Day 185 Tuesday December
24, Christmas eve day – A Successful Coconut Hunt
We wake up to calm weather at Lynyard Cay. There is a large fish about 15 pounds under
the boat, which Dawson thinks is a grouper which is out of season so Ross
cannot try to catch it. We decide to
dinghy the 2 miles back up to Sandy Cay and go for a snorkel as yesterday was
too wavy to catch the best part of the reef.
There are still some swells as we approach the reef. There is one large 8 foot wave that we climb
in the dinghy. It is kind of cool. The swells are not steep so very
manageable. We tie off to one of the 5
mooring balls that are set up at the reef to prevent damaging the corals with
the anchor. The 3 of us jump in with our
snorkel gear and immediately see how excellent this reef is. There are not as many fish as at Mermaid reef,
but the reef itself has a lot more coloured coral. We also see a turtle, 2 rays, a puffer fish,
and many other colourful fish. Ross dove
down and swam with the turtle for a short time.
By 10:15 we are back at the mothership preparing for departure. Our destination is only 2 miles away, but we
want to enter the channel at 11 so as to take advantage of a rising tide that
is almost in. The entrance to Little
Harbour our next destination only has 4.5’ at low tide.
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| Julie and Ross attempt to snorkel murky waters |
We get into Little Harbour no problems and are moored by
11:30. Little Harbour is a neat place
that we would recommend to people to visit, it is quite a bit different from
the other stops we had made on the Sea of Abaco. The harbour was 1st settled by a
Canadian Artist who after 15 year of teaching art in the states set sail with
his family to get away from the “Rat Race”.
After 2 years of cruising he settled in Little Harbour. This was in the early 50's. He was a bronze sculptor, so even built his
own foundry in the place so he could do his own castings. His work is found all over the world with one
piece on display in the Vatican. Ran Johnston
the founder of Little Harbour passed away in 1992 but one of his sons carries
on his work along with running a beach bar called Pete’s Pub.
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| Ross with the harvest |
Ross and Dawson go for a run in the small village. Julie starts food preparations for Christmas
day. In the afternoon we all go shore to
check out the gallery and foundry. The
gallery was good with a number of nice bronze pieces depicting sea themes. There were a number of turtle sculptors, we
later found out that Peter used to raise turtles to help re-establish them in
the harbour. The foundry was closed so
no tour there. From there we headed to
the beach on the Atlantic side to do some snorkelling but the water is too
churned up to allow us to see anything.
We make due with a walk on along the beach and then head back to the
boat. On the way back we harvest some
coconuts with a new record of 4. We decide
to husk them all that day so set up a coconut dehusking station on the beach of
Little Harbour. We get quite good at it
and have all 4 husked in less than 40 mins.
This is quite an improvement from our 1st coconut back at
Turtle Cay. All of them have an
excellent supply of coconut water and coconut meat.
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| Husking on the beach |
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| stack of husked coconuts |
Just before we leave the beach we talk with one of the home
owners about the condition of the moorings.
He reports they are in good conditions which is nice to know as high
winds are expected on Christmas day. The
follow invites us for the Little Harbour community Pot Luck Christmas dinner
the next day.
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| Locals towing cooler as no room in tender |
We head over to Pete’s Pub for dinner and enjoy an excellent
meal of fresh seafood, although it was served on plastic plates. We get our 2nd invite to the
potluck but this one comes with the advice that our contribution to the meal
must be more than a bag of chips and a can of corn. There must be a story there. Back to the boat for coffee and sending off
some hellos and good wishes to those we are missing as we are so far away.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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