Travels of Geo Nova

Georgetown Bahamas

We have been in the Georgetown for the last 10 days or so. We departed Long Island with a 15-17 knot breeze on the beam. It was a nice fast sail. The Georgetown area offers several different anchorages each with it’s own character. Our first and favorite is Sand dollar beach, a gorges expansive white sand beach. It is named aptly on our first walk we must have seen 100 sand dollars. It was just after a full moon so the tide was lower than mean. The shelling is good. Stocking Island has many well-maintained trails leading over to the ocean side of the island.

The next anchorage goes by several names, Volleyball beach or Chat n Chill. Both are descriptive. There is sand volleyball court and a beach restaurant called Chat n Chill a real Bahamian beach bar restaurant. This past Sunday a local historian came and talked about local customs and the history of the islands. A great place to relax and learn. The fact that we were drinking Kalik beers and eating conch salad didn’t hurt.

Monument is the next anchorage. It to is on the west side of Stocking Island. At the top of the hill sits a large concrete obelisk structure. The beach is nice and there are trails to the other side of the island. We have yet to explore more here.

Red Shanks is a very protected anchorage that requires some sight navigation to weave through some coral heads to enter the anchorage. When there you have the feeling you are out in the middle of nowhere, however you are only 2.5 miles from Georgetown. There are a lot of small island to dinghy around

Georgetown proper is on Great Exuma Island and offers services such as food store, restaurants, trash disposal and laundry.

We just finished up a week with Naomi and Hans. The visit was great. It’s so nice to spend quality time with the people who are important to us. This week Zach and Abe will be joining us.

This past week has also been memorable but in a negative sense. The first problem was a leaky generator. Hans and I spent several hours trying to fix it to no avail. The good news we found a fellow cruiser named Dave on a boat called Mist. He is from Tasmania and seems to be a most resourcefully mechanic. The boys are bringing us some supplies that should help us restore the generator to health. The next problem was less technical but not much fun to deal with. The out flow pipe from the aft heat was blocked. Hans and I tried for hours to unblock it but were unable to solve the problem. This meant that the hose had to be replaced. Sound simple but it is not. First hurdle is to procure the hose. No simple task in the rural Bahamas. After a 2.5 mile dinghy ride into town and visiting several business I found someone who had the hose. The problem was to find this place. I dinghy to where I was told to go but it wasn’t there. After having to drag the dinghy through the mud and hitch hiking to the store I had the hose. Next job installation. Working in very tight places we finally got it into place. It turns out that the pipe was full of mineral deposits narrowing the opening to nothing.

Today we said goodbye to Naomi and Hans. Tomorrow we welcome Zach and the next day Abe when we will be off to explore the area with them.