How to get to Andros the Hard Way

June 16, 2016

Our long sail from New Providence Island back to Florida was cut short when we had to stop at Chub Cay in the Berries to wait out the storms.  Weather at this time of year is spotty, and at this location on earth, doubly so.

The stretch of water between Chub Cay and Nassau is a few thousand feet deep, and then, in the stretch of a few hundred yards climbs to the Bahama banks at about 10-12 feet deep.  70-100 miles west of the Berries and Andros is the next multi-thousand-foot deep trench: the Gulf stream.

During slack tide, water sits on the shallow shelf and heats up in the sun while other waters hide in the deep trench, getting quite cold.  When the tide changes, either warm water "spills" off of the shelf into the cold deep or cold water is forced out of the deep, vertically up the wall to the warm shallows where it creates rapid thunderheads.

Chub Cay lies on the edge of the shelf where all this watery madness happens and about 12 miles west of the Northwest Channel, the only place on the shelf edge that is deep enough (about 12 feet) for a ship to traverse.

The day after being rerouted to Chub Cay by storms, we made our second attempt at the Northwest Passage. It was a lovely, mostly sunny day with a very favorable 15 knot south wind that had us on a gentle reach under full sail to the channel, no need to run the little diesel.  It was so nice that with an hour left to the channel, I popped down below to fix some lunch.  While Sarah and I were eating, Robin suddenly lurched hard on-ear, almost putting a rail in the water while turning nearly 90 degrees from east to north.  I jumped on deck to see what had happened expecting we had snagged a crab pot or one of my sheets or steering lines had frayed, but instead we were in the middle of 50 knots of wind from the west, and a small black spot cloud had formed in the otherwise sunny sky.  Our Aries self-steering wind vane steers according to the wind direction, so when Mother Nature decided to change 90 degrees almost instantly, the Aries did too.

But now we were on a fast reach at full heel under full sail in 50 knots headed due north towards the rocky breakers about a mile away (about 8 minutes at this speed).  I called Sarah on deck while I started the engine.

This is the moment for jiffy reefing.  If you don't have jiffy reefs rigged, then my advice is: don't go out sailing until you do.  I have each reef on a single line that cinches both tack and clew to pull the whole slab reef out of the mainsail at once.  It runs to a cleat and winch set up on my coachroof in the cockpit.  Under 50 knots of wind and without changing point of sail, I was able to reef the mainsail, with one line, from the cockpit, by myself, while the self-steering wind vane kept course.  I pulled the foresail in completely and had the mainsail all the way down to the third reef in about a minute.  Then I took the helm and turned 180 degrees, directly south to get away from the rocky breakers,  But even with a tiny triangle of sail on the mast, our Yanmar diesel was struggling to maintain any headway against the building swells.  The wind built the waves from a slow one foot swell to 6 footers pounding over the deck within about 10 minutes.  The engine overheated almost immediately.  I throttled it down and waited/hoped for the overheat to stop, because I wasn't about to shut it off.  But with no underwater propulsion, we were forced to do what the wind told us.  At that point, the only answer was downwind, fast.  

I was proud of my jiffy reefs, but I would have given anything for a downhaul at that moment.  With just that little triangle of sail, we were still making over 10 knots downwind  I wanted to douse the main entirely and continue sailing under bare poles, but the wind wouldn't allow us to take down the last bit of main.

Luckily "downwind fast" was directly back to Chub Cay.  Unluckily, we still had some sail in the air, the wind and waves were still building, the engine buzzer was screaming and flashing overheat, and we still had an hour and a half back to Chub.

The next ???? minutes are kind of a blur of me gripping the tiller as hard as I could while we surfed 10-foot waves that were so steep we were beginning to plow the bow of the boat into the trough while we were surfing the crests.  Even with that tiny triangle of sail, we were making over 10 knots dead downwind, and I thought we were close to pitchpoling.  Our windspeed indicator pegs out at 65 knots, and it was pegged for long periods.  Moving 10 knots downwind plus 65+ knots indicated apparent wind speed = 75+ knots actual wind speed.  The stitches on the end of our flag and the top and bottom buttons of my shirt got ripped out by the wind.  I could barely hear Sarah unless her yelling was directly in my ear.  It wasn't raining yet, but the wind was whipping up so much seawater that it stung when it hit you, which was somehow everywhere on your body at once.  I have no idea how long this lasted, probably less than 5 minutes, but it was enough time to give Sarah a warning that we may be living our final moments, and that I loved her very much.  She was pretty okay with that being the end of it.  I was impressed.

About ???? minutes later, the worst of it had passed, we could start to see a clear sky ahead of us again, and while we were still in 6-foot waves, the period had slowed down significantly, and the wind had "eased" back to a steady-ish 45 knots like when it all started.  Clouds were now dumping freshwater rather than wind-blowing seawater.  A more seasoned seaman would consider this a great day to make some distance.

We anchored back at Chub in the late afternoon about 20 yards from where we had left that morning, though it was afternoon, it looked like dusk, and we waited for the insta-storm to pass while holding through the 6 foot swells.  It was almost worse than sailing.

A day later, we decided that if storms were going to keep us from making it through the northwest passage, then we might as well wait for our time at Andros rather than Chub.  Andros is the largest and one of the least visited islands in the Bahamas.  It has large stretches of forest and fields and more rural settlements.

The sail to Andros went well enough.  It was a pleasant day that turned a bit sour near the end with a light squall, but nothing dangerous. The holding isn't great in North Andros, and the best of it, on the eastern side of the bay was taken up by four other boats with similar plans.  So we took the less-preferable western side. The sand is very shallow on the rock bottom there, so I had to dive and dig both our anchors into the best sand pockets I could find on the seafloor, and we rode out another night of deep swells. 

It took another day for the storms to finally clear enough for us to take a trip ashore, but in the meantime, the stormy weather made for spectacular sunsets.

Rerouted by a Storm

June 15, 2016

We departed West Bay with the intention of bringing our Bahamian adventure to a close with our course set for Florida.  We were headed towards the southern tip of the Bimini chain, a location far enough south to make the Palm Beach Inlet without the gulf stream sweeping us too far north. We had not decided if we were going to stop there or continue overnight towards Florida.

The sky was bright, and the sea was a vibrant glassy sapphire blue.

Sailing past high altitude rainfall.

We were happily sailing along at approximately 25 knots in calm waters towards clear blue sunny skies when I casually looked behind me. The sky was turning black as rapidly moving dark clouds coalesced on the horizon. Waterspouts began dropping to the sea.  "AJ!" I yelled pointing towards the stern. Then promptly went below to get the off shore life vests while AJ started reefing.

 

When I came back up a wall of darkness was devouring the light. As it encroached on both sides, we found ourselves pointed towards an ever-narrowing window of blue sky.

The wind kicked up, we put in another reef and decided to hightail it to the nearest island, Chub key.

We made it to Chub in time to anchor before sunset. It was a long windy bouncy night in the unprotected anchorage of a sport fishing club resort island. Unbeknownst to us, it was the first of many stormy nights to come, and our Bahamian adventure was far from over. 

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.

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...

Surfing a Storm Front to Nassau

A storm front was approaching, so we only had one day on Bird Cay.  We had to finish exploring the abandoned mansion and dinghy back to Robin in time to pull up the anchor and make the jump across the bay into the leeshore of Frazer's Hog Cay before night fell.  The sun set as we were entering the anchorage, and we found our spot of anchor-friendly sand by flashlight.  We waited a day and two nights in that anchorage as the wind slowly clocked from E to SE, through S and W eventually ending up NW.  Happily, Frazer's Hog Cay anchorage is protected and calm from all directions, and SV Pura Vida was there again rallying the eleven other boats in the anchorage on the radio.   That night they assured us that the wind would remain from the NW the next day as the front rolled through.  That would mean a predictable downwind run to Nassau, something that doesn't often happen.

Strong tidal currents surge back and forth from the deep Northwest Bahamas Passage ("the tongue of the ocean") and the shallow Bahamas banks every six hours, so I figured we would try to leave on an outward surge off of the Berry banks headed towards Nassau, hit low tide in the middle of the deep and catch the incoming surge into Nassau for the second half.  35+ knot winds and waves building to ten feet were predicted for the day.  I was hoping entering and exiting in a tidal surge moving the same direction as the wind would keep the waves down.  Surely my rough guess at favorable tidal currents would keep seas down to easy four foot rollers...

...35-40 knot winds built to ten foot seas by the afternoon.

Odd wave patterns converging from the two stretches of deep water behind us.

I didn't think that Robin's gloriously curved eight-ton fiberglass and lead underbody could surf, however GPS speedometer regularly surged more than three knots over base speed as the waves passed underneath.  We even hit 10.2 knots on some surfs. (though the overall readings could be influenced by tidal currents).  We started the day with a double reef in the mainsail, but were fully reefed shortly into the route.  Our tiniest triangles of sail were both pinned in place by 40 knot winds, and Robin plowed a massive trough in the ocean.  Bottomline, our 38 mile trip, anchor up to anchor down, took exactly 5 hours, giving an average speed of 7.6 knots ... in a classic full keel sailboat with a 25 foot waterline.  #micdrop  #mindsblown

Things build.

Eventually Sarah had to help me on the tiller during the hardest moments of windward helm.  It proved too much for Alfred (the self-steering windvane), and I was exhausted after nearly five hours of holding course and could barely handle it myself.   

We were happy to see land, even if it did mean the waves got steeper.  We surfed one last time past the lighthouse and breakwaters into Nassau Harbor entrance.  The waves immediately died down to a heavy chop and we finally struck sails as we made our way past the cruise ship docks to the anchorage.  There are even more videos of the passage on our YouTube channel if you didn't get your fix of POV sailing at casual bicycle speeds.

The anchor was barely in the ground before we prepped the dinghy and headed to shore to toast being alive and upright.  It took three drinks to calm down and a fourth to toast Robin's bad-ass-ery on a record setting passage.

WE ARE GOING TO HIT RAINBOW CONNECTION! The tale of our first near shipwreck

In the those first weeks on the boat, of course AJ wanted to take it out sailing.  I was not feeling too excited about this as I still knew virtually nothing about sailing a keel boat. I  barely knew the terminology he was always spouting which always led to strained communication. "Oh! you want that rope! If it's the rope you want why don't you just call it a damn rope!" But no, a rope is a sheet and a pulley is a block.

We prepped everything for a sail up the river and back.  We warmed up the engine for half an hour,  then I went forward to cast us off the mooring ball.  AJ put the engine in drive and it did not engage. We were drifting. Drifting in a 20,000 lb vessel towards other 20,000 lb vessels in a mooring field with no steerage. AJ was frantically trying to engage the engine and steer, I was just frantic. We yelled god knows what back and forth until I screamed "We are going to hit Rainbow Connection!" Rainbow Connection was our nearest neighbor. It was the boat of a 23-year-old Canadian who had lived on that boat with his grandparents since he was 6, and lived on it alone since he was 18. Lovely boat. Lovely guy.    AJ barked back at me "We are NOT going to hit Rainbow Connection." He was at the helm and there was absolutely nothing I could do in this crisis, and watching only led to yelping about what was happening which didn't help anything. So I sat down in the cockpit and put my head down. I was just going to wait until I heard a crash. I was thinking that it was over before it began. I had never been more scared. I was not afraid for my life, we were swimming distance from a dock, I was afraid of losing the boat and being 100k in debt for someone else's. Enslaving us. This dream would be unresuscitatable. Over, all over.

Then he said, "We are going to hit Rainbow Connection". I bolted up and watch our boat drift closer and closer, the bows of our boats on a sideways collision course. Time nearly screeched to a halt all sound disappeared as I watched the boats move towards each other.  AJ managed to get the engine to engage in reverse just in time to swing us back and around. I watched the nose of our bow circle by Rainbow's bowsprit missing it by just a few feet. He backed out into open space until he could get forward steerage enough to get us out into the river.

I was pretty shaken up at this point and wondering what we were going to do now that the transmission was not working and we were in the river and how we were going to get back to the mooring ball. But AJ immediately yelled "It's time to sail! take the wheel!" and he ran forward to raise the sails. Once we were in the river we could gain control with the sails, not to mention sailing is what we set we had set out to do. I was not in the best condition to be sailing for the first time. But what else can you do? You must figure it out and adapt. Quickly.

The wind caught the mainsail with a snap, lurching the boat forward, causing louder than expected moans and creaks from the hull and rigging. Then the boat started to tip. It felt like we were falling over.  The slow even pacing of the lean made it feel like it was going to keep falling all the way into the water, but around 10 - 15 degrees it held.  You can feel the power of the sail pulling and tilting the boat beneath you. it was unsettling in its unfamiliarity.

I had the wheel while AJ tuned the sails.  I was watching the GPS to keep the boat centered in the river, while watching to go between the markers out in front of me,  and keeping a close eye on the depth sounder. I can't say it is a difficult thing to do per se, but piloting a multi ton vessel for the first time, with no prior experience on the water and just having nearly been in a shipwreck, I was struggling a bit to stay calm and process all unfamiliar scenery, forces and motion. But we relaxed a bit once everything was set and the course was straight and were able to sit back as be taken by the wind with little or no effort on our part. We made about 6 knots.

We left the engine running for fear of not being able to restart it and to hopefully get it to engage in drive so we could motor back through the mooring field. We managed to get it going forward well enough, barely 2 knots, to drop the sails and steer back to the ball. AJ drove and I went forward to the bow to grab the mooring ball as we approached it and tie us off. He steered well and I managed to catch the ball first go round, thank god. We tied off and were safely back on the ball.  whew! Eventful day.

We need a new transmission.

Our boat under way

       

"..Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me!.."