April 2012 - Puerto Rico to Bahamas - Page 4

21 April 2012   Isla Culebra to Mayaguana, Bahamas (Day 5)
At midnight, a red flashing light appeared ahead.  I always feel nervous when approaching small islands in the dark – GPS is very accurate, but some of the electronic charts are still based on surveys in the 1800’s and can be out by a mile or so.  I used a compass bearing from the light and a radar bearing from the southern headland to verify our position as being three miles off the southern tip of Mayaguana.  I was please to get confirmation as it was pitch black and the reef-strewn coastline is very low with no other lights.

Stunning colours, Mayaguana, Bahamas

At the change of watch at one o’clock, we hove to with just a reefed jib.  Without the main, Alba lay at 70°-80° to the wind.  This wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t roll too much in the small four foot seas. When I came back on watch at four o’clock, we had drifted 3 miles south, away from the island.  The entrance through the reef was still 13 miles away, so with daylight only two hours away, we set off sailing again at 3 knots with just the reefed jib.  

We arrived at the western entrance through the reef at nine o’clock.  It’s a very large area 4½ miles long by 1 mile wide and is littered with reefs and shallows.  We were motoring east into the sun, so the visibility wasn’t really good enough to see the coral heads, but we managed to find a sandy anchorage in four metres depth without an mishaps.  I snorkelled down to check the anchor and the water is fantastically clear.  From the deck, the water colours are stunning.  

We’re in the middle of nowhere - the main settlement of Abraham’s Bay is at least three miles away and we’re quarter of a mile from the outer reef and half a mile from the shore.  The holding is excellent in white sand, so I think that we’ll be fine when the front comes through tomorrow night.  I think that the only problem is that we may get large waves from the north-west because we're half a mile from the land in that direction – it may get a little bouncy.

We both collapsed and had a nap before lunch.  We managed to get a mobile phone signal and sent out a few texts to let people at home know that we’ve arrived safely.  Our son (Brett) rang me back because Tasha and he have just put an offer in for a house and he wants to borrow some money to help him with his deposit.  I said that we’ll sort it out in a week when we get to Georgetown.  We only chatted for a couple of minutes and, even though he rang me, we gobbled up the remaining £4 of my prepaid credit on my mobile phone. 

Nurse Shark comes to check me out

Glenys spotted what she thought was a Southern Stingray swimming past Alba, which turned out to be three sharks.  They swam around our boat for ten minutes and seemed to be attracted by the slapping of the dinghy in the water.  I went into the dinghy, donned my mask and put my head underwater to confirm that they were Nurse Sharks.  Two swam off, but one remained stationery on the sea bed, with three Remora on its back.  I decided to go and take a photograph of it.  

All my previous experience with nurse sharks is that they are very docile and normally swim away when you get too close.  I’ve even pulled the tail of one before now.  When I dived down to take a close up picture of this one, it quickly swam off the sea bed and shot towards me.  I bolted to the surface and started to swim backwards towards the boat with the nurse shark following close behind.  I kicked my fins into its face, at which point, it decided that I was too big to eat and swam off.  Phew!!  We decided to go snorkelling another day - at least I got a good picture of the shark.

We chilled out in the afternoon, had our first cold beer for 5 days, ate a nice big fish dinner and went to bed early.

22 April 2012   Mayaguana, Bahamas
It's not surprising, but we had a lie in.  Later in the morning, I put on my scuba tank and dived down to sort out the rope stripper.  I was a little cautious and had a quick look around underwater for sharks before plunging in.  There were no sign of the nurse sharks, but there was a large shoal of squid lurking around next to the boat.  I swam over to look at them, but when I moved within five metres of them they flashed through a kaleidoscope of colours and kept their distance.  

The fixed part of the rope stripper was very loose and I found that the two plastic bearings had disintegrated.  I have some spares, but decided that I would remove the whole assembly rather than trying to fix it while the boat is bouncing up and down and swirling around.  It took me half an hour to clean off the barnacles and disassemble it – one has to be so careful when working underwater because it’s so easy to drop something.

As soon as I climbed back on board, we had a visit from a nurse shark which swam around the boat coming very close to the stern.  I splashed the swimming ladders in the water and the shark came over to investigate – these are unusually active nurse sharks, perhaps other cruisers or the fishermen are feeding them.

After lunch, we motored over to the anchorage just off the small settlement of Abrahams Bay where there are five or six other boats.  Our plan is to clear into customs tomorrow.  It was an interesting experience motoring for three miles avoiding reefs in depths that slowly decreased to 2.3 metres – we go aground at 2.0 metres.  The good news is that the stern gear doesn’t have any vibration now.

It’s a lot shallower over here (we’re in 2.5 metres of water), but it’s good to have some points of reference to check whether or not we’re dragging our anchor at night.  I snorkelled down to measure exactly how much water we have between the bottom of our keel and the sea bed and it’s the length of my forearm with outstretched fingers - exactly 0.5 metres, which is not a lot.

The cold front is still expected to bring 25 knot winds from the west tomorrow evening and into Tuesday.  We pottered about for the rest of the afternoon doing small jobs.  Glenys is trying to work out which anchorages we should visit as we go up through the Exumas because we only have five or six weeks before we need to go to the east coast of the USA.

23 April 2012   Mayaguana, Bahamas
We went into the settlement to clear in.  They call the small villages, “settlements”, which is very appropriate as the dwellings are randomly built and there isn’t much there.  This particular settlement is a ten minute walk from the run-down concrete pier along a very badly maintained tarmac road.  There’s a Batelco (telephone company) antenna under which are two small, mustard coloured buildings and a shed.  This is the administration centre for the island – customs, immigration, post office, magistrate’s court, telephone company, etc.

We were in the customs office for about an hour.  We filled in the plethora of forms and paid our $300US customs fee – the most expensive country that we’ve visited so far.  The fee is supposed to give us a 12 month cruising permit.  The actual piece of paper was a photocopy and says that it's a cruising permit for six months.  When I asked the customs lady about this, she just shrugged and said that it was wrong – it was actually for 12 months.  We should be able to use the cruising permit again when we come back south in six months’ time.

Government Headquarters, Mayaguana, Bahamas

While we were in the customs office, we were able to get Internet access and picked up our email.  It looks like the cold front has dissipated and we’re not going to get any strong winds now.  The winds are going to remain from the north for a couple of days, so we’ll have to wait until Wednesday 25th before we can sail north.  Our son, Craig, sent an email telling us that he’s finally got a job as a junior software developer, which was fantastic news.  

We had a quick wander around the settlement.  There’s one “grocery store”, which is actually someone’s dwelling with a sign outside.  There was nobody in, but some other cruisers have told us that there’s no bread and no fresh food because the mail boat hasn’t been in for a while, but they have frozen chicken, burgers and fries.  There’s also no gasoline left on the island and people are trying to buy it off each other now.  We walked as far as a crossroads where there was some kind of shelter with ten or so guys hanging about – obviously there’s not a lot of work here.

Dismayed, we walked back to the dinghy and to the luxury of our yacht – I’m sure that we’re carrying more food and beer than there is in the whole of Mayaguana.

By lunchtime, the wind had veered to the west as forecast.  We spent the afternoon reading pilot books for the Bahamas and trying to work out a rough itinerary of the places where we should stop.  We’ve only got five or six weeks before we want to get to the USA, so we want to make the most of our $300 cruising permit.

We went to “Shalamar” for drinks with Sebastian and Liz – Mitch and Jessica from “Boomerang” were also there.

24 April 2012   Mayaguana, Bahamas
The wind has veered around to the north as forecast, so we’re going leave tomorrow when it should come around to the north-east.  We continued to read pilot books and plan out our next two months cruising.  At eleven o’clock, when the sun was higher, we motored three miles towards the west entrance and anchored close to where we were a few days ago.  I’m still not comfortable sailing around in such shallow water, dodging all the small reefs.  I guess that I’ll get used to it after a couple of weeks.

After lunch, we did a few jobs and then went for a snorkel.  A nurse shark came and swam around the boat just before we climbed into the dinghy, but I didn’t tell Glenys in case she refused to go.  We looked a few small isolated reefs, which were in very good condition with nice coral, but I guess that the locals fish these regularly because the fish are very shy. 

I filled the scuba tank that I’d used the other day and we did a few small jobs, tidying up ready to do a 150 mile passage to Conception Island tomorrow.  It will be another overnight trip, but hopefully this is the last one for a month or so.

25 April 2012   Mayaguana to Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas (Day 1)
The wind was from the NNE at 10-15 knots as forecast, so we left at half past eight.  We had a cracking reach along the south-west coast of Mayaguana and then had to steer NNW towards Plana Cays, which meant that we were hard on the wind.  However, it was pretty pleasant as the winds were light and the seas were only 3-4 feet high.  

Sailing North-west

We cleared the north-east tip of the Plana Cays at around two o’clock in the afternoon and were able to ease the sheets and head off north-west.  As evening approached, the wind started to veer to the north-east and picked up to 20 knots, so we had a romping reach in growing, confused seas.

There was nothing to do apart from read our books and clear weed from the fishing lines.  There seems to be an incredible amount of the Sargassum Weed around here and it very soon catches hold of the fishing lines or the lures.  Dragging weed along is no way to catch fish – we didn’t have a single bite.

I reefed the sails before dark, which was fortunate because the wind picked up to 25 knots by midnight.

26 April 2012   Mayaguana to Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas (Day 2)
We didn’t sleep well because the confused seas made the boat bounce around like it was in a washing machine.  It’s hard to drift into blissful slumber when the waves are booming against the hull and you’re being thrown around in bed.

The wind abated and veered a little bit more overnight, so by dawn, we had 15 knots from the east putting us on a broad reach.  We passed three miles off Rum Cay at day break and headed towards Conception Island where we were expecting to spend a couple of days.

I listened to Chris Parker’s weather net and discovered that there’s a low pressure trough coming up from the south and will bring unsettled weather to the Exumas.  The winds are expected to pick up on Saturday night to 25 knots.  Sunday and Monday are forecast to be horrible with squalls passing through bringing winds up to 35 knots.  This weather sucks – why the hell are we going north?

We decided to go past Conception Island, which is very isolated and exposed.  Instead we carried on towards Georgetown.  The sail was uneventful until we arrived off the channel through the reef.

To the east of the Exumas islands is a very deep trench called the Exuma Sound.  This goes down to 2000 metres in places.  About a mile east of the islands, the sea bed comes up very rapidly from 1000 metres to 30 metres in a kind of underwater cliff.  To get to the leeward side of the islands, one has to find a gap between the small islands (generally called a “channel” or a “cut”) and then navigate through coral reefs to the anchorage.  The islands are all very low, with few distinguishing landmarks, so it is confusing and GPS is very, very helpful.

Our approach was downwind in six foot seas and it was very nerve wracking as we surfed towards the reefs.  To make things a little bit more exciting, our small GPS chart plotter was playing up and kept zooming in and out by itself, making it difficult to know exactly where we were.  We managed to get through the entrance and turn 90° to starboard before we hit the rocks in front of us, then we motored for 5 miles in 3-5 metres of water, through isolated reefs until we arrived at the anchorage off Stocking Island.

We were a little shell-shocked when we arrived - we just cracked open a beer and sat and stared at the hundred or so boats in the anchorage.  Not surprisingly, we had an early dinner and crashed out.

27 April 2012   Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas 
It was a miserable, grey, overcast day with drizzle - reminiscent of April in the UK.  We dinghied over to Georgetown, which is a mile across the harbour and very bouncy.  The Family Islands Regatta is taking place this week, which is a fiercely contested series of races in traditional Bahamian sloops.  It’s a very big event to the islands and Georgetown was buzzing.

Family Island Sailing Regatta, Georgetown, Bahamas

We wandered around, looking for the necessities – supermarket, liquor store, bank, launderette, petrol station, etc.  The town has everything that we need at the moment, but I wouldn't like to do any major jobs on the boat – there’s a small hardware store that has some boat parts, but not a lot.

We found where the Regatta was being run from.  There were loads of food/drink stalls set up on the way to the government dock where the ferries come in.  It was pretty mad with a couple of places booming out loud music.  As usual, the speakers were as large as a VW camper van, so the noise of the two competing DJs was intense.  While watching the people strolling by, we bought some conch fritters at a small stall which were very nice, but contained a week’s allowance of saturated fats.  

We called in at the supermarket and bought a few things.  As expected the prices of food and beer is almost twice the cost in St Maarten and Puerto Rico.  We bounced back to the boat, had a quick sandwich and went for a look at Stockling Island which we’re anchored off. There are three very sheltered lagoons – one is too shallow for yachts and the other two are covered with moorings.  It looks nice and protected in there.  

Georgetown is the sort of place that cruisers arrive and never leave – it’s called “Chicken Harbour” by some people because Americans have an easy sail down from Florida aiming for the Caribbean, but never manage to get any further south because it would involve real sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.  The cruisers have set up footpaths which wander around Stockling Island, we walked across to the windward beach which is lovely.

We went to the small marina and bought a couple of prepaid tickets to get Internet access – a bargain at $2US for 80 minutes.  Glenys cooked Goat Curry for dinner and then, because it was raining, we watched a film.

28 April 2012   Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas
The weather was even more miserable today.  We received an email from Gareth and it sounds like Glenys’s mum, Ceris, is not getting any better, so we’ve decided to have the boat hauled out in June in the Chesapeake, so that we can go home to the UK and see Ceris and the rest of our families. 

Sea plane takes off just in front of Alba, Bahamas

I spent the morning planning out all of the jobs that we want to do on the boat – it has turned into quite a list and will be a major refurbishment operation.  The main job is to replace the standing rigging which will cost approximately £7,000, but it needs to be done as the rig is now over 12 years old and the insurance company are requiring us to do the work.  I’ve got some more rigging work to be done to improve the running back stays and add a couple of new winches. Plus work on the generator, engine, anti-fouling the bottom, replace parts on the stern gear, new chart plotter, etc, etc.  I reckon that we’ll be lucky if it’s less than £15,000. 

The weather didn't improve any and it was raining on and off during the afternoon, so I continued doing admin and sorting out our finances, while Glenys chilled out reading and watching the regatta races through binoculars.  We had a little bit of excitement in the evening when a twin otter sea plane came in and landed through the anchorage.  It tied up to the beach, the passengers went to the beach bar for a drink and then they zoomed off again - obviously an uber pub crawl.  The plane took off about 30 metres in front of our bow – crazy pilot. 

29 April 2012   Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas
It was yet another miserable day – very overcast and raining. The forecast is to get worse for the next two days.  I continued plan the projects for our haul-out.

At lunchtime, we donned our waterproof jackets and ventured off the boat.  We went to the bar at Volleyball Beach, where we had a Barbequed Roast Pork lunch and a few beers.  While there we met Jim and Patricia from “Passage Maker” who are heading towards Nova Scotia.

We braved the driving rain back to Alba and spent the rest of the day drinking more beer and watching films on my laptop.  So decadent, but there was sod all else to do.

Glenys made a nice pizza to go with our third film before we sloped off to bed. 

30 April 2012   Georgetown, Great Exuma, Bahamas 
It was an absolutely awful day – heavy rain and strong gusting wind over 30 knots at times.  Now that the wind has veered a bit more south, we’re not anchored in the best place.  There’s a good mile of fetch in front of us, so the waves have built up to a couple of feet.  We’re pitching, but I suppose that the motion is not too bad – I’m looking forward to getting to a nice, peaceful, calm anchorage.

Stormy Weather, Georgetown, Bahamas

I spent the day on electronics jobs.  I first took our small chart plotter to bits and tried to find out why it keeps crashing and doing strange things.  I found a small section on the circuit board that had some salt crystals, so I cleaned them away with some alcohol.  Hopefully, that will fix the problems.

The various piece of electronic equipment on board can share information using a standard protocol called NMEA.  It’s a simple four wire network that sends messages out on two wires and receives messages in on the other two wires.  I spent a couple of hours tracing the wiring and documenting it.  The setup on Alba is not too bad – the GPS talks to the autopilot, the radar and the VHF radio. There’s also couple of leads that I can connect into the PC to pick up these signals. 

I spent a couple of hours trying to configure my laptop so that we can use it as a chart plotter if our small one finally goes down.  It’s not easy, because Windows 7 has a mind of its own when it comes to RS232 ports and keeps changing the port number when the wiring is unplugged.  I finally routed everything through a USB hub and that seems to have worked.

We watched a film in the evening, as the wind howled and the boat pitched and rolled.