Duncan Town

Thursday morning in Flamingo Cay, the sunrise was amazing. We forgot to include these pictures in our previous blog entry but they were so nice, we thought you would want to see them.

Notice that there was so little wind and the water is so clear that you can see the anchor, almost directly below the boat.

These are some of the many butterfly Tellens that Carol collected while anchored at Flamingo Cay.

Friday, with the change in wind direction that made Flamingo so uncomfortable, we pulled the anchor and headed over to Buena Vista Cay, a 30 mile trip. We didn’t stay there very long as it, too, was pretty rolly so, we pulled the anchor and started toward Duncan Town, 20 miles away.

We hadn’t gone more than 2 miles and had an engine shut down due to a sensor problem so we pulled in to a nearby island and Jim worked on the sensor. Then we upped the anchor and headed out again. After about 5 miles, the same sensor gave us a problem so this time we pulled into Raccoon Cay and anchored for the night while Jim worked on the sensor. Hopefully, it stays fixed for a while!

Raccoon Cay was a nice anchorage with about 5 other boats anchored nearby. While there, a French Canadian gentleman and his partner, an Italian gal stopped by in their dinghy to chat. They stayed in their dinghy as all boaters are quite cautious about not getting too close to anyone at the moment.

Early the next morning, there was a lot of bleating from shore as a herd of wild goats were having their morning walk on the beach.

Saturday, we decided to go to Duncan Town to see what was there – a 15 mile trip. Fortunately, the oil pressure sensor behaved. PTL!!!!

The anchorage we had to use to get to the town was quite windy and very choppy so we prepared for a wet ride in the dinghy. Once ashore, we found the road to town & headed out. It took about 30 minutes to walk the 2 miles to town.

On the way, we passed the town dump so we left 2 backpacks full of trash.

This is the view looking back at where we could see Samba was anchored, a waaay off in the distance. It was reassuring to see that she had not decided to go for a solo cruise without us, especially with the high winds and waves!

As we approached the crest of the hill, a group of goats was just crossing the road and keeping an eye on us.

Duncan Town was in pretty tough shape. It had been heavily damaged by a hurricane 2 years ago and was still rebuilding - - slowly.

Even the police station was in shambles!

Their little church had been rebuilt and painted.

The only other way to get to town was via this 5 mile long dinghy path through the mangroves and through open water. We had heard from other boaters that this was not a very fun ride!

 On our way back to the boat, we saw this nice sign for a private cemetery. The “road” to the cemetery was to the right and only would be accessible with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Really rough terrain! From the looks of it, no one had been there for a very long time.

There was evidence of hurricane damage everywhere. All of the telephone poles on our road to town had been snapped by the hurricane and had been replaced.

Near where we beached the dinghy, we found this fun airplane beach bar hideout!

Fortunately, the owner was there working on the property. He told us his dad had built this nearly 30 years ago. It closed maybe 5 years ago and had been damaged by the hurricane. He was hoping he could be back open come this July. Looks like a lot of work ahead of him!

We had hoped to spend the night in the anchorage near here but, after checking it out, decided against that due to the high wind and uncomfortable rolling. Instead, we moved around the peninsula to Hog Cay, a 10 mile trip.

You can see a number of masts in the background. This was a pretty popular anchorage. We chose a bay south of the crowd.

Looks like some weather coming in next week. We'll make some decisions about where we will ride it out and let you know.
Jim & Carol