Wow, this is how the weather is supposed to be in the Bahamas!  Warm, sunny days, breezes from the ENE, and cool nights.  Hope the cold fronts all dissipate before they get this far south.  We'd heard on the VHF that Chris Parker was predicting a series of fronts to move off the Florida coast for the next few weeks.  The current one will only have the winds clock to the ESE in these parts before returning to some NE - E quadrant after a few hours.  This makes all the normal anchorages protected which is perfect for us.

The last message was a bit short (for me) since we were at the Long Island Breeze Resort on their internet which they turn off at 1800 when they use the room for serving dinner.  It was close to 1730 before we got on line and got all our messages and weather downloads and had time to send a message.

We've been enjoying Long Island.  We've had some nice beach walks, unfortunately there is more plastic than shells on most of the Atlantic side beaches.  An amazing amount of stuff seems to be lost overboard from passing ships, everything from huge hanks of line, jerry jugs, and light bulbs to kid carriers.  There was a beach cleanup north of here on Saturday, but we learned about it too late to help.  Another cleanup south of here will happen this weekend, but by then we'll be gone.  It is a way for the cruisers to make a contribution.

The Easter Sunday pot luck was a fun chance to meet some of the other cruisers here.  It appears that most of the folks have spent the winter in the Bahamas and already know each other.  This year there are a surprising number of kids (5 or 6) in the fleet.  Most appear to between 7 and 13, and are being home schooled.  I spoke with one boy who has been living aboard for the past 2 years.  The family is planning for 1 or 2 more before heading back to the states. The kids all are well behaved and good company.

We were a bit surprised on our first walk to find a couple of very brave mocking birds fluttering around us by the well at Thompsons Beach.  When we noticed a hard hat propped upright in the shade, we filled a bucket of water and poured some in, and they soon hopped down for a drink.  It has been very dry in the Bahamas, and the Caribbean.  The drought has made the BBC Caribbean news on the evening local report on a number of occasions, especially south and east of here where the problem has been persisting for several years.  So far we've only seen one incongruous and totally out of place "green" lawn which was at a house on Staniel Cay.  Someone either has way too much money or is totally oblivious (or perhaps both) to need grass which requires daily watering in their front yard.  I know they use recycled gray water in Florida, but that seems an unlikely setup for a single home.

The Easter Monday mini-regatta at Salt Pond was fun. They were racing "C" class boats with 4 competing and practicing for the Georgetown Regatta later this month  It appeared that much of this end of the island's population along with a lot of cruisers turned out for the event.  Having learned last time that announced time and reality are not the same in the islands, we didn't rush ashore to be in place for the 1300 start.  We heard they did have one race mark in place by then, and when we headed in around 1500, the first race had just begun.

I'd love to see the racing fleet at home start a race like they do here.  They line up at the start, drop sail, and drop anchor.  At the signal, they raise both anchor and sail and beat to the windward mark.  Knowing how pared down the dedicated racers at home have their boats, I sometimes wonder if they even carry an anchor although I believe it is mandated in the rules.  It would make for a much more interesting race.

The windward mark was just off the regatta building, giving all the folks on shore a great view.  One of the locals had just finished building a new boat, "It In't Right", which we'd seen out racing with his old boat on Saturday evening.  Whatever changes he made were successful, as they won all 5 races.  As at home, tactics help too.  They'd gone on port tack soon after the start, and although it looked from shore like it might have been a mistake, when they tacked for the buoy, they were a couple of boat lengths ahead.  They then made a down wind leg to the start line before heading back for a windward leg, and finished with a short leg to the north.  The committee boat is at all marks, and then rushes to drop the final buoy and get in place for the finish.


After 3 races, the boats came ashore and 2 of them switched to bigger sails.  This also involves switching to a longer boom, and gives the racers a chance to grab a drink or 2.  Given that the wind was blowing 18 - 20 with higher gusts, I was surprised at the sail change.  The booms extended about 10 or 15 feet beyond the stern of the boats, talk about a deck sweeper!  Three of the boats had a crew of 5, while one, who carried a smaller sail, had a crew of 4.

On the first leg of the next race, "Sacrificed", who had not switched to a larger sail, broke a boom and had to drop out of the race.  The other 3 boats had a close race to the first mark, and the down wind leg was interesting to watch as the 2 with bigger sails rocked and rolled, dipping the sail into the water.  It takes a lot of agility to get out on the board to keep the boat upright and then hop off before burying the sail. Note that the 2 boards have to be transferred from side to side when the boats tack. The folks who ride on the boards are know as "board meat".  Unlike Hobie Cats with harnesses, these folks are untethered, and you are required to finish the race with the same number of crew as you started with.


We had fun mingling with the locals - when they talk among themselves, we can't understand most of what they say.  The food was as good as it smelled and the beer cold.  After staring the day with a DJay, a local Rake and Scrape band set up and everyone had fun listening and watching.  The Long Island regatta committee doesn't have government sponser ship (unlike Georgetown), so the proceeds of the mini-regatta help fund the local fleet in the regular regattas.  We wish the Georgetown Regatta was a bit earlier, we'd love to watch it, but it's the last weekend in April, and we need to be heading north by that time.


Our outboard, which had been running smoothly (knock on wood), decided to sputter to a stop well short of the boat.  Luckily we'd left the party around 1900 with enough daylight to get back aboard Antares.  It was a run of about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 miles to the dinghy dock, and we were probably about 1/2 mile short of the boat when the engine quit.  Rather than mess with it in the dark (we did have a flash light along) we grabbed the paddles and headed upwind.  The wind died back just a bit as the sun set which helped as inflatables are a pain to row in anything other than flat calm.  We were glad to get back aboard before the wind came back up.  Leonard spent a most of the morning trying to get the outboard back up and running with less than the desired result.

Our plan was to go ashore today to get on line for messages and weather before heading elsewhere on Wednesday.  Given the outboard situation, we'll have to move Antares closer to the dinghy dock (and more up wind, just in case the outboard quits) and try to get ashore.  Sure hope we make it as I've reserved a couple of pounds of fresh fish fillets which are being held at Long Island Breeze.  The hard part will be if we have to paddle into the wind and current.  That gets old fast!

Gotta say we are fast becoming opponents of ethenol which would appear to be the major issue with the outboard.  It causes a sludge like buildup in the fuel system for which we haven't found a cure, we've heard some fuel additive may possibly help, but we don't know which one, have limited access to the internet to check, and it isn't likely to be available here when we need it.  If a mechanic looked it every time we've had a problem, assuming we could find one, it would run $200 - $300.  Can't say I like my tax dollars supporting the cause of the problem, but I doubt the cruisers can get a lobby that could compete with the farm lobby in Washington.

Sent Monday 4/12/2010 from Georgetown

I took some time off writing since Conception Island, our next port of call, being a deserted island had no internet access.

As we were hauling up the anchor at Salt Pond on Wednesday, April 7, our neighbor on Winterlude, a trawler, dinghied over with fresh bananas and a papaya that I begged off some folks we'd seen at the dinghy dock with a huge stalk of bananas when we'd gone in Tuesday afternoon.  They'd rented a car and stopped at a farm stand and said the farmer insisted they take more than they could use and under charged them .  I was delighted since I figured my request had been forgotten when no one came by the evening before after the card game at Long Island Breeze. 

We departed Salt Pond along with almost half of the boats that had attended the regatta.  Several  headed for the Jumentos, the almost deserted chain of cays that swing south toward Cuba, but most were headed for Conception Island, a land and sea park, along with us.  The wind had picked up out of the NE for the last couple of days, and was due to be a bit more out of the east on Thursday, which would make it less of a beat to Conception once we rounded Cape Santa Maria on the northern end of Long Island.  With that in mind, everyone planned on spending a night at Calabash Bay, an anchorage just south of the cape.

We were among the last to leave Salt Pond, but a couple of boats took the long route to avoid a section of skinny water between some sand banks, which added several hours to their trip.  Much to our surprise, we passed a catamaran, on the reach north, which we thought would be one of their faster points of sail.  It was a fast trip, with plenty of wind to make it exciting as we slide between the sand banks.  The thought of parking while doing 7 plus knots kept us on our toes, but we made it with the lowest depth we saw being about 7 feet.  We beat the boats that took the longer route, and contrary to the chart, the water was deep almost all the way to the shore.  There is a resort at the north end of the bay with a mile and a half of beach running south that make for a great walk.


We continue to question  the charts on the plotter which don't always agree with our paper charts.  We're unsure if we'd spent the extra money for the Bahama charts ($200 - $500 depending on which level) if they'd be more complete or accurate. The detour the boats took was shown as shifting sand banks on our paper chart, and we later heard in a VHF conversation that the reef at just before Cape Santa Maria wasn't shown on whatever chart the one boat was using.  He was cautioned to head west before he hit it.  Since we'd taken these routes before, we tend to trust the paper charts and eyeball navigation more than what appears on the plotter.  They have marked shoals that aren't visible by eyeball, in the middle of good depths.  The plotter charts also have a tendency to run their magenta line through visible shoals which has given us pause more than once.

Eight of us headed out early the next morning, following 2 other boats who'd spent the night at a marina just to the south and had left early to take advantage of high tide to make it easier to get to the deeper water.  It was a rollicking sail once we rounded the cape, where we tucked some reefs in the main to make for easier sailing.  Leonard had shut the ports while finished up the breakfast dishes, but he neglected the port on the port side, thinking water wouldn't splash in on the low side.  Wrong.  I  looked down in the cabin and saw a wave had gotten in, managing to hit every cushion on that side and the rug on the cabin sole.  I tried blotting the water up with towels as best I could while bouncing up and down in the swell.  I'm glad the cushion covers are washable, and thankful that a thin piece of plastic was used to help slip the cushions into the covers which should keep the salt water out of the cushions themselves.  Otherwise any wet or humid weather will make the cushions feel damp with the salt attracting moisture.

We held our own, a bit surprising since we're one of the smaller boats and boat speed is dependent on water line length, coming in 4th of the 8 boats who'd left the anchorage.  We found a spot we liked that was clear of reefs and dropped anchor.  The anchorage was bigger than I remembered, which was good because eventually there were 20 boats tucked in behind West Point, including 1 mega yacht that arrived the second day. 


We followed a number of dinghies around to the reef that runs north off the tip of the island to do some snorkeling.  We now have a very healthy respect for the black spots in the water we've been told to avoid.  Portions of the reef are in 30 or more feet of water with coral heads that break on the surface at low tide.  It is truly amazing to see the coral towering up out of the sand.  It was tricky to maneuver the dinghy between the coral heads, many of them being too shallow to cross, especially at low tide. Much of the reef looked like had been affected either by a recent storm or possibly climate change, with sections of the reef toppled and broken on the bottom and parts of the coral dying or covered with sand.  The lack of fish was also surprising.  Usually we see a fairly robust fish population when we snorkel, but the numbers were way down.  One one of our dinghy rides we did spot a school of 4 or 5 barracuda swimming, enough so we weren't tempted to hop into the water.  Usually we only see 1 or 2, and they tend to be more curious than dangerous.

We had a unprecedented string of great weather and knew it wouldn't last.  The latest cold front to head off the Florida coast would remain north of us and not clock the winds around to the W or NW, but it would bring strong NE winds with squally weather for an extended period.  Getting the timing right was the hard part. At the shore party Friday evening we learned a number boats were headed south to Panama and the Western Caribbean, while others wanted to be Georgetown for the Family Island Regatta scheduled for April 20 - 24, but didn't want to spend 2 weeks there.  Several of them planned on riding out the weather at Conception while others were headed for Cat Island to the north.  It was good to get weather updates from the folks who had SSB or internet capability on board.  A group of boats departed on Saturday, heading either for Cat Island, or back to Georgetown. Leonard decided the weather sounded stable enough to wait until Sunday before we'd head to Georgetown which, given the NE winds, would be a down wind run.


On our last day at Conception with stronger winds on the northern reefs, we snorkeled the shallower reef by the anchorage.  We were rewarded with a big school (20 - 24) of blue tangs, and a variety of other fish, more than had been in the reefs to the north.  We also saw a 4' nurse shark and a 3' barracuda, both of which we kept an eye on as we swam.  Nurse sharks are harmless, but there had been reports on the VHF of reef shark sightings in the area by others.  It was nice to have had such great weather for snorkeling, especially since the water will be colder as we head north, making it less enjoyable.

Sunday morning, after a quick breakfast, we were underway shortly after 0730.  We weren't sure how the conditions would be since the wind had picked up during the night.  Once beyond the protection from Conception, we did a lot of rocking and rolling through the waves and swell, occasionally rolling through 30 degrees on either side, with 20-25 being the norm.  We only ran out the jib so we wouldn't have to worry about accidentally jibing the main.  It was a fairly fast sail with the jib poled out, and we sailed into the harbor, almost to the spot where we had previously anchored for the night.  A bit over 42 NM, not a bad day's run.  We even passed another monohull (larger than us) as we sailed through the harbor, and we were able to stay ahead of a 42' catamaran who left at the same time we did.  We're not sure if their rigging prevents them from running the main out far enough to run dead down wind, which would tend to slow them down.

In the morning, we'll go into Georgetown to get provisions and internet access.  From the chatter on the VHF, it sounds like the bad weather will last longer than earlier forecast.  Unfortunately the dinghy ride into town tends to be very wet when the wind is piping up from the NE, so I'd better get everything we need in that first run.  We can forget about doing laundry, which is okay since we've been wearing salty cloths for days now, rinsing out our shirts in the shower every night. 

One of these days, we'll get our "outside only" salty shorts clean again.  We've heard good things about Emerald Bay Marina which was recently taken over by Sandals Resorts.  They have discounted the dockage fee especially at the dock without power, and offer free laundry, reasonably priced RO water which we'll need in a week or so, and  are reported to have a  helpful, friendly staff.  The thought of a long (more than a quart's worth of water) shower is also enticing.  Hope the NE wind will let up enough so we can get in there safely.  Meanwhile, we'll sit out the next bit of inclement weather somewhere in the Georgetown harbor.