Our trip from Charleston, SC north to Hampton, VA was uneventful. A spot or two of heavy rain, but mostly we managed to dodge any significant storms. Winds were light, and we did motor a good bit to keep on our schedule. Schedule? What is this “schedule” thing?
Well, now that we have arrived here in Virginia, we hop on an airplane tonight and fly right back south to Fort Lauderdale where we will pick up a Hylas 54 and deliver her, with her new owners, right back here where Harmonie is staying at Bluewater Yachting Center in Hampton.
In another case of “it’s a small world” the new owner of the Hylas is a former student of mine from when I was teaching sailing full time back in California.
We did get a chance to pause during our trip up here and do some fishing. It’s always fun when I stop the boat out in the middle of the (apparently) featureless ocean, and say there are fish HERE. And then very satisfying when I drop my lure down and hook my first fish before it hits the bottom.
In this case the victim was a Lesser Amberjack. As a family, the Jacks are really tough fighting fish, and the Amberjacks are the toughest of the tough. Pound for pound these guys will tow any other fish backwards around the ocean all day and not break a sweat. This rather modest sized one took me almost 40 minutes to bring up to the side of the boat.
Unfortunately for us, we don’t find Amberjacks to be especially good table food, so this guy was sent back to the 300 foot deep wreck where he lived. I hooked several more Jacks of various species before we got moving again.
The approach to the mouth of the Chesapeake is always an interesting challenge. Up and down the bay there are large ports so the amount of commercial shipping is significant and continuous. At to that the largest US Navel Base on the East Coast in Norfolk, and it takes a lot of attention to a lot of things to stay safe and out of everybody’s way.
We have been enjoying Charleston over the past few weeks, and are getting ready to continue onward.
We have been staying on the MegaDock at the Charleston City Marina surrounded by boats mostly far bigger than Harmonie.
Harmonie in the shadow of the 165 foot motor yacht, Lady Elaine. Our suncover makes a huge difference in the load on the air conditioners in the summer heat.
We had a very unusual pair of failures of equipment on our trip up here, unfortunately both in systems we consider important to our safety underway.
The first indication of an issue was the dramatically reduced performance of our AIS system. This system alerts us to large ships in our vicinity, and lets them know that we are here as well. Normally we would see a large ship appear on our screen at distances of between 30 and 50 miles. Suddenly, they are showing up no further than 4 or 5 miles away. A bit of troubleshooting confirms that the radio is just not getting a proper signal. Any time you have this issue on a boat Suspect Number One is always the cable to the antenna and its connections. In our case a trip to the top of the mizzen mast confirms that the antenna and its connections need to be replaced. We have received the new cabling for the installation, and are anxiously awaiting the delivery of the new antenna. We will have this system repaired before we are back out in the ocean.
The next issue was the sudden failure of our radar, which suddenly lost communications with the display. Our experience with technical support from B&G was very much a mixed bag. The technician who helped troubleshoot the system was great. Patient, helpful, and knowledgable. Unfortunately, the phone waits to actually get in touch with someone are insanely long. Literally all day. A call placed at 10AM was finally picked up from continuous hold at 4:30PM. Even though the unit is marginally older than the official policy allows, they agreed to replace it at a steeply discounted price with a newer unit. We are not likely to get this in hand before we move on.
It was a bit disconcerting to lose both of these systems at almost the same time. You realize how much we have come to depend on these technologies to keep us safe. When I first started ocean sailing, I had neither radar nor AIS. I survived, although the level of stress involved with figuring out manually if that distant set of lights on a large cargo ship is on a collision course is something I do NOT miss!
Things To Do in Charleston
You can walk for hours in Charleston and never once be out of sight of a beautiful home. The architecture, both historic and modern, is amazing.
A mixed seafood platter at Pearlz.
In addition to its beautiful homes, this is a city with a very serious food fetish. Every restaurant seems better than the last. While you can find outrageously expensive food if you look for it, in general the food is very reasonable for the quality. One of our favorites is an oyster bar downtown called “Pearlz”. The chef is creative and talented. Everything we have had there has been over the top special.
Another recently discovered favorite is “60 Bull”. A small sandwich and dinner shop in a quiet residential neighborhood far from the tourist bustle. The shrimp and grits are just to die for, and I don’t even much care for grits!
We also had a chance to visit the Sistine Chapel. Or maybe the Sistine Chapel came to us? Are you now hopelessly confused?
Well… there is a traveling museum exhibit that just opened in Charleston, and will be here for the next 12 months. It is life-size high resolution photographs of Michelangelo’s frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. You can see these amazing works of art “up close and personnel” like nobody standing on the floor of the church itself can ever hope to. The photos are amazing. In many places you can see the scratches that Michelangelo made in the wet plaster over 500 years ago as the “rough sketch” that guided his paintbrush.
The exhibit lets you examine the master’s work in a way very few people have in the last 500 years.Here is one of the images where you can clearly see the painter’s initial scratch-sketch in the plaster.
Even if you have seen the actual Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, this exhibit is 100% worth a visit. Definitely, highly recommended.
Our Route From Here
If the weather cooperates, we will be headed out of here next week, with a destination of Annapolis. Ironically, as soon as we touch down there, we will be jumping on an airplane to Florida to pick up a delivery and head right back up to the Chesapeake. The boat we’ll be delivering is a Hylas 54, and the new owner is a former student of mine from back when I was teaching sailing in Berkeley, California. In the eight years or so I taught sailing I probably had over 2000 students, so I guess it is not surprising that they keep popping up on sailboats all over!
We left Brunswick on time to catch the ebb tide out of the harbor. As with most places we visit, we are both happy to be moving on, and sad to leave.
The view of Brunswick over our stern as we head out toward the ocean.
Our plan was to take a longer route to Charleston so we could do some fishing in the deeper water offshore. After visiting the local grocery store and seeing frozen tuna steaks at nearly $30 a pound, Karen had “requested” that I deliver a tuna for our freezer. One of our favorite dishes is fresh tuna poke, which is doubly good in hot summer weather. I feel there are a lot of fish I can deliver “on order”. Mahi-mahi, grouper, tilefish, snapper. But while tuna is a regular catch on Harmonie, it is a bit hard to predict when we will find them. I promised to do my best…
We did have a successful fishing trip. A king mackerel, a false albacore, two barracuda, a small mahi-mahi, and… a blackfin tuna! Blackfin are not large tuna, a REALLY big one is 30 lbs. But they have been a stable on Harmonie’s sushi menu because they are quite common in the waters we sail in. We can take a 10 lb. tuna like this and convert it into 6 lbs. of high-quality sushi. The fish are landed, and bled immediately, then cleaned and butchered quickly. Usually in the freezer within an hour or so of swimming, they come to our table as good as the best on the market.
And a few hours later, there are the preparations for a perfect tuna poke dinner laid out in Harmonie‘s galley, with a lot more bedded down in the freezer.
Poke is a dish from Hawaii, although it is frequently thought of as Japanese. In its most basic form it is fresh, raw fish, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and garlic. Beyond that, the chef’s imagination is the limit. In the US it is almost always seen with tuna as the fish. In Hawaii, it is made with a wide variety of fish, and each family has their own variation on the theme. Served over rice, our recipe is traditional, simple and delicious.
Our trip was pretty much as predicted. We motored for the first 20 hours or so in very light headwinds, and once we turned toward Charleston Harbor entrance, the wind picked up a bit and clocked around to the east, and we sailed most of the way back in to shore. Not fast, with winds ranging from 7 to 10 knots, but comfortable and easy.
We entered the harbor just before 6AM and docked at the City Marina by 7AM. We managed to keep our eyes open until the office opened at 8 to complete the paperwork before settling down to catch up on sleep.
We have been on radio silence on our blog not because we are hiding, but because we have been busy with less than exciting things.
Tied to the marina in Brunswick Georgia, we have had one or two projects on Harmonie, but most of the time here has been spent on OPB. (Other People’s Boats). We have helped install new engine mounts in one boat, and designed and helped replaced almost all of the AC electrical system in another boat. Plus a long list of miscellaneous projects. All that work has help put a little cash back into the cruising kitty, so now it is time to go cruising again!
On board Harmonie, we did a major rebuild of our bow thruster electrical and mechanical operation. With this modification, we should be ready to be thrusting our bow from side to side for another 25 years! You can read all about it in gory deatil here: Rebuilding the Amel Bow Thruster
Shrtly after we leave the marina on Thursday morning, we’ll be passing under a beautiful local landmark, the Sydney Lanier Bridge on US Highway 17 . We’ll be making our way north toward Charleston, SC. A relatively quick 24 hour passage if taken straight through, we’ll be making a bit of a detour it the weather allows. We’ll be headed for deeper water about 60 miles offshore hunting for tilefish, grouper and tuna.
The detour will probably add about 24 hours to our trip, and hopefully some protein to our freezer.
Once we get to Charleston, we hope to spend a little time there exploring a beautiful and vibrant city we have always enjoyed, and somehow never got to spend as much time there as it seemed to deserve.
Once done in Charleston, we will most likely be jumping much further north, probably to some place in southern New England. Newport? Block Island? Descisions…
We are a week into our stay in Brunswick, GA. It’s a convenient marina, well kept and well run. And it has happy hour three nights a week with free beer.
We are here because within a few weeks, there will be FIVE Amels parked here (counting Harmonie) and I have work planned on most of them.
The day of our arrival here was a bit more excitement than planned, as a fire raged through a pine tar chemical plant on the other side of town. Fortunetly, no body was hurt, although the dense black smoke rolled over town most of the day.
We have the occasional manatee frolicking in the harbor, and a very wide variety of birds. There are extensive salt marshes, so you have to be aware that early evening on light wind days can result in an invasion of various bloodsucking bugs.
We expect to be here until the work is done, or June 15, which ever comes first. This week Bill is off for a quick delivery of an Amel 54 from Florida to Virginia. Then, we hope to have Harmonie’s bow thruster motor back from the shop, and getting our wood cabin sole refinished.
Our spring project list has swollen, and swallowed us! But not to worry, the end is almost in sight. Harmonie is currently on the hard near Daytona, Florida at a small yard that has been doing good work for us.
Harmonie very much out of her element!
Even though the work list has been really long, the whole project list has been way easier than it could otherwise have been. Our friends Aras and Vickers have been beyond generous with hospitality at their home. The difference between living on the boat up a ladder and at a comfortable home is infinite. Thank you guys!
Here is our project list:
Renew bottom paint
Replace seals on prop shaft and change drive system oil.
New zincs on rudder and prop
New anti foul coating on prop.
Regrease prop
Raise water line
Paint new boot strip
Service bow thruster lower unit, change oil and seals
New lead-in wires for bow thruster motor.
Install new saloon air conditioner.
Rebuilt aft head holding tank with new seacocks and tank.
Remove abandoned keel cooler in galley, replace with seacock and galley sink drain.
Remove leaking injection pump from Volvo and send off to have rebuilt.
Repair torn genoa sail.
Install new navigation computer display.
Replace mizzen and mizzen staysail halyards.
Rebuild starboard side sheet winch, replace broken bearing retaining clip.
Rigging survey for insurance.
I probably forgot at least a few things from that list… In addition to all that we got a long list of doctor visits, shopping and general logistical stuff complete.
As soon as we get back in the water here, we are off north towards Brunswick, Georgia where I have some clients for upgrades and repairs to their boats. All that and a delivery from Florida to Virginia. Then we get to play again!
We have been out and off-grid for a while exploring the Plana Cays, where we saw only two or three boats in two weeks. Now we are back in Georgetown and there are well over 300 boats in the anchorage.
East and West Plana Cay are relatively remote as Bahamian islands go, with only two inhabited islands further east or south. Neither of the Plana Cays are currently inhabited, although there are ruins of past settlements on West Plana. There is no evidence for either permanent or temporary human occupation on East Plana.
It has been almost exactly four years since we were last at the Plana Cays, and we have been looking forward to coming back ever since. Unlike sometimes happens, this long anticipated return to a former haunt has not disappointed.
It is hard to know where to start with these islands. Beaches are amazing, beautiful and untracked by human footprints. If there were resorts here, these beaches would be on anybody’s top ten list.
Highlights of our visit are the shelling, the fishing, the turtle watching, the dark skies at night, the quiet. It is really a special place.
Even on an uninhabited island you can’t avoid evidence of humans. I think a lot of people would be surprised that the debris on the beach is NOT composed of generic household trash. Rather the vast majority of it is lost commercial fishing gear. Nets, floats, lines, even boats!
Nets, floats, and lines make up the vast majority of the flotsam washed up on these remote beaches.The wreck of the fishing vessel Carolina on West Plana is only about 4 or 5 years old, and has been colonized by TWO osprey nests. I am really surprised to see them this close together.An interesting, but not rare, find on the beach here are these small spiral shells. They are an internal “shell” of the rarely seen, very deep water, Rams Horn Squid.A pretty awesome picture of Karen watching an osprey (aka, “fish hawk”) catching his lunch.
We had really hoped to get a picture of a hutia, a nocturnal guinea pig like rodent, the only mammal native to the Bahamas. We set up a camera trap and baited it with veggies, but ended up with nothing. Maybe next time!
But… all great things come to an end. We are struggling with a fuel leak in our engine, which limits our motoring. But we do have a SAILboat, so we will have to sail most all the way. We will be underway from Georgetown in the next 24 hours or so with a destination of Daytona, Florida. It should be 3 or 4 days to get there. The weather is “active” so we’ll need to keep a careful eye on it.
450 miles southeast of Miami, just 45 miles from the eastern-most tip of Cuba is the most southern of the islands of the Bahamas, Great Inagua. It is the place we checked in first with Customs and Immigration to get our Bahamian cruising permit for this season. Although it is one of the larger islands in the Bahamas in terms of land area, it is quite sparsely populated with just 900 people spread across almost 650 square miles.
It is well off the normal tourist path, no cruise ships stop here. There are a few rental properties and guest houses, but nothing that would rise to the title of “resort.” There is an airport with two scheduled flights a week to Nausau. Most of the traffic at the airport is from the US Coast Guard which maintains a joint base here with the Royal Bahamian Defense Force. Being so close to Hati, Cuba, and a major shipping route from South America drug and people smuggling is an unfortunate constant in the local waters. Like all of the “out-islands” in the Bahamas we have visited, the local people are endlessly friendly and helpful.
The basic ecology is desert scrub. No real trees other than mangroves except for some scattered casuarina trees, known locally as “Australian pines.”
What’s This??? SNOW???
No, not snow. It’s the biggest (only) industry on the island: Salt.
The flat land, warm temperatures, low rainfall, and breezy weather make ideal conditions for the rapid evaporation of seawater, and the production of large quantities of salt. Large quantities as in more than 2,000 TONS a day, a Million tons a year. Morton Salt has been producing salt here for about 75 years, and there were previous large scale operations extending back almost 100 years, and small scale operations since 1600.
The basic process is pretty simple. Water is pumped from the ocean into a large shallow “pan” where sun and wind begin to evaporate the water. Once it gets more concentrated, it is moved to a second pan where more of the water evaporates. Just before it gets so concentrated that crystals begin to form, it is moved to the final stage, where salt crystals begin to drop out of the water. Once a sufficient amount of salt is deposited, the remaining brine is drained off, the salt is plowed into windrows, and “harvested.” The whole process is an odd combination of mining and farming.
Raw salt right off the crystallizer pan.Harvesting freshly crystallized salt.
The concentrated brines of the salt ponds are full of pink algea, and tiny brine shrimp. The brine shrimp make good food for a large number of birds, including the national bird of the Bahamas:
The West Indian Flamingo. Unfortunately, on the day of our tour the birds were hunkered down in strong winds, and we couldn’t get very close.
The diet rich in brine shrimp makes these some of the pinkest flamingos anywhere. Depending on who’s count you chose to believe there are between 50,000 and 80,000 of these goofy looking birds that nest on the island. They nest on the ground on a few isolated islands in the middle of the salt lakes to avoid the wild pigs that roam the island. In addition to the pigs, there are wild horses, cattle, and donkeys. The wild pigs are hunted and prized as food.
The white morph of the Reddish egret is common here.The Kestrels here are common birds of prey, and are quite different in color pattern to their mainland cousins.
Other common birds here are a white-headed parrot, burrowing owls, and an endemic species of hummingbird.
Next Stops
We’ll be heading out of here this evening heading to the uninhabited Plana Keys for some heavy duty beachcombing and fishing. We have been there before, and always enjoyed it as a stop. The weather looks great both for the passage and forecastable future.
Our trip there will be about 14 hours, so our plan is to do it overnight. That way we can arrive in the light of of the day which will help in picking our way through coral heads that are widely scattered in the anchorage.
We took a short pause on our way to the Bahamas in La Paraguera, Puerto Rico because we needed a quick provisioning stop, and we knew the grocery store there would have what we wanted. The entry is a bit convoluted, but easy to follow on the chart. The harbor is well protected from waves, and has no roll or surge.
It’s a very “boaty” town. On a weekend afternoon it seems everybody is on a boat out on one of the little islands. For all that, the town hasn’t thought of visiting cruising boats at all. The shoreline is totally packed with private docks, houses on pilings, and boat-based tourist businesses, but it has never had a dinghy dock. Last time we were here the dinghy landing was a tiny muddy gap in the mangroves, right off the main square. This has now been completely blocked by hurricane wrecked boats.
We cruised back and forth trying to locate any tiny spot that had physical access, and wasn’t obviously private. A couple queries didn’t turn up any options. Finally, we asked at one of the tour boat docks if we could tie up for an hour, “Sure, no problem, right here. Just be back before 9:00PM when we close the gate.” Success!
A successful grocery run, a dinner ashore of delicious dorado tacos, and the next morning we were off, headed west toward the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Next stop: Great Inagua in the Bahamas.
The Mona Passage has a bad reputation among sailboats transiting this area. Even in good steady trade winds, the surrounding land can leave the winds in the passage light and shifty. Along with fast, unpredictable currents. And very lumpy waves. Add to that when the unstable air coming off the mountains in Puerto Rico hits the warm water and for much of the year it spawns a continuous set of afternoon and evening thunderstorms.
We were just flying around the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico, with 20 knots of wind behind us and a course I plotted as far from land as possible to stay in clear wind. I was feeling very proud of myself, having cheated the wind demons of Mona through skill and good planning.
Ha!
Just as we settled in for a fast and furious passage, the wind changed: From 20 knots behind us, in less than a minute it shifted to 4 knots right on the nose. We are going nowhere. In the rough water without wind in the sails, the boat is rolling—a lot! We try waiting and working with what we have, but progress goes from fast to zero. We finally surrender and fire up the Volvo. We end up motoring all the across to the other side where we pick up the trades again on the north side.
Right now sailing downwind along the north coast of the Dominican Republic in ideal conditions. Relaxing, smooth. 10 knots of wind, calm seas, we are making steady, comfortable progress if not setting speed records. We expect to lose wind again for a bit in 24 hours or so as the very southern end of a cold front swings by. We should be anchored off Mattewtown, Great Inagua in a little over 48 hours.
Isla Caja de Muertos, literally “Box of the Dead Island” or Coffin Island is located about midway along the southern coast of Puerto Rico. We were last here in 2017, and the intervening years have not been kind. Ironical, “Coffin Island” is now a Ghost Town.
When we were last here it was a flourishing regional park, popular for its hiking trails and beaches with weekend day visitors who came out in large numbers by ferry from Ponce.
Since then, the park infrastructure was significantly damaged in the two hurricanes that impacted this area. Money to repair was actually allocated by the US Federal government, but the grant expired before the local authorities could initiate repairs. It’s a major loss of a recreational opportunity for the local population.
The ferry no longer comes here, and no caretakers remain. Although the main buildings are mainly intact, the outbuildings and supporting infrastructure were mostly destroyed.
Without regular care, the paths up the hill to the old lighthouse are now essentially impassable to the casual hiker, overgrown with cactus and thorn bushes. The island is slowly walling itself off from people.
On the plus side, the anchorage is still beautiful, the fish still swim, and the turtles still nest on the beaches.
fetchinketch 