Little Harbour and Pete's Pub

One fine calm day last week, we decided to make a journey to Little Harbour and Pete's Pub, only 15 miles south of us, but necessitating a transit across two of those nasty "open to the Atlantic Ocean" inlets that produce the big rollers.  In bad weather, crossing these inlets (just crossing them, mind you, not actually going out in them), can be impossible.  On this day, we were told, it would be as good as it gets.  A word here about beam seas ... this means that the waves are directly hitting the side of your boat ... and the difference between sailboats and motor boats.  When a sailboat has a sail up, the wind helps to hold the boat steady and lessen the rolling of a beam sea.  We have no such, so beam seas tend to roll us quite heavily.  Even on this "as good as it gets" day, we were rollin', but only for a short time until we got back into the lee (protection) of the next barrier island.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Here's the view looking south as we leave Sea Spray in White Sound and enter the beautiful Sea of Abaco...

... and here is a particularly lovely shot of the water.  I don't enhance any of these photos, the colors are sensational.  The "ripples" are actually the bottom of the sea bed reflecting in the sunlight.

It felt great to be out on the water in the big boat, rather than the dinghy.  We made it across the two inlets and entered Little Harbor, a destination with a wonderful story, which I am going to take verbatim from Dozier's Waterway Guide: Bahamas 2013 because they tell it so well.

 

Little Harbour probably comes close to anyone's dream of a Bahamian hideaway.  It certainly met the critical demands of the extraordinary, dynamic, eccentric runaway Smith College professor, Randolf Johnston, one of the great sculptors of the 20th century.  Johnston and his wife, Margot; daughter, Marina; and three sons, Bill, Pete, and Denny, left Northampton, MA, on their schooner, Langosta, to escape the maddening rush of civilization and live out their lives in sight of no man, in the pursuit of a free life and devotion to art.  With no particular place in mind, Langosta sailed to Little Harbour.  The family, in true Swiss Family Robinson style, lived in caves, built thatched huts, and eventually constructed a foundry for Randolf's work.  Johnston, who died in 1992 in his late 80's, spent the last 40 years of his life in Little Harbour, pursuing his dream of living free to sculpt in an unspoiled natural environment removed from the fetters, constraints and pollution of life in the developed world. 

 

Today, much of Little Harbour remains in the hands of his three sons.  Only Pete maintains a relatively high profile with a gallery devoted to his father's work and his own, as well as that of other local artists. 

 

The small harbour has mooring balls, 'er make that mooring tires, so we grabbed one ...

... and dinghy'd in to see the gallery. 

The sculptures are beautiful, but a bit out of our price range. 

 

 

 

We settled for a new hat for Steve and lunch at the funky open air beach bar, Pete's Pub. 

View of the Harbour from the roof.

We walked over the dunes on the board walk to take a look at the ocean... 

... and hiked down the road and up the path to the remains of an old lighthouse.   

 

It's a rugged coast line here. For cruisers heading further south to Eleuthera and the Exumas (the southern island chain, very popular cruising ground) Little Harbour is the last safe port before heading out for a 40 mile open ocean crossing. 

 

For us, however, it was the furthest south we would go on this trip.  On our way back to the boat, we met Pete on the dock.  He denied he was Pete at first, but after we chatted for a while and asked him about the caves, he owned up.  He told us where the caves were and how to best see them (we did), but said he couldn't really remember living in them.  We slept well safely attached to our mooring tire, glad that we had made the journey to see this famous place.  The next day, we anchored at Sandy Cay, met up with friends Steve and Elaine, and snorkeled a small reef that is part of the Bahamian National Trust Land and Sea Park.  The huge spotted manta rays that Elaine promised did not show up, but we saw some decent coral and several schools of colorful fish. 

 

The rest of the ride home was beautiful, cruising in the Sea of Abaco is great.  We get a little restless sitting in our slip, so today took the big boat out to Marsh Harbor for provisioning.  After paying the Elbow Cay prices for produce and dairy, Maxwell's prices looked pretty good.  Just a day trip, back home tonight. 

 

so here's a little map of where we've been so far, the Sea of Abaco is the water between Great Abaco Island and the Cays ... pronounced "keys".  The English apparently spelled it Cays, but when the Americans decided to use it to describe small barrier islands, we decided to spell it like it sounds.