The nice thing about our decision to stay in the Abacos this winter is that it’s been really easy for us to make quick hops back and forth between the islands. We left Marsh Harbour a little later than we’d planned since we needed to pay our slip fees, so we ended up dropping the hook by Mermaid to work and made the hop to Man-O-War after work, which is just a lovely way to end the work day.
Some places have a gravity all their own, and that’s certainly true of Man-O-War. Both times we’ve been here, we only intended to stay for a couple days and ended up staying for a week. We’re now at a point where we’re ticking off “lasts” and soaking in all the experiences. Man-O-War has been my favorite spot to kick back and take it slow, and I was excited to come back. It’s so quiet and peaceful here, and when the wind is down as it was for the first couple days, there’s a complete, pervasive silence that I fully embraced after the relative busyness of Marsh Harbour.
On our morning walks, I was really tuned in to the sounds – the rustle of palm fronds brushing against each other, the heavy crash of waves on the Atlantic side of the island vs. the gentle lapping of small waves from the Sea of Abaco.Within the past week or so, we’ve noticed that the birds have started to return – the volume and variety of birdsong has changed so much. And as we sat in the cockpit enjoying the complete silence, we noticed a small chorus of crickets.
We snorkeled the little limestone outcroppings on the Sea of Abaco side and while it wasn’t Mermaid Reef, there were a fair number of smaller fish, and the wrasses here were much bigger than at Mermaid. A barracuda decided to follow me, keeping just to the edge of visibility and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t unsettling.
It was finally calm enough to snorkel the ocean side of the island, and we found a really cool reef close to the shore. Towards the end of our snorkel, the surge and current started to build, and I admit to getting slightly panicky as I don’t have a lot of experience with that. But we were literally right off the beach in shallow water, so there wasn’t much to worry about.
I’ve finally figured out the conch horn – I no longer sound like a dying animal. Either that, or it only works here on Man-O-War, because I kind of had it okay when we were last here too. 😉
One of the other boats in the mooring field, V Twin, was in Green Turtle at the same time as us, and we finally got to meet them. Margi and Chuck were managing the moorings for Buddy, so we chatted with them a few times, and they invited us over for drinks. We had a great time, and it’s always fun meeting new people and making new friends.
It was a wonderful, lazy week – exactly what I imagined when I thought about spending the winter here.
