Author: Juan

To continue our way north we had to go through a narrow passage between two long stretches of land. That channel provides very little room for the whole lot of water on either side that wants to perpetually follow the tide. The consequence is “vicious currents” of “monumental proportions” that scare cruisers, especially first-timers.

So, what’s the name of that cut? You guessed, it’s called Current Cut. And the name of the island south of the cut (the one on the north being actually Eleuthera)? Yup, Current Island indeed. And the rock you would hit if you don’t turn on time? Correct, that’s Current Rock. And the nearby town? Right again, that’s no other than The Current. And what island is The Current on? Nope, you didn’t guess this time, sorry. The Current is not on Current Island, but on the Eleuthera side of Current Cut. I guess it was founded by the same bright guys who founded Kansas City in Missouri.

They say the current at Current Cut can exceed ten knots. That’s about two knots more than the top motoring speed of Ñandú. So, yeah, fighting a strong opposing current is a lost battle. A strong favoring current may seem like a good deal, but it’s not. You need some speed over the water for the rudders to be effective, and going twelve-plus knots when you have to avoid rocks might also lead to a lost battle. Only you’d lose in a more spectacular way than with an opposing current. In fact, if I had to go with such a strong favorable current I’d probably motor against the current in order to reduce the speed over ground (read “speed over the rocks”). What I’m not sure is whether I’d do it facing forward and motoring in reverse, or facing backwards and motoring forward.

People will of course tell you to pass with slack water, but that’s quite a piece of unhelpful advice. Not so much because it’s obvious, but because there’s no reliable way to know when the current goes slack. It’s supposed to be about two hours after high or low tide… except when it’s not, because the wind strength and direction can have a significant effect. And even if we knew exactly when slack was, we were more than 30 nautical miles away. With our wildly variable sailing speed, it could have taken us anywhere between four and eight hours to get there; no easy way to time the arrival anyway. A much simpler and equally sound advice would be “just go there and see what happens”. Even better if there’s someone ahead of you.

As it happened, we reached Current Cut two hours after low tide, and faced an already increasing but manageable opposing current of two knots. There was no other boat doing the Cut ahead of us, though. Too bad, because I was really looking forward to ask for “The Current’s current current” on the radio.

All that stress anticipating an epic battle left us exhausted, even if the battle didn’t occur.  We swiftly anchored right after the crossing and the next morning we beached the dinghy and strolled around The Current. It turned out to be a lovely and slow-paced town.

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.

 

Warderick Wells Island is part of The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, which protects 176 square miles of water, reefs and cays. Warderick Wells, where the park headquarters are, turned out to be the crown jewel of The Exumas. Unknowingly, we had left the best for last.

We picked mooring buoy number nine from the field that the park manages in an anchorage that’s well-protected, albeit narrow and subject to a wild tidal current. We lost the boathook in the process and recovered it later, but from what we saw during our stay, that appeared to be standard procedure when trying to pick up the buoy pendant in those strong currents. Never mind that we arrived at slack tide and didn’t really have any current to contend with, but we like to blend in, so we lost the hook anyway.

Buoy nine happened to be the closest one to an old sunken boat that became an artificial reef, home of a multitude of fish. A flood current would place Ñandú right on top of the sunken boat, gifting us with a colorful tropical garden underneath us. Getting wet was optional, as we could see the schools of fish, the huge resident lobster and the visiting nurse shark from the deck.

We spent an entire week enjoying the spectacle in our backyard, watching the tide come and go and the sand bars hide and show. We snorkeled in nearby reefs, and took the dinghy to shore to explore every inch of the hiking trails. The trails zig-zag from sandy beaches on the Bank side to rocky bluffs and seas that roar through blow holes on the Ocean side. They took us through mangroves, shady palm forests, not-so-shady Swiss-cheese-like rocky terrain, ponds, sand flats, small hills, ruins, and even a pirate lair.

What a gourmet dessert it was! You can see twice as many pictures in the photo album.

“Hello. I’m Roosevelt” said Roosevelt.

“Yes, we know. We came to pick up the hat”.

“Oh, right, it’s you! You called this morning. It’s one hundred dollars,” he joked.

Kathy had been upset for weeks because her favorite hat had pulled a disappearance act somewhere on our way south to George Town. It wasn’t so much the hat itself, but the feathers she had attached to it during a solo quest on the Mojave desert. Those feathers had great sentimental value for her, as they symbolized a profound experience she went through during that trip.

Mentally reconstructing the hat movements, we concluded it had likely been left behind in the bar at Little Farmers Cay’s marina. We had enjoyed a great conversation with Roosevelt, who owned not just the marina, the bar and the restaurant, but also the clinic and the housing for the school’s teachers. He’s a direct descendant of the slave who settled on the island after been freed. The slave’s children bought the island from the British crown and later willed it to their descendants, who cannot sell to outsiders.

A month later we were approaching Little Farmers Cay on the way back north. It was a long shot, and it required a small detour, but we tried anyway: we called Farmers Cay Marina on the radio, and inquired about the hat. “Yes, it’s here”, said Roosevelt, as if it was obvious. “I knew you would have to come back someday, so I kept it for you.”

We anchored in the exact same spot we had anchored before, lowered the dinghy, rowed a short distance to the beach, and walked to the marina at the other end of the small island, where Kathy reunited with her feathers. She thanked Roosevelt profusely, hug included. He handed us his marina business card. It read “Roosevelt Nixon, President.” He was born to
be.