Marsh Harbour week

Hi Folks,

Another beautiful week in the Abacos, although the weather has changed as of last night – we are going to have 3 cold fronts moving through this week, bringing some rain and wind. We can’t complain – it’s been perfect here for 2 weeks. Unfortunately the weather changed just as Rebecca and Abbie arrived to visit, but we are hoping to get some diving in anyway. Both of them are just happy to be in a warm relatively dry place. First night was at Snappas for an abbreviated introduction to Brown Tip and rake and scrape music. Then off to an early bedtime.

Aside from meeting more people – got invited to dinner by a couple who is living aboard a 60 foot ketch – big old fashioned boat with lots of space and amenities. Spent some time at a slip, where we met even more people – ran into a trivia contest and bbq – all people who have been here before and keep on coming back.

Another evening was spent on a “how to make a conch horn” arts and crafts demo. We all brought conchs and some brought dremel tools and other implements of destruction, just so at sunset we can blow our conch horns – a Bahamian tradition. Neat.

On the subject of conch, the local delicacy here is conch salad – fresh conch diced along with peppers, tomatoes, onions, lime and orange juice along with a special secret hot sauce. George, the local conch salad king has been doing this at dockside for as long as people can remember and of course he won’t tell you where his conch beds are or what’s in his secret hot sauce, but he’s a nice guy and fun to chat with.

While we were waiting for a conch salad to be made and talking with George, a waterspout appeared. A big one. Not so rare here, but I had never actually seen one before. Here is a good picture of it about a mile away.

Another night there was a jam session with musicians getting together to play ( for the first time) with an actual audience. Well the music was a bit lame due to the crowd wanting a sing-a-long, but Arnie had fun playing drums on a garbage can and then playing some guitar, too. We vowed to get together and play again without the audience.

Finally the four of us were walking through Hope town again, having sailed here on Monday to show the our visiting girls this pretty little place before the weather really got windy, and we came across a curly tail lizard. They are small and quick and
unique to these islands we think.

See you next week!
Arnie and Ronnie