Friday, April 17, 2009
17 April - Day 44. Shallow anchor sets combined with strong winds make for light sleeping. But setting the GPS and depth alarms before going to bed does help. I hate using the amps but being awakened by the keel bumping off the bottom is worse. On average, and when not underway, we run the genset two hours each day and get about 90 Ah back into the batteries. We decided to walk into the 'big city', New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay, population 400, today. It's about 3 miles each way. The dense, mostly low foliage is only broken up occasionally by houses. The terrain is surprisingly hilly. The road initially goes east across the Cay which gave us a good look at the reef strewn littoral. Several times we saw pretty water font clearings with picnic tables centered in them. Congestion picked up, i.e. we saw 3 or 4 golf carts, as we neared town. There's a steep hill leading down to New Plymouth, at the bottom of which is the Wrecking Tree. Many of the islanders used to make their living by salvaging the mostly English and American Schooners that went up on the local reefs. The Wrecking Tree is where, by law, the salvaged goods were brought. Under the Tree it was inventoried and then transshipped to Nassau for sale. The salvager got about 50% of the proceeds while the tax man got 10%. The advent of modern navigation electronics freed the Tree for new ventures. The latest of which is a locals restaurant. We can vouch for their great conch, grouper and cold beer. 0nm today: 1260nm total. DBH
