14 February 2019 Clarence Town , Bahamas
At 02:00, a big squall went through giving driving rain and strong winds from the North-west. The bay is exposed to the north-west and 2 foot wind waves soon built up making us pitch badly. It was horrible for about an hour before we fell asleep exhausted.
The weather forecast shows that the front has stalled over us and stretches from Cuba to the north-east. There’s a nasty looking area of squalls possibly with lightning over Cuba and it’s forecast to drift east over the next couple of days. Hopefully the worst of it will track south of us, but we’re bracing ourselves for a lot of rain today and tonight. The winds are forecast to be light and variable until Saturday 17th, but there’s bound to be localised strong winds in the squalls. We’re just going to hunker down here and take what comes for the next 48 hours.
In fact it turned out to be a lovely calm day. We went ashore at 09:00 because the weekly mail boat had arrived. The dock was a frenzy of activity with pallet loads of food and other items dumped on the dock with anxious owners waiting with their pickup trucks.
We were hoping that the island’s farmer’s cooperative would have some vegetables, but they only had a dozen boxes of bananas and a box of Papaya. The farming on Long Island is very low key and I think that most of the vegetables get sold before they get to the Cooperative warehouse. We called in at the convenience store to buy a few more things and retired back to the boat.
Hands-up, it’s my fault. When we tied up our dinghy in the marina, there were a least a dozen large Bull and Lemon sharks circling around the various docks, waiting for a fishing boat to clean their catch. I admit that I did tease Glenys a little bit about not falling in the water while she was struggling to climb up onto the high dock. Of course, when we went back to Alba, she was very nervous about going snorkelling, so we didn’t go – it’s my own damn fault…
We spent the rest of the day doing our own thing. The internet is very fast here, so we mostly indulged ourselves with a lot of web-site surfing. In the evening, we invited Peter and Aideen from “Petima” over for a sunset beer or two.
15 February 2019 Clarence Town , Bahamas
The forecast was for light winds and unsettled weather, so we decided to spend another day lurking about. Again, it turned out to be nice and sunny. Glenys still refused to go snorkelling, but I couldn’t resist the crystal clear water and went by myself. I went to the northwest of our anchorage to the edge of the channel where the seabed drops down to about ten metres.
The water was very clear, but the coral is mostly dead covered with a growth of algae and other marine plants. A Great Barracuda joined me within about one minute and followed me around for 20 minutes, no doubt very curious about what I was doing. I didn’t see any sharks apart from one sleeping NurseShark.
We had a quiet afternoon and popped over to “Aideen” for a beer.
16 February 2019 Clarence Town to East Bay, Conception Island
There was no wind today, but we decided to move on to Conception Island. We left at 0700 and motored all day in flat calm conditions. Half way, I hooked two Dorado at once. I tried to gaff the first one, but only succeeded in knocking it off the hook because my gaff is too blunt. I then tried to lift the other one just using the line, be it pulled away. I was really angry with myself, muttering and moaning as I filed a sharp point on my gaff.
We arrive at Conception at about 15:00 with a slight breeze from the west. The wind is forecast to veer to the east tomorrow, so we decided to go into East Bay for the night and move to West Bay when the wind switches. We anchored at 23°50.21N 075°05.62W in 5 metres over good holding sand.
There were three other boats in the anchorage, which is very pretty with stunningly blue water and a white sand beach. A small island called Booby Cay is to the north-east of us, but the prevailing swell coming in from that direction is still hooking around the headland and making us roll a bit.
17 February 2019 East Bay to West Bay, Conception Island
It wasn’t too bad a night with the rolling manageable. Midmorning, we went snorkelling. We tried on a reef inside the anchorage which was better than Clarence Town, but still lots of dead coral and not many fish. After 15 minutes, we headed east and look at a reef further out, but it was the same story, so we gave up.
We went for a stroll on the beach, which has lovely white sand with just a tint of pink when it’s wet. There’s a huge lagoon in the middle of the island, which we could see after clambering up a small 5 metre rocky cliff.
By noon, the wind had just started to come from the east, so we headed south-west out of the 2 mile long bay and headed towards West Bay. The sea bed drops off dramatically from 10 metres to over 50 metres, so there’s an impressive and dramatic change of water colour from light green blue to dark blue.
As we were motoring along the south-west coast, we came across half a dozen dive moorings. There was a sailing yacht already on one mooring, so we picked up another one that looked very strong. We backed up on the mooring to test it and decided that we’d do a scuba dive after lunch. I topped up the dive tanks and we hit the water at about 13:30.
The mooring line descended down to the top of the reef at 18 metres depth. There’s a slope of stunningly white sand coming down to the reef and then the reef drops off dramatically down to 50 or more metres. There was very little current, so we headed south-east, descending down to about 23 metres and swimming along the wall.
At half tanks, we turned around and swam back along the top of the reef. It was a nice dive with some dramatic scenery, some large grouper, but the colours seemed very muted and there wasn’t much for me to photograph – apart from a few Pederson Cleaner Shrimp. It’s supposed to be one of the best dive sites in the Bahamas – perhaps my expectations are too high.
After tiding up four dive gear, we motored the two miles around to West Bay, where there were 18 other boats anchored – quite a crowd for the Bahamas. We dropped our anchor at 23°50.81N 075°07.36W in 6 metres depth on white sand. The water is so clear that, after we’ve backed the anchor in, we’re motoring forwards and can see how well it’s dug in. A couple of Nurse Sharks came to welcome us and swam around the boat for a few minutes.
We had a peaceful evening with no surge for a change, although as usual, we had a few mosquitos as the sun went down. The Bahamian mosquitos seem to come out at sunset for an hour and then go away. I’ve picked up a couple of bites every evening for the past few weeks – I should have learned to spray up by now.
18 February 2019 West Bay, Conception Island
The east wind has finally arrived and it was a beautiful day. The anchorage started to empty as people took advantage of the wind, so we were down to nine boats by mid-morning. Glenys did some washing and as she was hanging it out some Dolphins called by and swam around us for a couple of minutes. It looked like two mothers and youngsters.
Later in the morning we went snorkelling just to the north of the bay, past some little rock islands. The water clarity was super, but the coral was mostly dead. It’s such a crying shame – there were acres of coral formations, which have obviously been growing for centuries, but they’re all dead and covered with algae and marine plants, just like in the Maldives.
As I’ve said before, the algae prevents the coral polyps from reattaching to the old coral structures, so there’s little hope of the coral recovering soon. People say that the coral was pristine around here ten years ago and many blame the local practice of using bleach to catch lobster. However, the problem is so widespread that I can’t believe that this is the cause here. We’re in the middle of nowhere with no settlements nearby, so is it global warming? – have we seen the last of coral gardens?
There’s a huge lagoon in the middle of Conception Island, so we took the dinghy a mile back along the west coast of the island to where it opens out to the sea. It was supposed to be high tide at 18:00, but there was very little water over the sand bar when we arrived at 15:30. We made our way into the lagoon and tentatively motored around various sand bars, travelling ½ mile up the main channel.
The area is mostly white muddy sand with red mangrove trees growing along the edge of the waterways. We were surprised by the lack of birdlife and the mangroves were very small - maybe 2 metres in height at the most. It’s a pretty enough area but I wouldn’t waste the petrol to go again.
19 February 2019 West Bay, Conception Island
We were planning to go scuba diving this morning, but it was very windy with 90% cloud cover, so we prevaricated over breakfast. When it started to drizzle, we abandoned the idea – it would be dark and dismal at 25 metres. It didn’t clear up all day, so we lurked around on-board.
20 February 2019 West Bay, Conception Island
After breakfast, we took Alba a mile around the corner to see if we could manage to do a dive today. Unfortunately, it was blowing a hooley with 2-3 foot waves, so having looked at the mooring crashing about, we abandoned the idea. I’m really glad we did a dive a few days ago while it was calm winds.
We’ve not seen any beer on sale since we left Puerto Rico three weeks ago, so we’re now down to one lonely can. It’s time to move on and we’re hoping that we can get some beer in Cat Island.
21 February 2019 West Bay to Old Bight, Cat Island
We set off towards Cat Island at 07:00. It was a pleasant sail with 15-20 knots of wind behind us, but it was a bit rolly with 3 metres waves. We hooked two fish and I was extremely careful to make sure that I landed them. We ended up with a nice Dorado and a small Yellow-fin Tuna.
It was a long way from the south-west corner of Cat Island to the anchorage off the Old Bight settlement. There are about a dozen boats here sheltering from the strong winds.
Alan and Claire from “Moonstone” invited us over for a beer (after I’d told them our sad story about having run out…)