Location: Man-O-War
We arrived in Man-O-War just an hour before sunset. Dad fooled with the radio all day and we were able to hear Stephanie and Jack at least some of the time. At the harbor entrance you could go to the north mooring field or the south mooring field. The recorded depths inside are few and far between, even on the paper charts, so we really just had to wing it and hope for the best. Dad and I went north while Stephanie and Jack went south. The north end of the harbor turned out to be right along Main Street, with innumerable dingy docks to tie up to. This made it a very popular spot. The boats were so close together here that you could practically jump from bow to stern up the harbor. Dad and I picked up an empty mooring and Dad, still testing his radio, called Jack and Stephanie to tell them that there were extra moorings up our way. We didn't hear a response so Dad tried a few more time, or around ten more times. I knew if I heard the click of the radio mic turn on one more time I was going to blow so I suggested that we check out the town before dark. We had just gotten our stuff together when we finally heard the radio respond. Jack and Stephanie had been on a mooring but left it to join us in the north end of the harbor when they hit a sandbar. They were stuck and needed our help. Through our travels Dad and I have become pros at this. We got out our towing gear; extra long lines, Danforth anchor, and our anchor float. I sang the Indiana Jones theme song aloud as we hummed in the dingy toward our friends in distress, but really there wasn't much that we could do. Jack's rental boat has a wingtip keel, forcing it through the sand usually just buries the keel in deeper. We put our anchor out and waited for high tide. The experience was very tame compared to mine and Dad's stressful encounters. The four of us listened to music, ate snacks, talked, and relaxed. Detrimental to Jack's running aground was the fact that the rental boat's depth sounder was off by at least a foot, which is huge in the Bahamas. This also made it hard to know if and when we were free floating again or still resting on the bottom. When we finally started to swing around 9pm the crew went to their battle stations while Jack steered us off the bar and safely to a mooring. With boating and with life you sometimes have to pay your dues, bad things will inevitably happen and it's just about how you handle them, we were all thankful because this could have been much worse.
Friday morning we strolled around Man-O-War. They have three stores on the island, making it basically a mall. No joke people come here from other islands to go shopping. First we went into the trinket/clothing store, next the fabric/clothing store, and finally the canvas shop. In the canvas store we met some native Bahamians. The two women gave us a brief history of Man-O-War, most Bahamians are of British decent, their predecessors were loyalists who fled the Americas after the Revolution. The island of Man-O-War is seemingly run by one family, the Albury's. The original Albury was shipwrecked on this island where he met a family who used to land to farm, but lived on another island. Albury married the farmer's daughter and the two of them single-handedly populated the land. If you meet someone here you have a fifty precent shot at guessing that their last name is Albury. I didn't learn the religious affiliation of the original Albury's but Man-O-War is very faith orientated in fact the island is dry, not a drop of alcohol is sold here. The two women at the shop were exceedingly proud of that fact. They believed that it spoke a great deal about their high morals, to me it just spoke for the lack of young adults here or for sure a revolution would have swept through already. We also talked about the U.S. immigration policies, which they clearly disliked. One of their daughters went to college in the States, married an American but is unable to use her degree and work in America because she an immigrant. I knew that the system was broken but I guess we don't feel how much the nation has to loose.
After our stroll through town Jack, Stephanie, Dad, and I went up to the beach, the museum, and the residential part of the island. The houses grew further apart as we walked away from the town. Many were much more modern than we had seen so far. It was clear that being a dry island has kept the resorts, big marinas, yacht clubs, and most notably noisy tourists away making it much less segregated or built up than any other island we have visited. Man-O-War was cozy, quiet, and serene.
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