February 10, 2008.

It’s already been a couple of days since we got here. Times flying. On our first full day here we decided to head into Georgetown to walk around a bit and maybe buy some vegetables and bread among other necessities.

That involved a dinghy ride across Elizabeth Harbor from our anchorage near Stocking Island over to Great Exhuma. It’s more than a mile across open water, there was no wind so the water was pretty flat so it should have been a dry ride. Our dinghy motor is a little undersized so it was going to be at least twenty minutes each way.

Upon arriving at Georgetown you have to dinghy through a small tunnel into a little lake.
As soon as you enter the pond there’s a large dinghy dock right at the Exhuma Market. The Exhuma Market is the local grocery. It was surprisingly well stocked, I mean they don’t really have much of a selection but they do have the staples. We could choose from several different types of bread along with our choice of some good looking vegetables. Then a few odds and ends and we were out of there after having spent $61. The same stuff back in the states would have probably cost us around $35-$40 or so dollars. So all in all, not too bad.

I’m not sure why we shopped first, because then we decided to walk around and see the town. Thankfully the “town” is tiny so lugging the groceries wasn’t a big deal.

We were really surprised how little there is here. We’ve been hearing long time cruisers complaining about how things have changed. How everyplace is growing and becoming more commercial. Couldn’t prove it by me, I mean again, the majority of these people have nothing. There’s some money splashed around but most of the businesses here seem to just survive.

We spent the evening at a get together on the beach with the crews from the majority of the boats anchored off Sand Dollar. It was a nice time and we got to catch up with a lot of people that we’ve been leap frogging for a thousand miles or more.
The anchorage has started to fill in after us and there will probably be 60 boats in our neck of the woods by the time the front arrives.

Today we went snorkeling and shelling and that pretty much killed the day. It’s now Sunday evening and the wind has picked up as the front has arrived. It’s blowing 20 knots, raining hard and supposed to reach 30 couple in the next 48 hours so we’ll probably be staying on the boat for the next 2 days, we’ll see.