M/V ILLUSIONS
YEAR 2000 CRUISE
TRIP 1 LOGS
CRUISE THE BAHAMAS
January 8-19, 2000
Preparations,
Ft Lauderdale, FL, Saturday, January 8, 2000
During 1999, Angela and I
moved our 1995 Carver 440 from Houston, TX to Ft Lauderdale, FL. Our
plan for 2000 included the Bahamas and a trip up the eastern coast
of the USA. Once we
reached the Statue of Liberty, we would have completed the Great
Loop. Not knowing where
this trip would end for the year, we started out calling it the Year
2000 Cruise.
Angela and I flew to Ft
Lauderdale on Saturday, January 8, and rented a car to get to the
boat. We bought
groceries, oil for the diesels, and various boat supplies, including
a courtesy flag for the Bahamas.
The Enterprise car rental office closed at 8pm, and they had
taken me back to the boat on an earlier trip, so I rushed to get
there before 8. A young man from Haiti drove me back to the boat.
For Christmas we had sent
a smoked turkey to our dock landlord, Brad, but he didn’t really
have time for it, as his wife, Helen, was still in the hospital.
He asked us to take it, so we started planning how to eat all
that turkey with the groceries we had just purchased.
Danny had been to the boat
and cleaned it up, doing a great job in some places, and giving it a
miss or not a very good job in others.
Apparently an iguana had been hanging around the dock and had
managed to get on board and leave his calling card all over the aft
deck and flying bridge. Danny
had cleaned that up, although the carpet looked ruined in one or two
places. He had removed,
refinished, and replaced two teak strips in the salon, and in
preparation for our arrival, he cleaned the inside of the boat, too.
Richard, from across the
river, had been on board and replaced the shaft for the starboard
tach and the Glendinning. He
removed the belt guard and left it off, as we had been advised to do
by the Glendinning salesman at the boat show.
Richard had also installed one each ball valves on either
side of the Racor filter for the generator.
I had hoped to avoid the problem I had in Ft Myers with air
in the lines after changing the filter: I did not know how to bled
the air out of the system.
The boat looked ready,
even though the fuel in the main engine Racors looked a little dark.
I was too tired to change the filters, so after a late dinner
and putting things away, we turned in for the night.
FT
Lauderdale, FL to Chub Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas, Sunday, January
9, 2000
We left our dock on the
North Fork of the New River at 7:30am, and by 9am we were clearing
the jetties from Ft Lauderdale (Port Everglades) into the Atlantic
Ocean. We had not
cruised to the Bahamas before, and cruising for hours over the
(shallow) Great Bahama Bank looked  dangerous to me.
I aimed for the Great Issac Light at the Northwest corner of
the Bank, planning to stay in deep water as long as possible.
That worked fine, except that I lengthened our trip by so
doing. We arrived at
the light at 1pm, having crossed the Gulf Stream and covered 54
miles from coast to light at 13.5 miles per hour.
It was a nice day, with
winds of 10 or so knots from the east and southeast, and
temperatures in the high 70s. About
10am the starboard engine gave us symptoms of Racor filter distress,
so we slowed down and I changed it.
About 11am I changed the port filter.
I turned off the generator and mentally planned to replace
that filter later.
We ran in the Northwest
Providence Channel, along the northern extremities of the Great
Bahama Bank, to a point just NE of the Gingerbread Grounds where we
turned SE and headed for the Northwest Channel Light. We did not see the red number 2 buoy shown on the chart to be
a couple of miles west of the NW Channel Light.
The weather had changed to stronger winds, say 20 knots, from
the SE. We had closed
the front and starboard esinglass windows, because we had spray
hitting the bimini top and everything below that point.
When we got to the NW
Channel Light, we found it destroyed, with a buoy there and two
remaining pilings standing at odd angles to indicate where it had
been. That is a tricky
area, with some shoals and coral heads in the shallow waters there. It’s the place where several recommended channels across
the Bank converge to allow boaters to get off the Bank and into the
deeper waters of the Tongue of the Ocean.
The cruise guide said to leave the light 50 yards to
starboard, but we passed it on the other side without incident.
As we moved into the
deeper water, our depth indicator started its usual flashing,
indicating “deep”, and not telling us any reading below 200
feet. In fact,
sometimes it flashed “2.6 feet” rather than “deep”.
The cruise guide said to stay outside the 100-fathom line,
which we could not determine. But,
we had our GPS chart plotter, which would show us where we were.
It was 5pm and getting dark.
Just then the chart
plotter gave out on us; none of the buttons elicited a response from
that electronic marvel. I
thought of the hand-held GPS loaned to me by my friend in Houston.
I left it home because I did not know how to use it, I
didn’t want to lose it or have it stolen, and there was no manual
to read on how to operate it. I
still had paper charts, and I had a Loran, which gave different, and
therefore suspect, latitude and longitude readings.
We proceeded on, about 15 miles in less and less light.
We finally got the
dockmaster at Chub Cay (cay is pronounced “key”) Marina on the
radio, and I didn’t understand a word he said!
I asked him to repeat it, slowly, and he said the same thing
the same way. We found
out we had come into the harbor on the wrong side of Mama Rhoda
Rock. The south side
had lots of rocks, and the north side, while shallow, was just fine.
We located the marina entrance and went into the marina just
as the light was disappearing, about 6:30pm.
Terrance, the dockmaster, and three others came out and tied
us up. He was somewhat easier to understand in person than on the
radio, but the Bahamian accent was strong.
He said to fly the yellow quarantine flag and they would ask
Customs to come over from the airport in the morning.
C. J. had confirmed a slip
for us on the cell phone earlier in the day while we were still able
to use it. The slip
rental rate was $1 per foot per night, which was not unusually high,
but water and electricity were extra: $0.35 per gallon for water and
$0.35 per kwh for electricity.
We hooked up to both and proceeded to have dinner.
I had a thought that the water might be cheaper at our next
stop, so I turned theirs off after dinner and used ours from the
storage tank.
Chub
Cay to Nassau, Monday, January 10, 2000
On Monday morning we had a
short rain to wash off the boat.
I checked out of the marina and again requested Customs
clearance. The 30
gallons of water the meter showed us using cost us $10.50.
Electricity was a flat charge of $5, and we paid a Bahamas
(or Chub Cay) tax (?) of $3.52, for a total slip rental of $63.02.
When the Customs man arrived, he took $100 cash and granted
us a temporary visa and cruising permit and fishing license.
Suspecting the fuel might be overpriced, I only bought 100
gallons; their price was $2.25 per gallon.
Departing Chub Cay at
11am, we were in Nassau Harbour at 2:30pm.
The waves were rougher than the day before, with a chop that
threw spray up on the windows and top.
We had spray on the starboard forward quarter, same as the
first day. We were in
the Tongue of the Ocean, with water depths over 10,000 feet.
Getting into the harbor
was not straight forward as there were conflicting lights and
breakwaters, and the main harbor breakwater had been breached by a
hurricane and so was not continuous.
There were other boats, however; and watching them helped us
find the entrance.
We
checked in with Nassau Harbor Control and received permission to go
to our marina.
We secured a slip at the
Nassau Harbour Club Hotel and Marina, based on a recommendation from
another boater at Chub Cay, and the recommendation of fellow boaters
from Houston who had stayed there in 1998.
The manager, Peter, a Greek with a lot of hair, was very nice
and helpful. The marina
and hotel were, as were a lot of places we saw, smaller than we had
expected, and somewhat older and in need of maintenance.
We fueled up before going
into the slip, which is a practice I usually try to follow.
Fuel was $1.54, but they added 4% if you paid by credit card.
Electricity was $0.35 per kwh; water was $8 per day.
We hosed the boat down and filled up our water tank.
We ate a late lunch, and
then I changed the Racor filter for the generator.
We had run the generator for an hour only and then shut it
down. Afterwards, it
wouldn’t start, which blew my theory about the ball valves
preventing air from getting into the system.
It looked like I would need a mechanic again.
The man I met at Chub Cay Marina the previous night offered
to help me bleed the air out of the system the following morning.
That inspired me to get the book on the generator out and
read what it said about the process.
We went for a walk to get
the stiffness out of our legs. The hotel owners also had a shopping center across the
street, which included a grocery store.
We read, and ate a small meal with turkey, which was becoming
a staple of the week’s dining.
Nassau
and Paradise Island, Tuesday, January 11, 2000
I worked on the generator
for a couple of hours. Since
I was going to have to bleed the system to get the air out, I
decided to go ahead and change the fuel filter also. The book described three bolts to loosen to let the air out.
Angela helped me finish it up, and it ran!
I was excited that we had done it and I had learned how to do
it.
Our success led me to
start the seemingly simple task of replacing some plumbing that had
failed on our last trip in 1999.
We had a replacement hose with two female fittings of the
right size to mate up with some PVC pipe under the forward sink. One end connected right up.
The other wouldn’t reach the threads: the male end had a
protrusion after the end of the threads.
Okay, so we would cut that off; it was only pvc, right?
An hour later, we were both sawing off that end of the pvc
pipe. Then we tightened
it up and it worked, but with a lot more effort than we had
expected.
We showered and changed
and went to the new hotel, Atlantis, on Paradise Island.
Peter actually offered and gave us a lift over the bridge to
the hotel. Our route
included a tunnel under the entrance channel to the hotel  marina
where, we heard they charged $3-5 per foot for a slip per night.
We made the 4pm tour of
The Dig,
an entertainment area designed to take advantage of the
legend of Atlantis, with lots of aquariums, pools, waterfalls, and
fish of all kinds. They
charged $25 per person for the guided tour, and it was worth it.
That was a fabulous place.
We toured the grounds and bought a couple of souvenirs and
went back across the harbor.
According to some
literature we received on Atlantis, it was only recently built at a
cost of some $800 million. It
has 2300 guest rooms, the largest casino in the Caribbean, the
world’s largest outdoor, open water aquarium, and a megayacht
marina. It was very
impressive. Room costs
were reportedly $200 or so for the least cost room up to the
Penthouse Suite, which connects two Towers, at $25000 per night with
a 7-night minimum.
We had dinner at the Poop Deck
Restaurant at the Nassau Yacht Haven Marina with Todd and Valerie, a
couple we met during the day. The meal was good, the harbor view was good, and the weather
was very nice. I had
been in shorts every day. These
marinas surprised me, though. They
were just 1-2 docks sticking out into the harbor with slips on both
sides, smallish, with no well-defined borders.
It was hard to tell where one stopped and the next one
started.
Nassau
to Hope Town, Elbow Cay, Abaco, Wednesday, January, 12, 2000
By
8:30am we had checked out and left the marina.
Our Chub Cay friends were heading south. We were heading north to the Abacos, which had been our plan
for years should we ever go to the Bahamas.
A friend in Houston had loaned us his videotapes from his
trip to the area in 1988. I
wanted to see that red and white lighthouse in Hope Town, and I felt
I knew something about the area from his tapes.
The generator was used for
about an hour; then we shut it off.
The weather was pleasant: 75 degrees, NE wind 10-15 knots at
first, increasing later, sunny. By noon we were at the SE corner of Great Abaco Island, at
the unusual rock formation called Hole-in-the-Wall. We got some great pictures there and proceeded up to Little
Harbour Bar. We needed
to cross the bar and get out of the
Atlantic Ocean and into the Sea
of Abaco, between the Abaco Cays and Great Abaco Island.
That was tricky, and I was nervous, but we did it, and we got
into some calm and shallow waters.
To say there are less
navigational aids in the Bahamas is to call a camel kind.
Navigating in the Bahamas is like navigating out in the
country. You tell
someone to go to a certain spot and turn one way or the other and go
until you get to another spot and turn again, etc.
Except that it’s much more complicated.
We used the Yachtsman’s Guide to the Bahamas, which was
very good; I don’t know how we would have done it without that
book. Consider the
following instructions.
Little Harbour
Bar is an excellent entrance in normal weather to the sound that
lies between Great Abaco and the cays.
Caution: Never attempt this passage in a rage or in strong
onshore winds when a heavy sea is running.
Little Harbour Bar is clear, wide, and deep (16 feet at low
water) but should still be negotiated with care, according to the
following directions. Approaching
Little Harbour Bar from the south, stand off the coast not less than
one mile until Little Harbour Point and Tom Curry’s Point are in
transit. (See sketch
chart, etc.) They will
then be bearing roughly 305 degrees.
Alter course to port to keep them on this bearing until in
mid-channel between the point and the line of breakers on the reef
that extends south from Lynyard Cay.
Then alter course to north, running parallel to land for
about 400 yards, in order to clear the reef that extends for about
300 yards north from Little Harbour Point.
You will then be in 18-24 feet.
As you alter course, rounding the reef, to your port a cove
behind the lighthouse will open up.
This will be easily recognized by the white sand beach and a
group of coconut palms in the eastern corner.
We followed those
directions and did fine, but by that time we had strong onshore
winds. I wasn’t sure
if they were too strong. There
were breakers on both sides of us as we came through the channel,
and we could have been washing up on the beach for all I knew.
From there we proceeded to
Hope Town. The channel
between Lubbers Quarters and Elbow Cay looked attractive to me (a
short cut), but I didn’t know the tide level.
In retrospect, that’s one thing we should have always have
known. Here are the
directions for that channel.
For yachts drawing no more
than 6 feet, a high-water channel exists from Hope Town, inside the
Parrot Cays, and south between Elbow Cay and Lubbers Quarters.
The route is obstructed in places by shallow
sandbanks, particularly in the vicinity of Tiloo Cut, but saves
considerable distance. Upon
departing from Hope Town with the intention of using this channel,
head for the north point of Lubbers Quarters and, when abeam of the
entrance to White Sound, steer towards Baker’s Rock at the west
end of Tahiti Beach, on a bearing of about 190 degrees.
Baker’s Rock is a flat cay, about 50 yards in diameter,
with no structures or trees. Then
when abeam of the point on Elbow Cay immediately north of Baker’s
Rock, turn towards the saddle between the two southernmost hills on
Lubbers Quarters (about 228 degrees), keeping the conspicuous
3-story building on Elbow Cay dead on your stern.
When abeam of the southernmost Cooperjack Cay, or when you
find yourself about two- thirds the distance between Elbow Cay and
Lubbers Quarters, alter to port toward the westernmost point of
Tavern Cay, (about 200 degrees), holding the Parrot Cays on your
stern. From this point
you will have 5 feet at low water until you clear the south end of
Lubbers Quarters. Watch
for the deep blue, rectangular dredged area (see inset, etc).
If on course you should pass over its eastern edge.
When abeam of the south point of Lubbers Quarters, turn
toward Snake Cay (about 240 degrees). You can continue on this leg all the way to Snake Cay or
until Lubbers Quarters’ south point is again abeam, at which time
you can take up 200 degrees for the western extremity of Tiloo Bank. When working north from Lubbers Quarters, keep the prominent
house on Anna Cay well open to avoid running aground on White Sound
Bar.
That should give you an
idea. Of course, if you
are going to Hope Town from the south, as we were, you need to
reverse those directions. We
touched bottom a couple of times, but after cruising in Galveston
Bay we were used to a little of that.
At 4:30pm we were tied to
a mooring in the center of the anchorage at Hope Town. We cranked the generator, and I prepared the dinghy for some
exploring. A plastic
pint of oil had leaked all over the floor of the dinghy, so a good
cleaning up was in order. Then,
the generator quit. We
called Rudy on the radio. The
harbormaster for the Hope Town Marina had already gone fishing, but
he came in and fixed us up with a marginally acceptable slip.
Their prices were $0.65 per foot per night, plus water at
$0.25 per gallon (we declined) and electricity at $15 per day.
A good salad with turkey topped the day.
Hope
Town to Marsh Harbour, Thursday, January 13, 2000
The red and white
lighthouse was calling us, although I did not want to go up the 101
steps to the top. We
walked over to the lighthouse by a route that seemed strange: first
a dirt road, that was really more of a track, then a rocky road that
went behind the lighthouse and over a hill, then through the paved
storage yard for a marina (the Lighthouse Marina), and along the
waterfront under some low-hanging trees to the base of the steps up
to the several buildings in the lighthouse complex.
I believe I read the lighthouse was 129 feet above sea level
and 89 feet above the ground, so we walked up 40 feet in elevation
to get to the base of the structure.
It was built well over 100 years ago.
Rumor had it that a cold
front was coming that evening.
Hope Town looked much smaller to me than I had pictured it to
be, so we moved over to Marsh Harbour, the commercial center of the
Abacos.
I was terrified of going
aground and ripping all the underwater gear off my boat.
The books I had read in preparation for the trip said you
need to be able to ‘read the water’ as to depth and ground
conditions, such as sand, grass, or CORAL HEADS.
I knew I could not ‘read the water”, and I was afraid
Angela couldn’t either. Especially
when she was reading a book.
We would go over a spot of
sand bottom that our depth indicator said was 8 feet, then the color
would change to brown, indicating grass or CORAL REEFS, and the
depth indicator would still say 8 feet.
In other words, I could not correlate the colors I was seeing
and the depths I was reading into meaningful information to steer
by. We spent 2 hours
going 10 miles from Hope Town to Marsh Harbour.
The Conch Inn and Marina
at Marsh Harbour was where we stayed, and we would recommend it or
stay there again. It
was operated by The Moorings, and it was more like what we were used
to in the USA. It had a
telephone, although the phone had been out for the previous five
days. It had a fax,
charts for sale, and a weather report.
The slip fees were $0.45
per foot per night. Water
was $3 per day. Electricity
was metered and charged at $0.35 per kwh.
We washed the boat and filled our water tank.
We had arrived: water was only $90 per month!
Diesel was $2.06 per gallon; we filled up before we left.
On the day we arrived the
weather report, which was the first we had seen or heard since
leaving Florida, called for high pressure north of Abaco, SSW winds
10-15 knots, 78 degrees F, seas 5 feet or less, for that day.
The forecast for the next day was for SSW winds 20-25 knots,
seas 8-12 feet. Specifically,
it said conditions would deteriorate; a cold front south of Abaco
would be there Friday evening, leaving Saturday afternoon.
A footnote said Whale Cay Channel was passable.
(I didn’t know then that the channel was the main way out
of there to the north, and it involved going out into the Atlantic
Ocean and coming back in again - lots of directions and angles, etc.)
We were willing to stay
somewhere a couple of nights, and it looked like this was the place.
We went out to eat at Mangoes, supposedly the best restaurant
around. It was listed in our cruise guide and in the local paper.
It was only a block away, but we found it closed, a casualty
of Hurricane Floyd, we thought. We ate a good meal at Sapodilly’s across the street.
At
the Conch Inn, Marsh Harbour, Friday, January 14, 2000
We were wakened by the
wind blowing out of the north, 20+ knots and gusty.
I went out and added a couple of lines to keep us off the
dock. Nancy, the
harbormaster, and a fellow cruiser helped me pull the boat away from
the dock and secure extra lines.
There was only one boat between ours and the bay, and it
seemed to be tied up well.
After breakfast we went to
the office and received the weather forecast.
It said winds from the north, 25-30 knots, temperature 76
degrees, seas 5-7 feet, Whale Cay Channel passable through this
afternoon, later this afternoon expect a rage.
(A rage is a weather phenomenon characterized by heavily
breaking swells in passages and on the beaches and rocks.)
Scattered clouds, isolated showers, strong cold front to
cross over Abaco today, thus strong winds.
The weather for that night
was NNE winds 25-30 knots, seas 10-14 feet.
The forecast for Saturday was for extremely low tides, NNE
winds 25-30 knots, seas 10-14 feet. I asked if we could stay three nights instead of two.
Nancy said the boat they had been expecting was in Green
Turtle Cay and would not be able to get to Marsh Harbour.
Well, our next stop was to be Green Turtle Cay, so that got
my attention. That’s
when I started learning about going out into the Atlantic through
the Whale Cay Channel.
One of the biggest and
nicest marinas in the Marsh Harbour area is actually reached from
the south and so is not in the harbor itself. We found we could walk to it, and so we did, to have dinner
and see the place. It’s
called the Abaco Beach Resort, and Hurricane Floyd destroyed their
marina and most of their waterfront restaurant.
We went over early to be able to see, and we were the only
ones there. The food
was good, but the selection was limited and the available dining
area was small.
In
Marsh Harbour, Saturday, January 15, 2000
On the 15th the
weather forecast was for NE winds 25-30 knots, gusting higher, seas
10-15 feet offshore, Whale Cay Channel not passable, temperatures in
the low 70s, tonight the same except low 60s, tomorrow the same.
We had a problem: how to get out of there.
We started talking to
people to see what we could learn. Winds like we were experiencing sometimes lasted for weeks,
or a week and some days, in the Bahamas in the wintertime. Some people left their boats there and flew away in a small
plane, although sometimes the planes couldn’t fly either.
Cruising boats usually had time; they just changed their
plans and waited for better weather.
We met the captain of a
76-foot Lazzara, which was not in the area at that time, and we
talked to him about the options available to us.
There was a channel, called the Don’t Rock Passage, which
was an alternate to the Whale Cay Channel.
He said he had considered using it once, since their boat
draws just 4.5 feet. You’d
have to go at high tide, he said.
He had told the owner of his boat just to plan on using a
chartered plane sometimes, because there were times the boat should
not be moved.
Our draft was 51 inches, just over 4
feet, and we did not want to fly home and leave the boat there.
We talked to one person who led us to another.
We spoke with a guy who had come through the Don’t Rock
Passage a month before. He
said the shallow sand bar was only 100 yards or so wide; it was
plenty deep on both sides of that.
I spoke to Barometer Bob on the Cruisers’ Net, VHF Channel
68 every morning at 8:15am. He
said he had been through that passage plenty of times and always had
enough water at high tide, which would be 2:30pm the next day.
Later in the day we heard
the weather would get better the following day, followed the next
day by two more cold fronts. It looked like we had a shot at getting out but only if we
left on Sunday. We
walked around the town a bit, visited the grocery store and a
souvenir shop, and made reservations for Wally’s at 6:30pm.
Wally’s was supposed to be good but only open Friday and
Saturday nights. We learned the winter is not high season as it is in south
Florida: it’s the quiet season.
There were not a lot of people there.
We ate at Wally’s later
on, and it was good. We
were the first to be seated in the open-air dining room with all the
canvas and plastic windows closed against the wind and cold.
The Bahamians were all bundled up in wool coats and caps that
covered their ears. We
had changed from shorts to long pants with a light jacket, and the
heater was running on the boat more often than the air conditioner.
Marsh
Harbour to Green Turtle Cay, Sunday, January 16, 2000
The weather was better on
Sunday. The weather
forecast was for E-NE winds only 20-25 knots, the first improvement
we had seen in days. Whale
Cay Channel was reportedly not passable.
The cruise guide said not to use Don’t Rock Passage as an
alternate to Whale Cay Passage when there were strong onshore winds
because the waves would come into that area and cause you to hit
bottom in the trough of the waves.
We had already decided to try it, so off we went about noon.
The run up to Don’t Rock
was uneventful, and I realized again we could have moved to Treasure
Cay Marina, just west of Don’t Rock, as another place to see and
stay. However it was
more expensive there, and no help as far as getting us out of that
area; in other words, it was just another place to be trapped by
that weather. We  had no trouble locating Don’t Rock, and we passed it on
the right as the skipper had told us to.
(Our chart showed a passage by the left of Don’t Rock.
It contained the note or warning not to expect more than
2.5-3 feet of depth at low water. We were approaching high tide, which should add 3 feet to
that. It also said the
sand bores in that area shifted around from time to time; that’s
why there was no definite channel or passage.)
We found the low water,
and moved to the left where we thought we would have more depth.
The waves crashing outside the Whale Cay Channel were
spectacular, and I can see why they said it was not passable.
We also had waves where we were, and we sometimes felt like
we were riding a wave. We
touched bottom, and ran on one engine to hopefully save one prop.
We touched bottom several times, but not hard, and not like
we were on a coral reef or anything like that.
And then we were free; we had made it through the passage and
we had plenty of water.
Green Turtle Cay was only
a few more miles away. It
was the last good marina for some distance, and our next trip would
not involve going “outside”.
I had wanted to stay at the Green Turtle Club, but was told
their marina had not yet been rebuilt from Floyd.
Same for Bluff House Marina.
So we called the Other Shore Club and Marina in Black Sound.
We arranged for a slip and motored past New Plymouth, looking
for the entrance to Black Sound.
Actually, I had all the
information I needed to go into Black Sound without going aground.
But I forgot my charts had an aerial photograph of the
entrance channel, clearly showing the reef I should have avoided.
I was so pleased with getting through Don’t Rock Passage, I
was too casual about that entrance.
I turned right too soon and went aground, hard, on a coral
reef.
I asked a passing
motorboat to help pull me off, but he declined.
I had been there and done that before, you know, in Galveston
Bay, so I got off the way I do back home - with power.
And it worked, we got off, but the props, or one of them, had
a twist in it that caused some vibration the next day.
We tied up and visited the
town, most of which was closed up because it was Sunday.
We walked a lot, with jackets on, and looked over the neat,
little town. The
streets were one car wide, with fences right up to the concrete
pavement, which looked like it had been placed recently.
There was no trash on the streets at all.
We saw the Loyalist Memorial Garden, which was excellent: a
garden with bronze busts of famous people in the history of the
Bahamas and further information about those loyal to the British who
settled there before and after the US Revolutionary War.
We walked to the extreme
southeastern corner of the island to see the Atlantic Ocean.
There were some large trees there, on their sides as if blown
down by a hurricane. They
had no real root system; I don’t know how they stayed upright long
enough to get that big. I was learning why sailors like the
Caribbean - it’s
windy, that’s why!
Upon returning to the
road, we stopped a fellow on a golf cart to ask him a question, and
he gave us a ride almost all the way to our marina.
We took some good photos of the sunset, just after 5:30pm.
Then we retired to the boat and some more turkey!
Green
Turtle Cay to Grand Bahama Island, Monday, January 17, 2000
The electricity was on and
off all night, apparently the supply from Marsh Harbour to Green
Turtle Cay was the problem. When
the dock attendant showed up, I complained about it, and he said,
“Welcome to the Bahamas”. I
had already showered and made coffee when it last went off, and we
had enough hot water for Angela’s shower.
So we didn’t complain any more when he let us off without a
charge for electricity. The
slip fee was $0.50 per foot (cash only without the electricity to
accept a credit card) and we declined their water ($0.25 per
gallon).
We left the marina and
Black Sound at 8:15am and touched bottom lightly twice on the way
out. It can be shallow
in some places there. We
motored over closer to Great Abaco Island and north to the extreme
northern end of the island. Then
we turned to the NW and cruised into the Little Bahama Bank.
We passed Hawksbill Cays and a rock called Center of the
World Rock. We went
north of Little Sale Cay and then turned more SW toward West End (of
Grand Bahama Island).
The western end of that
passage, where the Little Bahama Bank gives way to the Atlantic, was
very shallow and tricky. I
mean 5-6 feet of water right before it drops dramatically as you
head out into the Gulf Stream.
Coral heads and shallow water and reefs were all around us;
they even had some navigational aids out there.
One was a piling with a horizontal one-foot stick nailed to
it carved into an arrow shape.
I noticed the arrow was pointing towards us as we went by;
that was good.
The old Jack Tar Hotel at
West End had been torn down and new condominiums were being built.
Old Bahama Bay was its new name, and we bought 100 gallons of
fuel there and spent the night.
The fuel was $1.74 per gallon; the slip fee was $0.75 per
foot plus electricity at $0.35 per kwh plus $5 for water.
We rinsed off the boat.
The weather forecast from the mainland was for west winds, 5
knots, with seas of 1-3 feet, which sounded good to us.
West
End, Grand Bahama to Ft Lauderdale, FL, Tuesday, January 18, 2000
The
unreliability of the generator had prevented us from using moorings
or from anchoring. We
could do without it for a while during running hours, but we needed
it sometimes for the refrigerator, ice making, hot water, and
coffee. I cranked it on
Tuesday morning, and instead of quitting after a minute or less, it
ran until we shut it off an hour or so later.
We left Old Bahama Bay
Marina at 8:15am, hoping we were prepared for the Gulf Stream, but
not too worried due to the weather forecast. Unfortunately, the Gulf
Stream hadn’t heard the same forecast.
We had NW winds at 15-20 knots (don’t go into the Gulf
Stream with winds opposing the current, which is from the SW toward the
NE; high winds containing a north component cause a choppy sea).
Our course was 230 degrees; the wind direction was 300
degrees.
With the autopilot on, the
boat would come around to the right just as a big wave was passing
under the boat from right to left.
It felt like the back of the boat was struggling to catch up
with the front. Angela
said it felt light the kind of weightlessness you feel on a roller
coaster, and she didn’t like it.
The waves would hit the starboard forward corner (every day
it was the same corner) and rise up and cover the front windshield
and eisinglass, and it leaked into the flying bridge at all
openings, zippers, etc in the canvas enclosure.
I took the boat off
autopilot, thinking I could do a better job of steering, which I
could. You can
anticipate the waves when you are manually steering.
Still, we had a lot of water hitting the plastic windows
around the flying bridge. At
times it seemed like a hose, continuous, like being inside a car in
an automatic car wash. So,
I turned the boat more to the west and northwest.
This made the ride rougher, taking the waves straight ahead
instead of on the beam; but we were safer and not rolling so much.
It also took longer to get to the FL coast that way.
Our dinghy davit came
loose at one point, swinging wildly and threatening to hurt the
dinghy and the radar arch where it could hit in its travels.
We had to slow down, put the autopilot on, open the plastic
windows, and try to catch this great swinging arm when it came to
hit the arch. It would
have been a good place to break a finger, but we didn’t.
We caught it and tied it to the radar arch with a dock line,
where it stayed until we got back to our dock.
A small welding job should put it right again.
We saw the high-rises at
Palm Beach, and the winds and waves calmed down right after that.
The weather in that area was about what the forecast had
called for; it sure was different out in the Gulf Stream.
We turned more south and headed for the Port Everglades
jetties.
About 10 miles away from
port, one of the Racor filters indicated it was clogged; I went
below and changed it. Then
I changed the other one. Maybe
the violent motions of the Gulf Stream had stirred up the bottoms in
the fuel tanks, resulting in the filters getting the “bottoms”
as they did their jobs filtering the fuel.
I made a note to change the generator filter later.
Customs clearance was
straightforward at the Lauderdale Marina.
We could do it by phone while filling up with fuel.
I had ordered the US Customs decal earlier in December, so we
had what we needed to easily check in.
We returned to our dock on the North Fork of the New River,
glad to be back. The
Bahamas are isolated, and people go there to enjoy that isolation.
Then we found we had a
massive clean-up job to do. The
water striking the boat had leaked into the salon windows and into
the master head. We had
salt and water–lots of it. I
rented a car and we took sheets and towels to the laudromat.
I changed the generator Racor filter while Angela was wiping
down salty surfaces; the generator would not run.
We finished the turkey and packed for home.
Ft
Lauderdale, FL to Houston, TX, Wednesday, January 19, 2000
Our mechanic, Richard,
came over and installed a new shaft for the port side tachometer.
He convinced me the belt guard did not have anything to do
with the tachometer shaft, so he reinstalled it on the starboard
engine. He bled the air
out of the fuel system on the generator.
He also repaired a supply wire to the generator from the
battery; it had just fallen out of its place and we had temporarily
taped it back. A few
more adjustments and he had the generator running again.
Merle, the lady making
some drapes for us, came by and visited with Angela for about an
hour. I spoke to Danny
about getting the boat cleaned, compounded and waxed, and the canvas
cleaned and waterproofed. I
spoke to Brad, our landlord, about our future plans.
He will want to rent the dock space to someone else when we
leave in March.
Enterprise took us to the
airport once we dropped our rental at their lot.
We caught the noon flight back to Houston as planned.
Our statistics for the
trip were:
Running Hours: 39
Miles: 500
Generator Hours: 11
Fuel Used: 940 gallons
Fuel Costs: $1542
Running Days: 7
Lay Days: 4
Travel Days: 2
Average Speed: 12.8 mph
Average Fuel: 1.88 gals
per mile, 24.1 gallons per hour
Average Fuel Cost: $1.62
per gallon
Average Miles Per Running Day:
71
Average Running Hours Per Running Day:
5.6 |
|
