Lily and Mike .. part 2 Mermaid Reef

on our way to Mermaid Reef to Snorkel

 the many fish that came to greet us

we feed them corn and they swarmed  us and grab at the bag of corn for more

the fish let you pet them 

getting ready to head back to shore

lucky the Captain brought more gas for the dinghy

back to fishing

Mike making fish fritters

we all enjoyed

January 24 - 30 Lily and Michael's visit to the Abaco part one

Mangoes has its first ever Farmers Market .. it was quite good

all home grown and chemical free

Lily and Mike arrive at 6pm at Marsh Harbour

I came to meet them with our taxi driver Elizabeth, the one we use

all the time

after the kids had a quick nap after 14 hours of travelling time, we had pizza and the next day

had us filling our water tanks for departure

Lily will kill me for using this picture of her, fresh out of the shower  ...but they both got into the act of catching some more

fish .. Lily just wanted to feed them, then Mike took over and he was in for the hunt

checking in at home with Sue Allison, who is looking after their dog Mars

relaxing before the pot luck to welcome them to the Abaco

most of the cruisers this time at the marina are Canadians

Chris from Grooven (Toronto), entertained

Rey, the harbour master brought some wine and joined us after his work

after supper we headed to the other side of the Harbour for some

Rake and Scrape music …. here Mike is playing the saw

our friends from Moonlight Maid and Snow Bird

Mike even got into the limbo

Alan playing the saw

the real limbo guy .. doing his performance and even lighting a smoke on the way

under the pole

some pictures of the band

and yes I had to give it a try .. so much fun

the band encouraged everyone and anyone to try their hand making music

January 21-23, 2017 the storm

green heron on our dock line finishing at night

Joe changed the anchor chain end for end and had to splice on the rode .. the galvanization was

disappearing on the end we have used for a few years

I did some fishing off the boat and caught a few Grey Mutton Snapper

they where very hungary for the squid and we had to throw back the small ones

our Quebec neighbours  on Katmandu … Giesel and Philip decided to 

catch some also

one of my prize fish

we only kept 2 and gave the rest to one of the workers at Mangoes

very excellent eating fish

I'm not the best filleting fish and we cook them on the BBQ and the

bones come right out

a few days before Lily and Mike arrive we are hit by 45 knot winds for a day

the dinghy had 2 inches of rain in it and the cooler was floating

when the palm trees look like this it is windy

everyone was spider webbed in

we are glad we are at a dock and not at anchor in Marsh Harbour

there is no way you can get off your boat in these conditions

the big Donnie boat had a hard time turning around in the high winds

he pulls bow first into the dock and then backs up and turns around to head back out

… it took him about 4 tries to get the bow heading in the right direction

here he is rubbing up the side of our pole that we are tied to