Trailer Tri Adventures

From Eleuthera to Chub Cay….here are a few more pics from this lovely part of the World.

Wow …. it’s already over a year since our Bahamian rescue mission!! I must sincerely apologize if you have been waiting for Part 4 of the Rest of our Adventure. So much has happened in the interim since I last wrote on our blog.  I guess I’ll just say that sometimes life just gets in the way.  But enough shilly shallying, let’s go back to the Bahamas!

Rose Island to the Berry Islands –  about 40 nautical miles

Our goal after leaving Rose Island was Chub Cay in The Berry Islands group which lie east of Bimini and west of New Providence Island where Nassau is located. As we reached along, we reached speeds of about 8 -10 knots on average.  The water colour turned a deep blue-violet, a sure sign of very deep water.  At one point, our chart indicated 3000 metres of depth! Rain had been predicted in the morning but though it was overcast for a time, the sky stayed dry.  Soon the sun came out and a gentle swell, along with brisk north-east winds, propelled us westward along on a steady tack to the Berrys.

Here is a short clip of our sail that day.

We had a lovely, breezy sail toward Chub Cay until the winds came around later in the day to “on the nose”.  We decided to cut our passage short and headed into Whale Cay instead.  Though not as far west as we had hoped, we wanted to get into the anchorage while the sun was high enough to see the shallows in the water.  We didn’t need any more holes in the hull!

We saw that an anchorage was marked on the chart between the southern tip of Whale Cay and Bird Cay just below Cat Cay (remember, that “cay” is pronounced “key”). The depths were pretty shallow beyond the marked anchorage but we knew we could ride in a meter of water even with the tides.  But we had to have a careful look at the bottom.  Was it rocky, weedy, sandy?  We doused the sails and motored around trying to find the best spot out of the west wind.  Charts are good but one always has to use visual navigation where it can be shallow.  The sand bars can move all the time and dark sea grass can be mistaken for rock or coral sometimes! The islands in the Bahamas are all pretty low so even a chunk of mast sticking up 45′ into the wind can act as a sail! So windage is a consideration as well. Paul and I eventually jumped into the dinghy to scout out a site.  Finally we decided on a spot just east of Bird Cay over a smooth patch of sand.

As Happy Hour rolled by, we enjoyed a cocktail in the cockpit and gazed at our first glimpse of damage from Hurricane Matthew which had struck the western Bahamas in October of 2016.  On Bird Cay we could see trees that had been thrown over or snapped off by the strong winds.  Parts of the ground cover looked as though it had been rolled up and pushed back.  Debris lined the shore here and there. Though this is a pretty barren island, it was sad nonetheless.

The next day, we sailed “around the corner” to Chub Cay.  Chub is a popular fishing resort which according to our cruising guides had a restaurant, a laundromat, fuel, ice, etc.  Everything a cruiser could need.  And boy did we need ice!  As I recall, we had tried to get ice at Palm Cay marina on New Providence Island.  But the small store was closed (at 3:30! we are so spoiled in our culture) and all we could buy was some fresh water.  We still had some frozen meat in our cooler that we had brought from Ft. Lauderdale on February 6 and had not yet used on our adventures! Though at this point, I’m not sure frozen was the correct term.

As we approached Chub Cay, we began to see damaged villas at the resort and piles of housing debris on the land.  There were odd empty spaces where it seemed a villa may have been, or perhaps a stand of palm trees.  Things looked kind of bleak.  Then we sailed near to the entrance of the marina but it was chained off with large red floats holding up the chain as a barrier.  Uh oh!  Now what? I turned on my cell hoping for a signal.  Sure enough, Google let us know that Chub Cay marina was closed until further notice.  Dang.

I wrote about our tour of poor devastated Chub Cay in my February 19, 2017 post but I want to give another shout out to the local worker Dan who managed to scrounge us up 10 pounds of Ice…for free!  We obviously gave him a little something for his efforts and proceeded to have a lovely barbequed turkey in a bag meal later that night. If you’d like to see what Chub Cay looks like now, I believe they re-opened this past summer.  Here is a link to their website http://www.chubcayresortandmarina.com/

Our crossing to Bimini to the west began at dawn.  It was a beautiful sunrise.  We basically sailed across the shallow Bahama Bank for 80 nautical miles on one tack.  It was an absolutely gorgeous sailing day.  We hit our top speed of 14 knots and the guys were very happy with that.  I wrote about this trip in some detail on the “Yes it can be done” post of February 21, 2017.  What I didn’t mention was that many cruisers don’t make this jump in one day.  Because a lot of cruising sailboats only sail at 4-6 knots on average, this is not a day trip, especially for those who don’t like to sail at night.  Some cruisers will opt to anchor for the night on the Bank just out of any shipping channels. As our average speed that day was about 8-10 knots, we were pretty confident we could reach Bimini during daylight.  Which we did. It took us around 10 or 11 hours to reach Bimini where we tied up to the dock at Weech’s Marina.

It turned out that the winds were to blow really hard from the East for the next several days. The big local fishing trawler was carefully turned into the wind at her dock and most of the cruisers who could leave did so as the east side of Bimini is pretty unprotected.   We moved to the very protected Bimini Sands Marina the next day as the wind was already starting to howl. We docked in the nick of time as pouring rain drenched the area.  We were grateful to be snug and secure as the marina is protected on almost 4 sides! We stayed there for a couple of days and enjoyed our time walking the island in the stiff winds and visiting the Shark Research Lab which is often featured on shark documentaries during Shark Week on TV!

Soon we’d try to make our way out and head westward to Florida….or so we thought.

Here are some pictures and video from that passage. Stay tuned to more details from our Adventures coming up in Part 5:  “Almost There or Not Sunk Yet!”

We loved our almost 2 days at SW Allan Cay in the northern Exuma island chain.  The shallow, mostly sandy anchorage was small but protected and lovely with interesting low-lying rock formations, a tiny sand beach, palm trees, quiet neighbours and of course, Iguanas!  This stay allowed us to check off some items on the big “To Do” list such as:  effect sail repairs (by “we” I actually mean Paul….is there anything the man can’t do?), make sure the head was in top shape and working (it was – great work Jim!) and have a good look at the new damage to the hull.

Each day we also learned how 3 of us could live on a relatively small boat.  The F-31 is just about 31′ long and is 22′ wide when unfolded.  This gives the sailor a lot of deck space (ie. more room to store our crap).  But because this is a trailerable sailboat where the pontoons fold into the main hull, there is not a lot of interior space.  I believe the whole rig is around 8′ 6″ wide when folded so it can go on a trailer and legally travel on roads in North America, etc.  The interior has standing head room of about 6′ 2″.  Jim is about 6′ 0″ so this works.  Paul on the other hand, is 6′ 4″.  Poor fella.  Luckily, there is a sliding hatch above the companionway steps where he could stand up straight even in the rain as the boat came equipped with a dodger – a cover over this hatch to help keep the companionway dry in the rain.

Covers over the cockpit such as the dodger and the bimini over the aft (or rear) part of the cockpit, help to provide additional shade and protection from the elements.  Some cruisers fully enclose the cockpit which creates almost an entire extra room.  Our 22′ trimaran “Raise a Little Hull” has a bimini and in the evening, we can cover the cockpit with a patio umbrella screen to keep the mosquitoes out.  On this trip, we didn’t use a cockpit screen.  We did bring along very fine mesh screens for the front hatch and the companionway which could keep out both mosquitoes and no-seeums (tiny biting midges called sand flies in the Bahamas).  Regular screening won’t keep out no-seeums by the way.  You have to use a fabric like bridal veil netting if you are going to make your own screens.

Back at our rental house in Rock Sound, we had made the mistake of leaving one of the sets of French Doors open with just some loose mosquito netting across it one evening, and we eaten up by no-seeums.  They come at dusk and leave when it’s fully dark (or so I’m told, as I try not to be out at dark with those little buggers around).  The locals all put on long cotton/denim pants and long-sleeved cotton shirts and still cover themselves in Deet at twilight.  Deet is the only thing that I’ve found that works 100%.  I have a homemade spray for mosquitoes and midges but it’s not 100% effective.  It’s good for a trail walk during the day, but not for keeping swarms of them off of you at night.  The no-seeums can literally leave you scratching for months!  Jim has experienced that and I didn’t want him or any of us to face that torment so we were screened up as darkness fell.  I don’t know whether it was because it was winter, but we didn’t feel that there were many mosquitoes on our trip…thank goodness.

The winds died down to a reasonable speed for sailing and the marine forecast was fine…sunny and warm with a moderate breeze and small following waves.  It was time to leave SW Allan Cay.  Looking at the chart, we decided to head north on a broad reach toward Nassau.  A cruise we had met in Rock Sound told us about a great anchorage on the south side of Rose Island just east of New Providence Island where the city of Nassau is located.  I was excited to sail on the Exuma Bank.  I’ve heard a lot about how beautiful it is when sailing along this shallow patch of land on the leeward side of the Exuma chain.  On the charts, the water we were to sail across showed depths of 3-5 metres.  I will put a pictures of the Banks below. The popular sailing show “Distant Shores” with Sheryl and Paul Shard has a great clip on YouTube about sailing in this area.  (Click Here to watch the video)

Before we hauled anchor, we dinghied ashore in the cool of the morning to see if we could find any of the endangered rock iguanas we heard were in the Allan Cays.  Sure enough we saw tracks and burrows but none of the famous lizards! We hiked across the tiny cay to the south side which faces Highborne Cay.  These low, rather desolate islands are mostly limestone with some palms and scrub trees.  It’s a dry-looking landscape.  Perfect for lizards one would think.

There!  On the beach!  The guys spotted a small specimen.  It was about 18′ long.  We took some pictures and videos.  It didn’t seem too worried about us.  We went back to the beach where the dinghy was as the sun began to warm the rocks around us.  Suddenly we heard rustling in the scrub…all around us!!! We realized that we were surrounded by several of these rare critters!  The biggest that I saw was about 2′ long.  They do have a reddish chest and long claws.  They are also very bold.  Most came eagerly toward us.  I think they were looking for handouts.  Maybe visitors feed them? Tsk tsk.  I hate to imagine that.  Same with the poor pigs at Big Majors.  We heard later on that several of the friendly pigs died because some idiot tourist fed them rum!! Can you imagine?  I have stronger words to describe that kind of sub-human but I won’t use them here.  I was so mad.

I’m glad these iguanas have a relatively safe place in which to live.  They can swim to the other nearby cays I’m sure so that helps. It was great to see them but once again, time was moving on and so should we.

Our passage to Rose Island looked to be about 30 nautical miles.  If we could sail at 6 knots, that would be about 5 hours.

It was a beautiful day and the shallow waters of the Exuma Bank were ridiculously beautiful.  A turquoise blue that I’m not even sure I could paint…and I’m an Art Teacher!  Beside that, how can a painting capture the transparent beauty of that water.  Am I voicing an artistic sacrilege?  Probably.  I’ll take that chance (but I know that I will try to paint that water!!).  We still weren’t used to sailing in these shallows so I was a bit concerned about how deep the coral heads were that we could see.  Paul would probe the depth now and then with our long paddleboard paddle but couldn’t touch one so on we sailed.

The day was really pleasant.  The sun was shining and the crew were in great spirits.  Paul was delighted when we hit speeds such as 10 knots!  His sail repair was great but still largely untested as we were reaching along with the screecher, our big foresail instead of the jib. The guys were often sailing with the “hot stick” or tiller extension.  This allowed the helmsperson to sit out on the beams or the netting for a better view of the telltales on the sails (ribbons or yarn attached to the sails which indicate that your sails are trimmed properly for the wind, thus allowing for maximum speed)

By this date, we were 5 days into our trip from Rock Sound.  We had filled up the freshwater tank before leaving but it was already getting a bit low.  We hadn’t yet had time to try the watermaker aboard, which is a desalinator.  It had been sitting a long time without having been properly “pickled”.  This means that it had not been shut down properly to preserve the membrane (filter) while not in use.  We weren’t sure if the system worked and we didn’t want to take a chance that it would.  So we decided to detour to New Providence Island to get some water and a few supplies at Palm Cay Marina on the south-east side of the island.  Our guidebook said that the marina had a little store for basic provisioning so we hoped to stock up on essentials:  water, beer, maybe some meat and or salad, etc.!  But no, the little store was closed when we arrived around 4:00 ish.  I think the gal in the office said it closes at 3:00!

The water was available from a tap up on the quite high dock.  We had brought a flexible hose and could easily reach the tank access with it.  Once the hose was connected I turned on the tap….water spewed everywhere!  I guess some of the water went down the hose as Jim gave me the thumbs up. I think we were quoted 25¢/ gallon…our tank is  about 35 gallons.  I could literally see our money going overboard.  Sheesh!  The dock helper didn’t seem too concerned.  Paul helpfully suggested that they could use a new washer. Again, the young man didn’t seem too worried….Island style Mon.

Anyhew, at least we had freshwater.  We headed across another 5 nautical miles to the Rose Island anchorage. Being a shallow draft boat, we could wiggle our way past other anchored boats farther into shallower water, keeping an eye on the depth in case the tide went out.  It was a lovely sandy anchorage with several homes set up on the hill beside us and the lights of Nassau behind us to the west.  The boys barbequed and all was lovely.

None of us were really interested in seeing Nassau on this trip as we really needed to keep moving so the next day we set off to sail to the Berry Islands, the last group of islands before Bimini.  This passage was to be about 40 nautical miles.  The winds were a little stiff but it was sunny and the waves were short and spaced fairly far apart.  In short, it was a lovely day for a sail.

One thing we noticed was when the shallow aquamarine banks waters darkened to the indigo blue of much deeper waters.  The colours of the water of the Bahamas are entertainment in themselves.  But not to be outdone, Paul practiced his kiteboarding moves on the netting as we reached along.  We averaged about 7 and reached 11 at one point as the winds increased quite a bit as the day went along.  13 knots or even more were speeds which the guys were trying to reach if conditions were right.  Did we? Nope, not on this leg. The videos of this passage are below.

Once we reached the Berry Islands, we decided to sail into a shallow anchorage between Whale Cay and Bird Cay to the west.  While it was good to get out of the winds, it was a tricky anchorage as it was 1-2 metres deep with some rocks here and there plus some swirly winds.  We finally found a patch of sandy bottom where we could drop the hook and feel comfortable out of the winds.  After we were settled, we realized that we were seeing a lot of hurricane damage ashore.  The trees looked ragged with quite a few being wind-thrown (the whole tree is pushed over exposing the root system) and wind-blown where they are snapped off at the trunk.  Back in October, Hurricane Matthew slammed through the western Bahamas and the Berry islands were right in his path.  We were to see much more damage on our trip but that will have to wait for Part 4 of the Rest of the Story:  “Bimini here we come…and here we stay”