So Many Islands, So Little Time

Well, I had to wake up at 04:00 to do it, but I finally have some free time to update the log. I'll start with our last day in Key West and work chronologically to the present.

Friday, Feb 1, we woke up early and Rob and I dinghied ashore and got his luggage out of the rental car and a few cases of beer he had picked up on the way to Key West. We got all of that ferried back to the boat, then we all went back ashore and Rob drove us to the clinic to get our Yellow Fever vaccination and he went to the grocery store to provision for the trip. Rob met us at the clinic after provisioning and we took the groceries to the dinghy. Nancy and I took the dinghy back to the boat
while Rob returned the rental car and caught a cab back to the fuel dock. After we got all the groceries stowed, Nancy and I pulled up the anchor and motored the boat to the fuel dock. There was a beautiful wooden 3-masted schooner at the fuel dock from either Wisconsin or Michigan, I forget which. We filled the diesel tanks, water tanks, and the gas can for the dinghy outboard and were underway for the Bahamas by 14:00. The weather forecasts called for 5 to 10 knots of wind from the east, slowly
shifting to the southeast and wave height of 2 to 4 feet. These are pretty mild conditions but the wind direction is not the best for us. We will be sailing east along the Florida Keys, then northeast across the Gulf Stream to the Northwest Providence Channel, then east-southeast through the Providence Channel, and finally north-northeast to Marsh Harbor. We will be sailing into the wind for much of the trip, and we may be going too much into the wind to use the sails for some of the trip. This
time of year, however, it is unusual to get winds from the west or southwest (optimal for this trip) for any length of time, and when you do, it is usually because a front is moving through and the wind will soon be shifting to the north, which you really don't want for crossing the Gulf Stream.

The trip around the Keys and across the Gulf Stream was fairly pleasant. There was, of course, a lot of tanker, freighter and cruise ship traffic to watch out for, but that was expected. What surprised us was the amount of traffic pouring out of the Providence Channel. There were times where we had more than a dozen contacts on the radar within a 12-mile radius and nearly always had 6 to 8. It was late Saturday night and early Sunday morning by this time, and we are guessing that all the cruise
ships end their cruises on Sunday, so they were all heading back to Miami, Port Canaveral, or wherever they were based out of. It looked literally like a parade of ships going by for a while. Rob and I both stayed up for this part of the trip. Rob would stay on deck and keep a visual lookout, and I was below plotting ships' positions on the chart using radar for range and relative bearing and Rob giving me magnetic bearing for the ones he had in sight. This way we were able to better figure out
the ships' courses and bearings and determine the risk of collision. Some of these ships are moving so fast that you don't have much time to figure out how close they are going to get and which evasive maneuver is going to be the correct one. Anyway, we got pretty good at our visual and radar tracking system and managed to avoid any nasty bumps in the night.

Unfortunately, once we turned into the Northwest Providence Channel, we were going directly into the wind and waves, which made for a fairly uncomfortable ride, even with the relatively benign conditions. Nancy was sleeping in the forward berth and the boat started pitching (moving in a see-saw fashion) with the bow rising 5 or 6 feet on the wave crests, then falling 5 or 6 feet into the wave troughs. She developed a headache and really didn't feel very well. We decided to tack back and forth
across the Providence Channel, to help ease the motion, but I could tell she felt pretty bad. We were getting pretty close to Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama, so we decided to find a place there to anchor or dock and clear in through Customs. There didn't seem to be any good anchorages, so we decided on Port Lucaya Marina and tied up there.

After we tied up at Port Lucaya, I had to fill out all the paperwork for Customs and Immigration. Only the captain can leave the boat until Customs has been cleared. It only took about an hour to clear Customs and then we went for a stroll around the waterfront and had dinner at a restaurant. Nancy and I had conch fritters and conch salad and Rob had a conch burger. We were pretty exhausted, so we just went back to the boat, had a couple of drinks in the cockpit and went to bed pretty early.
The next morning we got up and washed all the salt off the boat, checked the engine, adding a little oil and cleaning the strainer for the raw water intake. We went to breakfast at a waterfront cafe and Nancy had a lobster omelet that was delicious. After breakfast we got underway, stopping at the fuel dock to top off the diesel and water.

We decided that instead of sailing through the Providence Channel and then north to Marsh Harbor, we would sail west and then north around the west end of Grand Bahama and enter the Little Bahama Bank, then sail east across the bank and then south down the eastern side of Abaco to Marsh Harbor. The Little Bahama Bank is like a plateau under the water. The ocean around the bank is hundreds to thousands of feet deep, then the ocean floor rises almost vertically to only a few tens of feet on the bank.
There are small islands (cays, pronounced like keys) all over the bank where we could stop and anchor for the night and many of them have pretty beaches and good snorkeling. We had a very good sail from Port Lucaya to White Sand Ridge, where we entered the bank. We got to White Sand Ridge shortly after midnight and the entrance to the bank looked so easy on the chart we decided to go ahead and enter in the dark and proceed directly to Great Sale Cay where we would anchor for the next night.

The trip from White Sand Ridge to Great Sale Cay was pleasant and uneventful, but I have to mention the dinner Rob fixed while we were underway. It was a linguine pasta with putanesca sauce (I'm not sure of the spelling). The sauce has oregano, basil, anchovies, olives, capers, crushed tomatoes, and various other ingredients and it was awesome. We arrived at Great Sale Cay and dropped the anchor in 8 feet of crystal clear water. We went swimming and I got my first good look at the boat's hull
since hauling it out of the water when we first bought it. Whatever the previous owner had used for bottom paint was really good, because there was no growth of any kind on the hull. Rob and I dove down and looked at the anchor and were surprised at how quickly it sets. You could see where it had started out and that was only about 2 feet from where it was set. After swimming we took showers and relaxed in the cockpit. Rob is making these drinks called Cuba Libre. They have rum, Coke and lime
in them and they are very good. I rarely drink mixed drinks, but these things are habit forming. They go well with a Guinness, too. Rob fixed steaks marinated in cuban mojo sauce with beans and rice. It was again an incredible dinner.

Wednesday morning we got underway headed for Green Turtle Cay, but we figured it might be too close to dark before we got there for comfortable navigation close to shore, so we decided to stop overnight at Allens-Pensacola Cay. Allens-Pensacola used to be two islands, but a hurricane piled up sand between them, joining them into one cay. We got there fairly early and Rob swam to shore and went exploring. Nancy and I relaxed in the cockpit for a while, then launched the dinghy and went ashore.
We found Rob and Nancy and Rob walked over to the Atlantic side of the island while I just wandered around the beach on the anchorage side. Then it was back to the boat for another sumptuous feast, drinks and music. Rob fixed some of the best burgers I've ever eaten with spanish rice liberally doused with Cholula sauce. I call them fantail burgers (the fantail is the aft end of a boat or ship and that is where our barbeque is).

Thursday morning (this morning) we got underway and arrived at Green Turtle Cay about 13:00. We dropped anchor just off the town of New Plymouth and dinghied ashore. We ate lunch at a little restaurant and I had the fried conch and fried grouper special. It was indeed special. Nancy had a crawfish salad and conch fritters and Rob had a grouper sandwich and conch salad. New Plymouth is a very pretty, quaint little town that was founded in 1786 by loyalists from the States after the revolution.
It is not glitzy or touristy at all, which is why I liked it so much. The streets are narrow, the houses are small, and they are all painted pretty pastel colors. We just wandered around for a while and toured the local museum. We're back on the boat now and Rob is fixing jerk chicken with beans and rice for dinner.

There is more interesting stuff to tell, but I really want to get an update posted on the website, so I am going to wrap this up and get it sent off. I can use my HAM radio to send this text as an email to a certain email address, and it will show up as a log entry on our website. That way I can make an entry without having internet access, but I can't attach any pictures, so I'll just save all the pictures until I have internet access and create a gallery on the picture gallery page. Even though
we are having fun, we miss everyone and look forward to hearing from you. Send us an email at the kc0wtv address I sent you.