Day 79 - Hope Town, Elbow Cay

The storm from the day before was long gone and the day was clear and sunny with calm winds.  We checked out of Harbor View Marina, joking with the very friendly staff, and were on our way to Elbow Cay by 9:48 am.  As we were leaving, we met a freighter entering the channel to the harbor, the Tropic Opal, carrying Tropical shipping containers.  Cruisers.net announced a sailing regatta for that afternoon and there were a lot of sailboats in the Sea of Abaco between Marsh Harbor and Elbow Cay.  In fact there was boat traffic of all kinds darting around, anchored, and coming in and out of the harbors.  We saw another private island with a beautiful house on it.

 

 

 

 

We arrived at Hope Town Inn and Marina at 10:55 am.  The harbor is small and filled with moored boats, dinghys, small fishing and rental boats, and cruisers moving in and out.  Small ferries or shuttle boats bring people back and forth between the marina and the town, which is on the other side of the harbor. 

 

Hope Town was founded by Wyannie Malone and her 3 sons in the late 1700’s, Loyalists from South Carolina.  We visited the Wyannie Malone Historical Museum in town.  The people subsisted on wrecking (salvaging cargo from ships that wrecked on the reefs around Elbow Cay), fishing, and ship building.  The “wreckers” were often accused of purposely misleading ships onto the reefs and rocks in order to salvage their cargo.  Thus, there was lots of opposition from the wreckers to the British plan to build a lighthouse on Elbow Cay in the 1860’s.  It took 2 years to build the lighthouse due to constant vandalism.  The completion of the Elbow Reef Lighthouse essentially ended the wreckers' economy on the island.  Today the economy runs on tourism, as it does throughout the Bahamas.

 

The town essentially runs along 2 narrow winding streets, Front and Back, that are lined with small, pastel colored buildings that house shops, inns, and restaurants.  We walked past a cemetery with a marker for 100 people who had died during a cholera epidemic and a stone memorial to several men lost at sea.  Just beyond that was the beach and the Atlantic Ocean.  We had lunch at Cap’n Jack’s, which served the usual fare along with daily specials.  I ordered one of the specials, chicken curry with plantains and rice, happy for a choice of food that was not fried.  Good choice as it was delicious!

 

 

 

 

Our server called the ferry for us and we were back in the marina within a few minutes.  From there it was a short walk to the Elbow Reef Lighthouse and we walked up the 101 steps to the top. The lighthouse is one of only 3 in the worked that is manually operated.  The spring mechanism that operates the light has to be hand cranked every several hours in order to maintain the sequence of five white flashes every 15 seconds. The lamp burns kerosene oil with a wick and mantle. We would have liked to have seen the lighthouse keeper light the lamp, but we were unable to do so.  Nevertheless, the views were spectacular as evidenced by the pictures below.

 

 

After all the exercise we relaxed at the pool for a couple of hours and met a couple whose son was coming for a visit the next week.  He lives with his family in Lincoln Park, right near Diversey Harbor!  What are the chances?

On the boat I managed to post a blog entry, but the internet was, as usual, quite slow.  We walked up to the outdoor restaurant for dinner.  There were a few locals at the bar and we sat there as it was pretty deserted.  Most of the boaters had been in the islands for weeks or months and ate on their boats most of the time.  We had lobster scampi and lobster tail and it was excellent.