1 May 2012 Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas
It was blue skies when we woke up. It’s still a bit windy, but it’s nice to have the warm sunshine again. The weather forecast looks good for the next week, so we’re going to start moving again – April has now disappeared and we need to get moving.
I spent some time wiring up a new power circuit for the computer that will tidy up the chart table and allow me to switch off the various power supplies with a single switch. After that, we went into Georgetown, did the laundry, had lunch and went to the supermarket to do a final fresh food shop.
In the afternoon, Glenys dragged me out to go walking on Stocking Island which was rather nice. Cruisers have cut out a network of paths through the bushes, which led us across several white sand beaches and up to a monument on a small hill. When we arrived back at the dinghy, we went for a snorkel in an underwater cave in one of the lagoons. There were lots of fish in the cave including large Dog Snappers and Atlantic Spadefish – I which that I’d had my camera with me.
We stopped off at “Passage Maker” for a quick chat with Jim and Patricia – they forced us to have a cold beer and the day degenerated from there.
2 May 2012 Georgetown to Black Cay, Bahamas
We tidied up, upped anchor at half past nine and motored out of Georgetown – we were pleased to be on the move again. The route out of Conch Cay Cut involved negotiating various shallows and reefs, but it wasn’t too bad. Once out of the cut, the seas were very steep and we had to bash our way to windward before the depth increased and we were able to turn north west and ease the sheets.
It was a pleasant broad reach along the outside of the reef. I put out two fishing lines, but no luck today. We arrived at Glass Cay Cut after a couple of hours and went through without any problems, but we still find it nerve wracking to go through the small passages between reefs in the big waves.
We anchored off Black Cay in 2.5 metres of water. It was reasonably calm at first, but as the tide started to rise, a swell hooked around the corner and we started to roll. By sunset, we were rolling unpleasantly. Will we ever be able to find a nice, settled anchorage in the Bahamas?
We attempted to go snorkelling, but the waves were crashing at either side of the island, so we gave up, went to the small beach and back to the boat. I’m really starting to wonder what everyone loves about the Exumas. The sea is pretty with lovely colours and there’s white sand beaches, but there’s got to be more to life than that – isn't there?
To cheer me up, Glenys made Portuguese Frango for dinner, which we had with a nice bottle of red wine.
3 May 2012 Black Cay to Emerald Bay Marina, Bahamas
We had sad news this morning. Glenys received a text from her brother Gareth saying that her mother, Ceris passed away overnight. Glenys rang Gareth, who told her that Ceris died peacefully in her sleep. We decided that we should fly home to the UK as soon as possible so that Glenys can help Gareth with the funeral arrangements.
We motored six miles to Emerald Bay Marina, which has a very scary entrance, but appears to be a very secure marina. There are only a few boats in here, which is surprising because it only costs $1US per foot for a berth.
We booked airline tickets and car hire to fly back to the UK tomorrow, then spent the rest of the day packing and doing a few jobs to prepare the boat to be locked up for a couple of weeks. I “pickled” the watermaker membranes with a biocide which prevents bacteria growing when it isn’t being used, flushed the toilets thoroughly and closed the sea cocks.
We had a quiet, reflective meal in the evening.
4 – 20 May 2012 Bahamas to UK to Bahamas
The flight back to the UK was relatively painless. The flight from Georgetown to Miami was the most spectacular view that I've ever had from an aircraft. The shallow, light blue waters of the Bahaman Banks are stunning - dotted with islands and coral reefs. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.
We arrived back in the UK in the early morning and were greeted by a cold, overcast day forcing me to quickly don my woolly hat and gloves. After picking up a hire car, we drove to our son Brett’s house where our other son Craig and his girlfriend Kristen soon joined us. It was great to see them again. Glenys and I insisted that we have an Indian curry (which is difficult to find in the Caribbean) and we sat up drinking red wine and chatting until two in the morning.
The next day, we pulled down our storage boxes from Brett’s loft and rummaged through them, picking out my suit and some smart clothes that Glenys had stored away for weddings and funerals. We spent the rest of the day with Brett and Craig, going to the cinema and chatting.
We dropped Craig off in Reading and continued onto Gareth’s house in Lymington, where we stayed for a few days. Glenys ran around with Gareth sorting out arrangements for their mother Ceris’s funeral - visiting the funeral director, church, organising flowers, catering, etc. She also started the sad process of sorting through her mother’s possessions.
I kept out of the way and upgraded my website. It didn’t go smoothly and, while sorting it out, I noticed that there were a lot of strange webpages hidden on my website server, which redirected to pornography sites. Further investigation revealed that my website has been hacked into in March. It was a pretty benign attack and I think that the purpose was to trick search engines into increasing the ratings for various pornography web sites. However, it took me a couple of days to investigate and then clean up my web server – very irritating.
One of the things that worried me about the hacking of my web site was that they had somehow obtained my administrator user name and password. I think that this was by using a security flaw in Joomla, which I’ve now fixed, but it got me thinking about the strength of my passwords. I tend to use a set of usernames and passwords that I can easily remember which are based on a combination of nouns and numbers. These are used on all my internet accounts including banks, pensions, investments, etc – this is not good. I investigated how to make it all more secure and I’m now using a Password Manager that creates very strong random passwords for each of my Internet accounts. The password manager is encrypted and I’ve also encrypted all of the personal data that I hold on my laptop. Hopefully this will stop anyone getting access to my accounts - I’ll sleep better now.
At the end of the first week, we went up to Accrington to visit my mother and brothers. We had a great time catching up on the past year. I insisted on having “steak pudding, chips and peas with gravy” from the local chippy – not very healthy but very, very tasty and impossible to get anywhere other than the North West of England.
On the way back down to Lymington, we stopped off at Bebbington in the Wirral where Glenys spent her childhood. We visited the cemetery and the Garden of Remembrance where Glenys’s father’s ashes were scattered. Frank died twenty five years ago and Ceris’s ashes will be scattered in the same place.
Ceris's funeral was on Thursday 17 May at a charming 11th Century church in the village of Pilley. It was a lovely, if sad service attended by all of Glenys’s eight cousins and her four aunts and uncles. We had a reception back at Gareth’s house with over forty people attending – it was very nice to catch up with Glenys’s relatives, many of whom we hadn’t seen for a number of years.
We stayed at Brett’s house for a couple of days, packed our funeral/wedding clothes back into our storage boxes and got ready to go back to the Bahamas.
21 May 2012 London to Miami
We were up at six o’clock and dragged Brett and Tash out of bed to say goodbye. We drove to Heathrow, dropped the car off and managed to get to the check in desk with over two hours to spare.
We were carrying two new hatches back to the boat to replace our existing ones, which have become crazed over the years. Sergio, the previous owner of Alba, had complained to Lewmar, who had surprisingly supplied him with three new hatches under warranty. Sergio had already taken one out to Alba - it’s sitting in the forepeak locker waiting to be fitted. He’d given us the other two hatches and they’ve been in Brett’s loft for the past year. I was expecting trouble because the boxes are large and heavy, but having taped the two boxes together, we escaped with only an additional charge of £40 for one extra bag.
The flight was long and tedious, giving me time to worry about the weather and our passage to the east coast of the states. Yesterday, I’d looked at a weather forecast for the first time in two weeks and discovered to my horror that Tropical Storm Alberto has formed to the east of Florida and to the North of the Bahamas. It looks like there’s very unsettled weather stretching across the Bahamas, which may delay our passage north. It’s really early to get a Tropical Storm system and I’m hoping that it will disappear soon and return to settled weather for our six or seven day passage to Chesapeake.
We arrived in Miami in the late afternoon and stayed in a hotel overnight, which was very pleasant.
22 May 2012 Miami to Emerald Bay Marina, Bahamas
We were up at six o’clock again and caught the courtesy bus to the airport.
We had problems with the hatches because they were overweight. They made us split them apart, so it cost us $80 in additional charges. I hadn’t taken our boat papers with us, so I had no proof that we were going onto a yacht, so the check-in clerk warned us that we may not be granted entry when we arrived in the Bahamas – a bit worrying…
The weather was overcast and the view of the Bahaman Banks was not as impressive as the flight out making me wish that I’d taken photos two weeks ago.
We had no problem with the immigration officer. However, I was expecting that the customs would try to make me pay import duty on the hatches, which are worth £1,200, so I had forged an invoice showing that the hatches were a repair under warranty with zero value. To my surprise, it worked and, even without boat papers, the customs officer let us through without having to pay any import duty.
We arrived back at Alba just after midday. She was still floating - which was a relief. We spent the afternoon unpacking our luggage and testing that the boat’s essential systems still worked - engine, generator and watermaker. We made a small amount of water to check the watermaker and then filled up the tanks with mains water.
I looked at the weather forecast and it seemed to indicate strong south-east winds, but we decided to go around to Georgetown tomorrow. It’s only twelve miles and it will be much nicer to be at anchor. Then Glenys went to the laundry and met June from Windflower who told her that there would be big thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. I had a chat to her husband (Hyde) who showed me some forecasts and told me that they’d been caught out a few days ago, so perhaps we’ll stay another day…
23 May 2012 Emerald Bay Marina, Bahamas
What a miserable night. There were huge thunderstorms, strong winds and lashing rain for most of the night. Glenys got out of bed in the middle of the night and found that, because we’re not facing into the wind, we had rain coming into the cockpit and down the companionway into saloon. She’d also left a small hatch over the galley open, so the kitchen area was wet through as well. We’ve got out of the habit of living on a boat…
The morning brought more of the same, with lashing rain coming from all directions, so we put up our foul weather “tent” which total encloses the cockpit and keeps out the rain – this is only the second time that we’ve had to get it out.
I spent an hour or so trying to understand the long range weather forecasts which now indicate that there is another low pressure system to the south west of Cuba. It’s forecast to track to the west and north of us and may develop into another Tropical Storm off Florida over the weekend.
This strange weather is unsettling – it looks like the Abacos, which are 200 miles north of us, are going to get clobbered with 30+ knot winds in the next few days. We were planning to sail 900 miles (6 days) directly to Norfolk, but I’m now very nervous about trying to get a clear six day weather window. I don’t want to be caught out by a Tropical storm.
I spent the rest of the day researching ports on the Georgia and Carolina coast, so that we have alternative routes planned depending on what the weather brings.
Thankfully, the rain stopped in the afternoon and we were able to have dinner in the cockpit.
24 May 2012 Emerald Bay Marina, Bahamas
I was up early checking out the weather forecasts. It’s looking very likely that Tropical Storm Beryl will form to the east of Florida during the weekend. If this happens, it will be the first time that there have been two named tropical storms before June 1st since 1887. It’s just our bad luck to be around for this “historical event”. On the bright side, it looks like the storm will turn towards the Georgia coast and dissipate by Tuesday. So, if we’re lucky, we’ll have a good weather window in the middle of next week.
It was a grey overcast morning with more thunderstorms forecast, so we decided to stay another day in the marina rather than bashing into the wind and waves for two hours in the rain. Hopefully, it will be better tomorrow and we can escape from here – we both feel very trapped.
By the afternoon, it was brightening up but still overcast. We went for a walk along the beach to stretch our legs and then Glenys disappeared with her netbook to take advantage of the air-conditioned lounge. I stayed on board, looked up more information about ports along the Georgia and Carolina coasts and read a novel.
25 May 2012 Emerald Bay Marina to Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas
It was a very calm night. We woke up to nicer weather with some blue skies and our first sighting of the sun for a few days.
We filled up with fuel and paid the bill - £670 for marina fees, £250 for fuel and an outrageous £40 for water. I’m pretty mad about the cost of the water, especially because it tastes absolutely foul – we should have made our own.
We motored around to Georgetown. I hooked a big fish on the way, but it threw the hook before I got to the rod. We anchored as close to the town as we dared get. It’s so shallow in the anchorage that we ended up about ½ mile away from the shore. We went into town, bought some food and tried to chill out for the rest of the afternoon - we’re both finding it difficult to adjust to the slower pace of life on a yacht after the manic couple of weeks zooming around in the UK.
26 May 2012 Georgetown to Stocking Island, Great Exuma, Bahamas
I listened to the weather on the SSB radio, then connected to the Internet and downloaded a GRIB file which shows that Sub-Tropical Storm Beryl is well established off the east coast of Florida and is expected to move west and hit Florida tomorrow. The forecast is that it will reform and head out to sea again towards Bermuda, so we’ll have to keep a sharp eye on it before we sail to the east coast of the States.
We motored across to Stocking Island and anchored off Sand Dollar Beach. After lunch, we went for a snorkel and discovered wreckage on the sea bed directly beneath Alba – our anchor was nearly wrapped around it, so after trying (unsuccessfully) to spear some fish, we moved further away from the shore.
The wind was very light and variable this afternoon and the no-see-ums were murder– I had to put on a t-shirt even though it was boiling hot. Then in the evening, the mosquitos arrived and forced us down below.
27 May 2012 Stocking Island, Great Exuma, Bahamas
It was a lovely morning with blue skies and 10-15 knot winds. I decided to take some pictures of the boat with the beautiful beach in the back ground, but the damn outboard wouldn’t start.
We motored along the island and anchored off Volleyball Beach, so that we could indulge ourselves with a Sunday lunch at the beach bar.
I had a look at the outboard and eventually deduced that it was fuel starvation, so I bit the bullet and removed the carburettor. I disassembled it and cleaned the various parts. Once back together, miraculously, it started OK. I think that it was either a small piece of dirt in the jets or the float valve has gummed up. It took me a few hours to work it all out, but I now feel more confident about my ability to sort out problems on the outboard.
Later in the afternoon, we went to beach bar, had a few beers and a pork barbeque, which was very tasty.
28 May 2012 Stocking Island to Marsh Harbour, Abacos, Bahamas (Day 1)
The weather forecast shows that there are going to be squalls coming over the Exumas in a few days’ time. Tropical Storm Beryl is just hitting the coast of Florida today with 50 knot winds and will then move north east along the Georgia coast and then off into the North Atlantic.
Then it looks like there’s a gap in the weather before the winds on the east coast of the States turn northerly, which is just what we don’t want. We decided to clear out and leave this afternoon, sailing towards Charleston in Georgia, which should take five days.
Unfortunately, when we went into town, we discovered that it’s another bloody bank holiday and the customs and immigration is closed. Undeterred, we changed our plan and will now sail up to the Abacos and clear out there. It’s a two day sail and will split the journey nicely - it will probably cost us an extra day’s delay, but at least we’ll be able to get an Internet connection and download an accurate forecast before we sail the remaining three days to Charleston in Georgia.
We headed north-east out of Conch Cay Cut towards the southern tip of Cat Island which was 40 miles away. The wind was 5 knots from the east instead of 15 knots from the south-east which meant that we had to motor – not a great start.
After a couple of hours, the wind picked up and veered a little allowing us to sail. The wind continued to increase during the evening, but was backing and forcing us more to the west meaning that we couldn’t quite make it around the headland. At nine o’clock, we reefed the sails and motored for a couple of hours to gain enough easting to clear the south end of Cat Island. The motion was very unpleasant below and I didn’t sleep well on Glenys’s 7-10 watch especially as I had to get up at nine o’clock to help her reef the sails as the wind picked up.
When I got up for my 10-1 watch, I was feeling distinctly nauseous - this is the first time that I’ve felt seasick for a long time. However, by eleven o’clock, we’d rounded the point and I was able to ease the sails and run more down wind, giving us a much better motion.
29 May 2012 Stocking Island to Marsh Harbour, Abacos, Bahamas (Day 2)
We had a pleasant broad reach for most of the night.
I wasn’t able to shake the nauseous feeling for most of the day, which made me very lethargic – I didn’t even put out a fishing line because I couldn’t be bothered with dealing with a fish if I caught one.
The wind veered more southerly as the day went on and we had intermittent rain, but no strong squalls thankfully. I rigged up the spinnaker pole so that we could run “wing on wing”, straight downwind.
Our insurance company wants us to be above 35° North from the 1st June because there’s less danger of “Named Storms” above that latitude – their term for tropical storms and hurricanes. We’re only at 24° North and with over 900 miles to get to Cape Hatteras, we’ve no chance of being there by 1st June. We thought that our insurance policy had a £15,000 excess on any damage caused by Named Storms if we were south of 35° North, but when I read the fine print, I found out that we aren’t covered for ANY damage to Alba for Named Storms if we’re caught south of 35° North. If the boat sinks in a Named Storm then we’ll lose everything. Worrying, but there’s not a lot we can do about it today.
Glenys started the engine at eight o’clock because the wind had dropped. When I got up at ten, we had enough wind to sail again, but it was slowly veering and I had a restless couple of hours, keeping close watch that the main sail didn’t gybe.
30 May 2012 Stocking Island to Marsh Harbour, Abacos, Bahamas (Day 3)
On Glenys’s 1-4 watch, she had to keep changing our course to starboard to keep running downwind, which was taking us off the rhomb line. At five o’clock, the wind dropped, so I started the engine, altered our course back towards the Abacos and gybed the main. At night and singlehanded, it takes ten times as long to do anything – it must have taken me 40 minutes to disassemble the spinnaker pole, un-rig the preventer, gybe the main and re-rig the preventer.
As we approached the narrow Man-O-War Channel going through the reefs, a large cargo freighter came powering up fast behind us. Under “The International Regulations for Preventing of Collisions at Sea”, he was the overtaking vessel, I had right of way and he would have to slow down and follow me in. However, for the sake of matrimonial harmony, I got out of the way – “pig-headed” I think she called me...
We motored five miles in 3-4 metres of water across to Marsh Harbour. The approach to the anchorage in the harbour was very nerve wracking because it’s very shallow and there are no buoys to indicate the fairway. We were going in two hours after low tide, and ended up anchoring in 2.3 metres of water, which will give us a mere 10cm below the keel at low water – I don’t think that I’ll ever get used to such shallow water. Once settled, Glenys rustled up Bacon & Eggs for our lunch to celebrate another successful passage.
I managed to get a free 10 minute trial from a wireless internet provider and downloaded the weather. As forecast, Tropical Storm Beryl is now heading north east along the Georgia coast and will be out of the way in two days. We’re thinking of staying here for a couple of nights and then leaving on Friday 1st June. There doesn’t seem to be any hint of a Named Storm around for the next week, but I sent an email off to our insurance company asking them what our options are about the endorsement to be above 35° North.
We walked to the customs and cleared out. I told them that we’re leaving tomorrow – they didn’t seem bothered at all, but I wanted to get some clearance papers to make sure that our entry into the states is as smooth as possible. While chatting to them, I found out that our 12 month cruising permit for the Bahamas (which cost $300US) expires if we’re out of the Bahamas for more than 3 months. The customs guy thought that it was amusing that I’d paid $300US for a five week stay in his country – bastard.
We found the supermarket and bought enough food to last us for a week at sea, then collapsed exhausted.
The weather forecast looks very settled for the seven days, so we’re planning to head for Beaufort, North Carolina which will take four days and then possibly continue another two days up to Norfolk in the Chesapeake.
31 May 2012 Marsh Harbour, Abacos, Bahamas
The weather forecast didn't look too good this morning. There’s a low forming over the Chesapeake on Tuesday 5th that is going to give 30+ knot winds and squalls. However, there’s a three day window that looks OK if we leave on Saturday 2nd, so we’ve decided to head for Charleston in South Carolina which is 400 miles away and we should be able to do it in three days. This weather sucks.
We may be motoring a fair bit, so I topped up the diesel tanks from our jerry can. I tried to set up a wind break, but a gust of wind still caught the first glug of diesel and sprayed it all over our beautiful teak decks. I was not pleased.
I went ashore and bought a 24 hour ticket for Internet access for the princely sum of $15US, so we spent the rest of the day on the Internet, sharing the laptop. I updated our website and Glenys wrote a few emails and browsed horse riding web sites – we’re thinking of going on a riding holiday in the middle of our haul-out in Deltaville.
We received an email from our insurance brokers, who have kindly given us an endorsement which gives us a £15,000 excess on any damage caused by Named Storms if we are south of 35° North up to the end of June. It’s a great relief that we don’t have to rush north. They didn’t charge us anything for it either - www.admiralyacht.com – they’re very responsive, reasonable cost and cruiser friendly.
On the trip from Georgetown to here, the autopilot control panel by the steering wheel was playing up badly. It kept going into “response adjustment” mode and beeping constantly. I reckoned that the fault was like the response button was being permanently pressed, so I took it all apart. I found a very small amount of corrosion on the circuit board that looked like salt deposits, so I cleaned it off with alcohol and a bit of WD40. After putting it back together, it seemed to be working, so fingers crossed it will be OK on the trip up to Charleston.