Homeward bound

We are under way across the Great Bahama Bank, with Big Majors, Staniel Cay, and, sadly, the nearest cell tower all receding behind us. Our Internet access dropped out a short while ago, and I am typing into a text file. We will not be back in range of a tower until the very end of the day, and that's if we are lucky. I will upload this whenever I can.

We set an alarm this morning for the first time in weeks. We were up at 7:15 for coffee so we could make one final trip to the dump after the lockdown ended at 5:00. Sad, perhaps, that our last steps on Bahamian soil were for a trash run, but it will be at least a week before we can offload trash again. Besides, we'd been trapped on the boat for the entire weekend, and we're trapped on board now for another week, so we both really wanted to get ashore and stretch our legs one final time.

After our decision to leave the country starting as soon as the lockdown ended, our remaining time in the anchorage was focused on getting ready for sea. I still had the watermaker partly disassembled and scattered throughout the engine room, and I still had concerns about a potential battery problem that could get worse under five straight days of running the engine alternator.

With the watermaker pump down for the count, we were worried about salt water sitting in the membrane housing indefinitely. Normally, the system flushes itself with fresh water before shutdown, but that still uses the pump. I wanted to deal with this in my final full day of downtime, because working on anything in the ER at the end of a full day of running is a lot like trying to do mechanical work inside a literal sauna. The ER gets to about 110-120 under way, and cools very slowly.

I was able to jury-rig a hose from our on-board fresh water system directly to the input filter on the Clark pump, and the 40psi from our fresh water pump was enough to get the Clark pump to pressurize the membrane. I ran the brine discharge into a bucket instead of overboard so that I could taste the output for salinity. It took about four gallons to flush the system until I could taste no salt. Normally the fresh water enters the system through a charcoal filter to remove any chlorine, which will kill the membrane. I had to forego the filter, but all the water in our tank is now RO water and there is no chlorine left in it at all.


Our final dinner sunset at Big Majors.

Having done that, I was able to secure all the loose hanging bits of the system, and box up all the other parts, including the bad pump, for storage until we reach the states. A week from now I will use more of our RO water to flush the membrane again before we put any municipal water in the tank. Clearing the aisle in the engine room and having everything secure for movement was the final requisite before getting under way.

I did have time left over to look at the batteries. This is a tedious process that involves running the generator full-time so that it can carry the AC loads and its start battery can carry the DC loads while the house bank is disconnected for testing. Then each battery must be load-tested individually. I have this down to a science, and only the main ground and two terminal bolts need to be removed in order to separate all six batteries for testing.

The good news is that I did not find any single battery that had failed catastrophically. What's good about that news is that it means we are not damaging all the other batteries as the charger struggles to charge a bad bank. The bad news is that I still don't understand why we are not getting a full charge cycle out of our expensive battery bank.

One distinct possibility is that a month of only charging the bank to ~80% each time, before depleting it back down to 50%, has left the chemistry in a place where they are getting only a surface charge now before the charger drops well down into absorption. The ultimate cure for that is an equalization charge, which will have to wait for the next time we are stopped for a while (or, better yet, a place where we can get shore power). Simply charging them fully through the entire absorption phase might also help, and they should get that charge over the ten-hour course of today's cruise.

I finished the battery project and had the whole system back together just in time for a final sunset dinner on the aft deck. It really is an incredibly beautiful spot, especially now that there are no high-speed boats careening through the anchorage on their way to Pig Beach (and no wakes), no tourists on Pig Beach, and no sportfishers cleaning their catch and blasting music at night.

We were steaming out of the harbor before 9 this morning. We were far enough away from the cell tower by the time the Prime Minister made his announcement this morning to Parliament, that we could not stream it. But we had just enough signal left to load the news story about it from one of the Bahamian news sites afterward. In short, the complete lockdown we experienced over the weekend will commence again Wednesday evening and run through Tuesday morning.


This unoccupied boat, which had been moored over near Thunderball, broke free in the night, hit an acnhored cruising boat at 3am, and ended up against the rocks on the south side of Big Majors. We passed in in the dinghy en route to the dump. I think it's been rescued.

The Bahamas is a largely Christian country, and Easter is an important holiday here. Many businesses are normally closed from Wednesday afternoon until Monday morning, and in addition to attending various Holy Week services, Bahamians often use the time for vacation: family visits, picnics in the park, going to the beach, or any of numerous parties or events. We think this action is intended to head all of that off at the pass, enforcing social distance by closing down the entire country.

The PM also announced that such total lockdowns will continue every weekend through the end of the month, from 8pm every Friday until 5am Monday. Separately this morning, the previously announced grocery shopping schedule by first letter of surname went into effect, and the Yacht Club read the schedule over the radio. With the lockdown commencing Wednesday evening, cruisers who remain will each have just one narrow window to get groceries between now and Monday.

While we are sad to be leaving, this morning's actions reinforced the correctness of our decision. As the embassy predicted, things are getting tighter. And if the virus moves to the family islands at all (beyond the case already in Bimini), I would not be surprised if all travel of any kind through the archipelago becomes restricted. Beyond that, being confined entirely to the boat without the ability to get out for exercise for another five days is unappealing. (It's not great fun under way, either, but at least underway the scenery changes and there is a sense of progress.)

Weighing anchor this morning to head back had an air of finality to it. An acknowledgement that our cruise is over. The glimmer of hope, however unrealistic it might have been, that if we just waited it out a little longer, some restrictions might be lifted and we could maybe cruise among even the uninhabited islands, was gone. And, as petty and privileged as this sounds, I am grieving it.

It's hard to make room for that grief. People are dying. Hundreds of thousands more will succumb to this disease. More still will die from depression, substance overdose, and outright suicide as the very real effects of this situation ripple through humanity. People will lose jobs and health care and will suffer long term consequences. Wars may yet start over limited resources.

Businesses will fail, as many already have, and real people will lose their life savings and perhaps their homes. Some will never recover. For those who do, the road will be a long one. Life as we knew it has changed forever. I grieve all these things, too, and I struggle with grieving the loss of something that I had a rarefied privilege to do in the first place, while so many are suffering.


These megayachts - Wheels, Planet 9, and 4You - have been part of our distant view for weeks. We passed them a half hour after leaving.

When we left the US, I had hopes to swim and snorkel in the clear waters. To visit some new places we have yet to see. To partake of what the locals had to offer. And to meet and socialize with other cruisers along the way, a place where some of our most enduring friendships have been forged. In the month we've been here (of a planned three), we have done none of that. There are 600 islands in the Bahamas, and we've set foot on only two.

In a twist of irony, having nothing but cruising boats in the anchorage, and many of the same boats week after week, would have made for a near-ideal social setting. Potlucks on the now-quiet beach. Cocktails on deck. Time to get to know your fellow cruisers. It was actually rather surreal.

Yesterday morning, realizing that many cruisers had probably not seen the Embassy announcement, we opted to start a brief impromptu radio net to share it and discuss it. Perhaps a dozen or more boats tuned in, and I passed along what the embassy had sent out. From the number of questions that got asked, not just about the announcement, but also about the local situation and what had come in through the grapevine from other islands, people are starved for information.

We did the best we could to fill in the blanks based on the information we've been getting from various sources. Inevitably, some folks wanted more definitive answers than can possibly exist in a place like the Bahamas. By the end of the net, we had the sense that many would leave today or soon, just like us. I expect that several more may have made that decision after this morning's Parliament session.

Several boats were already leaving the anchorage as we headed off in the tender to the dump More were weighing as we returned. Before we veered off well-established course lines to follow our own calling this morning, we saw several more under way. Something of an exodus has begun.

With the lack of clarity on vessel restrictions, the equivocating by the embassy, and the propensity of local Bahamian officials to interpret things in their own, sometimes draconian, ways, we have opted not to publicize our departure travel plan. We're off the main routes, will remain well offshore of inhabited islands, and hope to exit the country without crossing paths with many other vessels.

We should have some Internet coverage on and off during the day tomorrow, but it will be gone by dinner time. And it is possible we will not have it again until we return to the US. What day that is will depend on offshore weather in the Strait of Florida, and even where we will re-enter is entirely up in the air until we actually get out into the strait. It could be anywhere from Miami to Jacksonville, with the former being a day-long crossing, and the latter being the better part of two full days.

Rest assured that we are in VHF radio range of assistance should we need any. I will post again from the other side, as we leap with both feet from the frying pan into the fire.