Today we took the dinghy into Georgetown.  It was about a ten minute dinghy drive as we are on the farthest out anchor field.  There are so many different anchorages here, and each one has protection from different winds.  We haven’t learned much about them yet although we hope we chose a good one for this strong wind (50 kt squalls) coming through about 1 am. 

In the photo above, Mark and I are standing at the end of the dinghy dock.  At one end of it there is a hose with water running out of it.  Cruisers can bring their dinghy there and fill jerry jugs with water without even taking them out of their dinghy.  Garbage can be brought to a large trash bin in the dinghy too.  Both are free which is very unusual for the Bahamas.  

We were mainly going ashore to use the free wifi at the big grocery store, Exuma Market.  However it was a slow connection and we couldn’t do much more than get our e-mail.  We heard about someone selling prepaid cards to his server, so we walked up to the pet store/car wash/wifi store.  Every store here seems to have more than one use.  The owner was a young Bahamian who is a real entrepreneur, but I’m not sure how his pet store is going to go over.  His sign lists the animals they will be selling and one was goldfish. I don’t think that one will work as you can get a net and catch all kind of small tropical fish in the Bahamian waters.    We bought the wifi card but while I can get his signal far out where we are, I couldn’t get online.  Once we move back to the other anchorage we were at (Sand Dollar) I think it will work.

After we got back, we made pizza and went over to Ultra to eat dinner.  I had made the crusts and put on pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese for them.  We both have pizza stones, so made the pizzas in our own ovens and got together to eat them.  I bought a huge bag of shredded mozzarella at Exuma Market and it was quite reasonable.

We should be here through February 25 as JoAnne is taking a ham radio test on that day and then we’ll start north again.....unless we decide to go south to Long Island.  Many cruisers we talk to here don’t have definite plans.  When you ask them where they are going next, they often say they haven’t thought about that yet. 

We’d like to ride our bikes here, but the drivers are pretty crazy and I don’t think there are speed limits.  The streets are narrow and it is quite hilly.  We haven’t gone in any stores other than the grocery store so far. There is a straw market - mini version of the huge straw market in Nassau and quite a few small shops. We aren’t looking for anything, but will probably take a look.