Several weeks ago when we met up with Dave and Wan Grabb (see April 13th blog), Wan gave us contact info for two friends of theirs on Man-o-War (MOW) Cay.Thanks to Wan, we met both friends after we dropped our anchor off MOW Cay following a short sail from Hope Town. We first met Lisa and Pete who were at their new home on Dickie’s Cay (Dickie’s Cay is 60 yards south of MOW forming a little harbor with MOW) as their original home had been destroyed by hurricane Dorian. They were busy fixing up their new home, just next door to their former home when we pulled up to their dock. After brief introductions where we also met their house guests Kim and Bob, Lisa and Pete were kind enough to show us around their new property and home. In the course of talking, we discovered shared ties to Lake Charlvoix, Michigan and a mutual acquaintance from Ann Arbor (Sarah’s former pediatrician and good friend’s father). We stayed about an hour before crossing over to MOW by dinghy.
At MOW we walked the town that is known for the Albury family and their long history of boat building. The cay was hit very hard by the hurricane, which destroyed much of the Albury boat yard but the resilience of the local people came through. Two such individuals we chatted with who demonstrated much resilience we’re running the only two shops that were seemingly open (aside from the grocery store). Both happened to share the same last name of Albury. Joe (about 90 yrs of age) was running Joe’s gift shop and Annie (about 80 hrs old) was busy at her sewing machine making canvas bags in a well stocked but cramped shed across the street from the Sail Shop’s former location.
We then dinghied around to the Grabb’s dock where we encountered a couple in a passing golf cart who stopped as they knew we must be the friends of the Grabb’s that Wan had informed them would be arriving. We introduced ourselves to Anne-Charlotte and Per who kindly extended us an invitation to join them at their home tomorrow for a drink. We thanked them for their kind offer and told them we were planning on moving to Marsh Harbour for the night in view of some unsettled weather coming from the south and so we would have let them know tomorrow if we thought we could return.
We also met Neil as we approached the Grabb’s home. Neil is the local caretaker who was doing some outdoor construction work for the Grabbs, and he was busy digging a hole for a new water cistern. Down here, fresh water is a limited commodity so homes collect rainwater from their roofs and store it in cisterns for later use. Neil had been helpful to us on the phone yesterday alerting us to some shallow depths in MOW harbor. His information was partly responsible for us electing to anchor Juno off MOW rather than to use the Grabb’s mooring in the inner harbor.
We didn’t stay long at MOW due to the weather forecast but we certainly had an extra special visit while there thanks to the Grabb’s outreach efforts.
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