Nassau, Bahamas (25° 04.550N 77° 18.645W)…..

We’ve been here for six days waiting for our mail from our mail collectors-forwarders, Jim and Jane Caltrider in Longwood, FL. Seems the box arrived in two days, but was held at the main post office instead of where it was addressed. It was easy to find as it had a USPS tracking number.

Steve and the famous 79 year old Flo, namesake of Flo’s Conch Bar, Little Harbour, Berry Islands, Bahamas

Our trip from Little Harbour was a little more than we expected: from now on we’ll add a negative (bigger and from the wring direction) 25% to any forecast. The waves coming down the Northwest Providence Channel from the NE built up to 4 -5 feet with a period of 6 -7 seconds on the outgoing tide and the shallows as we exited Little Harbour Inlet. Blue-green water was crashing over the bows and rolling back over the salon roof back to the wind screens which we had luckily put up just in case. Once we were able to get the jib up we picked up speed to over 7 knots on our rhumb line of 154° True (T). As the depth sank to its eventual 6,000’ we settled down to the occasional large, breaking wave sweeping over the deck and winds gusting to 27 knots from the SE. The chart plotter was dead on and we motor-sailed to the entrance to Nassau Harbour at around 4:30 pm where we requested permission to enter. Permission was granted by Harbour Control and we motored east through the harbour past five cruise ships tied up at the Cruise Ship Pier, under the twin bridges to Paradise Island, and turned into Nassau Yacht Haven Marina for the night.

Bahamian racer: look at the guys on the hiking boards! Nassau Harbour looking NE over Kuhela

Wednesday dawned bright and sunny and we moved to our present position on a 20’ deep bank ½ north of Potter Cay just east of the last public marina. Steve of Semi Aquatic caught up with us and is anchored 30’ off our starboard side.

Manta at Atlantis Aquarium









On Sunday we took our collapsible bicycles (sold to us by Jack and Marion McGrath of the Barclay neighborhood group) ashore, pumped up the tires and rode (on the left, left, left…) over the bridges to Atlantis. What a spectacular complex: hotel, casino, shops, aquarium, marina, and beach facilities.
<On Sunday we took our collapsible bicycles (sold to us by Jack and Marion McGrath of the Barclay neighborhood group) ashore, pumped up the tires and rode (on the left, left, left…) over the bridges to Atlantis. What a spectacular complex: hotel, casino, shops, aquarium, marina, and beach facilities.

Front entrance to Atlantis

The marina was dug by a contractor, Shoreline Foundations, which I had the pleasure of bonding several years ago. Unfortunately this particular job was unbonded. Several Shahuli (spelling??) glass sculptures adorn the casino: incredible how he does his art! I hope the few attached pictures give some sense of the place.

Now that we found our mail we’ll be leaving in the morning if the weather holds up as predicted: NE winds 15 – 25 knots; seas 5 -7 feet. We’ll head for Norman’s Cay or Shrouds in the Exuma chain SE of here 35nm and 40 nm respectively.

Allens Cay (24° 44.954N 26° 50.277W)….

Would you believe I have on long pants, tee shirt, sweatshirt, foul weather jacket and hat to keep warm: its 68° with 12 – 24 knot NE winds and I can’t even guess what the wind chill factor is. Bahamas; Exumas; 24° N; February 17th! Anyway, a great sail here from Porgee Rocks just east of Nassau Harbour. Blue and turquoise seas were 1 – 3 feet from the north with a period of 10 secs. We got up to 8.4 knots and averaged 7.2 knots with one reef in for the 29 nm trip arriving at around 3 pm. The black coral heads surrounded by white sand scattered over Yellow Bank were easy to see even though they were well below our three foot draft. There are 27 boats of all types anchored here which makes it as little crowded. Allens Cay is famous for the last remaining Bahamian “prehistoric” iguanas which we’ll check out in the am. Ugly:

Allens iguana

Next stop was Shrouds Cay (24° 31.883N, 76° 47.798W) to meet some Colorado friends of Steve. Jim and Nancy Holland of Summer Breeze were there on their way back to Nassau to replace their macerator, a smelly job. Checked the rudders again for parallelism and they were fine. Moored first on a mooring ball, and then when forward and anchored in 8 feet of crystal clear water. We’d had an electrical problem which I traced to the main battery breaker after cleaning the battery leads and checking that each cell had the proper amount of water. We must have slipped into the tip of the Bermuda Triangle 'cause my battery clock also went on the fritz showing Pacific Time and 12:12 pm! We made it safely to Warderick Wells.

Little Harbour, Barry Islands, Bahamas….February 10, 2009

After a fine sail from Lake Sylvia (Ft. Lauderdale) where we replaced the starboard engine raw water pump which had sprung a leak, we anchored in 10 feet of crystal-clear, calm water just before sunset (red sky at night, even) at the northern edge of North Bimini Island (25° 46.2N, 79° 14.6W).

Using Google Earth one can put in the Lat/Lan coordinates

and see exactly where we are on our adventure.

No fish, but still a 10 – 12 knot breeze from the SE propelled us along at 5 – 6 knots for the best part of the day. Friday morning as the sun came up we steered a course towards Little Stirrup Cay (that’s Key, not Kaye) 74 nm east at the top of the Barry Island chain. The Barry Islands lie south of Grand Bahama Island approximately 56 nm from Port Lucaya. A front was coming down from Florida, so the 12 – 15 knot winds had switched around to the NE. As the squall line came at us late in the afternoon, we took down the sail and were socked in with driving rain. Keeping a weather eye on the chart plotter (couldn’t see anything over the side) we continued towards our way point and turn SSE to Great Harbour Cay marina (25° 44.85N, 77° 51.6W). It’s now pitch black and raining off and on. We’re in 5 feet of water looking with our search light for the two very skinny, short poles that mark the 4 nm long channel to the harbor entrance: a hard to starboard 100 ° turn thru an 80 foot wide canyon cut thru the cay’s western flank just before you run into a bluff. While all this was going on I lost the right lens to my glasses, so I’m driving the boat with one wet eye. Linda was crawling around on the deck looking in vain for it. She finally resurrected my other pair of glasses we’d put in the ditch bag. This is no way to cruise, but… Anyway we docked at around 10:30 pm without hitting anything and fell into our well deserved sack.

Sunday dawned bright, but cool, with winds from the NNE at around 12 knots: good sailing weather. So, off we go saying bye to Gabriel the Dock Master (oops, there I go again demoting him: the Marina Master) and head out the canyon and on to our southerly, twisting course through the shifting bottom sands on the west side of the islands. The waters here are very shallow – we bump several times and drag our rudders along for a good part of the trip as the tide rises – and we have to use VPR (Visual Piloting Rules) and discern the depth by the color of the bottom. Yup, it’s not easy, but doable. We made it around mostly under sail to Little Harbour Cay in about five hours. As we motored north in between Little Harbour Cay (25° 34.242N, 77° 43.213W) on the east and Lizard Cay and Cabbage Cay on the west we stuck to the Lizard/Cabbage side as we had done the last time we were here. No, no, the shifting sand had done their thing and bump, buuummmppp: hard aground 6 feet east of the “channel”. Nothing would pull us off, so we waited for the next high tide which floated us off in the wee hours of the morning. Waiting consisted of taking the dingy to Flo’s Conch Bar, watching the Super Bowl, drinking Kalik Beer, and munching on cheese and crackers: rough life of a cruiser.

The weather has deteriorated into front after front with 20 – 30 knot N - NE winds and cool (high 50’s and low 60’s) temperatures. However, tied to Chester’s (Flo’s son) mooring ball at $10/night and with our CQR (looks like a farmer’s plow) anchor out 90 feet to windward on 5/8 chain, we felt quite secure.

We’re here with two other, smaller cats and a trawler. Two other sail boats, a sloop and a ketch, are anchored south of Lizard Cay, apparently afraid to navigate the shallow channel. Boy are they rolling. Miow has a new first mate aboard from the last time we saw Dave as a single handed sailor down to a can of peaches. Semi Aquatic’s captain Steve is a friend of our Canadian friends aboard Caper: Bill and Jose Andersen. We hope to catch up with Bill and Jose somewhere in the Exuma Islands in the next few weeks, weather fronts and seas permitting.