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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