Fishing and Football

Fishing and Football   ...   Sat 12th and Sun 13^th Jan 2013

Yesterday we left out anchorage off Elbow Cay and sailed to an area off Man-of War Cay where the fishing is reported to be good.  We anchored in the deep water (20-25 ft) and fished from the boat.  Using the shrimp bait we got many bites but only landed two very small fish.  These were thrown back as they wouldn’t be enough for even an appetizer. After we had lost lots of shrimp, we tried the famous “yellow feather”.  Far from being endowed with magic powers, these produced not even a nibble.  After about three hours we decided to make for Marsh Harbour.

The entrance to the harbor and anchoring was uneventful.  After lunch we tried to sort out our topping lift. The purpose of a topping lift is to keep the end of the boom from crashing down into the cockpit when the sail is lowered. (In our case we also have a rigid boom vang that helps support the boom). Our topping lift consists of a line that leads down from the top of the mast.  This line has an eye fixed into the end of it. Ideally this eye can then be attached by some means to the end of a line that passes through the boom.  We had always thought that this was attached badly. The riggers had used a loop of line that was way too long, such that it couldn’t really be adjusted by pulling on or loosening the line through the boom.  In the process of untying the existing arrangement and rigging something shorter, we lost hold of the eye on the end of the line from the top of the mast, which proceeded to fly in the wind.  Some wild ‘fishing’ with the boat hook while Mike stood on the boom, finally allowed us to grab the errant line.  Every job on a boat is harder to do than you think.

After all this fun we went ashore to watch football at “Snappa’s” bar.  We saw the Baltimore-Denver game.  The commentators kept mentioning the temperature in Denver.  It seemed so unreal to us sitting in an open-air bar in our shorts. The game was pretty exciting going into overtime.  While we had been supporting Denver, we weren’t too concerned about the outcome.  Today’s game will be another thing! I’m sure we will be motoring over to Snappa’s to be on time for the kick off.

One football game is not enough excitement for one day, so we are in the process of trying to make some bread.  So far it’s looking good.  The two loaves have risen pretty well.  Now the oven is heating to the baking temperature.  Hopefully it all goes smoothly and produces nice bread. We had purchased a loaf from the local bakery but it was half way to a sweet bread—not very great for toast and awful as sandwiches. Hopefully we can do better but our oven provides a really challenge.  Our oven is a challenge - there doesn’t really seem to be a thermostat as we know it. 

Gloria

26 32 49.2 N, 77 03 29.7 W

Tailgating - Bahamian style

"Snappers" Bar - a bottle of the Bahamas brewed beer

This guy was a real character - a football enthusiast and Steelers fan, but he seemed more interested in his iPhone and missed many of the big plays

He had a fine collection of jewelry and today brought along his 7 week old bulldog puppy - very cute

We also met a couple of Canadian guys, Gary and Andre, who are long time cruisers of this area on their respective boats. Gary was a professional hockey player turned entrepreneur, Andre a pilot for Air Canada, both now retired. This photo of Andre