Hope Town is a festive place for Christmas – as long as you like mostly sunny & 78 degrees! While we missed their annual Christmas show at the little Community Center, there are enough lights & decorations around to get into the Christmas spirit. Their church bells even chimed Christmas songs after their noon & 6PM bell tolls. Of course, the most notable lights are the ones trailing from the Hope Town lighthouse. While those lights are LEDs powered by a generator, the lighthouse’s beacon is the original 1862 kerosene light rotated by 700 pounds of weights, hand- cranked every 2 hours – the last such lighthouse still in operation in the world.

Our great nightly view of the Hope Town Lighthouse.

Our first week in Hope Town had occasional showers with so many rainbows we almost got tired of looking for them.

Catamarans have certainly taken over the Bahamas.

Ooops – don’t worry – just a rental!

Our mooring is near the Sunshine Freight Dock – the Grand Central of Hope Town. Hope Town is the settlement on Elbow Cay, which is a small island & even though only 4 miles from Marsh Harbour, everything has to come over by boat, ferry or freight boat. As the freight boat arrives, dozens of little trucks, vans & even golf carts descend to load up in an orchestrated show. To supplement these daily deliveries, every one of the dozen daily ferry boats (on the left) bring an assortment of packages & boxes along with residents, visitors & workers.

Our “job” this year was Gene’s “Advance Crew”. His family & friends were arriving for a week to a rental villa. We (along with Maryella) helped with transport & pre-arrangements of boats & golf carts – paid with lots of laughs & perhaps a Pina Collada or two…

Hard to drive by without taking more pictures.

As the winds really kicked up the ocean.

Back to reality aboard brought on our “usual” projects +1. The placement of the table posts had always bugged me – way too close for my big feet – so …. just move them!

Almost disaster in paradise … our generator began producing less & less voltage (108 volts instead of 120 volts). Even though our solar system is great, the sun is lower this time of the year along with cloudy days produce only 1/3 of our usual solar energy, so we really need our genset to work properly – especially as it’s the only way to power our watermaker. After a few e-mails with the genset manufacturer, the tech finally mentioned “did you try swapping out your capacitor?” What the heck – didn’t even know there was one. Very fortunately the previous owner had a spare one hidden away & replacing it took care of the problem. Next problem was with a worn-out exhaust blower (which helps keep the genset cool) – jerry-rigged with a different type of blower until we get back to the U.S.

Christmas Babka – Lori’s family’s tradition continued on through the years in our various homes & boats.

We’ll be using Hope Town as our base for the next few weeks. On the calm days we’ll head out to visit our favorite anchorages, make water with our watermaker & stop over at to Man-O-War Cay or Marsh Harbour for groceries. Around January 20th, we’ll begin to journey the 70 miles south to Spanish Wells, on the northern tip of Eleuthera.

Merry Christmas wishes to all & Happy New Year!