Tree Topper

I wish I could use this little Bahama Woodstar hummingbird as a Christmas tree topper. Not a bad photo considering they hardly ever sit still and are camouflaged in the corkwood trees. Plus they are only a few inches long. I believe this is the female since the males have an iridescent purple throat.

We are having some chilly weather now and my feeder has been busier than usual. We are loving watching the bird life!

Christmas Is Coming

We have been in festive Christmas mode during the past week. First, the sailing Club's Christmas party, which was beautifully set up and accommodated 70+ members! The food was delicious with the meats coming from a local restaurant and the appetizers, side dishes, and desserts made by the members.

Dave and I made our popular penguin appetizers, to everyone's delight. 

The Children's Christmas play "Annie" was fantastic! The kids had rehearsed every day for 10 weeks before the program that ran for 3 nights. The main character was very talented and quite the singer, but all the kids were great little actors.

The Christmas Village here in Hope Town was a huge hit, with the ballfield transformed into a winter wonderland. Delicious food and drink, singers to entertain, crafts and goodies for sale, ice skating complete with snow (and lots of it!), and games for the kids and kids at heart.

Yum, Funnel cake, a rare treat in the Bahamas!

This year's newest and most favorite booth was the Piggyville Races (Piggyville is a popular spot in the northern Abacos where people go to a deserted island and feed and water the pigs). Dave and our friend Ron made the race course. It was hilarious with these little battery operated stuffed pigs slowly 'oinking' their way down the track toward the feeding trough. Dave even won a race, which was rather ironic.

There was also a drone photo taken on the beach for Christmas cards that were sold at the Village. All proceeds from the whole Village event benefit the Community Center.

Tonight was the last big night of celebration with caroling through town and out to the final night of the Christmas Village where Santa arrived to end the event. Tomorrow, everything has to quickly come down and get stored...before a huge cold front arrives on Thursday with winds in the 40+ mph range! Then it is back to projects, especially getting Sunrise ready to race in the Boxing Day race, held the day after Christmas. It is hard to believe how fast the time is going.

Thank you Catherine for being my photographer!

Tasks Galore

We have been working on all sorts of tasks lately. Dave has been helping several friends with boat issues, we moved the remainder of the dock pilings that were left in the back pond where the racing sailboats tie up, and Dave even helped repair the sewage pump out golf cart, and the bandsaw that is used for rebuilding the Abaco Dinghies (temporarily anyway...the belt that broke, he jury rigged with the one from the pump out cart, but it had to be returned so the cart could go about its 'business' 😉). We have also been doing lots more decorating, not only here at our apartment, where my little tree was put up for the first time in a couple of years, but also at the sailing club. Lots of helpers that day!

Today we helped to repair and clean up the Sunfish in order to get them ready to race in the HTSC winter series. This Waverunner has been abandoned on the harbor beach since we arrived, and Dave used it as a staging area for the epoxy repairs on the Sunfish that needed to be done.

Meanwhile inside the clubhouse, volunteers were removing old sails and installing new ones on the rigs. Now they are ready!

Tomorrow we help set up for the annual Christmas Village, including the famous ice skating rink. Then it is time for the kids' Christmas play and the HTSC Christmas dinner.

What a busy time of year, so you know I will be posting about it all soon!

Fill 'er Up?

Not quite. This is the biggest yacht we have ever seen at the fuel dock here, but it 'only' took on 500 gallons of diesel fuel...at about $6.00 a gallon!

Lighthouse Work

For over a year, our red and white striped lighthouse has been under much needed repairs. Recently the inside was completely sand blasted to remove the flaking old pink paint. It actually looks better left natural now and more of a patina. They also painted all the metal on the spiral staircase.

Outside on the top, the workers sand blasted and chipped the rust off the metal, repairing where necessary, and repainted it. What a job when you think about how high up they were. Then came the replacing of all the glass around the top that houses the Fresnal Lens. That was a huge project and very expensive too. All the repairs are funded though donations. It is a bit hard to see what transpired in the banner I took a photo of,  but if you click on it, it may show up better.

It looks like they are ready to start repainting the outside of the lighthouse now. This also is a gigantic project and should be interesting to watch as it progresses and they climb higher. The scaffolding only reaches so far.

A friend told us the story about how during the last time the lighthouse was painted, they first painted it totally white and he was so shocked and confused when he got close enough in his boat to see it. I bet he was wondering where he made the wrong turn!

As you can see, it's time to get this only remaining kerosene lighthouse back to its former glory. They are on the right track though!

The Christmas Season Begins

Christmas decorating starts early here in Abaco. Today we put the lights up on the lighthouse. This year we strung them up with small ropes attached, in order to hopefully support them better. In our windy winter cold fronts, they blow around a lot and chafe through, making it quite difficult to keep them lit for the whole month. It was a time consuming effort of 2 1/2 hours, but we had a fantastic group of about 12 tenacious people to assist.

Wow, it was the hottest day we have ever had to complete this project and we kept trying to find the least little bit of shade we could find to string out the lights and attach the rope.

Then they were carefully hauled up the outside of the lighthouse to the guys at the top who secured them while they were also secured on the ground.

Even the chickens 'helped out'....sort of. They started getting so close to our feet I thought they were going to peck at us.

Tonight it was totally calm and the lights on the lighthouse and our marina look awesome!

And so the holiday season begins!

We Are Done!

Tonight was our night to host the appetizers for the sailing club's stand-up. All went well and there were about 40 members and guests that attended. I even put Dave to work this year, and he became very proficient at making my ham and cheese roll ups.

We also made bacon mushroom bites and a taco dip, and our ever present flavored almonds.

There were only two couples scheduled to make food for tonight , but everyone sure had plenty to eat. Barry made flatbread pepperoni pizzas and Barb made deviled eggs and stuffed celery. 

Everything went over very well with not much left over, which was perfect. Now we can relax at the rest of the get-togethers and not worry about a thing. YAY, it's over!