It's over.

We are under way across the Strait of Florida, with the Bahamas receding behind us. I expect to be offline most of the day, posting this as we reacquire our Starlink signal somewhere offshore of Jensen Beach. We will come back into the US at the Fort Pierce inlet, drop the hook, and clear Customs online, bringing to a close our 2024 Bahamas cruise.

Our welcoming committee, a dozen miles offshore of Fort Pierce.

We have mixed feelings about this cruise. We enjoy the Bahamas and it is always a little sad to be leaving, but we are very much looking forward to being back in the states. This has been a very challenging season, with the worst weather we've had in a Bahamas season, and lots of things breaking. As a litmus test, my mask and snorkel have not come out of storage throughout the whole trip, and my swimsuit made it into the water exactly once.

The tanker Leo Sun passes astern of us this morning. He had to alter course to miss us.

When last I posted here, over two weeks ago, we were still at Treasure Cay. I'm glad we stayed, because that turned out to be one of the nicest stops of the season. We spent a little more time strolling the beach and the island, and we made it back to the Bahama Beach Club for dinner on Italian night. That proved to be a prix fixe affair that involved way too much food, so we had leftovers, but the entrees were decent if not stellar, and they had a surprisingly good tiramisu for dessert.

On our walk we encountered this sculpture in a roundabout. It's the logo of the Treasure Cay resort, and it looks a lot like the Santa Maria from the coat of arms of the Bahamas. It just needs the base to be barry wavy of four Azure and Argent. 

Wednesday at high tide the motor tanker Ocean Trader arrived and tied up at the fuel dock to offload.  The crew tendered over to Cafe Florence and we passed them there on our walk. They spent the night, which meant we had to pass them close aboard on our way out Thursday, once we had enough tide. Good thing, because we had been anchored pretty much where they needed to turn around when they left at sunset.

Ocean Trader taking most of the deep water on our departure.

Thursday morning we stopped in the mini-mart and then had a short two-hour cruise over to Great Guana Cay. We pulled into Fishers Bay and tucked in as close as we could get to shore for protection from southeasterlies (map), which put us closer than many of the other boats. That made it a fairly short tender ride to the dock at Grabber's Beach Bar and Grill, which was a good thing, as the dinghy overheating problem was still plaguing us.

Sunset over Vector and the anchorage at Fishers Bay.

We splashed the temperamental tender and made the short ride over to Grabber's for dinner. I'm sorry I did not wear my suit, as their pool looked inviting. Not so the tables, which were picnic tables set so high that your feet hardly touched the sand. We opted to eat at the bar instead, where the stools were more comfortable but it was a lot louder. The food was decent and the beer was cold, and they gave us tiny samples of the house frozen concoction, which will knock you on your butt. I would definitely return. We strolled the small settlement after dinner.

The chicken is very fresh at Grabber's.

Friday we returned ashore for an early dinner at Nippers, the other tiki bar atop a hill on the ocean side. They, too, have a pool, interestingly set across two levels. The burgers were excellent, but honestly we did not jell with the vibe of the place, even though it is incredibly popular during the daytime and especially so for the Sunday pig roast. The joint closes at 7, and seems not as popular for dinner. We liked Grabber's better.

Early dinner at the bar at Nippers. That's the Atlantic in the background.

Our choice to anchor as close in as possible for protection turned out to be something of a liability later in the evening, even though it was mostly comfortable throughout the day, apart from a few high-speed wakes. Friday night is evidently Karaoke night at Grabber's. Or, at least, we hope it was Karaoke, because if those were professional singers, they are in the wrong business. It was loud and it went into the wee hours; it was still wafting across the anchorage when I turned in. We'll try to avoid Friday night if we come back; it was much quieter Thursday.

Th upper level of Nippers pool.

Saturday morning our window arrived to cross The Whale, and we got an early start before the anchorage got bumpy from a wind shift. The Whale cut was a complete non-event, and we arrived to Green Turtle Cay at dead low tide. We dropped a lunch hook outside Settlement Creek, off New Plymouth (map) to wait on tide to enter the harbor. Once the tide came up above half we weighed anchor and followed our old track into White Sound with 6" under keel, dropping the hook in the tight harbor just a hundred yards or so from where we anchored nine years ago (map).

We kept finding water in the engine room bilge. The pressure switch on the fresh water pump was the culprit; here I have fitted the spare. It's just a well pump switch from the big-box store.

Barefeet was already in the harbor, docked over at the Bluff House Marina, and they invited us over for dinner. We did not set out to "buddy boat" with them this season, but our itineraries overlapped and we had a great time connecting in several different places. We dropped the tender and headed over for some delicious meatloaf, and cocktails and conversation well into the evening. They also supplied us with some more of their r/o water, as our tank was now up over 400ppm. We had a quiet and comfortable night aboard.

The beach at Grabber's.

Sunday I took the tender around the harbor, sounding it out and seeing if we could get into the adjacent bay for when the winds were forecast to pick up on Monday. I only found 5' at the entrance, but I learned later I had not quite found dead center of the channel they had dredged after Dorian for relief vessels. In any event, we decided we'd need to leave the harbor Monday, with not enough holding for the forecast winds.

Vector in White Sound. This photo belies how steep this hill is.

In the evening we returned to Barefeet and the four of us walked over the hill to the Tranquil Turtle for dinner. We could see in the distance on Great Abaco the smoke from an enormous wildland fire; shifting wind would later send that smoke right to us in the anchorage, making for an unpleasant night. Chris allowed that the burger was the best he had yet had in the Bahamas.

Dinner with Erin and Chris at the Tranquil Turtle, our last evening together.

The smoke turned out to be an indicator that the wind forecasted for Monday afternoon had instead arrived Sunday night, and around 2:30am the anchor alarm went off. We had once again yanked out a ball of grass roots and were slowly moving. Worse, we had no escape, as we need tidal help and good light to leave the harbor. We weighed and re-set the anchor in the blind, paid out more chain, and hoped for the best. It held till morning, again letting go just as we were making ready to weigh anyhow.

Vector seen through the end of the courtesy dock at Grabber's.

The wind was not conducive to staying anywhere on the outside of Green Turtle, and so instead we motored about an hour northwest and dropped the hook bewteen Nunjack Cay, also known as Manjack Cay, and Rat Cay (map), tucked up as close to Nunjack as we could get for some lee. By mid-afternoon there were over a dozen boats doing the same thing, and we're glad we arrived early. It was bouncy when we arrived, flat calm at dinner time, a little "jiggly" later in the evening, and very comfortable overnight.

An entire 4-pack of 50μ watermaker filters failed in exactly this way.

This turned out to be one of the prettiest anchorages we've seen in the Abacos. It used to be possible to land on the beach and walk a ways on some trails, but no longer. Instead we took the tender into the shallow "harbor" between the islands Tuesday morning, where we found loads of rays and turtles. We saw Barefeet passing in the distance, on their way from Green Turtle to Allans-Pensacola Cay. We enjoyed our stay at Nunjack/Manjack Cay (I could find no explanation for why there are two names).

The town dock at New Plymouth, complete with free trash dumpster.

After lunch we weighed anchor and motored back to Green Turtle, where winds were such that we could again tuck up near Settlement Creek (map) to get ashore. I walked the town of New Plymouth, refreshing my memory from a decade ago and checking out the several restaurants and other shops. I walked the entire waterfront and stopped at the Loyalist monument. The town has mostly come back since the storm.

Arriving ashore.

In the evening we came back ashore for dinner at Pineapples, which has its own dock, but we opted for the longer walk from the town landing. We offloaded our accumulated trash there, where the town provides a free dumpster for cruisers, a rare luxury in the islands. We returned ashore in the morning for some fresh veggies from the local grocer, and also ended up with a pair of delicious brownies from the "bakery" on a woman's porch. That provided dessert for two nights.

Pineapples. Very popular with locals and visitors alike. Burgers were good.

When we got back from our morning walk and grocery stop we decked the tender and got under way for Allans-Pensacola Cay, on recommendation of Erin. They were kind enough to provide us their soundings, and we were able to get quite a ways into the lovely natural harbor to drop the hook in beautiful clear sand (map). There is just enough protection here from the trades for a comfortable stay.

Loyalist monument.

This is another beautiful spot, and we finally caught a break on weather and it was pleasant to be out on deck. (Still just a bit too cold for swimming, sadly.) With perfect conditions, I ... I ... I got into my work clothes and went up on the boat deck to work on the tender. It's too vital to risk it quitting far from help, and I could not squander good working conditions on trivial pursuits such as enjoying the raw beauty of the islands.

En route to Allans we were passed by a phalanx of Palm Beach Motor Yachts on full plane. Some kind of brand rally; they all ended up in Marsh Harbour.

I was able to jury-rig the incorrect but new and supple impeller into the pump housing, and take it for a spin in the calm protected harbor, where paddling back to Vector would have at least been possible, if not pleasant. Sadly, that did not fix the issue. The telltale showed excellent water flow but the engine was still overheating. At least now I knew it was not the impeller, and I was glad I had not dropped a ton of money on flying one out from the states.

These plastic trays are cairns for a trail on Allans. Lots of other flotsam as well, such as pot floats. The sheer number of these bins tells me a container of them fell off a ship someplace. The Atlantic side of every island is littered with plastic that landed in the ocean.

I next pulled the thermostat, which was, unsurprisingly, badly encrusted with salt and scale. I cleaned it up and tested it, and it seemed to be opening at about the right temperature, but slowly. And I ran the engine with the housing open long enough to confirm water flow. The problem was still with me after the next test run, so next I removed the thermostat altogether, and that made the issue go away. I've ordered a new thermostat to the next stop, and I hope that will be the end of it. In the meantime, we have a working dinghy that just takes longer to warm up.

Thermostat looking a little crusty.

With the dinghy working I headed ashore with what was left of my afternoon, to walk the trail from the beach over to the ocean side, in search of "The Naming Tree," a tree where numerous cruisers have left mementos of their visit involving their boat names, usually on a piece of driftwood or flotsam from the beach. I ended up taking the wrong trail, well-marked with more flotsam, and ended up at a rope swing instead of the tree. I did not have it in me to try again with the right trail, so that's an exercise for a possible return visit.

The start of the very serpentine trail I took, marked with the aforementioned cairns.

We could have stayed here several days, and in hindsight perhaps we should have, but we had only a single weather window to get ashore and walk around at Fox Town, across the bay on Little Abaco. So Thursday afternoon we weighed anchor for the short cruise across the Sea of Abaco, worked our way in behind Hawksbill Cay, and dropped the hook as close to town as we could get, just a short distance from where we stopped nine years ago (map). We had a quiet dinner on board.

The swing. Yes, I availed myself; it was very relaxing.

Friday morning we tendered ashore at the public landing to get in a nice walk on dry land. Little did we know it would be the last place we'd set foot in the Bahamas for this trip. By the time we get ashore tomorrow night it will have been over a week since we stepped onto land. We had a nice walk through the small settlement, which we missed the last time through. There is one restaurant, a small but well-stocked store where we bought milk, and a gas station. We were the only foreigners in town; there was a single other cruising boat anchored a short distance from Vector.

Small store at Fox Town. A little of everything.

We weighed anchor before the easterlies picked up, and headed for the shelter of Northwest Harbor, in the lee of Great Sale Cay, a five hour cruise. We tucked in closer to shore than we dared on our first visit here and dropped the hook (map). On that occasion we were also seeking shelter from strong easterlies, which pinned us down here for three days. This time it would be a week.

Either a sunset or a hotel logo.

It was a great place to ride out the 30-knot winds we saw over the next day, and we had plenty of company. Monday, after the first windstorm has blown through, we weighed anchor and headed for Little Grand Cay, our very first Bahamian port of call lo those many years ago, where we knew there was a settlement with a nice restaurant and place to get ashore. Winds were supposed to be light for just a single night.

We get a lot of nice sunsets out here.

Alas, it was not to be. After about an hour under way, winds were back up to near 20 knots, on a forecast of less than ten. It became a rough ride, but, more importantly, there is no comfortable anchorage at Grand for those kind of winds. We debated on taking the chance that conditions would improve on arrival, but if they did not, which was likely, we'd have made a six-hour round trip from Great Sale. We turned around and make it a two-hour round trip instead.

Pot float tree at Great Guana.

Pulling back into the anchorage, tail between our legs, we pulled up even closer to shore and dropped the hook (map). And there we would remain until winds finally let up yesterday. We had plenty of company every night, with a dozen or so boats each night and 22 for the worst of it. Boats came and went, mostly inbound toward Green Turtle with a few headed for West End.

Maybe hard to tell in this photo, but Vector is closer to the windward shore than everyone else by at least a hundred feet. We probably have the deepest draft in the anchorage.

Yearning to get off the boat, we splashed the tender and explorer the entire enormous harbor. There are no beaches, only very sharp rock. The remains of an old landing for a long-gone space tracking station looked promising, but we could not get close without running our aluminum tender onto a rock bottom. I did not want to risk it, though we noticed a couple of smaller dinghys made the landing during our stay.

Sunset over Great Sale.

Yesterday we finally got our chance to get out of Dodge, weighing anchor first thing to have a fair tide to Mangrove Cay. This is a tiny island, barely 2,000' long, which can provide a very limited break from easterly fetch in mostly settled conditions. We pulled in as close to the island as depth would allow and set the hook (map). We were alone when we arrived, with our choice of spots, but by the end of the day we had eight other boats with us. There is a weird eddy here and we made a strange ground track on anchor.

Best my cell phone could do with moonrise over the opposite shore.

This morning we had the anchor up before dawn. The plotter is projecting an 8:30 arrival for a little over 14 hours on passage. As I wrap up typing we've just finished dinner, and I am driving directly into the sun. We'll have to claw our way in the inlet against over two knots of current, but that's just how it goes sometimes.

Legend has it that this is the end of a marriage. For us I guess it's just the end of a Bahamas cruise.

After we catch our breath, we will begin a somewhat leisurely trip north. We've booked a dock at the yacht club in Indian Harbour Beach so we can go to a real honest American grocery store and fill our tank with nice fresh city water for the first time since leaving Fort Lauderdale in February. It's good to be home.

Sunset from our deck at Allans-Pensacola.

For the schadenfreude crowd, here is a partial list of things that broke since we left the US:

• Watermaker membrane (increased salinity)
• Watermaker feed pump
• Watermaker J-tube
• Watermaker pre-filters
• My laptop screen
• Main plotter display
• Dinghy cooling system
• Fresh water pump pressure switch
• Wireless phone charging pad

Comfort Inn, I think.

Bahamas cruise by the numbers:

• Miles: 935
• Tach hours: 157
• Generator hours: 132
• Anchorages: 39
• Docks: 1

We arrived to Fort Pierce Inlet just as the sun set. A CG cutter is ahead of us.

Update: Even after a ten hour crossing, I still did not have the blog post done before I had to pay full attention to the inlet, which was a mess with nearly three knots of outgoing current against an incoming surf. We're now safely anchored in a familiar spot in Fort Pierce (map), cleared in with CBP, and have had a relaxing beer. 

Cruising a post-Dorian Abacos

As I begin typing we are anchored in Marsh Harbour, Abacos, which is on the "big island" of Great Abaco. We've been here a few days already and hope to get underway tomorrow for Treasure Cay, also on the island of Great Abaco. It's been ten days since I last posted, and I am grappling with the reality that we have no more long passages now until we leave the Bahamas, so I can't really save all my typing for when we are under way. There's a lot to update and I don't expect to finish this post today. [Update: it took longer than I hoped and this post is far too long; grab a drink.]

Elbow Cay lighthouse, as seen from inside Hope Town Harbour. A canonical image of the Bahamas.

The rest of our passage from Egg Island was comfortable, and we arrived at the Little Harbour inlet right at slack for a drama-free entrance. We can't get into Little Harbour at any tide level, and even though we would have loved to see the place, and reconnect with our friends on Barefeet moored in the harbor, the two anchorages immediately outside were way too rolly to want to spend even a night. Instead we turned north and dropped the hook in the lee of Lynyard Cay (map). The ride was bouncy until we were fully in the lee, which convinced us there was no good way to tender back to Little Harbour from here.

Sunset from our anchorage off Lynyard Cay.

The bottom was very grassy and so we had to hunt around for a patch of clear sand in which to anchor. We had a good set and a comfortable evening, with dinner aboard. We also had a comfortable night, right up until 6am, when we woke to the dulcet sounds of our anchor alarm. By which I mean a carefully crafted Klaxon sound meant to induce an adrenaline rush. Even with the adrenaline, we staggered upstairs and, pre-coffee, were both too foggy-headed to even silence the alarm expeditiously.

The vast majority of time the anchor alarm goes off it is either because a GPS glitch caused the boat to appear a few feet away from where it actually was, or because I set a very tight alarm circle, and if I don't mash the "set" button at the exact instant the anchor hits the bottom, or if it takes a few feet to set, the alarm circle is not exactly correct and we leave it when we swing in a different direction. This was neither of those -- we were moving.

How Louise dries the laundry after a passage. I put these clotheslines up in the engine room years ago. The power-hungry electric drier gets used for a final fluff.

We very seldom drag anchor, but when we do, putting out a bunch more chain is almost guaranteed to fix it, and with some 700' to the boat behind us, a big Krogen named Invictus that had come in after us, that's what we did. No sooner did I shut down the engine than we started moving again, and so we added even more scope until we had some 170' of chain out. In just 17' of water, that's what we'd use for tropical storm force winds, and the wind had only picked up into the 20s. While we were doing this, we noticed Invictus out on their bow doing the exact same thing.

When even that failed to keep us in place, we knew we had a bigger problem than just insufficient scope. It was dark when we first came up to the pilothouse, but by now it was twilight, and knowing we had to move later in the day anyway due to shifting winds, we decided to just weigh anchor and get under way. When we finally got the anchor out of the water the problem became clear: we had pulled it through the clear sand and into the grass, and a big gust of wind pulled it out with a big ball of grass, roots, and rocks nestled in the flukes. That keeps the flukes from digging back in and it just skips along the bottom, the one downside to our nice Bruce anchor.

This giant ball of roots and rocks makes the anchor slide along the bottom rather than re-catching.

Shortly after we had arrived to this spot, another big Krogen, Moonlight Dance, weighed anchor and left, but not before dragging the anchor a couple hundred feet hanging just below the surface, and then throwing a bunch of debris overboard when it came up on deck. We had been puzzled, but when our own anchor came up, it all became clear. We made a mental note to anchor further from the grassy areas if we ever come back.

It was a short cruise north and around the corner to an area known as Black Point Cay, where we tucked in as close to the southwest corner as we could get (map), for protection from southerly winds. Moonlight Dance was already there, along with perhaps ten other boats. Protection from southerlies is a scarce commodity in this area.

Sunrise at the Black Point Cay anchorage.

My big project for the afternoon, after the engine room had cooled down a bit, was to replace one of the J-tubes on our troublesome watermaker. The last time I ran it the filer alarm went off, which seemed strange considering the filter readings we'd been getting. When I went down to the ER to have a look, water was spraying out at 800psi in a fine mist. The last time this happened, on the same J-tube, I had to repair it with JB-Weld, as I did not yet have a spare, and that repair has lasted years. The new leak was in a different spot. It was a big project, requiring removing the Clark pump from its mounting and then doing yoga with a pair of wrenches in hand to remove the compression fittings.

One of two stainless J-tubes. JB-Weld repair at right held for years; the new leak is in the straight section.

My other afternoon task was dealing with a jury summons we received at our mail receiving service. They will open mail items and scan and email them to us on request, and when we see legal paperwork we have them do that. The Clay County court system has a web page for prospective jurors, and I was able to enter an "on vacation" excuse. They accepted a scan of our Bahamian cruising permit as evidence I was out of country, and I got a text message the next morning excusing me. We had a quiet sunset dinner on board. Winds increased overnight but we were mostly comfortable.

Thursday was a rainy day, and with winds shifting to the northwest, it was a good time to move. We weighed anchor and headed north to an anchorage near Tilloo Cut, where we worked in as close to shore as depth would allow and dropped the hook (map). The large cay known as Lubbers Quarter gave us something of a lee there, comfortable for one night until the winds started to shift more to the south.

Vector anchored at Tahiti Beach, looking toward Elbow Cay.

The channel north of there along Elbow Cay is very shallow; my chart says 4'-5' at low tide. We were planning to maybe sound it out in the dinghy before deciding if we'd have to go around the deeper channel west of Lubbers. But just after high tide Friday morning, none other than Barefeet passed us headed for the channel. They relayed their soundings back to us, and we quickly weighed anchor and headed north, getting past the first shallow stretch and dropping the hook in a tight anchorage off Tahiti Beach (map). Erin and Chris invited us over for homemade pizza, which was delicious.

Sunset over Tilloo Cay.

"Tahiti Beach" is mostly a sandbar that disappears entirely at high tide. At lower tide levels it becomes a family gathering/party spot, accessible from Hope Town by land. Around mid-morning the Thirsty Cuda, a floating bar, pulled in and set up shop just off the sandbar; Chris and I dinghied over and splurged on fruity rum drinks, the canonical sandbar tiki experience. In the evening we all piled into our respective tenders and rode the couple of miles to the Sea Spray resort on Elbow Cay for a beach-bar dinner; the marina is partly rebuilt, but not the restaurant, which is operating out of a food truck instead.

Chris and I enjoying the sandbar and a couple of drinks from the Thirsty Cuda behind us.

While we'd been seeing scattered wrecks and shoreside damage all the way up from Little Harbour, the sheer magnitude of Dorian's destruction and the painstaking pace of recovery becomes much more noticeable here in the more developed tourist areas. We walked around a bit on Lubbers Quarter and again here at Sea Spray. Construction is everywhere, moving at varying paces, but properties abandoned to the elements also abound. A dozen years of disaster relief work has accustomed us to the sight, but the heartbreak is still palpable. Even today I can't photograph it -- it's still an open wound for someone.

A distant view of Vector and Barefeet over the sandbar.

Sunday Barefeet left for Man-o-War Cay, and just before high tide we, too, weighed anchor, hoping to find a spot outside of Hope Town. The inside harbor there is full of moorings, none large enough for Vector. We scoped out a spot just abreast of the Elbow Cay lighthouse, but there was not enough depth for us to swing, and we backtracked to another deep pocket off the ruins (pre-Dorian) of the Elbow Cay Club (map). We had plenty of room to swing here, if a bit close to the marked sailing line, but with shoals in all directions, we were committed to this spot until high tide again would let us out.

Another sunset over Tilloo Cay. Barefeet is at left.

We tendered into town, landed at the public dock, and had a very nice walk around most of Hope Town after being pinned down on the boat for a while. Most everything is closed on Sunday, but we noted that a fair number of businesses had come back and the town was mostly intact. After our walk we tendered across the harbor to the Hope Town Inn and Marina, accessible only by water, for a nice dinner over draft beers at their bar overlooking the pool. This resort property is in full swing and had the nicest menu we've seen in quite a while. We walked the grounds a bit after dinner.

The bar at the Hope Town Inn and Marina. They had draft beer, a rarity in the Bahamas.

Our anchorage was a bit exposed in all directions except east, and overnight things became a bit bouncy. After midnight the tender was bashing into the swim platform and I ended up hip-tying it. I was hoping for another day in Hope Town, to maybe visit the lighthouse and stroll town with the businesses open, but after our morning coffee we decided the anchorage was just too lumpy and the ride to town would be a wet one. Instead we decked the tender and got under way just after high tide for Man-O-War Cay.

We were a little leery of this cannon aimed across our transom near the old Elbow Cay Club.

On our way to Man-O-War we crossed our wake. Long-time gluttons for punishment, er, I mean, readers of this blog may remember we started our first cruise to the Bahamas in the Abacos, nine years ago. We were traveling with another boat, with a draft even greater than Vector's, and between that, the lack of more detailed electronic charts, and our relative inexperience, we left the Abacos via Man-O-War Cut after a one-night stop at the island.

Sunset from our anchorage off Elbow Cay.

On this visit we pulled in much closer, entering the somewhat protected bay near Scopely Rock and dropping the hook (map), not far from Barefeet, who left shortly after we arrived. It was calm and overlooked a lovely beach. We had the hook down in plenty of time to take in the partial solar eclipse, which here reached a maximum of just under 40% obscured. A few wispy clouds passed by but we were able to get a good view through the eclipse glasses I stowed away after our 2017 totality experience in Charleston.

From our first anchorage at Man-O-War we could see the Atlantic over a small strip of white sand beach.

Just after maximum eclipse and with some clouds moving in, we dropped the tender and headed ashore for a walk around town. It was much as I remembered, except for the things that were obliterated by the storm. This was ground zero, sustaining a direct hit from the eye, with the one-two punch of eyewall winds in both directions. The Albury Brothers boat works is back in full swing, which was nice to see.

At max eclipse I snapped this photo on our flybridge. The eclipse is projected on the deck through the grommet holes of the soft top. 

Our lovely anchorage in the little bay was not to last. Shortly after we returned home, winds spiked up to 20, well above forecast, and our anchor, which had been set in just a few inches of sand over the rock bottom, began scraping the rock. Rather than spend a lot of time and emotional capital trying to re-set in in the very tight and shallow bay, we weighed and moved to a deeper, sandier spot outside, not far from where we were nine years ago (map).

As we walked around the cay we saw more eclipse projections from gaps in the tree cover.

We returned ashore in the morning for another short walk and to check out the hardware store. After that we weighed anchor on a rising tide for the hour-long cruise to Marsh Harbour. Most of the protected part of the harbor is just a hair too shallow for Vector at low tide, so we had to hunt around for some depth. We ended up anchoring not far from the entrance, in between the two channels that lead to the government docks (map). Those docks were very busy our entire stay.

Sunset from our second anchorage off Man-O-War.

We were settled in plenty of time to catch the last-ever Delta-IV Heavy launch from Canaveral, but even though we had clear skies, we saw nothing. The Delta-IV uses different propellant from SpaceX, with an all but invisible exhaust. We stopped at Barefeet for a quick chat on our way to Snappas, the restaurant at one of the marinas. It was typical marina fare but we were happy to have it; afterward we took a short walk to the nearby small liquor and grocery store for a look around. I stayed up for the 1:45am SpaceX launch, but there was too much cloud cover to see anything.

Please read the sign. I can not do justice in a caption.

Wednesday morning we landed at the public dinghy dock, which has free trash dumpsters. That's a big deal in the Bahamas, where we often have to pay between $5 and $10 per bag to offload trash; we carry large trash bags just for this purpose. We walked to the nicest grocery store we have ever seen in the Bahamas, Maxwell's, about a half mile from the dock. Along with the other groceries, we bought eggs and sausage for the first time in forever, and made breakfast sandwiches when got back home on a pair of hamburger buns that Erin and Chris had gifted us.

Obligatory food picture. I used the fancy plates.

In the afternoon I returned ashore stag to check out the rest of town, with stops at the liquor store and the pharmacy. I bought Stugeron (cinnarizine) for Louise, a seasickness med that is sold over the counter here but is unavailable in the US. This seems to work better for her than the other OTC meds. In the evening we were treated to more home-made pizza aboard Barefeet.

OK, Maxwell's takes the prize for nicest grocery in the Bahamas.

Thursday we had a quiet day at home, working on various projects (but not the blog, evidently), but we did go ashore for a walk. We stopped at Colors, a tiki bar restaurant, to check it out, confirming that Thursday was ladies night, with free drinks from 6-7. Louise is mostly not drinking nowadays, and absent any other ladies to tag along, we opted not to sit through loud music for one free beer at dinner, and ate at home instead.

This sign was on the pharmacy, of all places, where, like the liquor stores, I had to be buzzed in. Elsewhere in town I saw "masks required" signs leftover from an earlier time.

In keeping with the theme of everything breaking on this cruise, when I came upstairs from my shower at the end of the day, the chart plotter was flashing, the monitor blinking off and back on randomly. I tried power-cycling the monitor, but after it turned off, it would never turn back on again. Neither the remote nor the soft-switch pushbutton on the side would get it to come back on, even after several unplug/wait cycles, despite the power LED being lit.The smell of burning electronic circuitry confirmed the bad news.

Vector in the chaotic anchorage of Marsh Harbour.

To be fair, this was a cheap ($70) Insignia brand 19" TV from Best Buy, and it has been powered up more or less continuously for over 54,000 hours, with part of that time on a wonky sine wave from a failing inverter. I suppose I could not ask too much of it. But here it was almost bed time, with a wind shift expected overnight, and this monitor and the computer to which it was attached are integral parts of our anchor alarm system. To make matters worse, I know from experience that when the monitor stops working, our Nobeltec TimeZero plotter software eventually hangs, so I could not just rely on, say, VNC to display the screen elsewhere.

The failed monitor on its way off the boat. This case warping is now several years old, from a combination of internal heat and it sitting under the greenhouse windows of the pilothouse.

We bought this monitor in 2018 to replace an older Proscan 19" TV that suffered screen problems when it got wet (long story). The damaged part of the screen, a "nibble" in the bottom left corner, seemed OK for TV use, and I mounted it to the wall down in the guest stateroom, where it has sat mostly unused since. It took me 20 minutes or so to get it back off the wall and connected to the plotter PC. This late in the night I just set it on an inverted plastic container to keep the vent holes clear, and tied it to the busted monitor with a string to keep it from moving if we took a roll, and called it a day.

In the calm light of morning I snapped this photo of the jury-rig replacement sitting atop an inverted cream cheese container and tied to the failed unit behind it. You can see the "nibble" at lower left, which has since grown considerably.

Friday's project was thus excavating though the under-helm parts storage to find the table stand for the old TV, which I had removed to wall-mount it (yes, I am a parts hoarder), re-installing it, and physically swapping the two monitors, which have to be bolted down. Once I had it out I took the failed unit apart, harboring a fantasy that it was going to be a blown capacitor or on-board fuse that would quickly reveal itself. Of course I found nothing amiss at all on the single 5" x 6" circuit board that comprises the entire circuitry of this TV, nor could we find where the burnt smell had emanated. With no other options, we walked it to the trash dumpster on our way to the grocery store for provisions.

Dinghy dock at the Jib Room.

We returned ashore in the evening to the Jib Room, the restaurant at one of the other marinas, for dinner, which was OK but nothing special. This after yet another repair project, freeing up the bearings on our table fan for at least the third time since arriving in the Bahamas; the fan will be replaced when we return to the US. On our way home we stopped at Barefeet just to say hello and ended up staying much longer than intended over a beer. The evening ended with another SpaceX launch, wherein the booster landed on a drone ship just 50 miles east of us. The booster return was quite spectacular.

Dinner at the Jib Room overlooking the harbor.

By Saturday morning winds had clocked to the northeast as forecast and it became a bit bumpy where we were anchored. We weighed anchor as planned for the short cruise to Treasure Cay, where I am typing now, but we bashed through the chop, spraying salt water all over the boat and ruining the nice rainwater rinse we had gotten at Marsh. Oh well. Barefeet left the harbor right in front of us headed for the same place, and were again kind enough to relay the soundings. We made our way into the harbor through the shallow entrance, high tide putting 18" under our keel, and dropped the hook in the deeper end of the harbor (map).

Best shot I could get of the second stage flying almost directly overhead. The while line to the right is our SSB antenna illuminated by our anchor light.

I headed ashore first thing, landing at what is left of the destroyed marina, because I wanted to get cinnamon buns for the morning from Cafe La Florence, thinking they would be closed Sunday. I had heard good things about the cinnamon buns. When I got to the counter I learned that the cafe is open 7-12 on Sunday, even though both their Facebook page and the sign out front listed only Mon-Sat hours. I waved off, preferred to get them fresh in the morning, and instead checked out the nearby mini-mart, well-stocked, and the gorgeous re-opened beach resort a half mile away.

First stage re-entry burn, much closer than I expected. Much more impressive in person than this photo conveys.

I had to cut my exploration short to return home to grill some steaks for dinner; it was our turn to have Erin and Chris over after we'd been eating all their pizza. It was a great evening over too much wine, and we both crashed early.

We started out Sunday morning with the aforementioned cinnamon buns, served warm. We made a strategic error, inasmuch as we should have shared just one between us. They were enormous and loaded with sugar. We walked some of it off by walking down to the Bahama Beach Club resort, strolling the grounds, and making a reservation for dinner at the poolside bar.

Enormous cinnamon buns. $6 apiece. We could have shared one.

On the way back to Vector the dinghy gave an overheat alarm not once, but twice, and it had done so on our way to and from the Jib Room in Marsh Harbour as well. So we hoisted it on deck, bass-ackwards, so I could change the impeller. I knew this day would come eventually, and I had ordered the four-part impeller kit years ago to have at the ready.

Cafe La Florence. The blue building, with several businesses, withstood the storm well and was one of the first things to reopen here.

I removed the lower unit from the motor, took apart the pump housing, carefully cleaned everything up, and installed the new impeller into its housing. Then I installed the new gasket, O-ring, and Woodruff key and went to slide the whole assembly onto the drive shaft. It would not fit. Argh. A good look at the impeller revealed that all the external dimensions were an exact match, but the shaft hole on the replacement was about 2mm smaller than original.

An hour of Googling ensued, with both of us hammering away, It was a genuine Honda kit and all the part numbers were correct, so near as we can figure it was a mistake at the factory. And there are zero sources for the correct impeller in the Abacos. I inspected the old one; all the vanes were intact although with some cracking starting to show, but they're stiff in the compressed position so not moving enough water. I carefully lubricated everything and reinstalled the old impeller and put the engine back together, hoping we could nurse the engine along at lower speeds until we get back to the states.

View of the pool bar, complete with swim-up bar, and behind it the stunning water.

In the crushing defeat, and having not "changed" anything, I forgot to test the engine after we put it back in the water. So I am sure you can guess that when we got in the tender and started it up to make our dinner reservation, there was no water coming from the tell-tale. Back inside we went, with Louise heating up some leftovers for dinner while I called the hotel to cancel. After dinner, in what was left of the daylight, I took it all back apart.

The impeller was unchanged from when I had reassembled it, and that's when I realized the pump outlet and riser pipe must have been misaligned when I bolted the lower unit back on. A simple fix, and when we tested it after sunset it was all working again. I narrowly escaped having to inflate our kayak and row ashore in the morning to get expensive provisions for the rest of the trip; there is no guarantee I will be able to kayak ashore from any of our other stops.

This backhoe near the beach is frozen in time, likely flooded by the storm surge. It still has contractor items in the "glove box" area but the controls are rusted away.

Nervous now without a spare of any kind, I spent a good deal of time yesterday with a drill and a Dremel enlarging the hole in the new impeller, in the hopes that I can somehow make it fit the engine should the need arise. The current arrangement will have to last us until we get back to Florida. I did dinghy ashore for a real test, walking to the Beach Club and rewarding myself with a beer at the pool bar. I also made a dinner reservation for tomorrow, which is Italian night in their indoor venue. We had no interest in last night's "pizza night," since Bahamian pizza has universally disappointed, and I grilled some chicken at home instead.

We missed our opportunity to have dinner from the regular menu, which only happens Sunday and Thursday, and so instead today we went for lunch, making that today's big meal. We ate at the bar and had excellent burgers. We picked up an enormous cookie from Cafe La Florence on our way home for dessert.

Lunch at the pool bar with a view of that beautiful water.

Yesterday would have been an excellent day to "cross the Whale," a brief run outside the reef line at Whale Cay that is necessary to continue north. That requires cooperative conditions on the North Atlantic ocean, and every day on the radio can be heard skippers asking about conditions at the Whale. Barefeet left here Sunday, spent a night at Great Guana Cay, and transited the Whale yesterday, but we wanted more of a break in this very calm harbor after what seems like weeks of running and hiding from weather. With a cafe, a restaurant, a mini-mart, and a dinghy dock there is really not much else we need.

These guys are everywhere and they are skittish, but this one on the dock let me get close.

This may also be our one real chance to visit this place, with what some consider to be the nicest beach in all the Bahamas -- sugar sand adjacent to azure waters. In better times, the marina charged a fee to anchor here, if you could even find a spot, with most of the harbor given to moorings that would not fit us. Needing high tide just to come in and look makes for a challenging situation. We're happy to be here without the crowds.

Treasure Cay neither had treasure nor is it a cay, although it was at one time. I found an informative history of the place, pre-Dorian, here. Today there is an interesting juxtaposition between the Bahama Beach Club, fully reopened with amenities, and the Treasure Cay Hotel, Resort, & Marina, where the guest rooms have been bulldozed, the docks removed, and the pool and tiki bar area looking very much storm-ravaged. At least their fuel dock was able to reopen shortly after the storm. Recovery is a slow process in the islands.

What's left of the pool deck and tiki bar at the Treasure Cay Hotel and Marina.

Our next window to cross the Whale is Saturday. We'll be relaxing right here until Thursday, when we hope to depart on the afternoon high tide and cruise the short distance to Great Guana. It's a less protected anchorage, but we'd like to see the place before moving on. Once across the Whale we will make a familiar stop at Green Turtle Cay. Barefeet is there now, at one of the marinas, and there is a chance we will catch back up to them one more time.

From there it will be a slow roll along the inside all the way up to Walker Cay, where we entered the Bahamas for the first time nine years ago. We'll be keeping our eyes open for a weather window for the overnight crossing back to the US, likely making entry at Port Canaveral. Of course, the weather being what it has been this season, I am not making any bets.