jason and Kelly live in New York on their boat now, but we met them and buddy-boated with them in 2014 for the passage down to Spanish Wells.  incidentally, they have a great blog at www.Sailingchance.com.

So, during the week with Ron and Julie, we were able to take them to Green Turtle Cay, Nippers, Treasure Cay, Noname Cay, Hopetown, Marsh Harbour, and Tahiti Beach - not bad for a week of easy sailing.  And we were able to spend a day with Jason, Kelly, Zoe, and their friend Taylor at Snake Cay.  Now that is an interesting spot - with a beautiful mangrove river ride (by dinghy), its a pretty well protected anchorage from west and north winds and a small beach where we could take Salty.  We had a great day here exploring the mangroves and walking the beach.  We saw some huge Rays in the deep hole that forms the entrance to Snake River.  in fact one brave sailboat made it in to the mouth of the river and anchored for the night.  Not a whole lot of space but great protection in there!

Green Turtle Cay

So from here we headed south one more time to Pete's Pub and hoping to do a dinghy ride to the nearby blue hole.  Unfortunately we were not able to catch a free mooring ball, so ended up anchoring at Lynyard Cay........but that's not a bad spot.  We had hoped to meet up with friends Tom and Christie, but unfortunately we were not able to make that happen.  Oh well - next time!

After that, we started to head north, starting the trip back to the US......more on that in the next post.