Elvis has left the country

We are once again under way across the Great Bahama Bank. We are on our final leg in the Bahamas; tonight we will anchor one last time along the western edge of the bank for a departure tomorrow morning to the US. At this writing, weather in the Atlantic does not support continuing north on the outside beyond the Strait of Florida, and our plan is to come in at Lake Worth Inlet, otherwise known as the Palm Beaches.

I am once again typing into a text file for upload later. We did have Internet last night, surprisingly, and took advantage to double-check the weather and try to keep up with the latest developments regarding the situation and the rules in the Bahamas. Unsurprisingly, the rules are unclear and there is a wide variance in how they are being interpreted by various officials, which in turn fuels wild speculation by cruisers.

We do our best to separate facts from speculation and immutable directives from subjective interpretations, in order to inform our own decision-making. Our goal is to return safely and expeditiously to the United States without violating Bahamian law. That said, because of the widely varying interpretations, and the fact that tensions are high in many places, we're trying to do everything without attracting any attention whatsoever from the authorities.

On our planned route today we will not see Internet again until we anchor, and even then, there is a good chance we will be out of range. My planned route for tomorrow morning will take us through the signal footprint from Cat Cay and/or Bimini well offshore, and in the few minutes of coverage I will upload this post and we will download the latest weather and any alerts about conditions in Palm Beach County.

Shortly after I finished typing my last post, we left sight of the Exuma chain, and line-of-sight VHF contact of other boats. And then we did something we have not done in six years: we switched off our AIS transponder, which had been transmitting a destination of Miami since departing the anchorage. Again, this was to avoid attracting the attention of anyone who could mistakenly think we might be traveling inter-island, rather than departing the country without landing anywhere.


Nearly full supermoon rising over the Tongue of the Ocean from our anchorage.

If you've been looking for us on Marine Traffic or other AIS-tracking web sites, this is the reason you have not been able to find us. We can still see other vessels on our screen, because we have a separate AIS receiver that still works even when the transponder is off. I've been posting "all is well" tweets from Vector's twitter account whenever I can, just so no one starts to worry about our "disappearance."

Our route took us up the center of the Exuma side of the Great Bahama Bank, about midway between Exuma Sound and the Tongue of the Ocean. There's nothing out here, and it's generally untravelled. Almost everyone sticks to well-established sailing lines published on charts and known to have good depth and no obstructions, and we were traveling a dozen miles away, with conservative sounder settings.

Our goal was a spot on the bank next to a ~5' shoal in the White Bank area, with an arrival just before sunset. Here, some ten miles off New Providence, we knew we would get Internet reception, but felt we would be far enough from NP to avoid attracting attention. After hearing reports of cruising vessels being refused clearance to depart Nassau Harbor, we did not want to tempt fate.

Unfortunately, it was simply too rough to anchor there. Waves were higher than forecast, and we'd have a dozen hours with the boat bashing around. We'd probably get no sleep, and our ailing cat would have been miserable. Reluctantly, we made the decision to continue to a more protected anchorage much closer to NP.


Big girls anchored off Albany Marina, in morning's light. They were lit up like cruise ships overnight.

The decision to minimize the amount of time in what we had expected to be an uncomfortable anchorage by arriving at the end of the day, meant that we would now have to travel at night, with another two hours underway, at least half in total darkness. Fortunately, our planned anchorage was adjacent to one of the aforementioned well-established, known-good routes, and so we navigated over to it and followed it in to a waypoint at Coral Harbor. We used the last of the fading twilight to eat dinner in the pilothouse under way, an activity normally reserved for overnight passages in open water.

Once at the waypoint we stayed in good depth and picked our way around some charted obstructions to a moderately protected area near the high-zoot Albany Marina (map). Coral Harbor is aptly named, and once in a somewhat comfortable spot, Louise had to get on the foredeck with the handheld spotlight to try to find a large enough patch of clear sand in which to anchor.

At just a half mile offshore, we were much closer to NP than I had wanted to come, but it was past 9pm when we dropped the hook and we saw no other vessels save for the three big yachts anchored offshore, and an anchored tanker. It was still pretty bouncy, but much better than even a few hundred feet further out. I grabbed a beer and uploaded the last post, and we both crashed early.

We normally travel through the Bahamas on "island time," with short days and frequent stops. These sorts of marathon days here feel very weird. We have a comfort level here born of extensive cruising on previous visits; I can only imagine what some of the first-timers still in-country are going through.


Sunset over the bank from our anchorage near the Joulter Cays. Taken just a few minutes before the moonrise shot.

I was up before the dawn, and immediately prepared to get under way. I wanted to get some open water between us and NP as soon as possible. In only a short while we were out in the Tongue of the Ocean. As we passed the tricky entry to West Bay, where we had anchored on our way in, I could see a half dozen boats anchored, some I recognized from Big Majors. In hindsight, we should have just planned to anchor there from the get-go; it would have saved us a few miles and a lot of fiddly navigation, and would have been a more comfortable and restful night.

After soaking for a dozen hours on the three-stage alternator charger, the batteries seem to have made at least a partial recovery, and still had plenty of charge left in the morning. They were fully charged again just a few hours into our cruise over the Tongue.

We had Internet most of the morning and got caught up on weather and the latest situational updates on the Bahamas and south Florida. Lots of my information is coming in via Facebook, in the form of posts to no fewer than five Bahamas-specific groups, as well as two east coast US groups. Posts are now coming fast and furious, and, as with all things Facebook, separating useful from extraneous information can get tedious. I am going to say it took well over an hour of screen time under way, perhaps three hours real time, to get caught up. By which time our connection finally dropped.

We picked it back up again as we passed about midway between the north tip of Andros and Chub Cay, headed for a slough channel a bit further south than the established and marked route through the Northwest Channel. I had it on good authority from another experienced captain that it was a good route, and not only did it shave off a couple of miles, but it also kept us away from other vessels on the established route.


Our anchorage last night, at Brown's Cay. The prototypical remote island with a lone palm tree.

I expected the Internet to last only perhaps a half hour, and we used that time to again download the weather updates (a constant theme on a cruising boat), as well as checking to make sure there had been no further official announcements about the rules. We found another urgent plea from the US Embassy to leave the country as soon as possible, with a warning that fuel would not be available once the Easter lockdown starts at 9pm tonight. The embassy's message was clear that yachts could still travel for the purpose of leaving the country, that anchoring to rest was permitted, and that landing anywhere en route was forbidden.

As we approached the entrance to the slough channel back onto the bank, I was stunned to find we still had Internet coverage. Although it was still very early in the day, and it would leave us with extra miles to do today, we made the decision to turn off the route and tuck in behind the first shoal on the bank, where we dropped the hook a bit north of the Joulter Cays (map). Owing to the early start and the shortend mileage, it was just 2:30 when we had the hook down. It was a little lumpy, but pointed into the swell it was not uncomfortable. And we had Internet! A full 15nm from the nearest tower.

I grilled the last package of lamb chops for dinner, and Louise did some ironing, all on the battery bank. The electric grill was on for a full 45 minutes. Normally I run the generator while grilling, even if not otherwise needed, because it's more efficient than using power from the batteries and putting it back later, but I was keen to do some load testing. Everything was great all evening, until Louise ran the hair dryer just before bed, which tripped the inverter off on Low Voltage. Normally we get a low voltage warning from the battery monitor well before a single appliance can cause that sort of drop, so the batteries are still not functioning at 100%.

It was good to have a somewhat normal, relaxing evening aboard with full access to news and entertainment and no other agenda. A nice break in this otherwise frenetic egress from the country. We did use the opportunity to update family and close friends on the situation, including our USCG emergency contacts. I knew I would have hours of idle time today to type up this blog post, which I could not very well post publicly yet, anyway, if we wanted to maintain our stealth.


Our final sunset in the Bahamas, looking toward Florida from Brown's Cay.

We again weighed anchor early this morning, with an 11-hour day ahead of us, the downside of an early stop yesterday. The bank is very calm today, and we had a half-knot push for the first couple of hours. As I finish typing this segment, it's not yet lunch time, and the plotter says we will be at the anchorage at 6:30pm, in plenty of time for dinner.

Update: This morning found us anchored just off Brown's Cay, in the southernmost parts of the Bimini islands (map). After leaving Russell Beacon yesterday morning, we opted to take the southwestern route to Riding Rocks, rather than due west toward Cat Cat. For one thing, it's a deepwater route the whole way, avoiding the shallow ridge just east of Cat. But more importantly, it kept us away from the traffic, and well away from Bimini, which is on pins and needles from having had a fatal case.

As we approached the Riding Rocks, we saw our first vessel of the day, a fishing trawler anchored just east of the rocks. We continued out into the Strait of Florida, where, dead ahead of us, we could see on AIS the enormous Royal Caribbean ship, Navigator of the Seas, literally drifting at just over a knot in the strait. There are dozens of cruise ships out here, devoid of passengers and denied entry into their own flag states, the crews trapped aboard. From the flybridge we could just make the ship out with glasses; she was 14nm out, keeping clear of territorial seas. This morning we've been hearing them chat with each other.

Just past Castle Rock we turned north into the strait and proceeded a dozen miles to Ocean Cay. Up until three years ago, this was a semi-abandoned industrial site, used for sand mining. Cargo ships would haul off the pristine white sand to replenish resort beaches elsewhere. Our chart showed two protected anchorages behind the island.

MSC cruises bought the island a couple of years back, and has developed it into a private retreat for cruise passengers. The old sand dock has been turned into a pier for the cruise ships. Like all cruise lines, MSC is waylaid due to the virus; their web site shows no scheduled port calls here until June. We hoped to steam around behind the island to the marked anchorage, but as we proceeded down the channel we were hailed by island security, who asked us to turn around.


Ocean Cay, complete with fake lighthouse they charge passengers $12 to climb.

While the island is private, the water around it is not, but this is not an argument I was willing to have with a low-wage security guard on the radio, especially given the current circumstance, so we backtracked the half mile to Brown's instead. It's a little less protected, but fine for our purposes. Sadly, while we had excellent cell coverage close to Ocean Cay, at Brown's the signal was barely usable, and very slow Internet came and went throughout the evening.

It was usable enough to load weather and get email, and we re-confirmed our plan to leave first thing this morning. It was also usable enough to get most of this post uploaded. We weighed anchor first thing this morning for the 95nm run to Palm Beach, and we're taking advantage of good Internet as we steam past Cat Cay and Bimini at a respectable distance offshore. I don't expect the signal to last long, and we will be offline again until we are a few miles off the Florida coast.

It's a miserable ride. Seas 3' on three seconds, and we are just bashing through them. Things are crashing all over the boat, and Angel is trying to take shelter in Louise's shoe cubby, but there was no way we were going to sit here for another week or more waiting on another window. With any luck we will be anchored in Lake Worth by sunset, and we'll clear in to the US using the ROAM app on my phone. We should not need to dock or even leave the boat. When next you hear from me, we will be back in the US.