May 13, 2004

Hatchet Bay Pond, Eleuthera  Latitude 25° 20N - Longitude 76° 29W

Working our way north along Eleuthera's lee coastline, we came to the narrow opening amidst the cliffs to Alicetown's Hatchet Bay Pond.  Wouldn't you know, just before we reached  the narrow channel of the entrance, the motor died and with a terrible clunking noise, would not restart.  With reflexes that surprised me, we were able to get the Jib up and use the wind to turn off before running into the cliff.  We sailed back out into a windy sea, clearly not able to return downwind, and without a good spot to drop the anchor in raucous conditions.   Unable to hail assistance from anyone in town on the radio, a fellow cruiser took his boat through the cut and found someone with a motorboat who could tow us to safety.  We were towed to a mooring ball in 'the Pond' which became our home for the next 11 days.  All kinds of things go through your mind when something like this happens'but I'm not going to tell you what they are.  Instead, the good news is, the problem was the starter, not the engine (thank God) and it was fixed within three days for a very reasonable price.  On islands like these, everyone seems to know everyone, so I went asking around for a mechanic who could rebuild starters and voila'there was one in the next town.   We hitchhiked to his house, left him a note (he wasn't home), and he was there at the dock to pick up the starter the next morning.  Cool!   Using the Pond as our base, we rented a car and saw all the island sites including caves, cliffs, the Glass Window (narrowest part of Eleuthera), the ferry docks, the little coastal villages, the surfers beach and a darn good restaurant 'Tippys'.  Since there are only two movie theaters in the Bahamas, one being in Governor's Harbor, Eleuthera I couldn't resist going to it, and really enjoyed seeing 'Kill Bill'.  I also saw Billy Zane (in the flesh), co-star of The Titanic, who was having a swim and dinner at the same restaurant as us, after the last day of filming the movie 'Three' here on Eleuthera.