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We continue to slowly make our way down along the Ragged Islands, also known as the Jumemtos, of the Southeastern Bahamas. This stretch of small cays is uninhabited except for transient fisherman who harvest conch, lobster, and grouper from the local waters. Some of the islands have ruins from long ago attempts to pasture animals and harvest salt. These are not easy places to make a living.

Right now we are at Flamingo Cay, and will be here another day or two before moving further south.

Fishing is spectacular. Grouper and snapper are plentiful. Snorkeling is fantastic. Boats are infrequent, but seem to move in groups rapidly through the islands. Which seems odd to us. Why come all the way out here if you are just anchoring overnight before rushing off to the next island?

Sailing is challenging here. The islands are on the edge of the Great Bahama Bank. An area almost the size of New Jersey that is mostly less than 20 feet deep. When the tide rises and falls a huge amount of water roars up onto the bank, and then 6 1/2 hours later, it all pours back out into the ocean. Currents in the cuts between the islands can be ferocious. Care and timing is important.

We will eventually get down to Ragged Island itself, the only currently inhabited permanent settlement in this extended chain. It has a population of about 80 people.

We are enjoying our time unplugged from the torrent of information that is the modern world.

The weather, of course!

Much more than most land-based people (you farmers excepted!) we pay a LOT of attention to the weather. The prevailing winds in the the Bahamas are from the east. Sometimes a bit north of east, sometimes a bit south of east. In the winter, a strong cold front can come this far south and swing the wind around to the southwest and northwest for a day or two. That’s basically it.

We had the good fortune to ride south to Georgetown on the tail of the last major cold front with a north wind. But it is getting rather late in the season to count on those any more. Even though there is a powerful cold front moving through the southeast USA over the next few days, it is not forecast to get this far south at all.

That leaves us with a choice… we can either wait, hoping that ONE more cold front will dip this far south and swing the wind, or just suck it up and motor into the wind. Yesterday, we sucked it up and ran the Volvo for 8 hours for our move from Georgetown to Thompson Harbor on Long Island.

Today was a productive day. We managed to finally fill our diesel tanks. We didn’t need much, but we expect to be in places where fuel is difficult to come by for some time. We tried in Georgetown but the fuel station ran out just as we arrived. We also topped off the last of our provisions. Having literally followed the supply boat into the harbor last night, the grocery store was well stocked this afternoon. Then we had a delightful meet up with Mark and Denise from S/V Cara at “Tiny’s Hurricane Hole,” a great beach bar. All in all a good day.

Tomorrow, we are headed further south, into the Ragged Islands. We will likely be off the gird for a week or so as we meander down the mostly uninhabited islands. Exploring, fishing, and shelling will be our priorities. Hopefully, we will have good stories, and photos to report.

I do feel like we are giving Long Island the short shift here. Certainly a lot of people do love it. But we can not stop and linger everywhere, or we get nowhere!

Well… that might be overstating things a tiny bit. But we have migrated to Georgetown on Great Exuma Island, which I think I can say without argument has the best grocery shopping for 150 miles in any direction, at least on Monday and Thursday afternoons after the supply boat arrives.

Our trip down was an unusual delight. With a (mostly) steady wind from the north, we spread our downwind poles and had 1600 square feet of canvas pulling us along straight downwind, making much better time than we expected–so much so we had to do a couple laps outside the harbor waiting for sunrise to light our approach through the shallows.

Right now we were told there are something on the order of 400 (!) boats here, from sub-30 foot pocket cruisers to 180 foot super yachts. Certainly too many for us to casually count. This is a major social gathering place and resupply port for cruisers in the southern Bahamas. Many boats come here for the entire season. For us, it feels very crowded–almost claustrophobic. There are compensations however: Meeting people who are either old, or new friends. And the grocery shopping.

On many of the smaller islands there is nothing that we would recognize as a “grocery store.” Which kind of mystified me for a while. After all, there are people who live there, and they have to eat… The answer is not very complicated. They actually ORDER all their routine groceries to arrive directly to them on the “mail boat,” bypassing any local market.

Our shopping here is going to (hopefully!) supply us for a couple weeks, because from here we are going to the most “out” of the “Out Islands.” The Ragged Islands, and the Plana Cays. Mostly uninhabited, and certainly lacking anything that might be even remotely referred to as a “super” market. These are more challenging places, less well charted, less well documented. Very limited harbors of refuge, but lots of opportunity for exploring, shelling, and fishing. Our favorite kinds of places.

The computer models that generate the data used by our weather routing program are run on some of the largest super computers in the world, but no matter how super they might be, they are not the real world. When you rely on computer simulations, you ALWAYS have to leave room for questions and doubt.

For our trip south from Fort Lauderdale to Key Biscayne the model was forecasting about a 6 hour run in front of a brisk North to Northeast wind. The wind was pretty much exactly as forecast, yet we arrived in a bit over 4 hours. Why the large discrepancy?

The issue is the forecasts for the local ocean currents are not very precise. From Miami to Fort Lauderdale the Gulf Stream dominates the ocean, roaring northward at speeds of 3.5 to 4 knots. If you try to sail against it it can slow you down dramatically. Here is were the models fall apart.

All the models predict a strong North-bound current right in to the beach. That, however, is not reality. In the shallow water (less than 100 feet) close to the shoreline, the current is not 2 knots toward the North, but instead it is 1 knot toward the SOUTH. The net difference of 3 knots in total boat speed over the ground was the difference between an average predicted speed of 4.5 knots, compared to what we actually saw of close to 7.5 knots.

Figuring this out as you sail is a challenge without a full suite of instruments. We have both a mechanically measured speed through the water and a GPS measured speed over the ground. Using these data, our instruments present to us the actual speed and direction of the current. This lets us know in real time if we have sailed a bit too far away from the shore, and are getting into a contrary current.

A few hundred yards in the position of the boat make a HUGE difference in total trip time while making your way down the coast. It’s not too often that the difference can be this dramatic, but the speed and direction of the current is always an important input to the smart navigator.

While some of the computer models can have issues, overall they are hugely important to us. Right now we are waiting here in Key Biscayne for the wind to switch around to the south. All the models agree that Wednesday will give us the perfect chance to leapfrog out to the central Bahamas in one long, easy, 36 hour sail. Here is to hoping they are right!

In the meantime, we are exploring the wealthy enclave of Key Biscayne. Packed full of exclusive condos, gated communities, and even more exclusive waterfront estates. There are a couple of delightful state parks, but otherwise there isn’t a lot to attract us to this spot except for the grocery store and the anchorage which is well positioned to wait out north and east winds before jumping off to the islands.

Our “quick haul” went smoothly! The only source of drama was at the very end. The yard splashed one boat and then brought the lift around to pick up Harmonie, a good hour AHEAD of schedule. (When was the last time THAT happened on a boat project??) Unfortunately, the boat ahead of us was having problems and couldn’t get their engines running to pull out of the liftpit! Harmonie ended up hanging for an hour until the disabled boat was dragged out of the way with a forklift. (You had to be there…)

The whole process took just a few hours. It was 6 years ago, almost to the day, Harmonie was hauled at the same boat yard, for the same repair, as part of our purchase. It’s always interesting when such an anniversary is noted how it can seem like this has been our life forever, and it also seems like we just started!

We have pretty much everything back under control, and ready to go. Today is Friday, tomorrow a strong cold front is forecast to sweep down with quite strong winds. We are going to hang here until that passes, then use the North wind on the back side of that front on Sunday to sail down to Key Biscayne, where we will regroup, and wait for the next weather window to sail East.

Hopefully we can be back underway by the middle of next week!

We had an uneventful crossing from Bimini back to Fort Lauderdale. Despite forecasts, we ended up with winds that were fairly light, and we motored most of the way. It was a bit lumpy and rolly, but never scary, and I don’t think we ever had water on the deck.

We are currently anchored in South Lake, Hollywood, Florida and are processing a lot of purchases and logistics as we wait for our haul date next week. This is a place we know well, and it almost feels like “home”.

One of the problems we have run into is the City of Hollywood is restricting dinghies tied up to the local launching ramp. They do this because they have problems with derelict boats in some of the local anchorages, and they are trying (with a TOTAL lack of success) to force the deadbeats out of Dodge.

We sympathize with this (kind of). The accumulation of junk boats in an anchorage is a real problem in Florida. But, we are here to spend money and we have a boat that is the very opposite of “derelict.”

Somehow we manage to take the brunt of these rules because we try to actually FOLLOW them. While the derelict boats just continue on and on because they just ignore the rules and the local authorities can’t or won’t enforce the rules they create with an even hand. It seems if you are crazy, stupid, or ignorant enough you just get a pass on the rules because nobody wants to deal with your antisocial behavior.

We had a quick passage back to the Bimini area over the past couple days. We left Half Moon Cay with great wind, and barreled along at 8 knots for most of 24 hours. Then, pretty much as predicted, the wind began to die down, and before long it COMPLETELY went away. So we spent half our time sailing along fast, and half motoring.

We anchored south of Bimini at sunrise this morning, took the afternoon to do some boat work. Tomorrow we will take a serious fishing day. Then check out of the Bahamas, and head over to Fort Lauderdale to prep for our quick haul in a week.

We are sharing the anchorage with the wreck of the Sapona which has been since being driven aground in a hurricane in 1936. Built during WWI when steel was in short supply, it had a concrete hull and a long history being everything from a casino, to an oil storage tank, to a rum warehouse for rum runners during prohibition, to a target for the US military during WWII. Now it is a famous local navigation marker and snorkeling site.

It used to be that checking out of the Bahamas was optional, and was basically only done by people who were traveling on to a country that wanted to see your checkout papers. This actually made sense, since all the records were only kept on paper, so there really wasn’t any way to confirm that someone actually HAD checked out. Now that all the immigration data is fully computerized, the local authorities required formal checkout, with a BSD$5000 fine if the requirement is ignored.

For you sailor types who love a good argument, while on a late night watch I had an idea for a fun experiment. Are catamarans really faster than monohulls? Or not? The answer surprised me…

It is worth planning your spares carefully as you travel. I had the handle of a fishing reel break the other day. No big deal, replacements are easy to get. As I was shopping for the part, one website noticed that I was logged in from the Bahamas, and conveniently calculated the estimated import duty that would be due after shipping the part here.

On a part that cost BSD$50 the duty due was estimated to be BSD$114!!! Wow… From past experience we know that the Bahamas allow duty free import of boat parts, but ONLY if those parts are required to make the boat move. So engine parts, and sail/rigging parts. Everything else, you pay.

Fortunately for us, we’re headed back to Florida for a quick job that needs us out of the water. We are scheduled to lift on March 8th, at 8AM and splash back at 3PM. Then we’re back underway, headed east as soon as the weather allows.

For the past few days we have been based out of Half Moon Bay, at an island that is historically called Little San Salvador, but has been renamed by the Carnival Cruise line as Half Moon Cay. It is blessed with one of the best beaches around. The only downside is that the population of the island changes from about six every night, to about six thousand when the cruise ship arrives almost every morning. There is a complete faux village that is populated every morning by a boat coming over from Eleuthera.

Tomorrow morning we will begin moving again in earnest, back toward North Bimini where we will check out of the Bahamas, and jump off toward Florida.

It’s a hassle going backwards, but there are always things you forget, that are a lot harder (and more expensive) to source in the islands than they are in the States. So we will make the best of it and rush around getting things we missed.

For the past few days we have been anchored in Black Point Harbour next to another Super Maramu, Gleam, home to our friends Paul and Ashley Fry and their two boys.

I took Paul and his son Cason out fishing on Harmonie, to show them a couple tricks and tips. I showed them all right. We fished hard all day and we got:

We did managed to find fish, unfortunately the fish managed to take more from us in terms of tackle and hardware than we managed to take from them. It’s been a long time since I fished that long and hard with nothing to add to the freezers. But fun was had by all!

An unfortunate discovery while I was doing some routine work in the engine room: The oil in our drive system is contaminated with water. This means that the seals on the propeller shaft under the boat are leaking. This is not an urgent emergency, but is something that needs attending to. Unfortunately, that attention means the boat needs to be out of the water for a few hours.

The next place down our planned track we know of that can reliably haul a boat the size of Harmonie is in Puerto Rico, at least two weeks, maybe four, away. Our alternative is a 4 day trip back to Florida and make arrangements there. Right now, that is looking like our best plan.

We look to have an excellent weather window back to Bimini or West End in two days, and another day to check out and make our way back to Florida. Hopefully we can find a place to lift us out on a quick turnaround somewhere between Miami and Palm Beach in a week to ten days, and then back to travels…