fetchinketch

We sailed out of Rock Sound this morning, for the deeper water just south of Eleuthera.  Once you get to the ocean, deep water is not far offshore.  I mean water is 2000 feet deep less than a half mile from shore.

We set our trolling lines about 10:30 or so.  We shared this part of the ocean with two other big sportfishing boats.  The targets for the boats fishing here are Mahi-mahi, Wahoo, Sailfish, and–if you are really lucky–marlin.

We saw one fish caught from one of the other boats, and then we spotted some frigate birds circling.  Around here, frigate birds follow the mahi.  The birds rely on the large predatory fish to chase the flying fish until they take to the air, where the frigate birds can pick they off on the wing.  (For some amazing video of this happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk7McNUjWgw)

Sure enough, as we came by the area the birds were cruising, we hooked and landed a pair of mahi.  They are always welcome to come for dinner!  (I have pictures… but our internet connection here is not quite up to the upload…)

We traveled on to a delightful anchorage at the very southern tip of Eleuthera.  Just as we were getting into the dinghy to explore the beach, a large official looking boat hove to offshore, and a large RIB detaches itself and heads in our direction.  As it comes closer, we see the RBDF (Royal Bahamas Defense Force) logo prominently display on the side, and a crew of half a dozen smartly uniformed, and armed, young men.

They have a few questions, and politely ask if they can have a look around our boat.  A brief check of our cruising permit and passports, a cursory look around the interior of the boat, and they are off.  They were friendly, professional, and polite.

Cat Island and Eleuthera are separated by 20 miles of deep ocean.  Most of it half a mile deep or more.  But… there is a narrow underwater “bridge” about 80 feet below the ocean that links these two islands.  With deep ocean water on both sides, steep drop-offs, and complex currents this is a place where fish large and small congregate, so of course it was the place for us to be today too… A short afternoon, and we had a king mackerel, and three different kinds of grouper in the boat.

We again saw roving schools of tuna tearing into bait, and managed to get a few strikes, but no hook-ups.

Tonight we are anchored out at Half Moon Bay off of the island of Little San Salvador.  It is a beautiful and quiet place most of the time, but a couple days a week the anchorage is crowded by several thousand other people, who all arrive on one boat…

Half Moon Bay on a bad day…

I think tomorrow might be another fishing day…

Time: 1320 local
Lat: 26° 20.1’ N
Log: 076° 47.3W

After several weeks bouncing around the Sea of Abaco, and enjoying all the many places we stopped there, we are off exploring again.

We are currently underway headed southeast toward Cat Island, one of the larger “Out Islands” of the Bahamas. It is a bit less settled, and a bit less visited, and the a reputation for great fishing.

Right now we are experiencing the very picture of “smooth sailing.” Deep reaching with reasonably steady 10 knots of wind, 4.5 knots of boat speed, and calm seas. We will be sailing overnight, and coming to an anchorage near our destination in the morning.

Weather here in the Bahamas is a mixture of Caribbean tropical and North American Temperate.  That means we get “normal” tradewinds blowing from a generally easterly direction, punctuated periodically by the tail ends of continental cold fronts.  In the 48 hours before a cold front approaches, the wind slowly clocks around from the east to the south west, usually increasing in slowly in strength.  Clouds thicken.  Rain starts suddenly, sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightening.  After a relatively short period of heavy rain, the wind switches suddenly to the north and blows hard for a few hours, then slowly tapers off as the rain fades away.  The wind continues it slow swing around the clock, and soon everything is back the way it started. These days it is all very predictable,  We know, for example, that a front will be passing through in the afternoon two days from now.

For boats anchored out here, this presents a challenge.  There are very few places here you can anchor which will give you protection from winds from all of those directions.  This means you have a couple of options. You can crowd into one of the few protected anchorages.  You can move the boat from one spot to another as the wind changes.  Or you can grab a slip in a marina.  For this frontal passage, we are going to wimp out and do the marina thing.  Once that passes, we are on the move again…

When the dinghy looks like this…

….you know we have been grocery shopping. We are loaded up again for a trip a bit away from civilization for a while.  Here are our plans for the next few weeks.

We are heading about 120 miles southeast to Cat Island, hopefully to enjoy some of the great fishing there.  We will then be back up a little further north to Eleurthera to pick up my friend Alicia in mid May.  Then the last week in may we are joined by Alicia’s friend Annie and–with a full crew–we head north. We are really looking forward to an offshore passage with a crew full of sailors!

Where we will touch land on the east coast is still a bit up in the air.  But our ultimate goal is to get further north than we did last year, at least as far as Nova Scotia before the advancing winter chases us south again.

If you haven’t had the chance, go back to our previous post: Eat Snail  I have updated it with some fun photographs now that we are connected again…

Grand Cay

Now THAT”S waterfront property!

The Grand Cay waterfront.

We have hooked WHAT?

Last night, we had settled in at a comfortable anchorage near Grand Cay in the Abacos.  Shallow water (8 feet), mostly clear sand bottom, breezy (15 to 18 knots) but not anything out of the ordinary.  The last thing we expected was a problem with the anchor .

As part of our normal bedtime routine, I set up the anchor alarm program on my phone.  A few minutes later, the alarm is sounding. Sure enough, we are dragging downwind.  Slowly, but definitely.  In the pitch black, before the moon rise, we get the anchor up and motor back to where we want to be.  Again we drop the anchor.  This time with a LOT of chain out.  At first, it looks good, but a gust of wind, and off we go again.  This is really strange.  I am beginning to have fantasies of replacing this anchor, forgetting that it has held us 199 times out of 200.

One more time, up the anchor comes.  After it clears the water, Karen gets a good look at it with the flashlight.  Ah-Ha!  Stuck on the point of the anchor is… an outboard motor! She manages to get the debris free, and this time the anchor sets down into the bottom like it was bolted down.

Now THAT’S a Wreck!

Off one of the tiny islands surrounding Grand Cay is a huge pile of metal.  From a distance it is not at all clear what it is, but close up, we could see it was the remains of a work barge.  The three tall pilings could be driven down into the bottom to lift the barge out of the water and provide a stable work platform for… whatever.  We haven’t had a chance yet to get the scoop from one of the locals, but a good guess is it was parked there

to ride out a hurricane…  which it didn’t.

An irony… googling the name of the barge–Jim Gibson–turns up a famous English photographer from the Cornish coast who specialized in… yep… shipwrecks.

It has been some time since we have been so far off the grid I needed to post using the Satphone, but here we are!

As we approached Great Sale Cay yesterday at about 3 in the afternoon, the anchorage was empty. It is a well protected anchorage with good holding in deep sand, beautiful clear water, surrounded by a fairly large, yet uninhabited, island. We were approaching from the southeast. Meanwhile, from the west, an invading armada motored ever closer… By 6PM, there were almost 20 boats, mostly motorboats and catamarans, packed in.

It turns out this is frequently the first stop for boats coming into the Bahamas from Florida. Judging by the chatter on the radio many of the boats that arrived were traveling together, and had all likely been waiting for some time for calm weather to make the 50 mile crossing. By 9AM the next morning, they are ALL gone–on a beeline to the bars and social entertainments of Marsh Harbour. One boat pulled his anchor in the pitch dark at 4AM! Really?

It is not fair to expect everybody to cruise the same way, but this is such a beautiful spot, the weather is perfect, and there is so much to see and explore, that to blast through like it was room in a Motel 6 seems to very much miss the point of coming to the Abacos in the first place. Oh well… if we understood people we probably wouldn’t be out here enjoying ourselves far away from civilization on a boat.

This morning we took advantage of the calm conditions. We dropped our mainsail and re- repaired (correctly this time!) our mainsail leech line. The weather is as warm and steamy as anything we have seen since last summer. In fact it is warm enough we are hoping the shower we can see in the distance is coming this way!

Right now we are trying to decide if this afternoon’s excursion will be snorkeling at the blue hole or exploring on shore… Decisions, decisions.