Thursday, April 30, 2015

Little Bay, Great Guana Cay to Palm Cay Marina, New Providence

 
 Entering our anchorage at Little Bay

At anchor, view to the south

Little Bay is the bay just south of Black Point where we stayed on our way down to Georgetown last month. We wanted to go a bit south and check it out – it looked like it could be very pretty. And it was!  The first thing that happened was that our davit broke (as I wrote about in the last post). Things got better after that.

Sean & Louise were anchored at Black Point and Thursday is “cruisers happy hour” at Scorpio’s Bar. So that night we drove Petal up to town to have cocktails and dinner with them.  It turned out that there were a bunch of people at Scorpio’s – an impromptu party of sorts!  We met several couples from boats including Changing Course, Margaritaville, and Spiraserpula and Del Max who we'd been leapfrogging up the Exumas with since Georgetown. After happy hour we went to a restaurant next door, DeShamon, and had pizza.



Heading home from Black Point. The view from the dinghy dock

The next day, Sean & Louise headed out to Eleuthera to take care of some business.  We stayed and got a lot of chores done, including figuring out the davit controller. Friday afternoon we had a real treat when Gayle called us and said that she and Bill were going out snorkeling and asked if we’d like to join them. Martin and I jumped at the opportunity and followed them up at Dotham cut. It was a great snorkel site and to have two marine biologists pointing things out to you was Awesome!  My camera gave me a strange disc warning so I only got a couple of pictures. But in addition to the lobster and turtle we saw a puffer fish, scrawled file fish, brittlestars and more…

Heading out to snorkel off Dotham Cut



Baby hawksbill turtle

Slipper Lobster, his back end, didn’t get a good shot!

Joe & Holly from Scamper came over with their controller that evening and we had a drink together. Unfortunately, their controller didn’t work with our davit but we had a really nice time talking with them. They spend their winters on the west coast of Florida (which I love!) and Holly is a quilter so we had lots to talk about J

SUPing the rocky shoreline

Saturday afternoon I went out on a SUP and explored the bay.  The water was like glass – it was perfection.  Martin and I went back to DeShamon for dinner and had their lobster special. On the way home we checked out the snorkel sites that I had SUP’d over and found 1 small lion fish. It was too late (almost dark) to get him so we’re going to try to find him when we return in a couple weeks.

We planned to stay at Little Bay and wait for our new controller to arrive and then head north to New Providence where we’d pick up my Mom. When the trip to Cuba was cancelled, we gained another 6 weeks to spend in the Bahamas so we thought it would be a perfect opportunity for her to come! It was a last minute decision and I’m so happy that we were able to make it happen on such short notice! We made arrangements for her to fly into Nassau. The plan was to anchor on the SW side of New Providence, where we anchored on the way down from the Abacos, and then dinghy in to pick her up.

But several variables later, and by Saturday night we were making other plans. Most importantly, the davit was working. Then, while we were at happy hour, the folks from Changing Course told us about a marina on the SE side of New Providence. Martin has been pretty adamant about not wanting to go to Nassau but this marina is not in the city and we wouldn’t have to go into Nassau Harbor. It’s reasonably priced and has rave reviews. So now we had a good option to head up early if we needed to and the weather up there wouldn’t be a factor. And finally, the weather factored in. The forecast has been looking pretty chaotic – it seems there’s a “confused weather pattern” currently over the Bahamas. We’re expecting SW/W winds (rare for this time of year) and lots of rain over the next week.  Then Saturday night, we got slammed by some moderate SW winds. By Sunday morning we were hobby horsing so badly in the anchorage (that is completely open to the SW and W winds), that I was sea sick and couldn’t wait to leave.  


Cameras always fail to adequately capture the sea state. These were breaking waves rolling into the anchorage.

With more of the same, and potentially worse to come, we called the marina and found that they had a slip we could fit in that was supposed to come available. We would also be able to provision while up there. There’s a huge Bahamian regatta going on in Georgetown this week and apparently the mailboat (which carries food/fresh produce to the settlements in the Exumas), was hanging out down there. So it was slim pickings for provisioning.  

Party on Blossom at Warderick Wells!

And so we headed north to Warderick Wells on Sunday. Unfortunately, it was no more protected than Little Bay, so we hunkered down and I still wasn’t feeling that great. We couldn't get cell or wifi there to get updated weather info or confirm our marina reservation so we planned to head out to Highbourne the next day where we could be connected.

Monday was more calm and we got to Highbourne Cay and anchored pretty much exactly where we anchored several weeks ago. The only downside was that we had little/no cell reception even though we were anchored right under the tower. It seems that Batelco is having some serious issues throughout the Exumas. (Thankfully the problem started right after we figured out the davit.) Martin was able to get enough reception though to hotspot my phone and we downloaded and updated the weather forecast. We had a large remora visit us in the evening. He swam around the boat for quite a while. We have such a green beard along our waterline, I wondered if he thought he could attach to us! (Yes, bottom cleaning is high on our to-do list once we're out of the marina.)

Tuesday I awoke to distant rumblings. Uh oh, I know that sound. I waited for the sun to rise, listening to louder and louder grumbles. I walked to the cockpit and saw a black wall approaching from the SW. We closed the windows and waited. The wind was blowing at about 4 knots, almost dead calm. Then the water started to ripple oddly and then BAM a 60 knot gust slammed us. Kind of cool really! The sustained gust lasted about 2 minutes and averaged 50k according to our anemometer (or "wind-ometer" as I refer to it).  Blossom whipped around and stared the squall down. Can I tell you how much we love our over-sized Ultra anchor? The only unfortunate outcome was that we forgot to remove our flag and it started to shred again – and I just sewed it up! 

Sugar bird (en route to New Providence)

On our way up to Palm Cay Marina we had a guest come aboard. I remember the sugar birds from back in ’09. They would eat sugar out of your hand. I thought this little guy must be tired, he was so far from land, but he was scared so I helped him find the door. Then I saw “her” partner flying around the boat as well. I hope they landed and took a break on deck if they needed one.

We’re looking forward to spending a few days in a marina, it’ll be quite the change after more than 2 months on the hook. (Our night at Emerald Bay didn’t feel like a real “marina stay”). It’ll be nice to have wifi to catch up on emails and this blog. Our connectivity has been so bad for the past several days that we’ve not been on line much.  I’m also looking forward to a big grocery store and to some fun restaurants. We’ll be snug as a bug in the marina for the two days of strong westerlies and then two days of strong easterlies that are forecast to blow through. It looks like the “confused” weather will be winding down early next week and fingers crossed that we’ll have amazing blue sky and mild winds for my Mom’s visit!

Boat Business:
  • Davit. Martin diagnosed & hotwired the davit while I was on line trying to do my share of the research.
  • Water makers. Changed the oil in both water makers.
  • SSB. I tried to tune in to Chris Parker (weather guru) on the SSB but there was too much static to hear what he was saying. We’ll have to try to play around and figure out if we can turn something off to get the radio to tune in better. I have an “SSB for Idi-Yachts” book I just found. I hope it helps :/
  • Air conditioning. We’ve had a few very hot days and have been using our AC. The other night we tried to run it overnight for the first time using the 9k. At some point it stalled out from overload. We think a battery charger came on. Oh, if only we’d put in a 12k instead of a 9k! But we’ll keep playing with it and figure it out. By June we’ll need to run the AC overnight for sure. With no wind, my sleeping comfort level is cut off at about 85 degrees/100% humidity.


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