Snug Harbor
Well after the sail from hell, it was time to take care of business and get our passports updated as they were set to expire on the 21st. Our guidebook indicated that there was a port of entry at the airport, about a 4 mile roundtrip walk down a hot paved road. I was not super excited about this prospect. I suggested that we use the sat phone to try and call first as being the Bahamas it was doubtful that an immigration officer was just sitting there in a little office waiting for someone to show up. DJ called the airport, got no answer, so we tried a number for the Island Administrator, which is sort of like a mayor. She said she could take care of it, but her office was in Snug Harbor, 12 miles down the road. Clearly there was no way I could either walk or bike that far. We’d have to sail it. We decided to just take one boat, and soon left Perseverance in the anchorage as we motored into the headwind to Snug Harbor. It was not as far by sea as there was a large curved bay and we cut across. It only took a couple of hours before we dropped the hook in 5 feet of water about 2 miles away from shore. That’s as close as we could get due to the shallow water.
It was a long wet dinghy ride to shore, but we were prepared and wearing our foul weather gear. We had to wade the last 100 feet as it was too shallow for even the dinghy to make it all the way to shore. We walked down a short path, leading to a paved road. Hmmm, to go right or left. We opted left, walked a short way, spotted some very small single story apartment type buildings with a few folks hanging around outside. We asked for directions, and of course it turned out we should have gone right. We walked up and over the hill on the hot road and just down the other side saw the bright yellow government buildings. We left Coleen outside on the porch with Prince and went in to see the Administrator. She was very serious and all business while stamping our passports. She was only authorized to give us another 30 days. After that was finished she was quite friendly and welcomed us to her island and told us a little about it.
We met up with Coleen on the porch who said that the police officer had asked to see Prince’s tags. I had my pet permit with me so I wasn’t too worried. We then headed back down the road to try and find the store. It was just past the apartments, but it was CLOSED. Coleen and I peeked in the windows while DJ went on a bit further down the road to try and find something else.
About 20 minutes later a truck pulled up and the proprietor got out. He apologized for keeping us waiting, said he’d been to meet the mail boat, but it was late so he came back. Someone had called him to say he had customers waiting outside. He had quite a selection, but no fresh food. I managed to get some hot dogs, American cheese and crackers, and a can of Pringles which was a horrible idea as I’m not supposed to eat salty food. He said to come back tomorrow and he would have lots of fresh food. But we thought it best to try the grocery in Spring Point closer to where we were anchored. Little did we know we were missing our chance….