Out of the tropics

We are anchored back in Elizabeth Harbour, across from George Town, Great Exuma (map). We're just a little west of where we anchored earlier, owing in large part to the fact that the harbor has emptied out considerably.

Thursday afternoon we splashed the tender to head ashore for dinner. Rather than go into town, we opted instead to make our way across Thompson Bay to the small resort of Tiny's Hurricane Hole, on the Indian Hole Peninsula that protects the northern part of the bay. Resort may be a misnomer; it's two beach cabins with a tiki bar and grill.


Sign marking the Tropic of Cancer, which bisects Long Island.

Landing the tender there turned into something of a clown show. The information online said there was a small channel adjacent to a limestone rock jetty that would allow us to get the dink all the way to the beach. That proved incorrect; we ran out of water less than halfway from the head of the jetty to the shore. With rocks strewn on the bottom I took the engine out of gear, and then the fun started...

Winds were perhaps 10-15 and parallel to shore. With no power, that quickly swept us away from the limestone jetty and into much shallower water and finally up against the other jetty, which was earth and stone. We simply could not paddle hard enough against the wind to get back into deeper water. After perhaps five minutes of struggling and pushing against the bottom and the jetty, we got out far enough to start the motor and head back out into deeper water.

Our second pass was much smoother. Rather than try to get ashore we just nosed up to the end of the limestone jetty, stepped out, and tied off to the rocks. Lesson learned regarding this particular stop. Of course, the six patrons already at the tiki bar got a great show; I flipped my hat over for tips when we walked in. One patron offered to buy us a beer.


Scalar tied to the end of the jetty, finally. Vector is a white spec in the background.

All's well that ends well and we had a nice casual dinner near the beach. My burger was excellent, but Louise's fish sandwich was disappointing enough that she scratched the place off the list. We enjoyed meeting fellow cruisers Doug and Sandy on the catamaran Alibi. They had landed their dink in town and ridden their folding bikes the two miles out to the bar.

Friday morning we loaded all our trash into the dinghy and headed to town to get a car. I had called Thursday to get pricing and information and say we would be in in the morning; nevertheless, the car rental was deserted when we arrived. After making a few calls we learned the proprietor had gone to the next town to take care of some business, and promised to return in "a half hour." That's island time, mon -- they returned an hour later. We found a couple of chairs and sat down in the shade.


Our econobox

For $65 we got a tiny Suzuki with a stick shift. The Bahamas is a drive-left country, but this car was left-hand-drive, which suited me fine because my stick-shift muscle memory is all in my right arm. We headed north to explore the island in air-conditioned comfort. We had contemplated dropping the scooters at the government dock instead, but 100+ miles is a long day in the tropic sun.

First stop was the Stella Maris airport to extend our cruising permit and update our customs and immigration paperwork. After that we went almost to the northernmost tip of the island; the unpaved road that leads to the tip and the Columbus monument thereon became too tenuous for the little Suzuki perhaps two miles from the end and we turned around.

We then drove all the way south to very nearly the southern tip of the island. We stopped in Clarence Town to see what we missed on our brief stop there in the boat. And we tried to find "Hard Bargain," across from which we spent such a miserable night, but there is not even a sign on the road.


Sign at Dean's Blue Hole. It's really in second place. They have free-diving competitions here.

On our return trip north we drove out to Dean's Blue Hole, which is the second-deepest blue hole in the world (signage at the site optimistically lays claim to first place). It's quite impressive, and I thought to maybe go swimming or even jump off the low limestone cliff overhanging the steep side. We brought our suits with us, but lack of any way to rinse off the saltwater after swimming persuaded me to give it a skip, as we intended to remain ashore for dinner. If I had thought to bring my snorkel gear I might have changed my mind.


You can walk along in calf-deep water and then suddenly find yourself in 600'. Platform in the center supports the free-diving cable. Better photos abound on the Internet.

We refueled the rental car at the lone gas station in town. That happens to be next door to Regatta Park, which was abuzz with workers painting and freshening things. It turns out that the Long Island Regatta is this week. We asked around town if that attracted a lot of cruisers, but it's too late in the season.

At just 50 miles long, we had explored the entire island by 5pm, and we stopped at Sou' Side bar and grill right across from the dinghy landing for an early dinner. A quick trip next door for groceries wrapped up our shore leave. We parked the car with the keys still in it back at the rental place, as instructed, and headed back to the dinghy.


This old "fisherman" anchor was on the dinghy dock. Perhaps recently recovered from a wreck.

Saturday morning we decided we'd got our fill of Salt Pond, and opted to cruise up to the northern tip of the Island and anchor off the beach at Calabash Bay. If we were lucky we could land the tender on the beach right at the Cape Santa Maria Resort for a nice dinner, and maybe have a relaxing couple of days. I needed to work on the watermaker, and had figured to do that here, too.

We ended up transiting the fairly shallow channel across the northern reaches of the bank right at low tide, with, at times, just a foot of water under the keel. But we got through without incident, crossing the Tropic of Cancer and emerging into the deep water of Exuma Sound, just as a line of squalls caught up to us.


Vector (at right) in Thompson Bay, as see from the car rental.

We could see a couple of boats in the Calabash Bay anchorage. But getting into this bay requires visual navigation through a coral field. That requires good light, and relatively calm seas. At that moment, we had neither. I could see on the radar that the squalls would pass, but the forecast showed nothing but overcast for the rest of the day, and all day Sunday as well. Already in Exuma Sound, we turned west and headed for George Town, rather than finding a place to wait it out on Long Island.

We pulled up here right at 5pm, amazed to see the anchorage mostly empty and with our pick of spots. We got the hook set just before another squall came through. An hour later when the squall had passed, it was followed by a water spout which came right down the channel, passed us perhaps 100 yards away, and continued to a landfall in George Town. Louise grabbed the radio mic and alerted the anchorage as we saw it coming. Blu on the Water posted this video on their Facebook page; if you look closely you can see the spout passing Vector in the distance.


Best shot I could get of the funnel cloud after it passed us. Click to enlarge.

Sunday I set to work on the water maker. The last time we ran it, the production dropped to less than 3gph and it eventually "stalled" again. I suspected problems at the top end of the motor, and so I pulled the motor off and opened it up. Sure enough, tons of brush dust in there just in the last 300 hours, and one of the brush springs appears to be end-of-life. The brushes themselves have quite a bit of wear, although still within limits per the manufacturer.

I don't have spares for these, so I cleaned all the dust out of the motor with a vacuum and copious amounts of compressed air, cleaned up the commutator with fine sandpaper, and put the best spring with the shorter brush and vice-versa. Yesterday it ran all day at an average production of over 6gph, an improvement but still shy of spec.

Motor brushes. Left one is more worn. They are 0.87" long when new.

Sunday evening we wanted to go back to the Lumina Resort for dinner, since we enjoyed it on our last visit. They informed us they no longer accept dinner guests from outside the resort; phooey. So we had a casual meal at the St. Francis instead, which was as good as we remembered from three years ago.

I spent most of yesterday planning routes to take us from here to Nassau by way of Cat and Little San Salvador islands. We bashed our way across the harbor to go to town for dinner. After a casual meal on the deck at Blu on the Water at the Exuma Yacht Club, whose docks finally reopened since we left in April, we took a stroll around Lake Victoria. Eddie's was just gearing up for their weekly Rake and Scrape as we walked by; neither of us was much in the mood for dancing in a 90-degree room so we kept on walking.

Weather for a crossing to Cat Island is not acceptable until tomorrow at the earliest and more likely Thursday. We'll exit the harbor to the north, cross the sound, and anchor in the bight. From there we will work our way northwest to the southern tip of Eleuthera, stopping at Little San Salvador on the way. This latter island is better known as Half Moon Cay, the name Holland America bestowed upon it when they built a private facility there for cruise guests. Our last Holland America cruise had to skip it due to weather, so we will make up for it now.


The sure sign of the end of the season in George Town: an empty dinghy dock. Admittedly this is after the market had closed for the day.

We've already cruised Eleuthera, so other than a quick overnight stop we will simply cross back over to the Exumas at Ship Channel. From there its a long day across the bank to Nassau Harbor. We made reservations at a secure marina there so I can fly to my Red Cross training in Dallas while Louise takes care of the boat and the cat.

In case you missed it, we've already had the first named topical storm of the season, Alberto, even though the season does not officially start for another two days. We don't have a magic date in our insurance policy; our deductible just increases significantly during named storms unless we are north of the Carolinas. Still, we'd rather not take too many chances, and so once I return to Nassau it will be high time to start heading north. The fact that there are perhaps fewer than fifty boats left in the harbor here is a sure sign.

Worst. Night. Ever.

Tuesday morning we rose early and did a detailed check of the weather updates over morning coffee. We deemed the seas acceptable for a westbound crossing, and so at 8:15 we weighed anchor and got under way. The day got off to an inauspicious start, as Louise's headset for her communicator failed, and we scrambled around to cobble together something she could use. Weighing anchor in heavy wind and then navigating through a reef is more complex than we wanted to do with hand signals.

At that early hour the sun angle was barely acceptable to navigate back out through the reef; we opted for Louise to stand on the bow while I drove from the pilothouse to follow our bread crumbs as closely as possible until we were in deep water. We fought a lot of wind noise on the replacement headset but made it out uneventfully.


Hapag-Lloyd's Osaka Express crosses our path at a distance of 1.6nm. We were the stand-on vessel but he did not have to adjust.

Long Cay receding behind us, we set a course for South Point, at the southern tip of Long Island. And yes, those are really two different islands in the Bahamas both named "Long." As if having a more famous Long Island somewhat north of us was not confusing enough.

The first half of the cruise was quite pleasant; we crossed paths with the giant container ship Osaka Express close aboard, and saw a smaller bulk cargo, Baltic, six miles in the distance just drifting in the passage. Our AIS said he was "Not Under Command," which is never a good sign, en route to Baltimore. Things were calm enough that I even got around to fixing the helm chair, whose top bearing had apparently completely disintegrated.


The seat post had cut all the way through the plastic bearing, and the two aluminum surfaces were grinding together. The gray on my hands is fine aluminum dust.

On a northwesterly heading, we had started out in the lee of Crooked Island and Long Cay, but that lee became decreasingly protective the further along we got. The increase in swell was steady as the fetch increased, but then at some point we were basically out of the wave shadow altogether and seas increased dramatically, to perhaps seven feet or more, with the fetch of the whole Atlantic to the east. Fortunately that was only the final ten miles or so, and as we rounded South Point they dropped off even more rapidly than they had increased.

We could see into the anchorage just past South Point and it looked fairly calm, at least from where we were a mile offshore. And, in hindsight, we probably should have gone in there and checked it out. But we wanted to make as many miles as we could, to make our tight tide schedule Wednesday a bit easier. And so we proceeded on to the northernmost charted anchorage on the southwest coast of the island, adjacent a place called Hard Bargain (map).

I had to file the top of the post smooth. Black cylinder at right is old bearing I had wisely kept as a spare.

And a hard bargain it was. We negotiated in through the reef as close as we could get to shore. At that spot, the wind-driven waves and chop were almost non-existant. But swell from the aforementioned easterly seven-foot seas apparently curled right around South Point and then incessantly marched the dozen miles north up the coast to right here, where it was about a two foot swell. Nothing bad, except it was at just the right frequency to get Vector rocking like a metronome. And when I say rocking, I mean stuff-flying-off-the-shelves rocking.

This was going to be intolerable, but there was no place else to go. We set the hook just after 4pm; not enough daylight to get anyplace else, really, if there had even been anyplace else we could think to go. At least it's early enough, we thought, to try some mitigation techniques.

First up was to deploy the flopper-stopper bucket. This had only been marginally effective hanging from the midships cleat, so I extended the crane to its furthest position, rigged up some stays to keep it straight out the side of the boat, and we hung the bucket from that instead. It helped a tad, but not nearly enough. It was all I could do not to be flung off into the sea while I was up on the boat deck rigging the crane; I estimate the deck was moving four feet laterally with each roll.


Flopper-stopper bucket jury-rigged from crane.

We have a stern anchor now, a nice Manson Supreme that I bought while we were in Fort Lauderdale. And we considered deploying it to keep the boat pointed into the swell, which would have been much more comfortable. But the prospect of putting what was still 15-20 knots of wind right on the beam gave us pause. That's a lot of windage, and thus a lot to ask of a 35-pound anchor. Moreover, we needed to get an early start Wednesday to make it to the skinny section at high tide. Would we be able to quickly retrieve a well-set anchor off the stern with no windlass?

We opted instead to rig a "swell bridle."  We tied one of our longer lines to our rusty backup chain hook, cleated it off to our midships cleat, and ran it forward to the anchor roller. Louise took the helm so I could reach out the snubber hawsepipe and get the hook onto the chain while she took the load off with the engine. I held the line taught so I could pay out chain without the hook falling off; the open design of this hook is why we stopped using it for our main snubber. And then... I pushed the wrong button on the windlass remote, pulling the hook up against the front of the anchor roller and jamming it in the chain.

And when I say "jamming," I mean it. I could not remove it from the chain no matter what I tried, and certainly not with the windage of the boat pulling up against the anchor. Even after using the other chain hook to unload the chain I could not get it off. We even tried using the windage of the boat to pull it out, by tying off to the inside of the "U" of the hook.


Close-up of chain hook, jammed into a chain link. It normally goes around the outside of a link.

We finally decided that the only way to deal with the problem was to get the hook, chain and all, up onto the deck where I could work at it with bigger tools. Up to and including the angle grinder I would need to either cut the hook off, or else cut the chain so we could feed the part still attached to the anchor back in through the roller and into the windlass gypsy.

Bringing the hook on deck would mean getting a snubber line attached to the chain several feet further away from the boat, and there's no way to do that from on deck. We briefly contemplated launching the tender, but having a 560-lb dinghy hanging from the crane on a violently rocking boat was too risky. Fortunately, the inflatable kayak was ready to go and tied down on the boat deck, courtesy of the propeller fiasco in Provo.

We launched the kayak and I stripped down and headed up to the bow, Louise towing me against the wind from on deck with the painter. It was very rough at the bow, but I was able to hang onto the chain and attach our normal snubber just a few inches below the waterline. That would give us about six feet of chain to play with, enough to get the hook on deck.

Back on board I pulled about three feet of the chain, with the jammed hook in the middle, through the snubber hawsepipe and onto the deck. I tried to fit gear and bearing pullers onto the jammed link with no success, and a four-pound engineer hammer alone had little effect. Ulimately I went down to the workshop, unbolted the vise from the workbench, and secured it to a piece of scrap plywood with #12 wood screws.


Hook and chain on deck. Screwdriver keeping chain from falling back out. Four-pound hammer at right. Black line at left is holding the whole boat against the anchor, further down the chain.

With the chain hook, open jaw facing down, firmly gripped by the vise, and application of liberal amounts of PB Blaster, I was finally able to hammer the jammed links off the hook using the four-pound sledge and a pry bar. Careful inspection of the chain link afterward revealed no major damage or even penetration of the galvanizing, and we just dropped the chain back into the water.

Whew. Well, that all took about three hours. The nice pork chops we had thawed and which I was to grill for dinner remained in the fridge; mid-project Louise decided we needed to eat something and heated up some leftovers. I managed to wrap up on the foredeck before the daylight faded, but now we were exhausted. We talked about trying to rig the swell bridle again, now that the hook was free, but decided, foolishly, to just tough it out for the night rather than risk any more mishaps.

That was a mistake, as rather than abate, the swell increased overnight. As hard as it was to get any sleep on a rolling boat, it was impossible with something crashing to the floor in the galley every hour or so. At one point something leapt off the counter into the cat's food bowl, sending kibble everywhere, and the colander made a hideous racket when it tumbled to the floor. We had taken the precaution of securing anything breakable before we left for the passage, and we kept it that way for the night.


Louise shot this video as I was working. It gives you some idea of the roll, but it does not really capture how bad it was.

I can honestly say this was our worst night ever. Not in an absolute sense, but certainly the worst night on the boat. It was not dangerous, nor did anything even really break. It was just uncomfortable for all three of us, and mostly sleepless for the two humans. We had figured on an 8am departure, but we instead decided to weigh anchor at first light, since we couldn't sleep anyway. Once underway the stabilizers would give us a much needed respite.

Of course nothing is ever simple, and when we brought the chain up the snubber chain hook was double-hooked. Louise literally screamed. This happens to us on very rare occasions and we know how to deal with it, but it was just too much on top of the previous evening (and possibly a result, from dropping the excess chain over when we finished). We were too beat to document it, but this older blog post describes the problem and has a photo. We turned the engine off and sat down in our metronome to finish our coffee.

Thus reinforced, out came the rusty backup chain hook that, just the previous night, Louise had declared we would never use again, to unload the chain so I could untangle the snubber hook. Fortunately it came right off once I had it, unloaded, in my hands, and we were under way only an hour after we started.

Even the hour delay was not enough to prevent us from reaching the skinny section too far ahead of high tide. We putt-putted north along the coast at 1400 rpm, which was as low as we could go and still have enough stabilization in the still swelling seas. Once on the bank the swell started to decrease, and I reduced to 1350 rpm.

When we made the turn into the Comer Channel we were still an hour early, but here the seas were just one foot on a short chop, so we dropped the hook for an hour. That was just the ticket, and we saw nothing less than 8' as we transited the channel, which is charted at 5' at low tide.

Another couple of hours beyond the channel brought us here, to Thompson Bay, off the community of Salt Pond, Long Island (map). We dropped the hook just after 6pm, as close to shore as we could get. Ahhh.... so calm here. I put the pork chops on the pre-heated grill just as soon as the anchor was set, and we had a nice dinner on the aft deck. By 9pm we both collapsed into bed.

This morning we were much more rested. We've got the boat more or less cleaned up and back together. I bolted the vise back down to the workbench, and the cat seems less green. This afternoon we will splash the tender and go ashore. There is a much-needed grocery store here, and we hope to find a restaurant for dinner. Tomorrow we might rent a car to explore the island, and then begins the watch for a weather window for Exuma Sound, to work our way back to Nassau. We need to be in port no later than June 10th.

Cruise to nowhere, and a salty cocktail hour

We are still anchored off Long Cay, but we've moved three miles northeast (map). This is a bit more pristine; we can barely see Albert Town in the distance, with just an expanse of white sand beach and turquoise water here. How we ended up here is, as usual, something of a story.

Friday we decided to see if we could move up to Landrail Point. My charts showed a couple of anchorages close in to shore that ought to have been settled enough, and it would have been nice to get into town, pick up a couple of groceries, and maybe have a meal. Also I wanted to "top up" my BTC SIM card.


Our beautiful anchorage at Long Cay, as seen from atop the mast of Ariadne. Vector is a tiny spec a bit right of center frame - click to open full size. Photo: Gabrielle Heggli

In hindsight it was not the best day for it, one of the windiest in the forecast, but we needed to move in any case, even if just to re-anchor, because I did not want that same section of chain to continue abrading on the rocks. So we made an early start, in case we needed to come all the way back, and weighed anchor for Landrail.

We started out on the direct line, cutting across the bay, but after two miles or so the waves on the beam were a bit uncomfortable, and instead we followed the curve of the shoreline. On that route it took us two and a half hours to reach Landrail. We rejoiced to see that the mailboat was at the dock as we arrived; typically that means the store will have some fresh produce and maybe milk the next day, both of which we needed.

Alas, it was not to be. It looked calm from offshore, and as we got tucked in to the anchorage area, the wind-driven chop dropped to almost nothing. But for hydrodynamic reasons that are unclear from looking at the shoreline, a two-foot swell was moving north through the anchorage. That swell would have been beam-on, and it would have been much too much roll to be comfortable there.


Landrail Point settlement, receding behind us. Mailboat center frame.

We tried two different spots with the same results. On top of that, waves were slamming up against the narrow entrance to the small craft basin, which would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to land the tender. Reluctantly, we turned around and headed back the way we came. The dozens of people who had come down to meet the mailboat and were milling around on shore must have thought we were crazy Americans.

Coming back was rougher, with the aforementioned swell against us, and we hugged the shoreline even closer. We had to come all the way back, past the cuts into the Bight of Acklins and to where the shoreline at last begins running west of south. This was the first spot that looked calm enough to us. With no marked routes here I steered from the flybridge, and we threaded our way in past the corals to what looked like a large expanse of clear sand. We did first check that we were getting an adequate signal from the cell tower, now three miles further away.

No worse for the wear, other than having used fifteen gallons of diesel on a six-hour cruise to nowhere, we settled back in and had a nice dinner on deck. It's more isolated and peaceful here than closer to town; we can barely see the two streetlights at night, nor hear the generating station. And we have the whole place to ourselves.


Gratuitous dinnertime sunset shot. We had to wait for this kind of cloud cover each evening as it was otherwise too sunny on deck.

And so Saturday morning I made the coffee and was about to step out on deck au naturel when I looked out and was surprised to see a sailing catamaran anchored about a mile north of us. Wow... these guys made a night approach to an area well-strewn with coral and set their hook. Wherever they came from, we reasoned they must be exhausted. Yet their dinghy davits were barren and there was no movement on the boat -- perhaps they went ashore someplace?

It was close to lunch time before I noticed any movement on the cat. Once I was sure they were up and about (and aboard), I hailed them on the radio to share what we learned about the island. Specifically, that there were no longer any services there except a water spigot, just in case they were hoping to find anything ashore.

I learned in that exchange that they were a delivery crew, and the boat had no tender at all, so going ashore was not even really an option. And then they invited us for a beer. Louise had a phone call scheduled at 4pm so we agreed to come over at 5. I scraped together some ingredients from the fridge and whipped up a cream cheese spread, and we dug out a box of crackers from our provision stash under the settee. We keep the carbs deliberately hard to reach so we're not tempted to open them unless we have guests.

Once again, in hindsight, we should have postponed cocktails for a day, when things were just a hair calmer. But when we arranged it, they were unsure whether they'd leave Sunday or not. And so it was that we plowed through 2-3' waves, clawing our way north for a mile to reach their Lagoon cat, Ariadne. Louise had the foresight to wear her waterproof duster, and still got soaked, and I drenched the very same shorts I took swimming back in Provo during the tender prop fiasco.


Arriving at Ariadne. This photo really belies just how rough a ride it was. Photo: Gabrielle Heggli

Even with all the drama, it was a wonderful evening. We very much enjoyed meeting Gabrielle and Thomas, who are Swiss. They do have their own sailboat, Maselle,  a monohull which is right now in Beaufort, NC, but they do deliveries for a living. Ariadne is en route from Florida, where it undertook some post-Irma maintenance, to a charter base in Tortolla, BVI. Thus it is that they have that most dangerous of all things on a boat: a schedule. Explaining well why they are bashing through seas that have us remaining here in port.

Lacking a tender, they hadn't been off the boat in a week, and it's been that long since we interacted with any other humans as well. With everyone eager for company, we spent the entire evening over beer and snacks and sea stories. We finally headed back to Vector just as the light faded, not wanting to return after dark. We hope we will see Thomas and Gabrielle somewhere along the east coast as they cruise their own boat.

Yesterday Gabrielle emailed me some photos she captured, and we talked again by VHF. The anchorage was nearly as choppy as it was Saturday, and I think none of us was eager to repeat the wet ride or the acrobatics we needed to execute to debark at either end, so we just left it at that. This morning they weighed anchor and sailed off around the corner past Landrail point, headed east. It turned out they had also given up on anchoring there Friday night, which is how we ended up neighbors. Their next stop is Provo, so we gave them the rundown of all we had learned.


Ariadne sailing off into the sunrise. This is as close as we ever were.

The last thing I did before leaving for Ariadne Saturday was to go online and buy another week of unlimited data for the phone. With no way to top up BTC, buying more time for the Aliv SIM was my only option, and I wanted to do it before the current allotment ran out Saturday evening, while we were at cocktails. I had purchased it at the last possible moment on our way out of Provo the previous Saturday. Fortunately, it seems to have settled in and is requiring far fewer APN resets.

We had the tender in the water only long enough to go over there and back. Splashing it in these winds, which have been 25 steady and gusting 30 since we arrived, was quite literally splashing, and I struggled to get it in the water and up and running in the chop just before we headed over. We decked it as soon as we got back.

Today I went for my first swim since re-anchoring in this new spot. We've been using a bucket as a make-shift flopper-stopper, and the bucket needs some weight in it. I had started out using my dive weights but I don't want them to accumulate marine growth, so here I tried using a couple of old wine bottles from our recycling bin. They worked, mostly, but apparently some current caught the bucket and dumped a bottle out. I had to go snorkeling for it to avoid being a litter bug. I did snag it, but my free diving is rusty and I barely made it the 15' down.

I have to confess to a bit of nervousness when I jumped in, because we've had a barracuda hanging around the boat for the last couple of days. He stayed through dinner last night, perhaps looking for handouts. He was still hanging around this morning, still hopeful. I'm sure he's used to following sportfishers, who are constantly throwing fish bits over.


Our very own barracuda, with his fan club of smaller fish. No, we can't get the Heart tune out of our heads, either.

We've been trying to top up the water tank here in the pristine waters off Long Cay, and yesterday I started the watermaker and it ran all day at close to 10gph. Considering it's been averaging more like 6gph, we were rather amazed. The tank is nearly full, even after Louise did laundry earlier in our stay.

Today, on the other hand, I started it this morning and production steadily dropped into perhaps the 5gph range or less before it quit altogether, giving us a "stalled" alarm. This means the feed pump has stopped pumping; a visit to the engine room confirmed the feed pump would not run even when bypassing the control board and powering it directly. It was also very hot.

This is actually an important clue. I have been suspecting the motor on the feed pump for some time, even though I disassembled it, cleaned it, inspected the brushes, and reassembled it in Fort Lauderdale. I am now suspecting the brushes might be a tad short (worn), even though visually they looked good. This motor has a weird brush spring with which I have no experience, and so my inspection may have been lacking.

Reasoning that the pump quit because a thermal switch inside the motor had opened, I let the whole thing cool down and tried again. It is once again making 9+gph. I could remove and open up the motor again to clean and adjust the brushes, but there is a risk to that. So we are going to keep a close eye on it and hope it gets us through the rest of our stay in the Bahamas as-is.


Some small fish hanging out around our running gear, which is starting to show some growth. Bucket hanging in the background is the "flopper stopper."

Speaking of the rest of our stay, we've been pinned down here by weather for over a week now and are quite ready to move along. Tomorrow, or if not, Wednesday, is our best window and we will grab it, trying to make some progress and gain some more shelter before the system that is currently brewing in the Gulf of Mexico becomes a threat. Weird weather has been the hallmark of this trip; few we have spoken with can remember a consistent spate of 20-30kt easterlies like this for quite some time.

Our plan from here is to make for the leeward side of the southern tip of Long Island. We'll anchor for a night, likely in some swell, and then get an early start the next day to make the low spot of the Comer Channel at the afternoon high tide, 4:30 or 5:30 depending on whether we hit it Wednesday or Thursday. From there we will still have an hour or so of good light to make an anchorage on the west coast.

We'll spend a little time in Long Island to regroup, taking on some provisions and carefully watching the weather; the subtropical low in the gulf is a big unknown at this point. But from there, by one route or another, we will make our way back onto the bank and up to Nassau, where I am scheduled to fly out the second week of June for a Red Cross training event. Louise will be on boat and cat watch duty in my brief absence.

I'm hoping the weather is good enough for a departure tomorrow morning. For one thing, it will give us more leeway at the other end to settle in to a protected anchorage. For another, it means we will have high tide at an earlier hour, giving us a bit more wiggle room at the end of the day.

Albert Town

We are anchored just off the northwest shore of Long Cay, near the community of Albert Town (map). Long Cay is the smallest of three major islands forming the Crooked/Acklins atoll, the other two being Crooked Island to our north and east, and Acklins Island to our south and east. In the center of the atoll is the shallow Bight of Acklins.


Scalar tied off the beach at Albert Town. Vector is in the distant background.

Monday we weighed anchor at Datum Bay and began our cruise north to Long Cay. Looking at the weather and realizing we might have a now-or-never window to cross to Long Island, we turned northwest to make the crossing of the Crooked Island Passage, making for South Point on Long Island. The plotter said we could have the anchor down in the lee of the island by 5pm, a bit late to be coming in to an area littered with coral, but acceptable.

Seas built as we got further and further from the lee of the Acklins atoll, but they were behind us and we hardly felt them. Louise even went downstairs to sew, while I worked on charts and routes and what we would do after that first night, since the lee of South Point would provide little protection as winds and seas built and clocked further south of east.


This open pavilion above the beach and pier might be the most intact structure on Long Cay.

Getting into safe harbor on the back side of Long Island requires a long trip over the bank and through a shallow channel known as the Comer Channel. This channel is less than six feet deep at low tide, and Vector can safely pass only at high tide. The tide tables showed a high at 10am or 9pm, neither of which could work for us.

It's 50-odd miles from any lee anchorage along the south end of the island to the shallow part of the channel, some eight hours or so for Vector. To make a 10am tide we'd have to anchor overnight somewhere past the halfway mark, and there's no shelter in these conditions anywhere nearby. Likewise it is unsafe to travel after dark, or really even past 5pm or so when the sun is still high enough to see the corals.


Welcome to... not much. I'm blotting out the photos of the landmarks.

We considered making for the Jumentos or Raggeds after the tip of Long Island, taking the long way around on the bank, and waiting there a few days for a more favorable tide at the Comer Channel. But the forecast is for 30kt of wind, and eight footers or more in the open water, and the Jumentos just don't provide enough cover to the bank for those conditions. Our fear was that we could end up tucked behind a rather marginally protective Cay and then be pinned there for a week or more, rolling or pitching and with no Internet access at all.

Reluctantly, we again changed course after about ten miles, making essentially a 90 turn to starboard to come here. That put the seas directly on the beam and we cranked up the fins and the engine rpm to counter it. Seas got progressively better as we  moved more and more back into the lee of the islands; we rounded the westernmost point of Long Cay and continued here, to where my chart showed a break in the coral that would let us get closer to shore.


What used to be the store. And maybe the bar. Most of the houses look like this, too.

We passed two sailboats headed south toward Salinas Point, intending to cross to Great Inagua -- clearly saltier sailors than us. And there were two catamarans that spent the first night with us here, one of whom had been with us in Datum Bay. They, too, cleared out in the morning, bound possibly for Long Island.

We worked our way in past a number of patch reefs and coral bommies to a wide area of clear sand, and dropped our hook at the upwind end. We payed out only enough chain to keep us swinging clear of the corals we had passed, and took a good set to withstand the forecast high winds. We settled in and enjoyed a nice dinner on deck.


We followed the sound of diesels to the power station.

We are anchored across from a pristine white sand beach, in turquoise water. Just a couple hundred feet behind us, the bottom drops off sharply, and the transition from turquoise to deep blue is abrupt. The turquoise in all directions is punctuated by dark patches of coral. It's an idyllic scene, with the only signs of civilization being the BaTelCo (BTC) cell tower, a pair of street lights, and a couple of rooftops just under a mile away. The cell tower and the tiny settlement are the reasons we anchored here rather than further along the beach.

Tuesday we splashed the tender and went ashore to explore. The concrete pier that used to serve as the town dock (well, the oceanside one, anyway; there is another one a mile across the island on the bight side) long ago ceased to be usable and so we beached the dinghy, using our new home-made bungee anchor rode to hold the tender off the beach.


The generator shack was wide open, the sound of a diesel emanating from within. No need for security here.

We scrambled up the rocks to the landing to find a large "Welcome to Long Cay" sign, complete with photos of the two landmarks here: the oldest jail in the Bahamas, whose ruins still stand, and the altar of the two-century-old Anglican church. The cay was discovered by Columbus in 1492 and was one of the first populated settlements in the Bahamas.

Sadly, the town is almost gone, ravaged in 2015 by Hurricane Joaquin and never rebuilt, then evacuated and pummeled again by the one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria last year. Joaquin claimed the El Faro with all souls aboard just 40 miles from here. Our guidebooks said we would find a small store here, a BTC office, a telephone, and a lot of friendly residents. In reality, the store is destroyed, the retail portion of the BTC office is shuttered, the phone booth is flattened, and we saw only two humans in the whole town. Perhaps four or five of the dozen structures are still habitable. The landmark church is mostly collapsed.


Superman can not change here. Or make a call.

Thankfully, the tiny power station, consisting of a diesel generator and an enormous fuel tank, is still operating, as is the cell tower. The reverse osmosis water plant appears to be working, and we found water pressure and clean water at the spigot in the town square, near the dinghy landing.

We strolled the entire settlement, which took just a half hour. I would have liked to walk up to the ruins of the church and the jail, but our way was blocked by a small herd of goats, and we did not want to disturb them. We saw no sign of any going concerns here; the handful of residents still left (the 2010 census listed just 29 people, and it's a mere fraction of that now) appear to be surviving on subsistence fishing, tending garden, and herding goats.


The water plant. In-ground cistern at right foreground has been replaced by poly tanks. The RO machine is in the small, intact but shuttered building.

We're fully provisioned and so the lack of a store or bar is not a hardship for us. But I had harbored some hope of buying a top-up for our BTC SIM card either at the store or at the BTC office. That's not going to happen and so we are getting by on our other Bahamian SIM, from Aliv, the competitive carrier that came into the market in the last two years. Aliv has no tower here, so the service roams onto BTC, which by itself is not an issue. And we have an unlimited data plan, good for seven days.

The problem we have here is twofold. A BTC SIM would fix the first one: for whatever reason, the Aliv service just stops working periodically. And by periodically, I mean anywhere from five minutes to five hours. To fix it, I need to either reboot my phone, or, more expediently, delete, then reconfigure, the APN. I've set up a bogus APN and so all I need do to restart the Internet is push the radio button for the bogus APN and then the radio button for the correct Aliv APN; I just keep the APN setting screen open all the time. But it's tedious, especially when failures are coming every few minutes.

The second problem is simply that this tower, serving, as it does, perhaps only a dozen customers, has very limited bandwidth. We see throughput of about 500 kbps, bursting to 1 mbps. It's on a microwave link, so round trip latency is always at least 250 mSec, and often much more. All that said, we're very glad it's here and it's working. It's tedious to do something even as simple as getting this blog post out, but at least we have access to everything we need.


Vector swinging over this living coral bommie.

With the constant 20-30kt breeze out here on the water, the temperature is very comfortable. Not so while wandering around ashore, and so when we returned to Vector we stripped down and jumped in for a refreshing swim. After cooling off I donned my mask and snorkel to check out our environs. As planned, Vector is swinging over a coral bommie, the chain safely far enough forward to not be a threat. What we could not tell when we were setting the anchor, though, is that the chain is snagging on a couple of skeletal coral remains.

These long-dead corals are essentially the same color as the surrounding sand, and are often covered with that sand, and so from above the surface some 15 feet up, they can't really be seen. They are scattered through this area so re-setting the anchor in a slightly different spot will not really help. We can move significantly closer to shore, picking our way through a few more patches, to find some clear sand -- we sounded the depths in the tender and we can get quite a bit closer. If we need to remain here for more than another day we'll have to do something, as the abrasion will damage the chain. Also, new life does try to take root on these skeletal remains and we don't want to damage it.


Chain snagging on dead coral. A hint of life can be seen at the top, trying to gain a foothold.

Most likely we will weigh anchor tomorrow and try to move up to Landrail Point, the settlement at the northwest corner of Crooked Island. Landrail might have more services, and I am pretty sure the cell tower is faster, since we were using it when we passed the island a month ago. The catch is that the protection there is strictly from the east and maybe a touch northeast. Protection here is solidly southeast and that is the wind direction. So we'll make the two hour cruise and see if it's comfortable, and if not we'll come right back this way.

Tuesday morning before we tendered ashore, we ripped apart the floor on the port side of the master stateroom, bringing the vinyl flooring to the foredeck for a fresh water rinse, and popping all the hatches to access the bilge. We brought the fresh water hose and sprayer down below, hooked it to the spigot in the engine room, and hosed down the subfloor and the bilges. All told I vacuumed about a gallon of salt water and two or three gallons of fresh water out of the bilges before we set up the box fan to dry it out. In the process I dropped the vacuum on my foot, giving myself a purple toe and a good reminder why medical emergencies in remote places are bad.


Our anchor, flukes fully buried and chain barely visible.

With no reason to return to town or even ashore, we decked the tender when we returned, and so we're really just pinned on the boat until this weather passes. I'm doing projects; yesterday I refurbished what was left of the dinghy propeller from its impromptu diving expedition in Provo. Louise is quilting as usual and also doing laundry. The latter requires a good deal of water, so we've been running the watermaker daily.

Our watermaker, despite significant service in Fort Lauderdale, is not working as it should. Rated at 300 gallons per day (12.5 per hour), it is producing an average of less than half that. We refurbished the high pressure pump and replaced the feed pump head in Fort Lauderdale, and I've gone through the electrics, so it's really down to the feed pump motor itself. We'll get it tested when we're back in the states, but for now we have to make do.


Albert Town "town square," complete with exhortation to keep the island clean.

We haven't put a drop of city water in the boat since leaving Key West over two months ago, and so now the entire contents of the tank consists of RO water that we've made. RO water is, of course, perfectly safe, but it tastes funny (if you've ever taken a swig of distilled water you'll know what I mean) and it's too "soft" for my taste when it comes to showering. The taste is not an issue for me because I usually don't drink plain water, preferring powdered drink mix. Louise has been adding unsweetened flavoring to the water in the SodaStream to make it palatable.

We're pinned down now between here and Landrail Point for the foreseeable future. We check the forecast every day to see when a small window might open to make the five-hour run across Crooked Island Passage to South Point. With any luck, such a window will coincide with a tide window to get through the Comer Channel and into the relative protection of the bank west of Long Island.

Back in the Bahamas

I am typing under way between Providenciales, Turks & Caicos, and Acklins Island, Bahamas. At this moment we are about halfway between Mayaguana, on our starboard, and Little Inagua, off our port. Both are over the horizon, as is Provo, some 30 miles behind us. I can still see the glow of light above Provo, and we only fully lost Internet coverage ten miles back.


One of our final sunsets in Grace Bay.

Shortly after my last post, I tendered ashore to pick up our guest. Amanda managed to snag a shared ride to Seven Stars, where I suggested we meet in the lobby; apparently the resort has a rep at the airport who was able to connect her with another couple. I collected her straight from the taxi at the porte cochere and we walked the labyrinthine pathways down to the beach. Fortunately she brought backpacks instead of a suitcase, which facilitated "walking the plank," aka the narrow concrete beam which is all that remains of the pier we've been using. Nothing went for a swim as we loaded her gear and the two of us into the dink.

As if making our house guests walk the plank (still better than the alternative - a beach landing in the surf) was not inhospitable enough, what happened next really put a fine point on it. I started the engine and made ready to cast off. I put the lever in forward, and we did not move. Reverse did nothing either. Phooey. Must be the gearshift linkage again, seeing as that was the last thing to break, and the throttle was still held together with zip ties (Amanda offered to bring us the part, but I called every Mercury dealer in SE Florida and no one had it). We tied back up and I took off the engine cowling.

Hmm. All looks good in there. The gearshift seems to be working as I move the lever into both forward and reverse. This is strange. So I glanced down at the "lower unit" (the part of an outboard that contains the transmission) to discover... the propeller was gone. Wow. There's no way I can paddle back to Vector; we'd be blown halfway down the bay and out to sea before I could cover even half the distance. I radioed Louise and told her to start inflating our two-person kayak, a twenty-minute process, while I contemplated what to do next. The kayak could get us and all the gear to the boat, in three round trips. Or it could be used to bring me the mask and snorkel I might need to find the propeller and its hardware.


Surfacing, recovered propeller in hand. Photo: Amanda Baker

Realizing the propeller most likely came off when I engaged reverse while approaching the dock, we moved the tender aside and I could see it, lying on the bottom in about nine feet of water. Getting the propeller in the crystal clear water would be a cinch. But the propeller nut and thrust washer were both also missing, two little black specks among many littering the bottom, and also easily buried in the sand.

Of course, I was not wearing a swimsuit. Meeting Amanda in the lobby of a nice hotel, I had put on a fresh pair of khaki shorts and a nice Hawaiian shirt before heading ashore. In the TCI, it is considered quite rude to wear swimwear anywhere except the beach and the pool. So I stripped down to just my shorts, removed my belt, emptied my pockets into the dink, and dove in for the propeller, which I snagged on the first try. It was ripped to shreds; as it backed off the shaft a blade hit the combination anode and trim tab, which broke off entirely and split in two.


This blade is peeled open. The other two have chunks missing.

Reasoning the nut and thrust washer landed near the prop, I made another dive and managed to grab both. I felt sure I would not be able to see well enough to find them without a mask, but the water is crystal clear here. I would never have been able to do this before I had laser eye surgery a few years ago. I was able to get the thrust washer, propeller, and nut on well enough just by hand to get us back to the boat, so long as I did not engage reverse, and after 20 minutes of monkeying around at the end of the pier we were on our way, Amanda having a story to tell her kids. She snapped a photo of me popping up with the prop in my hand.

Sadly, this was the brand new propeller I installed in Fort Lauderdale before we left. I had saved the old propeller, which had various chips and other damage that I had repaired over the years, and after relaxing a little back at the boat I installed that prop and properly tightened the nut with a wrench. I went back to the pier with mask and snorkel to make sure I did not leave any hardware on the bottom; all I found were the two broken pieces of the zinc trim tab. After a somewhat trying afternoon, we enjoyed cocktails on the flybridge and just tendered right back to Seven Stars, where we had a nice dinner at their outdoor beachfront restaurant, The Deck.


What's left of the trim tab, in pieces. Fortunately, the zinc base of unit is still bolted to the motor, providing some cathodic protection.

Tuesday I was prepared to go snorkeling, or kayaking now that it was inflated, or engage in one of the numerous water sports or beachfront activites available ashore, but Amanda mostly wanted to relax. We did go ashore mid-day to walk around the Grace Bay shopping district, stopping at the nice grocery store where Amanda wanted to pick up a few food items for lunch and another bottle of white wine. I grilled a couple of steaks for dinner and we had a relaxing afternoon and evening aboard. Wednesday was much the same, with the addition of swimming off the back of the boat, and we tendered ashore for a pizza dinner at Pizza Pizza.

Amanda's flight was Thursday afternoon, and we opted to have a final lunch at The Deck before seeing her to a cab at the lobby of Seven Stars. One final walking of the plank with full kit; to borrow a phrase, it's not just a visit, it's an adventure. She scored a window seat up near the pointy end and sent us some nice photos of Vector in Grace Bay from the air.


Lunch at The Deck.

We try to have only one big restaurant meal in a day, and lunch was it, so we had our usual lunchtime snacks for dinner, and tendered ashore for sunset cocktails at the Infiniti Bar in the Grace Bay Club. It was very nice, but I'm glad we only went for drinks; two cocktails came to over $40 with tax and tip. They did supply complimentary bar snacks, however. The evening marked one full month since we arrived in the TCI on April 10th.

Friday morning a swoopy 72' Azimut yacht came in the cut, down to where we were, and dropped their hook just a hundred feet away. They immediately cranked up their music, even though it looked to us like only the crew was aboard. Not long afterward, a French ketch, Wind's Way, arrived and dropped another hundred feet west of the Azimut. In the afternoon the French couple, whose names we never caught, came over to ask some questions about the anchorage. We gave them the skinny on groceries, public access from the beach, and dining, but I could not tell them where to get a SIM card short of taking an expensive taxi ride to the big grocery store on the main highway.


Vector, between the palms, as seen from the Infiniti Bar.

Late afternoon at high tide the Azimut left, presumably headed to one of the marinas in order to board guests -- no walking the plank for them. We enjoyed cocktails aboard and then headed ashore to Lupo, the Italian restaurant behind the four-diamond Regent Grand, for our anniversary dinner, which we'd deferred for various reasons. It was quite casual, but good. Little did we know it would be our last meal ashore in TCI.

Louise checks the weather daily looking for a departure window. She uses several sources, including Passage Weather, Wind Finder, Wind Guru, Windy, and a subscription passage weather service from Chris Parker. A week ago it looked like we might have a window Thursday through Saturday, but by the time Thursday rolled around that window had evaporated. When we spoke with Wind's Way after their arrival Friday we learned our decision to wave off had been correct -- they got slammed. But they'd been pinned down in a lousy anchorage in Mayaguana for weeks, and elected to pound through it rather than be trapped for yet another week.

Friday afternoon we discussed whether we wanted to clear out and make a run for it Saturday, what the original three-day window had narrowed to. But Friday's forecast showed a better window coming on Monday, and we opted to just wait for that, clearing out first thing Monday morning. As these things often go, however, the Monday window had evaporated entirely by Saturday morning.

In what can only have been a harbinger of the end of our stay in Provo, I spotted our first dolphin here, swimming just yards from the boat, while having my morning coffee. It turned out to be JoJo, a local celebrity because he basically lives in Grace Bay and interacts with humans. He swam around the boat, under our keel, up to the tender, and then stuck his head out of the water right where we were standing, to say hello. By the time I grabbed a camera all I could get was a shot of him as he turned to leave. We've been seeing signs about JoJo all over grace bay, including one over at Hemingway's with a little bell to ring if you spot him.


JoJo the dolphin swimming away after a brief visit.

The latest forecast showed a barely acceptable window still remaining Saturday and overnight to Sunday, with things taking a turn for the worse Monday, and nothing on the horizon for at least a week. While I would be happy to spend another week in Provo, hurricane season is fast upon us, and we need to be moving in the right direction. Also I have committed to some Red Cross training in early June, and, having to put a stake in the sand, I had provided Nassau as a departure airport.

After lots more study of the weather and much discussion, we decided Saturday morning to make a run for it. The window was no longer big enough to make Great Inagua in three or even two hops, and even if it was, there we'd be trapped for a week or more. Even stopping in Mayaguana posed the risk of being trapped in the very exposed harbor for weeks, as happened to Wind's Way. We decided the best course was the overnight run all the way to Acklins Island, where, once in the lee, we might be able to make further progress Monday and beyond.

That, of course, meant clearing out on short notice on a Saturday. I called Customs around noon, and they offered that they could meet me at Turtle Cove Marina at 4pm. That gave us three hours to get ready to depart. Good thing, because I had quite a bit to do.


Grace bay from the air. Vector is the tiny white dot just off the beach, left of center frame (click to enlarge). You can clearly see the coral reefs protecting the bay. Photo: Amanda Baker

For starters, I had to fuel the tender. It had enough gas to make another couple of trips to our private little pier, which was just a hundred yards away. But the marina was at the other end of the bay, a seven mile round trip. Adding fuel from a six-gallon jerry can and mixing in the correct amount of two-stroke oil without getting fuel or oil all over the dinghy or myself is about a fifteen minute process. The good news is we're fueled up now for the next several stops.

I also wanted to use our remaining very fast Internet to update charts, and also upload most of the photos for this blog post, in case I only had low-speed access later. And I went online to add more data to our Bahamian SIM card, since there'd be no way to do that in the Bahamas without, ironically, a working SIM card. I left early for my meeting, at 3pm, since I had to pick my way through a coral reef without detailed charts in the dinghy. I arrived just ten minutes early.


Louise and The Pretzel go for a swim.

Just before I left for Customs, we monitored radio traffic from a pleasure vessel inbound to Turtle Cove. He had nearly a seven foot draft, and the necessary high tide would not be until 7:30pm, when the marina is closed. They had to tell them they'd need to try after 7:30 in the morning, leaving them stuck for the night. They were contemplating anchoring outside the reef, so we called them to let them know they could easily get in to our anchorage for a comfortable night, and head around to the other cut in the morning.

That boat turned out to be a Nordhavn 57, Time 2, from South Africa. Mike and Lynn have cruised that boat all over the world, and it would have been wonderful to have cocktails or dinner one evening and hear their story. I regret that we were just ships that passed in the anchorage and did not get a chance to get together. While I was running to Customs, Louise spoke with them on the radio and gave them lots of good information about the anchorage and the town, since they, too, will be pinned there for a while. They offered us what was left on their Bahamian SIM card, but I had no time to swing by and get it.


Time 2 anchored near Club Med, as we passed them on departure.

Clearing out with Customs and Immigration was painless. In addition to the $50 exit clearance fee, I also paid $30 in overtime ($15 to each department) for the weekend visit. I said goodbye to the marina staff, and then slammed my way back upwind the three and a half miles to Vector. We decked the tender and we under way just a little after 5pm.

We had an early dinner in the pilothouse. After we rounded the corner at Northwest Point, we found ourselves in five footers on a relatively short 7-8 second period, but with both wind and waves behind us, the motion was tolerable. The seas did make the decision for us about which end of Acklins to target; the northeast corner has a much more protected harbor, good cell coverage, and a shorter trip, but the direction was too much north of west to be comfortable, putting those five footers on the quarter. We opted instead for due west to the southwest corner, a more comfortable ride.

Outside the limit we discharged our now nearly full waste tanks, and were both relieved when the replacement macerator pump did its job. With no remaining spares, we'll be holding our breath every time now, so to speak. Louise turned in around 8:30, and I did whatever I could on the Internet before it faded out. Seas continued to build throughout the evening; I quit typing this post not long after I started because it was too rough to type, and I picked back up again this morning after I came on watch.

I donned a mask to check the running gear but these fish beat me to it. They were just hanging out by the prop.

We changed the watch at 0300 as we normally do, and I collapsed in bed. Louise had been running the portable AC in the stateroom, which I found too cold, so I turned it off and opened the portlights instead. About an hour later I was rudely awakened by a large splash of water in my face, as if from a bucket in one of those old cartoons. Louise came running downstair because she heard the noise, which she described as a pail of marbles. I was wet, and my pillow was wet, and it was clear a wave had hit the boat and splashed in. I sleep on the starboard side, which was also the windward side, so I closed and dogged the starboard portlight and went back to bed.

That lasted only a few minutes, until the bilge alarm went off. I popped the center bilge open to see water running in from the port side aft. I turned all the lights on and only then did I discover that the entire port side of the stateroom was covered in salt water. Apparently a rogue wave had actually hit the port side of the boat, with enough force to send a few gallons of water into the boat, nearly taking out the bug screen in the process, and to have hit me on the starboard side of the bed. The port side of the bed was soaked, and the floor was covered in water from wall to wall. It had finally worked its way below the flooring, through the subfloor, and into the bilge.

Additional casualties were a bunch of Louise's sweaters and several pairs of my shoes, all in shelves under the port portlight, and a basket of quilting fabric that had been moved into the stateroom temporarily while we had guests. We did our best at 4am in a rolling boat to clean it all up, and I again returned to my wet bed, but I didn't get much sleep. Sometime in the next couple of days we'll need to drag the flooring up on deck and hose it off with fresh water, clean the subfloors, cabinets, and bed frame as much as we can with wet towels, and vacuum out the bilge. Louise had to do a load of laundry on the way into Acklins this morning to get the salt water out of the bedding.


Castle Island Light as we approach the south end of Acklins. It took ten minutes to upload this one photo.

Update: We are anchored off the southwest point of Acklins Island, in an indentation known as Datum Bay (map). Winds are still 20kt or so, and we had seven foot seas right until we turned the corner. But we are in the lee of the island now, and the bay is calm enough for a decent night sleep. My cell phone is barely functional here; we have Internet coverage intermittently at just above dial-up speed (for those readers who remember back that far), so it's a good thing I had pre-loaded the photos. In the morning we will try to move north to Long Cay; we'll see if the seas cooperate as we pass along west of the Bight of Acklins. The Bight itself is too shallow for us to transit.