We had an excellent time with Dan and Sarah and were sad to see them off today, although they did go out with a bang - we had an amazing sail this morning from Hope Town to Treasure. 6 - 7 knots (ok maybe 5.5 but we hit 7 a few times) in about 15 - 20 knots of wind, close hauled (as close as we get).
I think I already covered New Years Eve, so I'll start with Junkanoo at Green Turtle. We took the ferry over and got there a little early but had time to see the town, pick up some not very good lunch from one of the booths and grab a seat. Note to self - long lines are sometimes worth it and always go to the booth with the food being warmed up in catering trays, not the microwave. There was a sign on one of the buildings that the parade would start at 2:00 but, we heard a local say, "well it's scheduled to start at 2." In true island fashion, it was closer to 3, but was worth the wait. The costumes were amazing and the music (like the whole thing), some how came together.
It was a slow moving parade, but apparently it looped around the town and them started over. We didn't wait that long. We grabbed some drinks and hopped back on the ferry.
January 2nd was a Sunday, so we decided to head to Guana and go to the "famous" Nipper's Sunday Pig Roast which we had heard so much about on the Cruiser's Net. We had no idea the party we were getting ourselves into. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday and the music was pumping and the dance floor was full. We stuck to the pork and, of course had to sample Nipper's house rum punch.
On Monday we decided to head to Hope Town. In very exciting news, we caught our first fish on the way, and then promptly caught our second fish of the same variety. We think it was either a type of tuna or a mackerel, but really have no idea other than it was delicious.
The entire harbor is full of mooring balls, so we hailed Hope Town Marina to arrange a mooring for the night. Skeddadle hailed us back and we ended up having happy hour on their boat, which is beautiful and somehow only 3 feel longer seems much bigger, especially in the cockpit/living room.
On the way into town Sarah proved her worth by spotting a hand painted sign which read, "Yamaha Sales and Service." We dingyed over to the marina with the sign, and they were closed Monday for New Years Day, but would be open the following day. But they allowed us to dock the dingy for a little while so we could climb the 101 stairs to the top of the lighthouse. The view was beautiful and it was fun to look down and see Whisper in the harbor.
The next day we headed over to the marina. We did some laundry, went snorkeling and of course, had the engine fixed! Once the guy arrived the fix didn't take very long. The longest part was probably cleaning the gas tank, and filtering the gas. We couldn't get the gas tank out of the boat until we emptied it, so we used the extra fuel bulb/line to syphon the gas into 3 buckets (with Ben in the dingy holding the buckets). Then once D at the Yamaha place cleaned the fuel tank, and we reinstalled it in the boat, we syphoned the gas back into the fuel tank (which was much easier, since the dingy was not needed).
Once the motor was fixed we did a victory lap around the harbor, including several left turns, and a pirouette right next to Skeddadle who cheered along with us. The beautiful sail the next day was wonderful, and of course it came the day we finally had the motor fixed. We were very thankful we had it though because right as we were docking at Treasure the wind picked up to almost 20 knots, and something we've done several times with one motor somehow became incredibly difficult despite having both.
We are going to miss Whisper, but we are excited to be heading to Costa Rica and are looking forward sleeping in a bed that doesn't move, as well as all the other things that go along with living on shore. I think in two weeks we are going to be very excited to see Whisper again.
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