Treasure Cay instead of Hopetown

Before heading off from the Jib Room Monday, we dinghied over to the Royal Marsh Harbour Dinghy Dock across the harbor and headed to the BaTelCo office in hopes of finding out how our Bahamian phone went through over 1.3 gigs in one day when the first 2 gigs lasted 29 days!!  After an hour with customer service at the BTC office (whose internet was down!!!) I was told to get on WiFi somewhere else and update my iOS and that should solve my problem.  We made a quick stop at Maxwell's for groceries and headed back to the boat.  I went up to the bar at the Jib Room and got the new iOS downloaded and we headed off...but not for Hopetown.  We had heard on the Cruiser's Net that there were no mooring balls in Hopetown so we headed for Treasure Cay.

We followed Resolve the 13 miles to Treasure Cay and took a slip the first night....no moorings available.  A
very pretty setting but a bit rundown at the Marina, AND they had just raised their rates!!

We had studied the Treasure Cay listing on Active Captain and found all the complaints to be 

accurate.  Very old wooden docks,  so so facilities and LOUD music from the bar until 1 am.  Resolve had taken the last mooring ball, so we came in to take a slip.  We had been told we would get a great discount with our Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club membership, but that expired at the end of March!  That news plus the new higher dockage rates made it important to make it out into the mooring field (that price went up too, but $30/night is better than $2.15/foot!)  Luckily we were not obligated to use the electricity (it had been $24/day, we didn't even ask how much that went up.)  

First thing Tuesday morning Mike called to say he was in the dinghy hanging on to a mooring ball that has just been vacated.  We hightailed it out there and Mike was there to hand us the line!  It was an absolutely beautiful day so we headed over to the beach on the Sea of Abaco side and had lunch at Coco's Beach Bar.  Touted to be the third most beautiful beach in the world, we were sure it was the

loveliest one we've seen!  Lunch was good. 

I decided not to collage the beach pix...  These two catamarans were heading from Green Turtle, just about to pass No Name
Cay (home of the northern pigs) on their way out through Whale Cay Cut.

Wanted to include a little of the pristine white sand along the 3 1/2 mile beach.

Kite surfer near the southern end of the beach.

The wind piped up quite a lot last night and we were surprised how close we came to the charter catamaran on the mooring behind us, but close only counts in horseshoes...  The sky was brilliant and only the masthead anchor lights interfered with seeing the stars.

Debbie declared she has too much food aboard and asked us over for a brunch casserole and freshly baked coffee cake.  Quite a feast, and with Dan's famous Bloody Mary's we were set for the day.  We are moored right near Spartina from Clairborne, MD (they have a mooring in Tilghman Creek)  We had first met them 8 years ago down near Warderick Wells, and then once back on the Bay, so we caught up with them a bit.  They now keep the boat in Fort Pierce every other year so they don't have to do the northern trek every year.  Sounds tempting...

It's almost low tide, so we are going to head back to the beach to see how big a sand bar develops. The cruiser's net has been talking about this being a perigee time so tides are more extreme. ~~~_/)~~~M&D