Here is our update for this week. We left
Lake Worth on Dec. 4th very early and made a
motor crossing to West End. There was one small
trawler clearing in when we arrived and other than that, no other
boats. The marina and resort looks absolutely fine. Old Bahama Bay has been in financial turmoil for several years so this isn't going to help at all. After clearing in we set sail for the south side of
Abaco. Unfortunately the
wind didn't cooperate and we ended up dropping
sails at sunset and motoring through the night. There was a ton of freighter and
cruise ship traffic in the channel. We arrived the next afternoon via Tillaho Cut to the south side of
Elbow Cay. Starting just North of Cherokee you could see the damage to land and homes. We didn't encounter any floating debris or any unusual shoaling, in fact, it was just as I remembered from this last April.
Hope Town is pretty bad. There really isn't anything else to say about it but DANG. We arrived in time to talk to one of the community organizers that evening and then had a drink at On da Beach, which has been opened for several weeks.
There are 6 of us on Palarran. Three are journeymen carpenters who flew from Fort St. John,
British Columbia, my daughter, cousin, and myself. The first day we could work, Friday, we rebuilt a
dock for a local named
Captain Stafford Plugg. His house is badly damaged but his mothers (80)
lost her's and is living with them. She struggled to get in his boat so we built a lower level for her and braced the old
dock. We finished that on Saturday and then proceeded to finish the roof of the library by putting the balance of the
plywood up and ice and
water shield. The guys ripped through that. The windows and doors are supposed to come next week so we hope to be able to install those.
Tomorrow we are going to a locals home to tear off the old roof, patch about 7
sheets of
plywood, and put the roof shield up. They are going to use this home to house some of the relief workers as it has a working
generator. Actually there is a 12' x 12' shed sitting upside down on the
generator but it apparently did start so much to my enjoyment I'm going to knock the heck out of that shed tomorrow with a sledge hammer. This will take about 3 days for our crew and they have two more similar projects lined up for us afterwards.
We haven't been here long enough to fully understand the dynamic's of what is happening here. They do believe that a fair number of cruisers are going to come and help them. Currently there are about 10
boats in the harbor and we are the only one doing relief work besides
True North, which is a professional NGO. The
captain of True North said only one other boat has come since they arrived like us, with workers who can and are doing something.
I bring this up because as I posted before and still believe, it is too early to just come here to "cruise". It really will not help the economy or the community in any significant way but does take away resources that are needed for working crews. Probably in another 3 months this wouldn't create any issue. But there is no reason for a cruiser to not come here and provide working aid.
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