History of Little Harbor

Leaving Lynyard Cay and heading south, our next stop is Little Harbor. This is the sourthern most point that we will travel in the Abacos to wait for our crossing to Eleuthera. We need winds that have anything but South in it's heading.

We reach Little Harbor and the entrance to the harbor is cliffs and caves on one side and beach and houses on the other. The waves are rolling very high and the depth is shallow. We draw 4 1/2' and are questioning if we will make it in. Not everyone gets to visit this unique little place because of how shallow the entrance is. We need do go in at high tide. The tide differences here is about 2 feet.

We roll in no problem and see a few mooring balls. Not many boats are in the harbor so we decide to anchor.  We head on out by dink to land and start our exploring. The pub here is called Pete's Pub and on the cruisers channel they are know for their rum drink called the blaster that claims "why walk when you can crawl". The pub is open air, not in a building. The ground is sand, the roof is old fabric sails thrown over logs. It is such a Bahamian look and feel. We fall in love with it right away. 

The stairs from the pub lead right out to the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. To the left a ways out there is an old lighthouse that was taken out by a hurricane. It used  to be run by a couple who have long since left. It is now run by solar power. You can make it there by foot to check out the remains. We did just that and collected sea glass and drift wood along the way. 

We met a lady at the pub named Christine with her dog Barney. She is a published author and Barney is her sidekick. She single handedly sails to the Bahamas on a regular basis. After Mark and I have now done this together and see the difficulty in even the general day to day things I have a great appreciation for what she does. Barney is super at keeping her company. He is a yorshire terrier puppy that has so much spunk. He runs up and down the deck saying farewll when you leave. She has rold us there have even been times where he ran straight off the bow... right into the water. Lol! 

The next day we go check out the caves. There are bats galore in them and I surely can't imagine anyone living in there. We didn't stay long but to take pictures. 

We also took a dink ride over into the Bight of Old Robinson. It was very shallow water at low tide and 1-2' at high tide with mangrove swamp land all around us. We had heard there were a few blue holes in here and one that was a memorial to a couple of kids that had drowned with their family. We found that exact one at the end of our journey. There was a plaque with their names on it and a warning to divers to not go too deep. We snorkeled the area. It was pretty neat and lots of fish. But you couldn't stop thinking about the parents that were there that day who lost their kids. 

Overnight we had our anchor problems as some of you have read. This blog post was written by Mark entitled "Anchor terror". I am here to tell you it was just that. I have always gone to bed wearing some kind of clothing for fear that a fire will break out and I will have to run out of the burning building buck naked. There wasn't a fire but I was rushed up in the middle of my sleep and I was certaintly glad that I had "some" clothing on. Watching us whipping by another boat in the dark when we are supposed to be stationary is such a terrifying thing. Mark tells me to grab hold of the other boat and I kid you not that is exactly what I did. I grabbed their railing as I was standing on the bow of our boat , that is how close we were. However our boats momentum was so strong and the rain was coming down so hard that I could not hold on. Eventualy I grabbed the boat hook and lassooed another mooring ball and we were safe for the evening. After the adrenaline rush wore off I was a limp, soaking wet, crying girl standing on the bow of the boat being comforted in her Captain's arms. We made it through alive. The fear that we would crash into someone elses boat or into land and then take on water was just more than I could handle. Praise God for helping us through.

http://www.abacoescape.com/Caves/Caves.html