Elizabeth Harbor Dinghying – the new Olympic Sport

Elizabeth Harbor, known by the lively yachting community as Tarpit Harbor, is quite an interesting place. This community anchors mostly off the shore of Stocking Island. With so many boaters they even have their own VHF channel (68) to communicate on and in the morning they broadcast ‘The Net’ which is a weather forecast, community forum, and welcome center. Upon a day time inspection George Town has quite a lot to offer including Destinations (a travel agent), a tourism center, a straw market, a post office, Sandpiper (a very cute gift store), Exuma Markets (an actual grocery store), Top II Bottom (a hardware store), as well as a local and a specialty clinic. The specialty clinic, just over two miles out of town, claims to have a chiropractor on Thursdays. After my trek there I find out they have a Cuban lady who runs a mineralizer lamp (very similar to what they use on rotisserie chicken or to warm the hamburgers at McDonalds) and some variation of an ultrasound machine. In the end, her hocus pocus doesn’t fix my back – on the upside I get a nice four mile walk out of the deal.

The food here has been fabulous including the steamed conch at the Towne Café, the hotdogs and conch fritters at Nezzie’s Hotdog Stand (which is open very infrequently it seems), and a huge plate of barbeque chicken and ribs at Eddie’s Edgewater (it’s a large Styrofoam container and there is one piece of bread and the rest of it is filled with meat – it is amazing, also, the spicy is really very spicy – not for the faint of heart, or faint of mouth I suppose). But by far the best meal I have had here so far was out at Fish Fry Village, which is just out of town at the old commercial harbor, at the restaurant Tino’s. Fish Fry Village is a grouping of many quaint Bahamian food and drink stands in a variety of pastels. Most have papers and pictures all over the walls and big windows open to the ocean. Tino’s, in particular, seems to love Mr. Obama and has a life-size cardboard of him which greets you when you enter. Our lunch was the largest Sea Snapper I had ever seen. It was a stewed Snapper so it was served with potatoes in a roux that was both sweet and spicy. The side was some sort of cornmeal bread that was also the perfect combination of sweet and spicy, by far this has been the best meal I have had since Frazer’s Hog Cay.

No worries, it hasn’t all been just fun and games. As I mentioned earlier, the floor of my room has been becoming damp with sea water. To remedy this problem we have just been bringing in buckets of sea water to flush our toilet when we are finished – you can imagine how tedious this gets. The leak is in the line that brings the salt water to the toilet, so while I was at my fruitless chiropractor endeavor Bob and Margi were at the NAPA store acquiring new hose. We tape the old hose to the new hose and run it through, making sure that a section of the new tube still resides above the waterline, so that we don’t sink our boat (more boats are sank due to head complications than anything else). Our next boat housekeeping issue was to change the oil in the Perkins engine, check the water levels in the 12 volt battery, and finally change some engine filters. As most of you already know, checking the water levels in the 12 volts requires a trip to behind our large Perkins engine, but surprisingly this was the easiest of our three tasks.

Removing the oil, which we usually do through a small pump run by a drill, was very hard as it was very thick (from age) and burned out our drill engine. Luckily, we found a valve under the engine for it to drain from, with a little help from Dad sucking on the tube to get the oil flowing. Removing the fuel and oil filters which are both just twist offs had become corroded into place and the oil filter could only be removed by jamming a screwdriver into the side of the filter to use as a handle – effectively getting oil everywhere. I have no idea how this boat is thirty years old and still this clean.

We have been making lots of long sails, but what I have neglected to mention is our epic dinghy rides. If you Google Elizabeth Harbor you will notice that it is big, really big, like hugely, colossally big and every time I mention going to George Town, we have to cross this stretch of waves. Most people put on oils (a full wet suit type thing that goes over your clothes) or just gives in to getting really, really wet. I really can’t take pictures of this to prove it, but I can again give you pictures of the entry to Lake Victoria for your appreciation.