A Tale of Two Chemists: A wild night

A wild night … Saturday 16th February 2013

We spent the day ashore, wandering around Elbow Cay in our raincoats looking for birds and trying to avoid the worst of the downpours. We were once again invited up onto the porch of a friendly gentleman from Indiana called John to look at the birds that visit his feeders (see blog entry 9th January). It was at this point that the heavens really opened and we were lucky to be under shelter. Except for when the squalls came through it didn't seem too windy, but as we returned to Cotinga later this afternoon we could feel the wind picking up. It's now 8pm and it's really blowing outside. The boat is twisting and turning on the mooring ropes and rocking from side to side. We have just lit the kerosene lantern to warm things up a bit, so it's pretty cozy and we're quite content to sit and listen to the wind howling through the rigging. Hope Town harbor is essentially completely enclosed so there are no waves to speak of and we are pleased to be in such a well protected place. As the sun went down we could see a boat making it's way around the harbor looking for a free mooring, but I think every one is taken and there is precious little room left to anchor. It doesn't seem like the sort of night you would want to raft up on a mooring - maybe they will get a slip at the marina. I'm glad we came in here yesterday.

The only other topic I wanted to mention is communication. As some of you know we bought a Bahamian "pay as you go" phone to try and avoid the hideous cost of using our Verizon Wireless phones over here ( now we just pay the regular monthly fee for our three family phones that we don't use at all!). Well the Bahamian phone also turns out to be pretty expensive for calls abroad and so although service is good we try and avoid using it too much. Then there's Skype - a wonderful way for two people to connect for free via the computer - or even for us to call a landline / cell phone from our computer at a very low cost. The only problem is that you need decent internet access. We purchased 2 months access to "Out Island Internet" which is adequate for email and internet access some of the time. However, when you come to try to Skype the limitations become all too apparent. Fragmented dialogue and dropped calls seem to be the norm - it's quite frustrating. I think we are going to start hanging out in cafes and bars that have internet access to see if we can do better.

Mike