On Thursday, a group of us got together to register for the Coconut Harvest, more to follow. The island restaurant was preparing a pig for a bbq, and of course someone suggested a picture of “the girls”.
Later, lunch overlooking a few of the 350 boats here.
We braved a walk across the island to the sound side, a lot rougher than the anchorage.
The wind was been relentless the past week, making the 2 mile dinghy ride across to the town itself unpleasant. I needed to do some grocery shopping, mail some stuff, and dump trash, so I called the water taxi and took the ride back & forth. Luke stayed behind and did chores on the boat. 
There was a great No Talent Show on Friday evening, which well earned its name. A few acts were well done and polished, but most were just fun. This belly dancer may have a few years under those cymbals, but she could sure still shake ‘em!
It got dark too early to catch pictures of all of the acts, but we had a conch orchestra (ouch!!!!), The Blues Brothers, The Raisonettes doing, of course, “heard it through the grapevine”, and the winner, a well rehearsed cancan act. After the show, there was dancing on the beach to the “oldies”…quite appropriate for the demographics of the cruising community ….
Now, the coconut harvest ….The idea is to have teams of 4 in each dinghy, all rushing to gather up as many floating coconuts as possible. Over 700 were dumped into a little bay area. 25 dinghys participated. We had a women’s teams and a men’s team, shown proudly below.
We were each allowed one swim fin per person for propulsion, one bucket per boat, and mandatory wearing of a life vest, no matter where you wore it. After corralling all of the teams on the beach, we had a La Mans start, with a horn blast and everyone running for their beached dinghys. 
Paddle as best you can, heading for the floating coconuts the guys dinghy ---- 
Some were not above filching from boats --- yes, that would be Luke’s boat mate.
No matter, the girls team didn’t win, but we sure got our share of the coconuts.
The guys got 17, we got 26.
We were pleased at that little victory.
Next phase was the “guts and butts” race. Each team had carry coconuts back and forth across a volleyball court, first belly to belly, then butt to butt. We were perfect, again!
Here are Luke & Dave, butt to butt.
And Dee & Marion, belly to belly.
And THEN, the coconut toss. We women had a plan…..we knew we couldn’t hit the far targets (had 3 circles on the other side of a volleyball net, had to get the coconuts in one of them to count), so we just all went for the near target, going a perfect “4” and didn’t want to risk a wash out. Guess what !!! We got ‘em!!
We didn’t win, but we did come in high in the points, and we had a great time.
Saturday night the group met at Marian & Greg’s boat for a birthday dinnerparty for Joanne. The birthday girl is on the far right.
Sunday was mostly spent doing last chores before leaving --- trash to town, a few groceries, 50 pounds of cat litter (yes, that was the ONLY size they had!), planning our next port of call, etc. We stumbled onto an impromptu barbershop/beauty salon on the beach. One of the cruiser ladies was a hair dresser and had taken her generator, scissors, and assorted paraphernalia to a beach. We both got a hair cut and gave her a “donation”. I wish I’d taken a camera!
George Town is sort of the destination/dividing place for cruisers. Almost everyone goes there, but from there, the options are endless. Some continue south to the Caribbean or further south, some to Europe, some turn north and scoot home to the USA back the way they came, some go north and make a big circle before heading back to the USA. We left many of our friends at this point and we’ll miss them. Fortunately, we will see some of them as our northern passages cross and others at various US places as we head north, either to Deltaville or on our trip next summer to Maine.
On Monday, we left with friends Dee and Dave of Wings of Angells, from Savannah. It was a nice mostly sail to our next island, Cat, about 50 miles due east. I decided to cast out a fishing line and within 5 minutes caught a fish SO BIG it broke my reel! REALLY!!! I snagged a big mahi mahi, maybe 40 inches long. I dragged that rascal in for a long time and JUUUSSSST as we got him to the stern of the boat, he gave one big shake and broke not only my line, but also the inner workings of the reel. I think Luke has it fixed --- we’ll try again as we got to the right waters. They generally are in an area where the water depth changes, like from 4000 ft to 150 ft or from 150 ft to 20 ft.
We arrived at New Bight just in time for full moon-rise.
Wick isn’t usually interested when I cook, but on the rare occasion that I cook meat, well…. He’s most helpful. 
He even tries to help his daddy after it’s ready. 
New Bight (Cat Island) in the Elutheras is the home of Father Jerome. Born in England in 1876, he came to the Bahamas in the early 1900’s to restore hurricane damaged churches. As an ex-architect, he built 7 hurricane proof churches with thick walls and barrel-vaulted roofs in the Bahamas. He built the Church of the Redemption in New Bight and also The Hermitage, which was his retirement home. Beautiful and quite impressive, it was built on the highest point of land (206 ft!) in all of the Bahamas.
Now look again, at the relative size of the Hermitage, with me as a reference.
It’s so small but amazing. A tiny chapel, large enough for only 3-4 people. 
His private room is here, the small room indicated by the green shutters. 
The 14 Stations of the Cross bring you up the mountain to the Hermitage. Here is Christ’s tomb, with the stone rolled away. 
Inside, he has even included the body of Christ. 
Father Jerome was buried here, too, when he died in 1956. 
His choice was perfect – the view from the church is a 360 degree view of the beautiful island and waters. This includes old cleared field areas that were once used in a effort to farm the small island. 
The island beach is the perfect postcard Bahamas beach. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than this. 
We even found 2 live sand dollars. See the “fuzz” on them? And they aren’t bleached out yet. Yes, we put them back in the water. 
Wednesday, motored to Fernandaz Beach, 7 mles and 1 hour away. Internet! How's this for an internet cafe? Self service bar, honor system, taken over by cruisers in need of internet.
Not much else, except beautiful beaches. 
Here are Dee & Dave, doing the cruiser thing, standing in the dinghy so they don’t get wet. We haven’t mastered that yet. 
I think we’ll take one more day at Cat Island, then further north, maybe Little San Salvador. Hopefully we’ll have internet there, too, but not sure yet.
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