April 27, 2009: Hope Town, Abaco, Bahamas

This morning we took our dinghy over to the short pier at the base of the Elbow Reef Lighthouse. Some other boaters as well as the guide book had recommended this as a must-do activity. The red and white horizontally striped, lighthouse is 146 years old and perched on the peninsula of Elbow Cay facing the Abaco Sea. It is very rare in that it is still manned by a lighthouse keeper. We entered through a double door in the base and climbed up the spiral staircase to the top, 101 steps. The light house is 120 feet above sea level and 89 feet tall.

We were fascinated that the lighthouse, as most along the east coast used to be, is lighted by a kerosene lantern with a wick that you light manually. It is very similar to a camping lantern except that it is larger and also magnified by huge Fresnel bull’s eye lenses. Each panel was probably three feet across and mounted on a rotating chassis. Tom and I were familiar with the story of the Confederacy removing the Fresnel lenses from the Hatteras Lighthouse during the civil war to darken the lighthouse and prevent something of that value falling into the hands of the Union. There was a speaker at a Kiwanis club meeting who had researched the history of that lens and Tom is the proud owner of a book on the subject. The lighthouse keeper lights the wick and winds the rotating mechanism every 2 hours between 8:00 pm and dawn. There is a pattern in the shades so that we could see five bright flashes as the lenses completed a rotation every 15 seconds. The light can be seen for 17 miles out at sea.

From the parapet of the lighthouse you could see the harbor, the cottages of the island and across to the ocean, a magnificent view. The harbor was full of boats on mooring balls including our own.

There was an Abaco dinghy on display which had been built here. It was propelled with an 11 foot sculling oar or sailed in favorable winds. Getting back into our dinghy we spied a conch shell thrown under the dock. It was glistening pink and calling to us, so Tom gallantly worked with the oar to retrieve it.

Dinghying across the harbor, we also briefly walked around Hope Town, two parallel streets each about 8 feet wide separated by pretty little beach houses in the Caribbean style colors. There was an occasional alley cutting between the roads, sometimes steps down. We found the St James Methodist church where we had heard the bells chiming out a hymn at 6 PM last night as we entered the harbor. I loved hearing the tones wafting across the water.

This afternoon we took our bikes back to shore and unloaded them on the government dock. We were amazed at how low the tide was hence how tall the pier was from the water level. It was an adventure just getting the bikes up the ladder. There were three boys there fishing the way I like to – constantly catching fish and letting them go. They said they came to Hope Town every summer, sort of like Montreat or Emerald Isle for us.

Then we rode the length of the island which turned out to be about 4 ½ miles up and down hills and through the gusty wind. Inevitably, if there was a turn in the road, it was at the bottom of a hill with sand across the asphalt. Our skinny tires make a unsettling whirring sound in sand. Thanks to the last hurricane, much of the road had been recently resurfaced. There were majestic sweeping views of the angry Atlantic on the ride. We finally reached the other end of Elbow Cay to see the famous Tahiti Beach. The tide was out and the water is low, so the beach looked like the Sahara desert. We hiked around the edge to the ocean and back and it was interesting to see the wave patterns marked in the sand from before the tide went out. I found another sea urchin.

The Abaco Inn was on our path and we stopped and made reservations for dinner including a van ride from the government pier. The woman who picked us up as 7:00 was a local. So local, in fact, that she grew up the daughter to the light house keeper, one of 10 children. She said her Dad made the kids set an alarm and every two hours two of them took the turn to climb the stairs and wind up the light. She said they never left the island during hurricanes even though she acknowledged that a lot of damage was done. She and most of her siblings now run the Inn and she was also our waitress. We sat on the porch (windows closed) facing the ocean watching the massive white capped waves pound the shore. Dinner was delicious and the end of a very unique day.