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, if 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.

Abacos Bound

We are under way northbound across the mouth of the Northwest Providence Channel. To starboard is the vast expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean. As I begin typing, the sea floor is some 13,000 feet below us. We drove out of coverage of our Starlink terminal a short while ago, and I am saving to a text file until the terminal comes back on line somewhere east of the southern part of Great Abaco Island.

Vector at anchor off the beach west of Egg Island. Photo: Ted Arisaka

When I posted here a week ago we were settled in at Highbourne Cay for the night, having just picked up a few groceries. We ended up pouring the vast majority of the $9 half gallon of milk overboard before its sell-by date of March 31, highlighting the Bahamian supply-chain issue: everything comes from Florida by way of Nassau, being transferred from a cargo ship to a mailboat at Potter's Cay. Refrigeration may or may not be involved. Clearly our milk had been thermally cycled before we bought it.

Our plotter this morning showing Vector in the middle of a conga line of northbound boats.

Tuesday morning we weighed anchor right after coffee and got underway for Royal Island, north of Eleuthera. All routes north on the bank out of the Exumas involve crossing a minefield of coral heads, called "bommies," and we had about an hour of vigilance at the helm reading the water and dodging around the dark patches. Fortunately, we had excellent daylight conditions with the sun high in the sky.

The dark circle in the middle of this photo is what a bommie looks like from on deck, rising above the surrounding white sand. It could be ten feet down or five, you can't tell from a distance, so we go around them.

There are two routes to Royal Island from the northern Exumas. One remains on the bank the whole way, but transits the aptly-named Current Cut, which we traversed on our way south. On this pass, however, the timing of the tide was just wrong, and we could not get across the shallow bar at the entrance. Instead we had to proceed to the deep water route via the Fleeming [sic] Channel.

Sunset over Royal Island from the calm harbor, before the storm.

The channel is wide and deep, but the depth goes from 16' to over 1,000' in the span of just a mile. This steep underwater bank has the effect of pushing the swell coming in from the ocean upwards to enormous heights, and we pushed off the bank in eight-foot rollers. They were wide and gentle, and Vector just bobbed over them, but in the binoculars, which foreshorten everything, from a distance, they looked formidable. We could see the boat ahead of us disappear entirely and reappear with each wave.

To make matters worse, an overtaking sailboat trailing fishing gear was right where I needed to turn, and I was on the radio just as we arrived at the rollers. Once we were across and made our turn ahead of the sailboat, we were in calm but gently rolling seas until we crossed back onto the bank at Southwest Reef. I carefully plotted our route to take us 3nm from land so we could take care of business.

Vector inbound to Spanish Wells. Photo: Ted Arisaka

By 3:45 we had the hook down in the protection of Royal Island harbor (map), tucked in quite a bit further than last time for forecast southerlies. We were a full day ahead of the windstorm, but it's a small harbor and we wanted a good spot. By the end of the day Thursday the anchorage had swelled to 20 boats, with a half dozen in the much less protected zone across from the entrance, so we made the right call.

The clocking winds pinned us down there for three nights. It was far too rough to splash the tender and take it outside to get to Spanish Wells, and with no place to go ashore inside the harbor, we just remained aboard the whole time. This has become something of a theme this season. Starlink has made being pinned down a lot more pleasant, with unlimited high speed Internet to let us surf and stream to our hearts' content without blowing through very expensive cellular data. This is our first visit to the Bahamas wherein we did not buy SIM cards from BTC or Aliv for our cell phones.

Sunset through low clouds over the anchorage off Spanish Wells.

By Saturday the wind had settled into the North-through-East quadrant, which made it comfortable to leave Royal and run the five miles east to Spanish Wells (map) so we could finally get back off the boat. We splashed the tender and headed ashore to the grocery store before the Easter closures, replacing our milk and restocking the fresh veggies. By the end of the day, Barefeet arrived from Eleuthera and joined us in the anchorage.

After nine days eating aboard we were ready for a break, and so we returned ashore for dinner. We arrived just before 5 in hopes of catching one of the chandleries, to replace our tattered Bahamas courtesy flag, but they had already closed for the holiday. We walked down to The Shipyard restaurant at the east end of the island. In spite of a nice and varied menu, we were both craving burgers, which did not disappoint.

Dinner at The Shipyard, looking over the Ridley Head Channel. North Eleuthera is in the background at right.

On our way back from groceries on Saturday we had popped into Wreckers, where we ate last time, to see if they would be open Sunday, in light of Easter, where pretty much the whole country shuts down. They said yes, so we made a reservation for four of us Sunday evening. Chris and Erin came by and picked us up in their tender at 5:30 and we plowed through the chop into town. I'm glad we made reservations, because the place got busy, perhaps the only joint open.

Barefeet and Vector crews, happy to be seated for dinner on Easter.

Louise has been tracking the weather and it looked like yesterday would be the best day for our crossing, and, in fact, Erin and Chris, who are also Abacos-bound, left at dawn. We were up and ready, but a pre-dawn check of the weather revealed ever-so-slightly better conditions today, and so we stayed right where we were. Barefeet relayed what conditions they actually encountered throughout their crossing, which gave us some reassurance.

Another gratuitous sunset shot on Sunday. Barefeet in the distance mid-frame.

Winds yesterday started clocking around to the south, which would make our anchorage uncomfortable, and so we weighed anchor in the afternoon and ran the eight miles west and around the corner to an anchorage just west of Egg Island, where I tucked in very close to shore to try to minimize the swell (map). It was a beautiful spot, with swimming-pool clear water and a lovely little beach, but we did roll. Along with some 22+ other boats all doing the same thing -- staging for today's crossing.

We saw the Starlink launch pass overhead Sunday night, and I was able to get this fuzzy shot of the Falcon-9 booster making its re-entry burn on the way to the drone ship just east of the Bahamas.

A short while after we set the hook, we were surprised to see online acquaintances Ted and Patty arriving on their sailboat, Little Wing. They had been just leaving Spanish Wells as we were coming in, on their way south to Eleuthera, and I figured that's the last we'd see of them this trip. They stopped by in their tender to say hello on their way back from walking their dog. We hope to see them somewhere in the Abacos and have a proper get-together.

Sunrise this morning over Egg Island as we depart the anchorage.

I don't have much trouble sleeping with a bit of roll, but Louise had a miserable night, and so even though we had cut an hour and a quarter from today's trip by moving anchorages, we were up before the sun and under way at sunrise. As I wrap up typing, the plotter is projecting a 2:45 arrival at the cut and 3pm to the anchorage. The Starlink came back online a short while ago. We are looking forward to being back in the Abacos after nearly a decade.

Charm City in our hearts

We are under way northbound on the Great Bahamas Bank, in the protection of the Exuma chain just off to starboard. We've spent the last five days pinned down by weather, and I might easily have got a post up here, but I knew we'd have six hours under way with little else to do, so I saved it for today.

Vector at Pipe Creek, after the crowd had departed. Snapped by a passing cruiser we had met just briefly in Great Harbour Cay. Photo: Chris Head

That, of course, did not anticipate the horrific allision this morning of a neoPanamax container ship with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore. We've been mesmerized by the coverage, but also I spent a good part of the morning combating conspiracy theories and just plain misunderstanding on social media. We've been under that bridge several times in Vector, and over it at least once, and we have a fondness for Baltimore. Our hearts go out to the families of those lost in the tragedy, and those whose livelihoods will be disrupted, and the entire community there.

Our very first visit to Baltimore aboard Vector was very early in our boating career. We had joined the Marine Trawler Owners Associate (MTOA) and were there to attend our first rendezvous. As newcomers to both boating and the MTOA, we were assigned a "mentor" to spend some time with us. As it happens, he was a retired Maryland Pilot who brought ships like this one into Baltimore. When we lamented to him that we had chosen a very large boat to start out, he reassured us by telling us that bigger, heavier vessels are actually a lot easier to pilot, and that we would come to appreciate that; he was right. He also told us that the flip side is you will know well ahead of time that you will have a problem you can't avoid; I think the example he used was "we will hit that bridge in three minutes, and nothing we do can stop that."

And a rare head-on view. Photo: Chris Head

There was a Maryland Pilot at the conn this morning who knew exactly this, likely three or four minutes in advance. As I understand it, they had the presence of mind to pick up the phone and call someone who was able to stop traffic from entering the bridge, likely saving many lives. The details, of course, will all come out in the NTSB report, many months from now. For now, I will try to put it out of my mind long enough to get the travelogue done.

When I finished my last blog post here from the Galliot Cay anchorage, things were relatively comfortable. But later in the evening the wind and swell changed just enough to make it a very lumpy night aboard Vector. I don't have much trouble in these conditions, but Louise was up all night and got almost no sleep. Consequently, I was up before the dawn so we could get under way at first light and get the stabilizers working. Barefeet weighed anchor and headed out just ahead of us.

Vector entering Galliot Cut, just before turning to the anchorage. Photo: Erin Miller

We both set our sights on a semi-protected bay just south of Black Point. They apparently arrived just in time to get their hook set before a giant thunderstorm hit. We were not so lucky and took the brunt of it under way; our anemometer registered 48mph winds on our port beam. That pegged the stabilizers, with a considerable list to starboard, and drove rainwater into the boat through every port side orifice.

It had let up somewhat by the time we arrived, and we blasted past Barefeet and several sailboats to snag the best spot in the anchorage just a few feet from shore (map). In due time the wind clocked around and we had a comfortable night, sleeping in on Wednesday morning to make up for the miserable night Monday.

Wednesday we weighed anchor, once again right behind Barefeet, for the short run to Big Majors Spot, opting to pass up the anchorage at Black Point Settlement, which was just recovering from an enormous regatta/rally of the Seven Seas Cruising Association. Big Majors was busy but not too busy, and we were able to work in close to the beach and drop the hook in a good spot (map).

Big Majors at a busy time. All the dots are boats.

Regular readers may remember that this is exactly where our last Bahamas cruise came to an ignoble end, after sheltering in place here for over three weeks in the early days of the pandemic. We developed a connection to the place, with our last take-out meals from from the nearby restaurant, one of the best in the Exumas, and our early purchases of COVID-related medications coming from the store in town, fully masked and one patron allowed in at a time. When even outdoor exercise became banned, we made it a point to walk our trash to the dump every few days.

You'd think we'd be tired of the place, but I was looking forward to spending a few days, and enjoying the place in a less fraught time. As with so much of this year's cruise, the weather had other plans for us. But at least this day was pleasant, and we splashed the tender and headed to the nearby Staniel Cay Yacht Club bar to meet up with Erin and Chris for an early dinner. Sadly, they were out of draft beer, but we enjoyed our burgers with some bottled beer instead. The bar was packed. After dinner we strolled around town, past the government dock and the two stores we remember so well.

Staniel Cay Yacht Club, more or less as we left it.

We knew some weather was coming, but the seriousness of the situation became clearer to us as Chris spent the first few minutes in the bar on the phone with Norman's Cay marina 30 miles north. Barefeet moves more than we do, and they wanted the protection. The three other, less expensive marinas nearby were already unavailable; two were sold out, and Staniel Cay actually makes all vessels leave the docks in westerlies.

Sunset over Big Majors Spot.

As soon as we got back from dinner, Louise hit all the weather sources and announced that we might be in for a walloping. By first thing Thursday morning we knew it was serious and we had a big discussion about our options. I immediately contacted Norman's Cay (and the other two -- Compass Cay and Highbourne) hoping for a last-minute spot. To place this in perspective, Norman's Cay is $8 per foot, and we'd need to be there at least three nights, for something north of $1,500 including tax and power just to hide from a storm.

Alas, I think Barefeet got the very last reservation, which explains Chris's hustle right before dinner. For the last several days they've been texting us from what they kept calling "private equity land" -- there's a lot of money here in yachting season. That left us scrambling to find some kind of protection from strong winds that were going to clock around through every direction, including the very problematic westerlies, where choices are few. When we were stuck here for weeks, we were able to go around the back side to a spot called "between the Majors" for protection, but there are perhaps five times as many boats here now, and we knew that would be an untenable zoo.

I snapped this photo on our way out of the abandoned docks where we used to land to walk to the dump, our only exercise for a while during COVID, just for nostalgia.

After an hour or so with the charts, we settled on a place called Pipe Creek. It's protected on all sides, with Compass Key to the north, Thomas Cay to the east, Overyonder Cay to the south, and Rat Cay and Little Pipe Cay to the west. The problem is the entrance from the bank side is 5' deep at low water, and the Sound side entrance is narrow and difficult in many sea conditions. Also, swing room for Vector's draft is available in a limited number of spots. Big Majors would be comfortable for two more days, but if we did not get moving first thing Thursday, we'd likely miss out altogether.

And thus it was that we weighed anchor right after developing our plan, after just a single night at Big Majors. We made our way out into the Sound, since tide would not be favorable for the bank route until the sun was too low to see the bottom for visual piloting. We arrived at Overyonder Cut on the last of the ebb, as I wanted some current against me for the challenging entrance. That put us inside at dead low tide. As we feared, the "easy" spaces were already taken, and we had to pick our way carefully through shallows and along the channel "between The Mice and Rat" to find a spot almost in the middle of the basin (map), where we had just enough swing room between a pair of 6' shoals to put out 70' of chain.

Sunset from Pipe Creek, in the calm before the storm.

And that's where we've been, right up until this morning, five full nights. It's a beautiful spot, surrounded by lush hills, white sand beaches, and just a few high-end "lodges" that are basically AirBnBs for the uber-wealthy. We were quite happy to arrive when we did, with fewer than 20 boats in the harbor. By night fall the number was two dozen, and we would have had trouble finding a spot. The number climbed to 30 for the worst of the storms. Still, we were comfortably spread out, much more so than some of the other anchorages.

On our way out into the sound we passed the "between the Majors" anchorage and it was already packed to the gills. Over the next two days we heard hundreds of radio calls between boats jockeying for position and concerned about overlapping swing circles in reversing current and high winds. We were very, very glad to be away from the madness in a harder-to-access spot which, frankly, we could not have accessed on our first couple of visits here because our skills were not yet up to the task.

My feeble attempt to capture some of the anchorage, with Vector center-frame.

Shortly after setting the hook we splashed the tender to sound out our entire swing circle (and then some) and have a visual look at our anchor set. We also sounded out the route north past Compass Cay, finding a bar just south of the marina that would have been a problem for Vector even at high tide. We talked briefly to a 53' Fleming, Stand Down, that came in via that route to get their soundings, but they only draw 5'. Before dinner I went out again, slipped through the narrow opening between Rat and Little Pipe Cays, and sounded out the other route to the bank, finding it as charted, with 7' at mid tide. We had a quiet dinner aboard.

A bit more ominous sunset before the storm. s/v Kepler in the foreground and Little Pipe Cay background.

Friday the winds started in earnest, but they were still the more common easterly trades. Someone over between the Majors opened a pop-up "cruisers net" on the radio which we monitored to glean any information on how folks were faring down there. Even though it was blowing 20 knots, a whole gaggle of children from several boats in our anchorage spent the day playing on the sand bar.

We never left the boat and had another quiet dinner on board. I was sorry to be missing the annual James-Bond themed Casino Royale night at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, hastily moved up from Saturday night due to the storm. I'm certain I could have placed in the James Bond costume contest in my tux. The Bond connection stems from the nearby underwater cave that featured in the film Thunderball and is now known as Thunderball Grotto.

I snapped this photo of my computer screen in the course of working on it. This is supposed to be a solid black background.

Winds continued to escalate and started moving clockwise overnight. In the morning was another impromptu radio net, followed by more negotiations among cruisers. We heard at least one boat who did not realize they would be thrown out of the marina in the morning and had become desperate for a spot. That made me wonder if the marina had sold some slips to cruisers hoping to shelter from the storm without bothering to tell them they would have to leave just when they needed it most.

Thunderstorms moved in as expected and things went from bad to worse in short order. We were well-set, as were the rest of the boats in our anchorage. At the height of the storm our anemometer registered wind at 52mph, but honestly I think it missed the peak. We had almost zero visibility at times, and the boat got a nice rinse. Lightning strikes were all around us, but thankfully none in the anchorage.

Anemometer showing max wind speed of 52mph (45kt).

Others were not so lucky. We heard reports of 67-knot winds Between the Majors, and four or five dinghys were flipped over, their motors inundated and contents lost. Numerous cushions and other items went overboard. And lots of boats dragged and needed to be maneuvered or re-positioned. We later learned that seven boats in George Town took direct lightning strikes.

It was mostly over by nightfall. We're glad it hit in the daytime, and we had a comfortable night. We awoke Sunday to much milder conditions, but there is no rest for the weary. In the middle of the morning generator and watermaker run, the watermaker went into alarm for plugged filters. I thought that odd, since they're pretty fresh, but I shut it down and did not think much more of it.

The calm after the storm. Sunset Sunday evening.

Later I went into the engine room to change the filters, only to find a spray of salt water radiating out several feet in all directions from the watermaker. Uh-oh. After a brief inspection I donned some safety glasses and started it from the maintenance switch. That's when I discovered one of the hoses had come loose and popped off its barb. It was a simple fix, but I spent over an hour cleaning salt water out of the ER and rising some parts with fresh. I did not need to change the filters.

Da Conch Swing. While this looks like a beach, we are on a sand bar. The water covers the sand here.

Conditions were pleasant enough Sunday afternoon that we launched the tender, rode around the harbor a bit, and landed on the sand bar. We spent some time at a beach swing made from driftwood and adorned with a sign, erected by the exclusive guest house on Little Pipe Cay. We met four families on the beach, from Rebel Fox, Kepler, and Oceananigans. The two families aboard this latter vessel, a large catamaran, are from San Jose, and I enjoyed connecting with them over our shared history.

Families enjoying the sandbar. We saw kiteboarders several days, and I think the small wing kite here is a trainer.

I had made certain we were all set to go by Sunday night, in case Monday's weather was favorable. But Louise determined we have a much smoother ride today, and so we just waited it our one more night. But over the course of the day the anchorage emptied out, including the folks we had just met, and we had just four other boats widely spaced by yesterday evening. It looked like Vector had a bad case of halitosis. I did spend some time in the afternoon sounding out more of our exit route, and swinging past some of the high-end properties on the surrounding islands.

Vector, now all alone, as seen in the distance from Little Pipe Cay.

Yesterday we also learned that there had been a fatal accident Sunday morning over at Big Majors. A couple in their 50s were out in their dinghy and they were run over by one of the many high-speed tour/transport boats that blow through the anchorage on full plane at all hours. The couple was ejected from the boat and the woman did not survive. The man was airlifted to Nassau in critical condition. Our thoughts are with him. I did ask around to make sure someone was looking after their anchored boat and other affairs; this is not a place to leave a cruising vessel unattended.

Our final sunset from Pipe Creek.

I grilled a nice steak for our final dinner at Pipe Creek. Afterwards we enjoyed the sunset, and then were treated to a SpaceX rocket launch through partly cloudy skies. We could see the booster firing for its return after it separated from the second stage, and I was even able to snap a couple of photos.

SpaceX Starlink launch coming into view.

That brings us to today. We needed an early start to have high tide for our departure, and we heard about the bridge collapse on the marine radio as we were making ready to depart. Of course we got sucked into the coverage immediately, and after we navigated all the skinny bits out to the bank, including having to do-si-do with an anchored sailboat that was right in the only deep part of the channel, I brought my laptop up to the helm to catch up.

The bright spot about mid-tail is the Falcon-9 booster returning.

Update: We are anchored off Highbourne Cay, in a familiar spot (map). I think we both spent the first two hours of the cruise on the bridge collapse coverage and the social media chatter around it. The late start on the blog, as well as a fair amount of traffic in the "lane," meant I did not get this post done before we arrived.

Second stage almost directly overhead.

Once we landed here I called the marina to make sure their store was open, even though their restaurant is dark Tuesdays, and we dropped the tender and rode over. We walked around the property a bit before stopping in to the very nice but very expensive store for some milk, chips, and two fresh veggies totaling $32. It would all be cheaper at our next stop, but what we've learned in the Bahamas is not to pass up milk or vegetables if you need them, because that next stop in just another day or two may not have any for a week.

The "weather coconut" on Highbourne Cay.

If the weather cooperates, tomorrow we will make the long run from here up to Royal Island to shelter from the next windstorm while we stage for the crossing to the Abacos. It's been nine years, and a hurricane, since we've been to the Abacos, and on that trip we had to miss some of the best parts, so we are looking forward to getting back.