Welcome to George Town

We had a nice evening in Galliot Cay with some snorkeling followed by a fabulous dinner of Reinhart’s fresh caught Barracuda. The Barracuda was on the small and delicious side, so we’ll have one more dinner to look forward to from this unlucky fish. We heard lots of whispers around the anchorage about leaving early for George Town, and we certainly didn’t want to be at the back of the pack, so we were up bright and early on Friday. One sailboat left a while before us, and we left with three others at 7am. Two power boats passed us soon after we exited the Galliot Cut and not too long after that we could see another 7 boats behinds us. We could hear the chatter on the radio of the same thing happening at every cut on the lower half of the Exumas. It sounded like we might be one of 40 boats joining the 300 plus boats already anchored in Georgetown. We were excited to see what all the fuss was about. There was a lot of fishing chatter on the radio as well. Reinhart caught another Barracuda just after leaving the cut, but as he lifted him onto the boat, he wriggled free and got away. It’s hard work to go forward and douse a loaded spinnaker to bring the fish in, so it was an extra disappointment when this one got away. About 20 minutes later there was another tug on the line and we doused the spinnaker again only to find some sea grass on the line. We decided the fishing got in the way of our downwind sailing today and decided to give up; but the talk of dolphin and tuna went on all morning with the other fishermen in the pack.

We sent an email on Wednesday to the folks we knew were in George Town to let them know we’d get in on Friday. We received an email back from a boatshow friend, Tim, letting us know he was anchored in Kidd Cove…near the dinghy dock and with access to wifi on the boat…we marked Kidd Cove as our destination. We also received an email from boatshow friends, Sally and Conrad, but our satellite link gave up before we got the contents of the message. Sally and Conrad got us on the radio when we were about 15 miles out of George Town and let us know where they were anchored…near the beach in a nice protected spot. You know us, we went for the free wifi, but it doesn’t look like our anchorage in Kidd Cove (N23 30.365 W75 45.775) is close enough for a connection.

Sally and Conrad invited us over to “It’s About Time” for a welcome dinner. Just before we left to dinghy over to them, we head someone calling Reinhart’s name outside of the boat. It was Arne & Bev, and Peter and Oriana Z. from Greensboro are visiting them this week! We went on over to “It’s About Time” and they treated us to steaks on the grill and pulled pork and yummy pineapple coleslaw and plantains and fresh baked rolls; it was a feast! After dinner Conrad took us all over to a beach party with his fancy new 15 hp dinghy motor. There was a large bonfire and logs to sit on; folks brought their guitars and drums and lots of folks joined in singing and having fun…it looked like the ultimate college beach bonfire, expect that most of these folks have children that are out of college already. Arne & Bev and Peter & Oriana were also at the party, so we could spend a lot of time catching up with them…Arne made the joke about it feeling like an old Grass company party and Reinhart and Peter disagreed. We went back to Sally and Conrad’s for a little run nightcap and they said this is very much the life in George Town…extremely social with parties every night and activities every day. It is especially active now because the George Town Regatta is coming up this week and there will be more to do than usual…I guess there will be some races as well. We finished off our night with a 15 minute dinghy ride back to Maia…the hundreds of anchor lights in the harbor made it look as if we were drifting through space, and we really could understand the allure of George Town.