Black Point Sunset – Bahamas Defense vessel stands watch

Hanging out at Staniel Cay, anchored reasonably close to shore allowed us to pick up Exuma Wifi from the boat. A better deal than  Warderick Wells at $10 for 250mb or 24 hours whichever comes first (pricey anyway uh?), we did all our online stuff and still didn’t use up the 250mb.

The forecast was pointing to a jump down to George Town Thursday and if we didn’t take that, the next opportunity was indeterminable. Most sailing craft want some north in the wind to reduce major pounding into the waves for 40 miles. The prevailing wind is generally E and ESE; ENE only pops up once in a while and sometimes it could be more wind than you want.

Before that we needed to attend to laundry and more importantly, score some of Lorraine’s mom’s coconut bread; manna from heaven. The trek to Black Point was an easy nine miles; ran the water maker since we couldn’t sail that angle. Only four boats in the large anchorage told us once again how early we are this year; just wait a few weeks!

Ida wasn’t around so we left our laundry at the machines and headed over to Adderley’s market – the backup place for tokens. But they only had dryer tokens. Ok then we’ll try her on VHF16- nope. Went to see Lorraine at the café and she said she’d call Ida at home for us 🙂 She greeted us with hugs; gee I guess we’ve become known regulars. Her mom had fresh out of the oven coconut bread which caused me to do a little happy dance; we’ll take two! The bread was still hot and the aroma filled the house. We chatted and told her that no one makes coconut bread like she does; not that she hasn’t heard that a million times.

Ida appeared and we began our three loads. Had the place to ourselves but Ida was chatty and remembered us from when we were at the airport for Benj’s flight out last January. She and her daughter were Nassau bound on the same small plane.

Benj, the multi-talented pilot, Ida and her daughter wait to board (Jan 2013)

We learned her daughter is 19, her son is 22(?) and currently in France. They both sound like motivated young adults who take after their successful business owner parents. In addition to Rockside Laundry, Ida and her husband own Rockside Cottages overlooking the harbor.

The Laundromat is 11 years old now. Five of the washers finally need to be replaced. Ida shared some figures with us: each new one cost $700 in Miami, approx. $1,200 total freight cost plus import duty. If the machines were bought in Nassau the cost each would be $1,600 plus freight to Black Point. You do the math; she went to Miami and saved considerable even with her RT travel cost included. As we headed off with clean laundry, coconut bread and smiling faces, Ida asked us to say “hello” to her cousin (I think) who is the Doctor of Libations at Peace & Plenty (P&P) Resort in George Town. Of course!

Wednesday morning, after a breakfast of- can you guess? Yes! Coconut bread French toast- sigh- we mostly-sailed 13 nm further down the Exuma chain to a spot off the beach at Big Farmers. If the forecast held up, Thurs would find us in Exuma Sound bound for George Town, Elizabeth Harbor and all that goes with being in that larger-than-life area.