Off to Long Island Bahamas

We got wind, pun intended, of a group of boats headed for Long Island and decided to go along, always happy to have a buddy boat or two. We had easy downwind sails both ways to and from Long Island, traveling with some 20 boats on our way south to Thompson Bay, LI. Twenty buddy boats is usually a good indicator of really mild weather. We arranged a car rental share with friends and toured the island going south to Clarence Town on Saturday and north to the Columbus monument on Sunday. Father Jerome's churches in Clarencetown continue to intrigue us. We climbed to the top of one tower, barely able to turn around at the top.

The blue hole on the way to Clarencetown was as impressive as the first time we saw it. This time we had the added entertainment of fearless young tourists cliff jumping. The water depth goes from knee deep to 600 feet deep in a matter of steps.

The dirt road up to the Columbus monument was a challenge to the little rental car, but the view was worth it. The monument is not that impressive, but the view of the reef from the top certainly was, so visible we wondered how Columbus had lost a ship on them as is rumored.

Tryphena cooked up a buffet for 40 and we feasted on ribs, conch, fish and sides at her restaurant Saturday night, all arranged over the trusty VHF radio. We joined a campfire on the beach Sunday night after a long ocean beach walk. Monday we moved with another parade of boats up to Calabash Bay at the northern end of LI, where the swell wrapped around and rocked us to sleep. The sail back to Georgetown just happened to coincide with the around-the-island race, so we had company approaching the harbor. One boat was dismasted in the race, a sight that puzzled us until we got near enough to see what had happened.

There are still 255 boats in the Georgetown harbors, with the cruiser's regatta ending Saturday. We pretended not to be here last night by anchoring in Red Shanks, an isolated harbor boaters flee to in strong winds. It was beautiful with only a few other boats, but the dingy ride to the grocery was about two miles long. We stocked up for the trip up the Exuma chain where groceries are hard to come by. What a pair we are: Lee always has to know where his next meal and I where my next harbor is coming from. Wonder we ever go anywhere. This morning we moved back over to our spot off volleyball beach for our last day of summer camp. There's socializing and games under the trees, Trivial Pursuit tonight. Below is the sand sculpture competetion, followed by the coconut carry competetion. We missed the only event we had signed up for, the scavenger hunt, while we were at Long Island.

Tomorrow, wind willing, we hope to head some 20 miles up to Lee Stocking island and slowly island hop up the Exuma chain, visiting the islands we missed on the way down.

We have a new microwave chocolate cake for two recipe you might like to try: In a 2 cup measuring cup mix:3 TBS flour, 3 TBS sugar, 2 TBS cocoa, 1 TBS chocolate chips, 1 egg, 3 TBS milk, 3 TBS oil, 2 TBS nuts, dash of vanilla.Mix well. Microwave 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 minutes. No need to butter the cup.

Lee's commentary: Not much to report from my end, the wind is still blowing 15-20 and the harbor is rough. I am about to make a trip 1 mile across to town by dingy for distilled water for our house batteries and 40 gallons of fresh water for our tanks. There is a spigot on the dingy dock, free from the supermarket here, so I only need to lift and carry from the dingy to the front of the boat, I have 8) 5 gallon jugs, the water here is excellent, other places it may be salty. Sherry likes that there is an experienced couple in another boat "Salsa" that will travel with us tomorrow. Some of the cruisers at Long Island were making plans that were impossible or uncomfortable due to the winds and seas, they will find out, and we will probably hear stories when we meet again.

Georgetown, Bahamas

We are in Georgetown at "adult summer camp" and guilty of not writing home very often. Most boaters love or hate Georgetown. We have mixed feelings. The weather down here is not something we can complain about to the frozen people up north, the wind chill is not part of our daily weather report. But...the fronts have been coming through with such frequency that we haven't found a great window to visit other islands. The morning after we arrived, many boats left for a race to Long Island, the next island south. It's good that we had heard or we would have wondered about the mass exodus. It was extremely windy and one team told us they weren't speaking by the end of the day, some argument about how much sail they had up.

We've had guests for the past few weeks and have to be sure we can get them back to the airport, so here we've stayed. First came Barb and Jack, Carolyn and Lizzie from Rochester.

Our daily routine is to listen on single sideband radio to the Chris Parker weather report at 6:30 and then to the local cruiser's net on VHF 68 at eight. The cruiser community now has around 260 boats and is quite organized. Volunteers manage the morning net on the marine VHF radio, with boaters calling in to get on the list with their agenda. We all sit on our boats with pen in hand to write down the activities we'd like to join; anything from volleyball, bocce, dominoes, Scrabble, dances, seminars, dinners, ARG (alcohol research group), book exchanges, doggie get-togethers, trivial pursuit, poker, baseball. Local business make their announcements followed by the boater exchange requests. Lee often has parts and knowledge to help with boat problems. Most boats anchor in the three harbors at Stocking Island and dingy across the mile to Georgetown village for shopping, library, laundry, internet and baked goods. Stocking Island has a beach bar, a restaurant, and the beach with shade and picnic tables for all the activities. A short walk leads across the skinny island to the ocean beach where we walk. We were the first to arrive after an announcement for a lobster sale and got a very large one. We had to ask on the radio for cooking instructions. He sat in a five gallon bucket on the galley floor all day and I felt very sorry for him.

Another morning's radio announcement was the offer of a sourdough bread starter. Lee dingied right over and brought back the container and three pages of directions, complete with colored pictures. We're been in bread heaven ever since, with variations of southwest cheese sourdough, breakfast cinnamon/raisin sourdough, etc. The only problem has been the lack of a large enough bowl for the overnight rise.

Take a look at look at the oceanswatch.org website if you have time. They have a boat here awaiting a weather window to carry supplies to Haiti and are encouraging cruisers to join the flotilla. The smaller boats can enter harbors on the south west shore away from the bottleneck where supplies don't get transferred to the people who need them. One cruiser is definitely going and we are all donating supplies and money to buy more. Lee later was able to keep in touch with them by single sideband and report that they arrived safely and distributed the goods to an orphanage, a fishing village, and a work for food program.

Lee's news: We did have one sailboat race, we came in second of 3 catamarans, I placed Sherry and Carolyn on shore first and took the other guests as crew. I was expecting times compared to all the single hull boats that I was able to pass, but was only given the placement between one super fast home built cat and one that seemed to have stretched out sails. I heard one single hull boat complaining they could not go up wind enough, that is supposed to be a catamaran problem. My sister Tracy is aboard for a week, there may be another race this week that she can crew for. This time I am letting the water tanks go down and leave the dingy behind to save weight. Tracy's week aboard was notable for the cool windy weather and the race was cancelled. She mostly had to be happy with hikes and land events.

Last night we had Rake and Scrape music at a local bar/restaurant, watching the dancing is quite interesting. There are about 5 Bahamian men that show up and dance, we were there last week with guests Barb, Jack, Carolyn & Lizzy. Carolyn, age 17 kept getting dance requests from age 30-50 Bahamians. I told them to go find a Bahamian under 20 and they said that anyone that young would have no rhythm. Otherwise, the Cruising American/Canadian men don't seem to dance much, and there is just this one wild young Bahamian woman that comes, so there is a group of wild eyed 60ish American women, dancing with Bahamian men, great people watching! We actually stayed out until 10 PM!

Cruising down the Exumas, Warderick Wells and Black Point

From Normans we headed down to Warderick Wells, center of a large area (8 by 22 miles) designated a land and sea park. Our boat is on the right. You can see the narrow dark blue channel through the anchorage, bordered by light blue water so shallow you can walk through it.


It is a no take area with patrol boats enforcing it. There are mooring balls to prevent anchors from damaging the coral. You reserve one by calling in on the VHF radio. You can earn a free day (value $15) for each day you volunteer. Lee worked three days and earned a $45 credit, only a good deal if you love the work. He certainly did, since they let him work on the patrol boats. I was surprised on day when he came home in one to get more parts. It looked very impressive behind our boat.





They got a good deal, since he had many parts on board to do the repairs and went beyond their basic requests. One that he worked on had been stolen by drug runners and taken as far as the Dominican Republic. Another had been sunk. Beside working we took many hikes over the marked limestone and sand trails, all the way down to the Hog Cay anchorage and pirates lair where the pirates anchored to fill their water tanks. The trail required careful attention to foot placement, but the views over Exuma Sound were worth it.






There was a cruiser gathering under the tiki hut one night, books to exchange, movies to rent, dingy drift snorkels (you hold onto a line behind the dingy while it drifts with the current over the coral. I ran up to the Memento Pile on Booboo Hill several times to read the boat names and see the view.Somehow six days went by and it was time to move on.

The day before we left another boat requested that any boat going to Staniel Cay please take their guests to the airport there. We had met the guests, Maddie and Aaron, a young couple hitchhiking their way south on boats, and were happy to take them. They had begun their journey on bikes in Maine and planned to tour South America. Hitchhiking on boats seemed to be a good way to get there. Except their rides kept deadending. So they planned to fly to Equador, but first had to get to the nearest airport. You can see the beginnings of their trip at Mustachetravelers.

Only the very young and carefree could tell the stories they had to tell and we were entertained the whole way. They had no reservations to fly out of Staniel and we weren't sure how many days we might have them aboard. Getting a ticket on Flamingo Air requires finding Samantha. The terminal consists of a gazebo next to the runway, but Samantha is only there when planes are arriving. We were told we could find her at the general store and set out walking. Aaron asked every female golf cart driver "are you Samantha" until one finally gave us a ride to the store. There were seats available and tickets were purchased. We had just enough time for lunch at the yacht club. It runs on island time and we wondered if we'd have to eat while running to the airport, but we finally got served. Aaron admitted he hates to fly and was getting a little flustered. He heard a plane engine and began to run, overloaded with backpack and dangling shoes. The waitress had laughed at our worries, saying the plane is never on time and she was right. Another boater was at the gazebo with his guests, their luggage finally arriving two days after them. He had met the kids in the states and was so relieved that they were doing well. Small world. Like the previous two islands we explored every corner of Staniel Cay on foot. We did get a golf cart ride, but gave more than we got, having to push it up every hill. The driver knew what he was doing when he picked us up.





We found a new trail that let us hike the entire perimeter of the island with beautiful view down over our anchorage next to Thunderball Cavern, where a James Bond movie was filmed.

Late in the day we sailed the 12 miles down to Black Point, our very favorite stop in the Exumas. There's a settlement of a few hundred very friendly industrious people. First stop is always Lorraine's cafe.

She has a new baby boy and a lively two year old granddaughter. Picture an outgoing toddler sitting on a barstool chugging vita malt. She's notorious for going table to table mooching food. I stopped over at Lorraine's mom's house for a loaf of coconut bread and got a quick lesson in weaving palm plaits. She told me to come back with a fathom done the next day. Lee cut me lots of supplies on our walk, now I just have to get to work. Everywhere we walked small groups of women sat under trees plaiting away. They send the rolls to Nassau to be made into bags. The world's most beautiful laudromat is the next stop and she just happens to make conch fritters, six for a dollar. We had to check out our favorite sea glass beaches where it washed up by the handfuls around our ankles two year ago. The tide must have been right, we got very little this year, but collected lots of coral fans and my paperweights of stippled coral. My pockets were so full I would have sunk if I fell out of the dingy. There were over 30 boats in the harbor and we finally got to socialize to our hearts content. This morning we dropped off school supplies at the tutoring center and were enveloped in a group hug from all the kids. We got to hear about the building of the newest sloop, almost ready to enter the next race.

To all appearances it's an ideal life here, but of course we only see it from the outside. We left reluctantly this afternoon to head down the banks and position the boat at Cave Cut for an early morning exit into the sound and on down to Georgetown. There may not be another weather window for quite some time and lots of boats are ready to make the move. The sound side of the Exuma chain is real Ocean, unlike the calm shallow banks and most boaters take it seriously. We know slack tide is at eight in the morning and the cut won't be raging. Almost everyone has had the experience of going through a cut at the wrong time and descriptions like disney ride and washing machine apply. Tomorrow in Georgetown!

Lee's comments: Not sure what I have to add, weather and water are finally quite warm. I actually was sunburned through my shirt! Working on the Exuma Park patrol boats was interesting, they have no mechanic, and simple things such as wire splices and fuel leaks needed fixing. I changed out the hydraulic steering system on one boat with one borrowed from a boat in long term repair. I think when I came, there was only 1 of about 5 boats still working, and it had a bad gasoline leak that was dissolving plastic parts in the bilge. They buy the best Yamaha 225 horsepower outboards, for probably $20,000 each. They last about 2 years, 2000 hours of use, consuming 14,000 gallons of gas, that is worth around $60,000. Fuel is a bigger expense than all their payroll, with the bigger boat with two 225 HP motors costing nearly $100/hour to run. The park also needs to make their own electricity with a Diesel generator, much of the power then goes to making fresh water from seawater by R/O process. We really do enjoy Black Point, the people there are so welcoming. We had a tour of a Bahamian racing sloop under construction, complete with the ancient art of finding crooked and "Y" tree branches that fit the new boat. We met another couple that we knew from 2 years ago and traveled to Cave Cay, our jumping off spot, with them. We went snorkeling, talking of finding LOBSTER. Such a dream. I did see a Lion Fish that I was cautioned to keep a safe distance from. I had my spear and then came across a 40 pound unidentified monster, but since I could not identify it as edible, I let it be. It had no fear, I tapped it once with my spear and it paid no attention. Checking 3 fish ID books, still no match. It had a wide face like a catfish, but no barbells, was speckled and and big bulging eyes. I think it may have been a Puffer Fish, with possibly poisonous meat. Cave Cay is just that, the Island is ringed with undercut limestone, some real caves. I noticed nice fish in the caves with no air at the top. It was low tide and there was a surge that wanted to rake you across the coral if you were not careful. Water temp about 76F. Our GPS coordinates: N 23:54, W 076:16.

Through the Exumas, first stop Normans Cay

We haven't posted in so long, there have been a few inquiries about our whereabouts. The horizon may look like we've fallen off the face of the earth, but we haven't. We are currently in Black Point in the Exumas, enjoying a leisurely meander down the Exuma chain of islands.

We left our Nassau anchorage late in the morning a few weeks ago. Our departure was delayed when our anchor wouldn't come up. Nassau harbor is famous for having a littered scoured bottom. Lee had his suspicions the day before when a nearby plastic jug attached as a mooring marker to an unknown underwater weight (ideally known as a mooring ball) disappeared. He worried that our anchor chain had nabbed it and continued to tangle around it as the boat swung. There was no way to tell from the surface. As he tried to raise the anchor, a weight much greater than our anchor kept turning off the circuit breaker to the electric anchor winch. I'm pretty proud of myself for writing this technical stuff. Lee will probably come along and correct it all, but, until we got this boat, I was the anchor wench and think I know a lot about anchoring. So Lee spent two hours analyzing, attaching lines, using both the chain and lines to slowly raise the 500 pound ship's anchor that our chain was well attached to. Later we heard another boat call the harbor patrol to come over and detach a similar anchor that they had caught. We dragged the anchor over to a shallower spot out of the way of future cruisers and attached a new jug to mark it. Some say we should have sold it.

After that delay we didn't arrive at Norman's Cay until sunset and had to anchor outside the anchorage until morning. Then it took over an hour to motor around the sandbar and into the more protected anchorage with the other boats. We have outlasted some 50 knot blows, only one reason why Norman's is one of our favorite stops.

The little islets, the shelling, the biking, the restaurant, we never skip this stop. It has a very bad, but bikeable road extending past the runway on the south all the way to the north, around the pond and down to the cut into Norman's Pond. It is probably only ten miles round trip, but feels like fifty with all the vertical bouncing. We hardly see a soul except for crew building a large house with guest house and crew house, but always find people on the beach after we've spent two hours biking and hiking to get there. They have sailed into the narrow pond entrance from the sound, which I plan never to do-you can only get in and out in good conditions at high tide.

Beaches for shelling, comfortable lawn chairs and strange creatures are at the end of the ride.

We weren't sure what we were looking at until we tipped it over with a stick and found it to be a jelly fish of some sort.

By the time we got back to the south anchorage, we had earned a burger at MacDuff's. (We actually had a LOBSTER wrap! (Lee))The restaurant is next to the runway and always populated with people who have flown over from Nassau. There are only a few guest cottages and scattered homes, so they must come for the meal. We explored the anchorage at midtide, making sure we could get back to the boat, since large areas dry at low tide, picking up a few conch for dinner. They are the only bounty we've gotten so far on this trip-no fish. A kayaker herded a group of rays over near our boat and called us out to see them. Next destination: the land and sea park at Warderick Wells

Chub Cay to Nassau and Rose Island

We sailed right through Nassau Harbor, continuing east to anchor at Rose Island, where our friends Cathy and Doug greeted us with the fanfare of toots on the conch horn.

We stayed warm in the cockpit enclosure of their pristine boat, enjoying sundowners and making plans for excursions the next day.

From previous visits we knew which abandoned dock to tie up to for a walk across the island to the north side's long beach. There are several houses, but we don't usually meet anyone. To our surprise we found two young campers from Montreal.

Escaping the usual tourist trap of Nassau, they had arranged for a fisherman to deliver them to this isolated beach where they camped for a week. They were tired of their campfire cooking and glad to have pancakes and hot chocolate on our boat.

Next on the agenda was bocce on the beach. We had only played a few times on grass and the choices of wet sand, dry sand, smooth sand, rough sand, uphill, downhill, added a few challenges.

Boat dogs always add to the fun, Doug and Cathy's being one of the cuter ones, and just the right size.

After a few days of beach time, we headed back to Nassau for city life and provisioning, while Doug and Cathy headed to the Abacos

From Ithaca to Florida to the Bahamas in Nine Days

After nine days of watching and taking full advantage of every weather window, we have finally reached our reward. We are at Frazer's Hog Cay, 35 miles west of Nassau, in an anchorage worthy of a vacation ad. There is a dingy dock nearby and plans for a bike tour of the island. Low outlying cays and sand bars hopefully will protect us from the front coming in later today. The water is that Bahamas turquoise and almost warm enough to test out. A buddy boat just took the mooring ball next to us, so we have everything we need to enjoy the next few days.

The first weather window we needed to get from Ithaca to Florida was on Dec 30. We rushed to button up the house, throw everything into a rental car and get out of Ithaca before the snow started, leaving after lunch. We listened to radio warnings of freezing rain and worse all along I81 down through Virginia for the next morning. So we chose to brave the beltway around Washington to I95 and avoid the mountainous I81. We got as far as Richmond the first night, before we were sure we were past all the nasty stuff. A long day's drive on the last day of the year got us to my aunt and uncle's in Port Orange, FL in time to celebrate New Years with them. We actually lasted through a dominoes game before pumpkining at 9:30. We planned to head for the boat early the next morning but the cold rain ruined our motivation and we enjoyed our last chance at the comforts of home and hearth, staying until lunch time. We had just enough energy when we got to the boat to inventory and shop at Walmart for all the non-perishable items. We left the meat, vegetable and fruit items for the better quality at Publix the next morning. We thought we were overstocked until another boater told us he had 15 cases of beer. After returning the rental car, we donned our three layers, ear muffs and gloves and walked two miles to catch our annual movie at the $5 theater. Our Ithaca boater friends, now escaping winter in their RV, met us for movie, dinner at Nicky's, and a round of dominoes on the boat. They did mention a few times the comforts of heat and hot showers on their RV.

Very motivated to seek warmth, we headed south on the ICW the next morning and made it to Vero Beach. The location changed but the (mid 30s) temperature didn't. Our friend Neal on Ming showed us the ropes in Vero, how to catch the free 9am bus, transfer to bus #2, stop at most any big box store we might need, and even lunch at an Irish pub. I was pleased to find a quality Visiting Nurse Assoc second hand store (quality stuff) and a used book store. We had the usual last minute notary, postage, banking needs, but mostly enjoyed sightseeing on a warm bus. Then we headed south again on to West Palm Beach. The next two days were the only window to get to the Bahamas in the foreseeable future and we were on a mission. We headed out INTO THE OCEAN for the run down to Miami since, with the many bridges opening on a restricted schedule, it would take twice as long inside. The ocean was behaving, perfect wind behind us for a smooth ride, an arrival at Government Cut, and around the corner for anchoring in the last light.

This is a busy entrance and we paid attention!

The sunrise the next morning predicted a good day for crossing, that's not red, it's gold.

Our new routine of listening to Chris Parker detail the weather at 6:30 am on the shortwave radio has begun. We usually ask for specifics for our route and trust his predictions. He told us the wind hadn't died down as fast as expected and to wait until mid morning for the seas to lay down before heading across to the Bahamas. The gulf stream with its 4-5 knots of north flowing current can get horrendous if there's much wind from a northerly direction, so boaters pay attention on this one. His favorite quote for me is "well, you might have a big enough boat and a strong enough stomach to enjoy.....". It was a little bumpy at first, but settled down as the day went on, Lee thought the current was wider and thus slower than usual. We could see Miami skyscrapers behind us for maybe 15 miles and then low-lying Bimini came into view ten miles out, so the 41 miles didn't seem so far.

Again we arrived just before sunset and were glad to have light to guide us into the narrow channel to the harbor. Our friends arrived two hours later and had spotlights on, anxiously searching for the two markers. As is normal in the Bahamas, one was missing.We had one more day of settled weather so we stayed on anchor at Alice Town, Bimini only long enough to check in, pay our $300 annual cruising fee and walk around town. We woke up to this sunrise, still flying our yellow customs flag.

We headed out at 10:30 to make the 80 miles across the Bahamas banks to Frazer's Hog Cay. The captain was very devious, telling me we would arrive by 8pm, knowing I don't like night sailing. He shortly discovered he had miscalculated but didn't tell me until evening that arrival would be more like 11pm. At least the banks were my kind of ocean: no waves, no swells, no land in sight, just beautiful turquoise water 10-15 feet deep. So here we are in paradise, ready to slow down and smell the seashore.

Lee's version: It was quite a wonderful trip motorsailing from Fl to here, we left FL with 3 other boats that we talked to on the radio all day. One, "Wanderer" with Mike and Liz from Oneida Lake in NY, is still with us here. I especially like sailing at night with music in the CD player. The autopilot steers and there was not ever any traffic that we needed to change course for. After leaving Bimini, the area is "The Bahama Banks", which averages just 10 feet deep, this shallow water calms the waves. Sherry hates sailing at night.LeeSunday morning: We have a mooring ball that we are renting for $15/day, not a lot, EXCEPT: The mooring is about 200' from a bar, and they played loud, awful music until 3AM. We took the ball because the anchor holding was described as poor here, and winds in predicted squalls could be 50kts (58mph). Next good weather to move on is Tuesday. I wonder about the mooring. It is a rusty chain to a submerged pickup truck, the chain would be the failure, but it looks like the rust at the last link that usually wears out that is keeping it from moving, may be a good thing.Frazer's Hog Cay seems to have about 20 residents, plus about 10 vacation mansions. The residents are the bar staff, the bar patrons, the police man, and, there must be a fisherman that supplies the restaurant part of the bar. Last night was some private "function", I have no idea where the people came from (found out they flew in from Nassau). We asked what there was to see or do, they answered "nothing". We had a nice walk, 2-3 miles round trip in the rain, with a beach included. Temperature here is around 60 with a 20-25 knot wind. Not bad compared to low 30s Florida nights. I had a nice swim to inspect the mooring, the water was a cool 72 degrees. The boat bottom and props have no growth on them, I think due to the cool recent FL temps. My first sailing year, upon returning to FL after parking the boat a few weeks, the boat would not move until I cleaned a one inch layer of barnacles off both sides of the prop.Today we expect to take our folding bikes to shore and ride the entire length of the island, plus Chub Cay, which is connected. Chub Cay has a newly remodeled glitzy marina. (Power boaters have this NEED for marinas, it is a psychological need, as the power boats are equipped as well, or better, than the sail boats for living at anchor, most have built in Diesel electric generators.) We are going to try the Cracked Conch at the restaurant tonight. I also have an engine oil change to do and a bathroom light to fix. I have a new $129 cheap Chinese electric generator aboard. I may need to get this going to charge batteries, as there is NO sun for the solar panels. Sherry is making granola and sweet potato pie.