Thursday 5-20-10: Hope Town

Wednesday’s weather pattern prevailed today, offering little hope of good sailing winds. This port, promising many ashore charms and sights to see, lured us to stay. ‘We did. ‘Generally, but not specifically. You see, we developed one of the common, albeit rarely discussed, plagues of bareboat sailing ….. that being a fouled starboard toilet (this problem being ambidextrous, although). The solution to this issue, a common one with sailboats, is to sail out to open waters, far from any nation’s teeming shore, and then …… ahem ….. drop the load, so to speak. This was our plan, which we executed more or less accordingly. Minor hiccups ensued, but not worthy of immortalizing in this blog, unread thou it may be.
Freed of our restraining baggage, we made our way back to Hope Town to continue our explorations. Entering Hope Town Harbor, we secured Crookshank to a new mooring ball without incident.
Hopetown Lighthouse became our next sight to explore. We made our way there, and in small groups, hiked to the top, all 131 steps mastered at various paces. This is a magnificent Civil Engineering structure, completed in 1863. It's a masonry edifice, foundations unknown, but probably of massive stacked masonry. Unlike its cousin, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Hope Town suffered no debilating shoreline erosion, dictating a massive - in toto - relocation of this structure in 2003. (My company, MACTEC, was soils engineer-of-record for this award winning engineering effort, although I claim no part of the enterprise.)
While I marvel (get wrapped around the axle, some would say) about the construction of historic structures, far cooler, I find for lighthouses like this, are the optics. Using nothing more powerful than a kerosene-flame lamp, optics developed by a French engineer by the name of Fresnel, are able to project the kerosene-flame image out to sea some twenty miles(much to the chagrin of the Abacos salvagers.)
We made our way by dingy, courtesy of Cap’n Scott, to the other side of the harbor for lunch at Cap’n Jacks. ‘ not, great, … bugs swarmed with the fried food, but hunger and we, prevailed.
Thru the afternoon, we explored and shopped the island, highlighted by a stop at Vernon’s, famous for his Key Lime Pie. Yo & I found his pie somewhat lacking, although this apparently was a decidedly minority opinion. Key Lime Pie critics not-withstanding, Vernon, present, and on-the-hoof, was real and his sense of humor, pervasive. ‘In my opinion, our Key lime pie criticism was trumped by Vernon's humor.
Eventually, we made our way, in late afternoon, back to Crookshank. There, we heard, via VHS radio, that Gran Cru, Kelly’s boat, was aground at Tilloo Cay, listing at the time at about 15 degrees. Being too far away, we could only offer moral support …. and wait.