3 June Marsh Harbour

Marsh Harbour the biggest town in the Abacos and third largest in Bahamas after Nassau and Freeport. It's not that big, but does have two good sized and well stocked supermarkets, hardware stores and most things you may want except sufficient depth for us to anchor in the harbour.

The charts showed the harbour to be 2m with some areas as deep as 2.4m. We draw 2.1m and because we were only making a visit to provision we opted to anchor outside on the west side of the commercial, dredged channel. It was only half a mile to dinghy to the public dock.

We visited each of the hardware shops and even found a 20m stainless steel nut, which David has been trying to find for six months, in Ace. A very welcome surprise to find a metric nut in an imperial country. It's for the bottom of the forestay where it anchors below the bow. We discovered the original had corroded when we were hauled out in Trinidad. The only replacement available to us wasn't SS and has rusted leaving orange streaks on the fibreglass. Hopefully the new find will stop this.

old one replaced in Trinidad

By mid afternoon the thunderstorm clouds were building and I did my personal version of Supermarket Sweep clearing from shelf to basket in record time in order to get back to the boat without getting drenched. We made it – neither self nor shopping getting wet.

It isn't a pretty place to stop and we had had wake from commercial traffic so moved a short hop to Man 'O War Island.