Return to Florida

June 28th, 2016

The days of June were wrought with brief unpredictable pop-up storms that thwarted our attempts to return to Florida. The nights, however were calm and clear so we decided to set sail from Bimini across the Gulf Stream in the late evening, hoping to reach the Palm Beach inlet by sunrise.

Sailing through the night varies wildly depending on the phase of the moon.  When the moon is full and the sky is clear, night sailing is magic.  The light of infinite stars dances across the waves illuminating the horizon. The moon casts shadows and your eyes easily grow accustomed to the pale glow needing no additional illumination to pace the deck. 

We were sailing on a cloudy night with a waning crescent, which is an exercise in trusting your instruments and physical sensations.  With no visibility, our vessel plowed blindly through the inky blackness.  

We were able to see the lights of the Florida Coast many hours before sunrise.  In the dead of night, you can see Miami and Lauderdale all the way to Palm Beach.  First as a glow, then eventually, as full points of light breaking over the horizon.  As we had hoped, the night was both surreal and uneventful.  Around 3 am we slipped into the inlet and sunk our anchor into US sand for the first time in 4 months.

The next morning we awoke to the bustle of the West Palm inlet and started down the ICW towards Stuart.

After a night on anchor in Stuart, we continued motoring up the Okeechobee to Indiantown.

Through the hours of the late afternoon, beautiful contrasting rain clouds were all around us but somehow never upon us.

We hauled out at Indiantown Marina.  After a few days of cleaning, packing, and preparing Robin for dry storage, we returned to Arkansas to wait out the summer.

Exploring North Andros

Mid-June 2016

After three days of intense sailing in storms we were safely anchored in North Andros, well almost safely.  We arrived in the harbor a little after 7pm after hitting a light squall on our way from Chub Cay. Those winds caught back up with us in Andros and we spent the first night bouncing and slipping on one anchor. The next morning when the rain had cleared, AJ rigged a second anchor and dove on both to find sand pockets between the rocks deep enough to bury them in. And just in time too, as we were soon stuck on the boat for a couple more days of  wave riding.

Shore was a welcome sight when the weather finally cleared. 

We were anchored in a little fishing harbor a few miles north of the nearest settlement, Nicholls Town, population 645.

The only business within proximity was the Water Loop, a bar/restaurant frequented by the fishermen.

Across from the Water Loop are pavilions overlooking the beach.

We were planning to be on our way as soon as possible, but after the intensity of the storms we had just survived we were a bit skittish and the radar readings just weren't inducing confidence. There weren't storm fronts on the radar, but rather storm cells would just pop up and disappear at random spots all over the map.  Essentially what we had been experiencing in the days prior. We set out on a clear flat day with nothing on the radar or weather predictions then BAM! A wall of 65+ knot wind and crazy water. Then BAM! it's gone. Welcome to the Bermuda triangle.  With the radar littered with squalls day after day we spent a fair amount of time kickin' it with the fishermen at the Water Loop, or sitting under a pavilion watching seagulls harass a pelican.

The first time we went ashore we were told to ask for a man named Sully if we needed anything. The nearest grocery or anything store was a couple miles away from the harbor, so I'm assuming stranded sailors often need a ride. Sully, short for Solomon, was an exuberant middle aged fisherman with a big smile and bigger laugh.  He and his crew of jolly fishermen were usually at the Water Loop if they weren't out fishing. The oldest among them (eighty-something) went by "Hard-Ass", made a mean conch salad, and would got to sea fishing, alone, for a week at a time, on his 18 foot homebuilt boat. They could all dance a pretty mean jig too, or rather, a Bahamian Quadrille.

One evening on the Water Loop porch I was swatting at mosquitoes and Sully said to me, "Mosquitoes are nature, if you want nature, you can't just have some of it. They feed the frogs and fish and lizards and birds. If you want the beauty Andros has, you got to have them too." True words from Solomon the wise. Still, I was starting to look like I had chicken pox. 

After about a week hanging out on the waterfront waiting on weather we were growing a bit restless. The oppressive heat and humidity of mid-summer was kicking in and altercations with horseflies resulting in long term hand to hand combat was getting more frequent. We decided to see if we could find a car to rent and drive around the island for a day. See some new sites, get a little wind in our faces... win a battle against a bug... by smashing them with my windshield..muha hahaha. (Sorry Sully.)  A little General Store of sorts a couple miles away had a single rental car.  It was a cute little early 2000's Hyundai, that came with a highly effective "Keep Left" sticker facing inward on the windshield. There's no better place to learn to drive on the "wrong" side of the road than  low-traffic, rural sprawl.

In case you're curious about the best prices in Andros, the price for three cans/bottles is as follows:  Bud Light: $6.50  Kalik~$6.25  Bush~$6.75  Heineken~$7.90  Guinness~$8.50  Coors Light~$6.75  Colt 45~$6.75.  That's $44 for a case of Kalik and $58.25 for a case of Guinness.

Grocery store and pharmacy.

Classy neighborhood.

Government administration building.

While we were out, we saw a peculiar hotel advertisement hung on a chain link fence.

We were having a nice time out of the harbor, so we decided to call the number and maybe spend our first night off the boat in four months. What sort of motel lies in middle-of-nowhere Andros anyway? I wanted to find out.

Stormy Weather and a Broken Prop

June 2016

We dropped anchor in Nassau Harbor, and while backing down to set it in the bottom, I allowed my rudder to overturn and strike the prop.  (I knew I should have installed turn stops).  The whole drivetrain started shaking and vibrating, so I dropped into neutral.  Our little Yanmar diesel still idled and revved smoothly in neutral, so at least I didn't bend a con rod or crankshaft, but a quick dive overboard revealed that our four-month-old two-bladed prop was a, still youthful, but much less useful, single blade prop.

Immediately I thought about all the hassle of trying to get a spare radio into the country a couple months earlier, and I knew we would have to source a prop locally.  Luckily, a local prop shop on the island had a spare used three-blade prop that could be modified to fit.  "Island cheap" at just under $500, but they still wanted another $450 for an in-water dive installation and wouldn't be able to do the install for two weeks.  I ordered the prop to be modified and they said we could pick it up in a couple days.

Nassau Harbor is a long East-West straight of water between the main island, New Providence, and the barrier island, Paradise Island/Atlantis Resort.  This means that during tidal shifts, the current rips through at about 3-4 knots in a different direction every 6 hours and lays slack between times.  Anchoring in a situation like this can be hairy because your boat drifts over the anchor and starts pulling hard 180 degrees opposite every six hours, so if your anchor doesn't properly roll over and re-set in the sand, then you will go adrift...  FAST... through a tight harbor packed with multi-million dollar boats.

The nice part about storms and heavy wind in the harbor is that you only swing on your anchor in one direction if the wind is strong enough to beat the ripping current.  Of course, then your keel is sideways to the current, and the boat starts sailing up on the anchor before reaching the end of the rode, stalling and falling back to do it again.
Geologically speaking, Nassau is a terrible place to anchor.
Geographically speaking, is a pretty nice place to break down.

Obviously, I was nervous hanging on anchor in Nassau harbor for a couple days without push-button propulsion.  With storms on the forecast, I was more than just nervous.  But, in situations like this, you've got to figure out something.  So I manually deployed another anchor, dove to the bottom to dig the anchors into the sandy/muddy bottom by hand, and scoured the area for anchor-clogging debris.

(With the anchor we pulled up a total of four pairs of jeans, a heavy-weather jacket, and a concrete cinder block wrapped in flannel shirts during this trip.)

The storms rolled in from the north over Atlantis Resort.

Everybody in the anchorage hunkers down for the blow and 90-degree shift in position.  

As expected, the prop was being fixed on island time, so we spent another week sitting in harbor without power. Every storm was nerve-wracking.  Watching the GPS drag alarm, sitting in foul weather gear, just waiting to spring on deck and fire up the dinghy (instead of the big boat's diesel) if trouble arose.

With a week of fast-moving storm fronts and killer oscillating currents, the anchors had to come loose at some point, and sure enough, when returning from a grocery trip to town, we found our boat had drug out into the shipping port turning basin, immediately in front of Nassau Harbor Control.  We meekly dinghied back to the boat, and Nassau Harbor Patrol was on us within minutes, demanding that we move.  I agreed, apologized for the disruption, and promptly failed to notify them that I lacked power and lacked a dinghy with the power to move my boat in the current.

One thing the Army instilled in me: Many problems that seem insurmountable can actually be overcome with rigorous output of brutal manual labor.  With this in mind, I realized "just" had to hand-over-hand haul our 9-ton boat about 150 feet to the first anchor, hand pull the anchor and chain out of the mud, drive it out into the current about 200 feet, and reset it before the current pulled the boat over into the commercial docks.  Then I could do the exact same thing with the other anchor. And if I did that four times in a row, then I could "walk" my boat out, anchor-by-anchor, a couple hundred yards into a safe spot in just a couple hours. So I did that, and I only had to dive 25 feet to dig the anchor out of the harbor's underwater anti-drag cables twice along the way.

Two days later and a week late, we got the prop from the shop.  I wasn't about to spend $450 on a diver for a half hour, so I gathered up my hammer, pliers, wrenches, prop puller and all my gumption and did it myself. Six breath-hold dives (plus a couple for go-pro selfies) to do the job from start to finish and POOF, one blade becomes three.

More storms were coming so within an hour or so of installing the prop, we were under sail en route to West Bay at the western tip of New Providence island to catch the first good passage westward.

Exiting the western Harbor entrance.

Physically and mentally, this was hell week, but there is nothing like taking some hell to make you feel like a superhero.  And West Bay turned out to be a great little natural day spa to scrub it all away. We watched the sunset from the deserted secluded beach while having ourselves a sand scrub ocean bath.

24 Hour Sail to New Providence

June 4-5, 2016

With weather getting less predictable so late in the season, we decided to make rapid progress home with a direct sail back to Nassau. From Arthur's Town we would sail west, keeping north and skirt the southern coast of Eleuthra, cross the Exuma Sound, sail right through a passage near the northern tip of the Exhumas, and then jig northwest to sail right into the eastern entrance to Nassau Harbor.  

Experience led us to longer and longer (aka: more accurate) calculations for average distance to destination, so we figured on a conservative a 20 hour sail.  We left Arthur's Town, Cat Island at 3:45 PM for the overnight sail. We predicted a sunrise arrival in the  Exumas and a near-noon arrival in Nassau, with plenty of sunlight left for error.  And if we sailed faster than expected, and finished the leg to the Exumas before sunrise we would be able to turn north up the Exumas until sunrise and pick the next best crossing, then sail a shortened northwest leg through the morning.

Wind was coming steady at nearly 20 knots directly from the east, so I used my spare Garhauer 4:1 snap shackle blocks to rig a boom preventer so we could safely sail wing-and-wing dead down wind out of the anchorage in Arthur's town at 7 knots.  Engines are for the nervous.  I even found that the Aries windvane actually really likes sailing wing and wing downwind, provided you set your sails correctly for helm.

In our usual routine, after setting the windvane I droppped three heavy 6" plastic squid lures in the water to troll, set out on two hand fishing spools with massive 150lb. test clear monofilament line.  I had taken to sending two lures out on one of the spools, spaced at about 15 feet, so maybe it "looked" like a small school of squid were following our boat.  (Do squid school?  Do they follow boats?  Fish don't give a shit, so neither do I.)

Shortly out of sight of Arthur's town we landed three Jacks on all three lures at the same time.  During the "fight" (I throw on leather gloves, grab the line by hand, and mostly just yank them aboard) we lost the second lure on one of the lines, but still ended up with two Jacks alongside.   I wasn't really able to ID them (Jack Crevalle?), but I know their shape is both edible and tasty.

When I gutted the first jack, it had some strange yellow grub-like things in pockets around the gut sac, but when I began cutting the filet at the head, I saw they were big yellow worms and they had eaten pockets throughout its flesh...  We tossed it back and I began filleting the second one.  Same issue.  I thought back on every piece of raw fish I had devoured.  Still within range of BaTelCo's Cat Island Cell Towers, Sarah looked up wild fish parasites on Google and confirmed our findings, while I dumped bucket after bucket of seawater into the cockpit to wash away the blood and guts.

I steered west into the sunset; I couldn't be taken by its splendor.  Covered in the red spatterings of missed fish guts, I gazed downward into the endless ocean and mourned the death of my love: Sushi.

But the ocean heard my call and shortly after sunset, as we crossed into the deep of  the Exuma Sound and landed our first Yellowfin Tuna, two at the same time.  A raw fish eater's delight.   We couldn't take on that much meat, so I tossed one back to filet the other.  No worms, just that famous firm beef-red tuna flesh.

The eyes looked up at me.  "Eat me," it called out. "I am safe." I hesitated.  Then I saw that beautiful raw tuna flesh for myself.  I couldn't not eat it.  So, I didn't not eat it.

Jacked Jack by day, Tasty Tuna by night.

After filling up on tuna, we watched a movie to start the overnight passage on the west leg to the Exhumas.  We were following a rarely-travelled path through the islands with no shipping lanes until morning, so we relaxed below for much of the night on a "mutual watch," allowing our AIS/GPS warning beacons and regular on-deck checks to prevent mishaps in the dark.  The boom preventer proved very useful as I was able to fine tune the rig to allow the boat to ghost downwind as slow as 2.5 knots with about the same in apparent wind across the deck while Alfred, our Aries windvane, self-steered.

Yes, you read that right.  Don't give up on your windvane!

I believe you can balance almost any self-steering device with sail trim.  Just play with your boom vang, Cunningham, outhaul, preventer (if downwind), etc., and especially sacrifice your sheeting in order to find the sailtrim to balance the boat in a way that your windvane likes.  Optimal performance trim does not result in optimal cruising/self-steering trim, and the half knot you lose in speed is made up for by perfect directional steering that responds properly to swells and waves over the course of hours and never stalls.  A well-set windvane is as good as 90% of helmsmen, and even a better helmsman would require constant concentration to beat it over a long course.  We will eventually get an electric autopilot for motoring, but the windvane is an amazing tool that is far more useful than most people give it credit for.

Sunrise after a full night of ghosting downwind in still water, and Alfred the windvane finally gybed at 2 knots boat speed with zero wind across the deck.  I was half-awake eyeing the sun anyway, so I stepped on deck and looked around at the glassy sea.  We let the sails hang and the boat bob in the middle of endless deep blue, 10 miles east off the Exhumas sea shelf, while we made coffee and breakfast and prepared for a day of motoring.

The next day went smoothly.  We motored up to the eastern shore of Highbourne Cay, where we had first entered the Exhumas a month and a half earlier on the west side.  It was an easy inlet just north of the island, and by the time we were crossing on the shelf, the wind was back and we were able to quiet the blazing iron beast again and sail for most of the northwest leg.

As afternoon wore on, we caught a couple very large barracuda that also took the last two squid lures with them when trying to de-hook.  The wind turned northwest, and we had to motor into Nassau for the last hour.  And at 3:45 PM the next day, after a slow, relaxing, exactly-24-hour sail, we dropped anchor.

While backing down on the anchor, I released the tiller long enough for the rudder to overturn, and BAM!, make contact with the prop.  The boat started violently shaking, and I shut down the engine immediately.  A jump overboard to inspect for damage revealed that my two bladed bronze prop was now a one bladed bronze prop.  Luckily Cheoy Lee uses a 1 1/2" diameter solid steel driveshaft that is only 16" long for the boat, so that was still straight...  and at least the anchor was set deep.

Rake 'n' Scrape Music Festival, Arthur's Town, Cat Island

June 2016

We sailed into Arthur's Town after departing from New Bight just after sunset.  We dropped anchor in the dark while an alternating mix of American Hip Hop and local Rake 'n' Scrape music blared from the direction of a few flickering lights on the coast.  In the morning we could see where it was all coming from, a little bar with a hut overlooking the vibrant turquoise water.  The bar has two floor-to-ceiling height speakers sitting just outside the front doors facing the beach. 

Unlike New Bight, Arthur's Town has a rocky coast, so you have to wedge a dinghy anchor somewhere in the rocks, let it float it the shallows, and scramble up to the walkway.

But behind the rocks, calm clear shallows swirl atop soft white sand making it a perfect beach.

We walked the town to inquire about the location of the Rake 'n' Scrape festival that evening. There weren't that many people around, but we were offered a ride out to the site by the first person we asked. Her name was Flora, and she was going to be making crab at the festival!  Crab is my favorite and I had yet to see it on a menu in the Bahamas. 

The Rake 'n' Scrape festival began around sunset.  Rake 'n' Scrape is a form of Goombay music (native to the Bahamas) that originated on Cat Island.  The music requires a Goombay drum and scraping a carpenters saw with a metal file.  Like all saw music (Rip Saw of the Turks and Caicos, Hoedown of Appalachia, etc..) It originated when the people had to make instruments out of whatever they had. Now it has evolved into a full blown genre with the accompaniment of saxophones, harmonics. electric guitars, and any other instrument appropriate for the composition. You will probably hear it sitting at any local establishment in the Bahamas. That evening child and adult groups performed to compete for cash prizes and titles. The musical performances were accompanied by small troops dancing the Bahamian Quadrille or Heel and Toe Polka - dances evolved specifically for the boisterous Rake 'n' Scrape sound.

The picture below sums up the Bahamas pretty well.  It is a very wholesome place. Every festival is an all ages family friendly affair. FYI to any parents out there who want a remote chill beach vacation in a place where all local events are for the whole family (and swearing is prohibited!)- the Bahamas is the place to go. Cat Island in particular has a few small local "resort" hotels.  10-15 rooms/bungelos on a beach in a small community with fresh seafood and no souvenir key chain to even consider.

Around the parameter of the of the festival zone a dozen food booths smoked and sizzled with the aromas of fish, lobster, conch and crab.  I visited Flora and got a container of pan friend crab meat and rice. It was so much crab. Below is a man making the famous Bahamian conch salad. There will always be a man making conch salad. And for good reason, it's delicious.

At this point it was early June and we were planning our route back to Florida. We left Cat Island and raised sail for Nassau (approx 24 hours away) the day after the festival. Nassau was intended to be a quick one night stop en route home, but things didn't exactly go to plan.

New Bight, Cat Island

We left Georgetown on the morning of May 30th in fine weather, and arrived at New Bight, Cat Island, late that evening. 

Hoping for an ENE or even an E wind, we sailed all the way down to the eastern tip of Great Exuma before rounding north towards Cat Island.  

The eastern tip of Great Exuma wasn't far enough, and we sailed hard on the NE wind, missing the south western tip of Cat Island by 10+ miles.  That meant an extra five hours of slogging to windward late into the night.  Luckily the wind was predictable and at that just-right 15-20 knots with the endless windward protection of the sheltered harbor of Cat Island, so we avoided motoring altogether, and ripped upwind in smooth water, making four tacks over four hours all the way into New Bight sound.  We sailed to a stop, and dropped anchor just off the beach shortly after 1AM.

New Bight is a small town in the middle of the island, home to Mount Alvernia, a hermitage on the highest peak in the Bahamas.  You can barely make out the structure on the hill to the right of the cell tower in the picture below.

The town is built along a long, shallow beach.  No dingy docks, just beach the dinghy and dig in the anchor where ever you want.

We pulled up to the local fish fry, a string of food shacks along a road running parallel to the beach.

The food really can't be anything other than fantastic when the fish and conch are caught fresh that day. We ate at a little place run by a kindly Bahamian woman called Hidden Treasures.  She had sweet potato fries.

It was a bit stormy while we were there, little did we know we were going to be seeing a lot of storms in the coming months.

We rode out a couple days of storms before finally getting a chance to hike in and see Mount Alvernia.  It was spectacular, and well worth the wait. (Next episode!) Between rains we had a couple beers and at the local fish fry, and when we mentioned we were headed back through the Exumas to Nassau, our cook told us we couldn't go before the upcoming rake and scrape music festival happening up north on the island at Arthur's Town. Cat Island is the native home of Rake and Scrape music, so we made the obvious choice to head north up the island to Arthur's Town for the weekend before leaving. With a steady southeast breeze that Thursday evening, we spread sail wing and wing out into the harbor for gentle downwind sleigh ride 10 miles northwest into the sunset and another 15 on a fast running reach back north after rounding the 5 mile long sand spit, once again sailing to a stop right in front of the bar and dropping anchor around 8pm.  This time the bar was blaring local Bahamian music and locals with drinks in hand were lounging all over the rocky shore...  Looking forward to a music festival in Arthur's Town...