Norman's Cay to Nassau

I had dinner on Moonshadow last night, then I went to my rocky boat on the Sandy Point anchorage at Norman's... For those who may not know, Norman's Cay (or at least part of it) used to belong to Carlos Lehder, and it's airstrip was used to bring in tons of you-know-what...
You can read about it here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Lehder

Anyway, I woke up before sunrise, cooked some scrambled eggs with onions, tomatoes, spam, etc, pulled the dinghy engine onboard, and weighed anchor under sail... Again, as a purist might... I was ready to do the run to Nassau under sail only.  At some point halfway, the wind dropped, and so did my speed, so I had to start motorsailing at four knots...

After some time, the buildings in Paradise Island started breaching the hazy horizon and I was finally able to see my destination.  I had to swerve around a few coral heads along the Yellow Bank and Middle Ground area, but otherwise, I had the loyal autopilot engaged while I cooked, ate, and read.

I've been reading this book about Colombian drug dealers turned informant and it depicts Colombia's violence so graphically that it almost makes me wonder whether it is a good idea to move back, but I won't ever know unless I try.

I will be in Nassau a few days, and probably won't be updating this blog much until I leave...

Staniel Cay to Normans Cay

I decided to do a longish run today so I can get to Nassau tomorrow... If I don't make it to Nassau tomorrow, I may have to wait till Friday (mind you, in paradise!).

I motored out of the Big Majors Spot anchorage at around 8:45 AM, raised sail, and started flying northwest over to Norman's Cay, about 35 nautical miles away.

The conditions were pretty good and I was able to sail AND pass some bigger boats that shall not be mentioned here.

I arrived at Norman's Cay at 4:00PM, and I'm looking forward to a run to Nassau tomorrow.

Black Point to Staniel Cay

Last night brought some nasty surge into the Black Point anchorage but not much else... It turns out that the nasty front that came through lost much of it's strength on this part of the Bahamas... Other places further north weren't as lucky.

I woke up after a rocky night feeling tired but encouraged after having dodged the storm.  The water was clear and placid, plus the wind was about 10 knots, so I decided to weigh anchor and head towards Staniel Cay under sail only, as a purist might do.  The wind remained good as I sailed past the other boats in the harbor, but as soon as I was out of the half-moon shaped anchorage, the wind dropped to under 5 knots... So I bobbed around not doing any progress for about 30 minutes, after which the wind came back, albeit a little odd and inconsistent.  As I am vainly enjoying my self-righteous sailing state, Dan from Spice pointed out to me on the radio about a small vessel headed my way.  As I got closer I managed to observe that it was a custom little boat, most likely not greater than 12 feet, patiently sailing downwind headed southeast through the Exumas.  I suspect it may have been the person from the www.microcruisers.com website.  I tacked over to head into a collission course to see the boat from up close, it seemed like a pretty spartan vessel.  We waved to each other as boaters do, and I yelled "you put us all to shame!".  This guy unknowingly managed to erase any kind of sense of accomplishment that I may have had!

I continued sailing over to Big Majors Spot (just north of Staniel Cay) and as I got close, I realized I was finally going to be able to hang out with people in my tax bracket!  There was a super-megayacht, rafted up to a megayacht, which was rafted up to three large yachts in decreasing size, which were rafted up to a 40 foot center console powerboat which I suppose is one of their tenders.  I can only imagine the crazy parties that go on in these vessels...

Since my dinghy engine had stubbornly refused to start that morning, I started working on it right after I anchored.  I don't know much (anything really) about internal combustion engines (or for that matter, any kind of engine), so all I figured I could do was to follow a friend's advice on two-stroke engine repair.

Step 1) drain the water that might be caught up in the carburetor bowl.
Step 2) remove the spark plug and spray some wd-40 in the hole where the spark plug goes
Step 3) with the spark plug out, pull the starting cord 20-30 times.
Step 4) replace the spark plug or clean the old one and screw it back in
Step 5) pull the starting cord and hear the engine purr while tasting the sweet taste of victory in the battle of man vs machine (or at least that is what step 5 was for me!)

Dan and Linda from Spice were waiting for me to deal with the engine so we could go to Staniel Cay (in case I was going to need a ride), but once I cried victory they left, only to have their engine die on them shortly thereafter.  I towed them back to their boat with my resuscitated engine and since they now didn't want to go to Staniel Cay, I left on my own.

At Staniel, I immediately met up with Bill from Meant2B, everyone else on his boat was napping due to an exhausting previous night (when we were all sitting ducks at Black Point).  Anyway, his crew eventually did wake up and joined us at the bar.  Later on, we met up with Wesley and Renee from Moonshadow, we played pool, had some drinks, and said goodbyes as I left to finally have some good night's rest.

Note: the pic with the rafted yachts was taken BEFORE the super-megayacht joined the raftup!

Sitting ducks at Black Point

Tomorrow night we are going to get winds clocking from the south all the way through to north (going through west).  Our anchorage is very protected from most wind directions, except southwest through northwest! So guess who's life is going to suck tomorrow night?

Did I mention that this front is likely to send us very strong thunderstorms?

Oh well, I guess the cruising life is not all potlucks and happy hours!

PS: this post is being written while having a Happy Hour at Scorpio's at Black Point, Exumas.

Cave Cay to Black Point

The weather was predicted to be light, around 13 knots... And it was at first... I was able to have a nice sail with a full rig up for a while, but then the wind picked up a bit and the boat was flying!  For a while there, I was doing sustained 6.4 knots, even going up to 6.7 a few times!  My boat, however, is not really designed to do more than 6.3 kts, so I decided to reduce sail and still was able to stay between 5.5 - 6.2 knots! This was more comfortable and still fast enough for me... It was a sweet sail and now I am peacefully anchored at Black Point, one of my favorite spots in the Exumas.

Georgetown to Cave Cay - singlehanded

Today was my first truly singlehanded passage.  It was not very long, only about 35 nautical miles, but it was good!

I raised anchor at Georgetown at about 7:00AM, and started making my way northwest through the Elizabeth Harbor.  This time I chose to deviate from the recommended Explorer Charts' tracks, instead, I simply cut through wherever I felt was deep enough.  I might not have done this before, with Lorena onboard, but now I am the only person onboard to suffer from my mistakes so I have a bit more leeway to explore.

I made it out of the harbor around 8:00AM and started heading northwest towards the Cave Cay cut.  The winds were supposed to be coming from the north in the morning and gradually clocking to the northeast through the day.  My observation was that the wind was from the north-northwest, preventing me from sailing straight to my destination.  Instead, I was forced to sail (motorsail to be honest) west-northwest, then motor straight north, then go back to sailing west-northwest, you get the picture...  At around 2PM the winds did finally clock around enough for me to just sail straight!

The ocean (Exuma Sound) was calm with an odd swell coming from the east-southeast which graciously propelled my towarda my destination.  Occasionally I noticed some sets in the swella which were disproportionately bigger than the rest.  The thought of getting one of of these sets while going through the cut concerned me.  When waves hit opposing currents such as in this cut, they become steep, and sometimes break.  However, I managed to slowly make my way through the cut and did not observe any breakers.  My engine was throttled about halfway and the sails were full, but the ebbing current in the cut was so strong that I speculate I was only doing about one knot of speed over the ground!

Once inside, the motion of my boat eagerly welcomed the nice, clear, calm waters of the Exuma Bank.  Soon thereafter, I anchored in calm water on the lee of Cave Cay.

Going through this cut brought to my mind the engineless sailors out there.  In a case like today, an engineless boat would have to wait until slack tide at 8:00PM or so, and then make it through the cut.  These people are my heroes, I wouldn't have the patience to do that unless in the case of an emergency, and then I would be breaking the classic rule "don't enter strange harbors at night".

It looks like tomorrow and thursday are going to be good days to sail, but probably not so on friday and saturday... So I'll have to plan to be anchored somewhere protected on thursday.  According to Dan from Spice, who listened to Chris Parker on the SSB this morning, this coming front may bring some nasty squalls with heavy winds, so that makes the need for a good anchorage even greater.

Farewell Georgetown

I first arrived in Georgetown about 1.5 months ago, it is a nice harbor with a strong cruiser support network, and most of the basic supplies anyone might need.  Anyone interested in extended cruising could learn the ropes during a short cruise down to Georgetown...

During the last few days I've spent a lot of time with the people from Kokoi and from Meant2B.  We've gone surfing, wakesurfing, barhopping, and we've also had some awesome dinners at both boats.  When not doing any of those activities, I've spent much time reading on my Kindle which I appear to have broken a couple of days ago (the screen has a segment that doesn't work anymore, not sure how or why this happened).  Having a broken kindle is going to take a toll on my lifestyle, ever since I don't have a TV I've been going to sleep by reading for a while...

Tomorrow, a number of boats are planning to leave the harbor, the weather looks like we may have to motorsail a lot due to lack of wind, and the little bit of wind there will be, will be coming from (you guessed it!) the nose.  This will be my first solo passage, it should be easy in tomorrow's conditions... I've spent most of the day getting the boat ready for sea again, fortunately it is a small boat and it doesn't take very long to put everything in order.

Yesterday I was offered one of the most tempting opportunities ever, to crew on a friend's boat down to Cuba, and travel the country by train for a few weeks.  Not only is the plan ridiculously cool, it would be while doing it with two of the most awesome people I've ever met! Last night I was leaning towards going with them, but this morning I decided that I've already spent too much time and money around here, I'm ready to head back and get the boat sold in Miami so that I can finally make it home.  It's been fun, but I'm ready to become a land person once again.

Today, both Kokoi and Meant2B were leaving the harbor, it sucks to say goodbye but it is likely that our paths will cross again in the future.

First few days on my own

A couple of days ago we had some really nice waves and offshore wind in Exuma Sound.  Matt and I spent a long day surfing waist-high glassy waves over two feet of rock!

We have also been investing time in the time-honored tradition of beer drinking... Sometimes we do this at the beach, sometimes in town, other times on boats...

Aside from these two activities, we've spent time wakesurfing, building bonfires, and doing nothing at all... Such is the hard-knock life of the unemployed.

Not all is fun and games though, I've also been spending time cooking and cleaning.  The task that seems to take me the longest is doing dishes, I seem to procrastinate on this all the time, until I find myself forced to do it in order to cook, which has the undesired side-effect of dirty pots and pans... It is a neverending cycle, not to mention that my faucet doesn't work, so I have to get saltwater with a bucket and use that instead (this is possible here given that the water is so clean), then I rinse with freshwater.

Some would say that I'm having a blast out here on my own... They would be right!

Salt Pond to Georgetown - bittersweet

Heading back is bittersweet.  Heading back implies that I did not reach my original goal, but it also allows me to try to give Seas the Moment a new home, and run some errands that I'd need to do in Miami.  I'll also have a chance to visit some of the places that we skipped on the way south. 

We are underway right now, passing by Hog Cay in the easternmost tip of the Exumas headed toward Georgetown.  We will be stocking up on stuff and extending our visas.  This passage has been uneventful so far, there has been barely any wind so we have been motoring in flat seas, which I don't mind at all.  Had we not been able to get the throttle cable fixed on Wednesday, we would have been motoring at idle speed and would probably be doing about 1 mile per hour!

I feel I've gone through an interesting transformation during this trip so far, I've learned to not give a fu©k about anything and to just do what I want!  This reminds me of a Southpark episode...

Anyway, here are some pictures of what this passage has looked like so far (note how the wind seems to always be on my nose!).

Long Island

We have spent the last few days cruising Long Island.  We started out in Salt Pond and made our way up north almost to the tip, there we encountered an annoying swell, so we turned back south and eventually came back to Salt Pond.

We have met some interesting people in this island.  First we met Socrates, a Dominican who took us to Dean's blue hole while stopping every few minutes to top up his radiator with water... When he wasn't topping up his radiator fluid he was generously topping up his cup with rum, needless to say that after a while he was wasted and asked me to take the wheel.  Driving down the left lane of the island's main unlit road at night, with a crazy Dominican rambling about music, while getting blasted from opposing traffic's high beams and trying to stay in my lane was kind of scary! However, it was also fun to see the inside of the island with its abandoned structures and wild goats and pigs!

Then we met a young, engineless singlehander called Alex.  He went with us to the blue hole.  I can't understand how people make it so far upwind without an engine! It seems to me that no matter how much we wait for weather, I always end up motoring against the wind!

Then we met Charles, a south Floridian who owns a fish processing plant which is under renovation, he gave us a ride to a blue hole and offered to hang out with us for some drinks.  It seems his family has long ties to the island.

Shortly after Charles dropped us off we met Mark and Jill, they have a super nice oceanfront property overlooking their Pearson ketch moored right in front.  They have built the house themselves and have done a great job, they have all the amenities of a regular house, but are also totally off the grid, relying on rain for water, and solar panels plus a wind generator for electricity!  They recommended we check a local bar down the road.

We went to Blue Chip bar and there we met Mario, the owner and apparently, local historian... Mario is a descendent of the first settlers of the island, loyalists from North Carolina.  He was happy to discuss chat about the island and ended up offering us a free round of beer, which we eagerly accepted!

On a different note, I did some battery rearranging and the batteries are charging perfectly! A small victory that is letting me sleep much better at night.

I've been thinking about the time when this trip ends and how difficult it will be to cope with having to work now that I've had a taste of freedom... I really wish I could retire at this age, like my friend Matt... Working for a living is no way to live, however, lacking any other obvious means to make money, I suppose that work is an element in the set of activities that compose my future... :(

Great Guana Cay - Exumas

We spent a couple of nights at Big Majors Spot, next to Staniel Cay.  So far, Staniel Cay is the most picturesque town we've seen... the small town was clean, most houses were brightly painted, and it had beautiful beaches as well as a nice hill with an awesome view.

I caught a lionfish there, and we had it for dinner... tasty! plus, we were helping the environment!  I did manage to lose my spear tip as part of this whole thing... so that wasn't as sweet.

Anyway, we picked up the anchor in the morning on Saturday, and we sailed towards Black Point at Big Guana Cay.  The wind was a bit stronger than expected and we found ourselves sailing on a close reach at 6kts sustained!  I don't know how Lorena manages to make the boat sail so fast!  Some boats that came in that afternoon reported gusts up to 30kts while sailing... I don't think we had that much wind, but I do think we had about 20kts of wind!

Black Point Settlement is also a very interesting place, for the first time in weeks, we actually see regular people with regular families hanging around... some of the other spots are mostly fishing-oriented and you don't see children or elders... This town has a very strategic harbour and it is very cruiser-friendly, it has several places with free internet, it has free water, free garbage disposal, dinghy dock, etc

Yesterday we spent all day on the boat doing nothing!  The wind was howling and we didn't feel like doing much, so we read, slept, ate, read some more, chatted on the phone, etc... it is nice to not do anything once in a while!

We've seen a couple of boats that we had seen before in different harbours, so it is nice to see some familiar faces around...

Hopefully at some point this week, we will be sailing to Cave Cay, and out into Exuma Sound towards Elizabeth Harbour.  This may be the last spot with good internet before Elizabeth Harbor, so we may not post anything for a few days.

On a different note, the GoPro camera stopped working properly at Staniel Cay, so we put it in a bag full of rice and we are going to try it again today... preliminarily, it seems to be working well... so we haven't been able to post any good pics on this blog.

Exumas

After 15 long days we finally left Nassau Harbour.  Nassau is a very nice place, and we had a good time, but we really wanted to move on.  We had a great time with Bill, Regina, and Matt from Meant 2B, and we met some other interesting characters along the way, but we needed go...

On Tuesday, Jan 5, we left Nassau in the morning around 8:30 and we anchored in the lee of Highbourne Cay around 4PM.  It was an awesome sail, at first, we were motorsailing since it was a bit to close to the wind to sail, but after some time, the wind shifted just enough for us to sail close-hauled engineless!  the wind was light, about 11-15 kts, and we were doing about 5+ kts! for some reason not normal to our boat, we were going faster than all the boats in our vicinity (about 4 boats, all of them longer) and we soon left them behind...

Some time after having anchored, Quiet Time anchored next to us, we had met one of the crew in Nassau so we hung out for some drinks on our boat.

Since the weather was holding up, the next morning we decided to weigh anchor and continue south towards Warderick Wells, we picked up a mooring there, and stayed for the night.

The next morning the weather was still cooperating so we decided to leave the mooring and head for Staniel Cay... we motorsailed most of the time given that the wind was on our nose and we needed to make long tacks... anyway, we anchored in Big Majors Spot, fed the pigs, explored the beach, went over to Staniel Cay, rescued a loose dinghy, etc... we might stay in this anchorage for a couple of days...

We also saw Moonshadow, a boat that we met in Key Biscayne, then in Bimini, and now in Big Majors Spot...

A front is expected to come through this weekend and the area around Staniel Cay and Big Majors Spot seems to offer a number of anchorages for the clocking winds, so we will see how long it takes us to check out of this spot...

By the way, the last couple of posts have been written from the boat at anchor while sharing the 3G data connection from my phone (thanks Olga!) with a hotspot application... if/when I get real WIFI, I will add a post with some videos...