Ñandú

After so many days spent waiting out heavy winds, first in the Berry Islands and then in Allans Cay, we suddenly found ourselves in a hurry to reach George Town, at the southern tip of The Exumas, to receive our daughters for their spring break. It’s been so windy!

We split the remaining distance in four legs with two nights and a full day to spend on each stop. The first three legs were on the shallow or Bank side of the islands, while the last one was on the ocean or Sound side. The sailing was magnificent, with the GPS registering up to 13.8 knots. The only minor incident was that our Bahamas courtesy flag decided to part ways and flew away (if you’re going to buy a flag, ask me which brand not to buy). Our attempt to retrieve it was a complete failure. That led to the sobering realization that we are ill-prepared to do a crew overboard recovery, let alone a single-handed one, particularly when sailing with the monster sail, also known as the screecher. As a consequence, the captain has issued an executive order, effective immediately, to ban the crew from falling overboard, regardless of their country of origin. Violators will be denied re-entry.

In Shroud Cay we made a rowing expedition through mangroves to the ocean side of the island. In Cambridge Cay we went snorkeling to a nearby reef. And in Little Farmer’s Cay we found no veggies to replenish our dwindling stock. Maybe we should have chosen Big Farmer’s Cay.

Shroud Cay

Cambridge Cay

Little Farmer’s Cay

Let’s see… out of the 365 Islands in The Exumas, we’ve explored seven. We intend to do the Exumas northbound more slowly to check out a few more.

My worst nightmare materialized in our anchorage at Allans Cay: having to reanchor in the middle of the night. That would normally happen if you drag your anchor, but this was a case of just too many boats in a small anchorage subject to wind and current. Instead of having a neat array of boats downwind from their anchors, some boats would swing with the current, some with the wind, while Ñandú remained utterly undecided right above her anchor. I don’t know what Kathy was doing awake at midnight, but she got alarmed when she saw two monohulls about two feet from us. Technically, since they came to the anchorage later than us, they should have moved, but it wasn’t obvious how to wake their crew up and get their boats moving before having any damage. On the other hand, maybe the exact same thing happened the night before, only that no-one was awake to notice.

Regardless, we didn’t have much time to think, so we quickly fired the engines and started moving away from the menacing boats. Luckily, a guy on another boat was awake, concerned about his own boat in this chaos. He saw our predicament and came on his dinghy to help us find another place, which was a blessing because I couldn’t really see anything in that moonless night, other than the light on his dinghy. The cruising community is amazing in how they take care of each other.

Our first attempt at reanchoring failed, as we ended up now too close to our savior’s catamaran. In the second one we ended up very close to another boat, but as long as we didn’t drag our anchor we would be fine… which meant not much sleep for the rest of the night. The next morning we decided to move to the other side of the anchorage, a lot less crowed because it’s either very shallow on a sand bar, or very deep in the channel, very close to the rocks. We tried to anchor in the narrow Goldilocks zone. Our first attempt left us with too little water under our rudders to be comfortable on an ebbing tide. We succeeded on the second one. That whole ordeal set a new record for us: five anchoring spots in less than 12 hours.

Next to us on our new location was a Bahamian fishing boat. One of the fishermen passed close by, carrying a load of conch to the mother ship on his skiff. Behind his dark and wrinkled skin, his beautiful smile, and his entirely uncertain age, lied a tough negotiator, as we soon learned. Kathy waved at him and asked if he had any lobster. He came closer.

“What do you want for dinner?” He asked. “Conch? Lobster? Chicken?” We didn’t see any lobster on his boat but I could believe he was capable of producing some. Chicken, not so sure.

“Lobster”.

“How many do you want?”

“One.”

He scoffed. “OK, I’ll bring you one.”

“How much will it be?”

“No, I can’t charge you for one. I’ll bring one and give it to you.”

“Wait… No! We want to pay for it!”

“I can’t charge you. I wouldn’t know how much.”

“How much do you charge for a dozen? We’ll divide that by twelve.”

He just laughed loudly and contagiously, but didn’t bulge.

“How about we trade for beer?” I tried.

“That may work.”

He left and came back with a beautiful lobster. We gave him a few beers, but he did make a show before finally accepting them. Then, as he motored away, he blew several kisses to Kathy.

The name Bahamas comes from the Spanish “baja mar”, which means “shallow sea”.  And shallow it is! The Great Bahama bank is a large submerged platform on the west side of the Berry and Exuma Islands. The Bank is often less than 16ft (4m), and scattered with boat-crunching coral heads. The depth plunges rapidly to 13,000ft (4,000m) in the surrounding seas.

Cruising in this area is quite technical and demanding. You have hundreds of small islands in a roughly north-to-south chain. On one side the shallow water with shifting sands and coral heads force you to be on a constant lookout. Some routes are better transited at high (or at least a rising) tide with calm waters and the sun above or behind you so that you can see the bottom (those conditions, of course, don’t happen every day). On the other side the deep ocean allows you to navigate on autopilot, but the prevailing winds can stir the water up to rough conditions. You can switch sides through a few narrow “cuts” between islands, but you better make well sure, before even attempting to pass, that the wind and current are in agreement… except that the only tool at hand is a tide table, which, in this convoluted geography is not enough to predict the currents. You have to be constantly aware of what weather is coming and understand how it’s going to limit your options.

We experienced some of those challenges in the Berry Islands, and were as ready as we could be to get to the The Exuma Cays, our main destination in The Bahamas. Taking advantage of a deep water route and a good breeze, we enjoyed a full day sailing to West Bay, a conveniently located stopover half way to the Exumas. West Bay is in New Providence Island, where the capital Nassau also is. It’s also known as Jaws Beach because some scenes of a Jaws sequel were filmed there. We rested a full day in that unremarkable anchorage (for our new standards), before embarking on the next leg.

The second leg was radically different from the first: shallow water, no wind, and thus no sailing. However, when we reached an even shallower area know as White Bank, for the first time I didn’t mind that we couldn’t sail, because the dead calm gifted us with magical underwater scenery. As if we were flying barely above the ground, a surreal world passed underneath us, with grass, sand ripples, rocks, coral, star fish, snails, rays and other fish. And a dolphin. It went on for miles and miles, hours and hours.

From the marina where we cleared customs, on the west side of Great Harbor Cay, there’s no safe passage straight south so we did a three-quarters clockwise circumnavigation of the island, and then continued south to anchor in tiny Market Fish Cay, the first of a chain of islands with deep water on the east and the shallow Great Bahama Bank on the west.

We needed to wait for the next day’s high tide to continue through a shallow passage to the more protected anchorage on the west shore of Hoffman Cay, right on time to receive the forecasted cold front and strong winds. Not too long after we dropped the anchor, bucketloads of rain fell, which we used to clean the windows and ourselves, showering on the deck. My rain-catching device is still not ready, so none of that precious water made it to the tanks.

After the rain, it was six days of relentless wind and sleep-depriving noise. That meant, of course, plenty of time for boat maintenance tasks. We dived to inspect the saildrives, which to our chagrin were full of barnacles, and a whole ecosystem had started to form around them. A treasure trove for a marine biologist, but a potential nightmare for a boat owner. We dove again armed with a brush each to scrub the saildrive legs. The hulls are a bit slimy, but the anti-fouling paint has fended off more serious stowaways.

There was a lot of drilling and sawing to install a dimmer, an additional 12-volt outlet, and a shelf. Some filing, sanding and more drilling to fix a stubborn door, and some sewing for the rain catcher prototype. Then, half a day was lost turning the boat around in search of a key piece for using the dinghy in sailing mode (a windsurfing mast extension that I had modified back in California for the task). It simply disappeared. Or maybe it never made it to the boat. Either way, it’s exceedingly frustrating. As expected, in the process we did find stuff we were not looking for, including more things to fix.

On our free time we visited the protected beach and socialized with the neighbors on the three other boats anchored nearby.

To get out of Hoffman Cay after the wind calmed down, we headed north, backtracking our route with the afternoon tide. We anchored by wild Soldier Cay, and the next day we went back to deep water to cross the Northwest Providence Channel in perfect sailing conditions, leaving the Berry Islands behind.