How to stay put in the worst holding ground of Bahamas

We left the beautiful Exuma Cays on a lovely day to sail 60 nautical miles to Eleuthera, a long and thin island with roughly 200 miles of coast line. We chose Governor’s Harbour, in Eleuthera’s geographic center, as our landing destination.

We reached a wide harbour devoid of other boats, and picked the only mooring buoy that was “on service”. The other three or four, we were told, were waiting to be inspected and serviced. A front (yet another one) was expected for the day after, bringing clocking winds from the southwest, then west and then northwest. Governor’s Harbour was a pretty historic town to set as base to explore the southern half of Eleuthera by land, but the anchorage is fully open to the west.

On the other hand, Eleuthera has very few anchorages with west wind protection anyway. The only other place close by was Hatchet Bay, a small pond joined to the sea by a man-made canal. For sure we were not the only boats seeking refuge, so if we didn’t find space there we would have been worse off.

To add to the uncertainty, we had read inconsistent reports about Governor’s Harbor under west winds: from “absolutely untennable” on one extreme, to “yeah, we waited out not one but two cold fronts there” on the other side. Also, the very same guy that managed the mooring buoys said, “you are welcome to stay, but if it was my boat I wouldn’t”. Great.

Normally, we feel safer on our own anchor than on any device that we don’t know if it’s properly installed or maintained, but the situation was different here because our chart has a note that claims that Governor’s Harbour is “widely known as the worst holding ground in the Bahamas”.

We resolved to check the mooring ourselves and decide depending on how it looked. We dove 20ft (6m) to the bottom. The buoy and its rode looked in good condition, and the rode was attached through a sturdy iron ring to a huge cement block about 3ft per side. Everything seemed fine, strong, and immovable. Except for one detail. The ring was not on top of the block, but on a side. The side that faced west. And the rode was not chain, but rope. That meant that precisely with a west wind, the rope was going to rub against the edge of the block, which wasn’t exactly smooth. The taught rope could chafe and break in no time, setting us adrift in the middle of the night. Not an attractive scenario.

We didn’t really have good alternatives, though, so we decided to make do with what we had, and that 2-ton block of concrete was the best anchor we could have in the worst holding ground in The Bahamas. We just had to improve the weak link: the attachment between the block and the boat.

The first measure was to have a backup attachment in case the buoy broke free from the block. The idea was to detach our secondary anchor from its rode, lower the rode to the sea floor, thread it through the block’s ring, and shackle the rode back to itself to form a loop (since the rode has a 20-foot chain lead, chafing against the block was not an issue).

The plan looked trivial on paper. I thought I’d need two or three dives to the bottom and be done. I overlooked that you cannot just happily swim with 20 feet of chain. Nope. The chain sinks and you sink with it! I overlooked that I was going to receive a (allegedly accidental) kick in the netherlands. I overlooked that by the time you reach the bottom 20 feet below, you’re already almost out of breath. I overlooked that it was going to take long enough for me to get cold to the point of shivering. I overlooked that murky waters, lack of breath, shivering muscles and a scratched snorkeling mask in lieu of prescription glasses are not the best conditions for finicky work such as joining two links of chains with a shackle. The estimated couple of dives turned into a dozen dives from each of us, but we ultimately completed the job.

Then, for extra safety we attached a length of fire hose around the buoy’s rope and lowered it to the bottom. (Yes, we carry fire hose, because it’s great precisely for chafe protection). We spent almost two hours in the water, but now the buoy’s rope was better protected against chafing, and if it broke anyway then our backup attachment would keep us safe.

That night the front came, winds clocked west, the water became agitated, thunder was heard, dreams were interrupted, lightning was seen, and the boat rocked, yawed and pitched playing hobby horse, but it remained roughly in the same place.

Before departing we had to dive again to release our chain. Everything looked fine, but on a closer inspection, it was obvious that the fire hose saved the mooring line. Swimming back to the boat, I saw a school of small fish under our hull. At first I was happy to see life. Then I figured that a hull supporting a full ecosystem doesn’t speak well about the effectiveness of the bottom paint, which is there precisely to discourage marine life growth. Oh well. There’s always something.