OK, we've been really bad about getting to the Blog.... not sure why but either we're sailing, exploring, eating, meeting other sailors, sleeping or doing a lot of troubleshooting and repairing. Oh yeah, and drinking rum.
Below is some text we started a while back and we'll catch with lots of photographs with long captions.
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| Leaving Key Biscayne passing Stiltsville (Google it, neat history) on the way out with the Miami skyline is in the background. |
On Feb 16 we had a smooth crossing of the Gulf Stream from No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne, entering the Great Bahama Bank north of Bimini at sunset.
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Our first Bahamas sunset anchored off the Northeast shore of Bimini.
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The entrance to the Great Harbor Cay Marina is through this narrow but deep cut
excavated through limestone.
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Once you clear customs, you lower the yellow Quarantine flag ang raise the
courtesy flag of the country you are in.
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W
e cleared in through Customs at Great Harbor Cay Marina and paid the $300 one year cruising permit fee. We spent a couple nights at the Marina to get settled. While marinas can be a bit expensive ($2/ft/day for less expensive ones) they provide a great opportunity to meet other cruisers, tour their boats, help each other out, and share stories. Tim had an interesting conversation with the developers and former owners of the fabulous cruising guide app Active Captain who were at the marina with their new yacht. They recently sold Active Captain to Garmin which obviously helped fund the recent upgrade to an impressive ocean going yacht.
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| Wohoo, we're in the Bahamas. |
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This beach on Cistern Cay is like the thousands of little white sand pocket beaches
that you have to yourself throughout the Bahamas.
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| We explored the ruins of some homes on Cistern Cay that were reportedly associated with the massive drug smuggling trade that flowed through the Bahamas in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The island also had an airstrip similar to Normans Cay which was immortalized in the film Blow starring Johnny Depp. |
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Skylark resting at anchor off of Cistern Cay. We're smiling because the 9.9 Mercury outboard that came with the Skylark is running smoothly (but since has demanded four carburetor cleanings, ugh.)
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We had heard about Shark Creek which allowed you to take your dinghy or kayak from the east
shore of Great Harbor Cay to the west shore. We inflated the two-person kayak and entered
this large beautiful bay with crystal clear water.
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The bay eventually narrows to this mangrove lined creek.
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A King Helmit Conch found on the bottom under Skylark at Soldier Cay in the Berry Islands.
So beautiful we had to put it back, it's lucky day.
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February 26- Since crossing the Gulf Stream 2 weeks ago the winds have been mostly E/SE/S making sailing to the south most difficult. Many boaters we have met motor their way into the wind to get to their desired locations south. We try for the most part to sail as much as possible and let the winds govern where we might head, even if it takes us a little off to unanticipated destinations. Today we find ourselves sailing from West Bay on New Providence Island (Nassau) down the Tongue Of The Ocean which has depths so deep they do not register on our depth sounder, often over 5000 feet. We are sailing some 65 miles to an isolated, 1.5 by 0.5 mile island Green Cay in the middle of nowhere where few sailors venture. We plan to anchor for the night then continue East and see which Exuma island gem we land on.
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| A screen shot of Navionics with our course to Green Cay. |
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Google Earth image of Green Cay. We anchored off the north shore in 15 feet of water.
The darker blue water to the west is over 3000 feet deep!
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| Sun setting and rain clouds on the way to Green Cay |
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| We have Green Cay to ourselves without another boat in sight for the two days we were there waiting for the winds to shift south allowing us to sail across the Eastern Great Bahama Bank to the Exumas. We really enjoy these little pocket beaches. |
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15 foot depth under the bow, over 3000 feet just ahead in the Tongue of the Ocean
between Andros and the Great Bahama Bank
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The sole navigation light on Green Cay formerly was atop this pole and lies shattered on the ground. There are very few navigations aids exist in the Bahamas
and those that are present seldom operate and maintenance appears to be non existent.
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We pulled out the asymmetrical spinnaker and had a glorious sailed from Green Cay across the Bahama Bank to Cambridge Cay disappointed to see mega yachts anchored everywhere. During our trip to the Bahamas five years ago we seldom saw a mega yacht.
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| Even the swimming pigs at Big Majors Spot now have a water shed and the area is a destination for speedboats packed with tourists and mega yachts. I will say the pigs seem more tame than five years ago. |
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| The thousand dollar view from Ida's Laundromat in Black Point. |
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Our first seafood catch of the trip, a delicious Slipper Lobster. We have been trolling whenever offshore but so far no luck. We also carry a hand spear for spear fishing, however the risk of consuming fish with ciguatera toxin is admittedly frightening when you hear the stories from folks afflicted by the toxin.
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We arrived in Georgetown on Great Exuma Island on March 6. One reason for the quick run down the Exumas chain was to be near an airport. In January during the visit home for Tim's father's 89th birthday, our Kelsey announced she is pregnant and due to deliver in late August. We are over the moon about this exciting news, so I flew home for a week to make a visit to support them during this time and help as they move to a new apartment in Brooklyn, NY with a friend whose home has an upstairs newly renovated apartment, this too is very exciting.
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An oceanside beach on Stocking Island, a four mile long narrow island which protects Elizabeth Harbor and George Town from the prevailing easterly trade winds. This feature results in George Town being a gathering spot for a large number of cruising boats.
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| Hamming it up with the local police at the annual Bahamas Music and Heritage Festival. |
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| Gayle and Bill hiking with us on Stocking Island. Check out their awesome website cruisingbiologists.com for some great photos and descriptions of undersea life they have encountered in the Bahamas. |
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Feeding the Manta Rays conch bits at the Chat n Chill beach, which features a beach bar, jam sessions, volleyball, a conch salad vendor, lectures by cruisers and locals, and even a beach church on Sunday.
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We have two ukuleles onboard and recently attended some uke gatherings on the beach that even led to us performing at an open mic night at the local Saint Francis Resort restaurant.
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| It's always something on a boat. Tim recently found these exploded soldiers in a deep dark compartment. Clearly they succumbed to being shaken too much in heavy seas. We probably heard them explode and quizzically looked around saying "what was that pop?" Oddly, no trace of the former contents to be found, though someday I'm sure we will encounter where the sticky mess ended up. |
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| View from on top of Monument Hill on Stocking Island. Skylark in in the distance near shore in the center of the photo. The grey material is dredge spoils from WWII when the US government dredged the harbor to make room for Navy vessels. When we arrived there were 250 cruising boats anchored along the west coast of Stocking Island. The anchorages are identified by the nearby beach; Flip Flop, Hamburger, North Monument, Sound Monument, Honeymoon, Chat n Chill, Volleyball, Lumina Point, Sand Dollar. |
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| George Town is one of the best locations in the Bahamas to re-provision food, fuel and water. The ritual of filling jerry jugs with diesel (yellow), gasoline (red) and water (blue) is common on smaller boats. We recently commissioned the Spectra Ventura reverse osmosis watermaker that was installed on Skylark so on days when our 270 watts of solar panels has good sun, we can make water at a rate 6 gallon per hour. We along have a D-400 Wind Generator that is almost constantly spinning. With the improvements and lower costs for wind and solar power, and a sufficient battery bank, we see no reason why a cruising boat should require running a generator, the noise from which is always an annoyance in an otherwise peaceful anchorage. |
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| The canvas on Skylark is at least six years old and seen several seasons in the sun of the Caribbean. As such, the stiching on our mainsail cover, dodger and bimini was coming apart. We were fortunate to meet Dennis on Spitfire who was anchored next to us and had a heavy-duty Sailrite sewing machine. We also had the help of Anastatia from the Volga region in Russia, who was in George Town with her boyfriend Daniel hoping to fulfill a dream of getting on a sailboat and going around Cape Horn. After two days of struggling with a finnicky sewing machine, we remounted the repaired items on Skylark. Lesson Learned: Use only PTFE UV resistant lifetime threads, such as Tenara or Profilen, when having canvas items fabricated for a boat. The cost of a high quality thread that will last decades is worth EVERY penny versus watching your canvas items prematurely come apart at the seams. |
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| A trip up the mast to do some maintenance and repair would not be complete with some photos. View of Monument Hill on Stocking Island. |
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| View of the aft deck and the awesome awning that shades much of the boat. (No drones were harmed during the course of taking this photograph.) |
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Tim working at the masthead. Good thing he's not afraid of heights
(or me holding the end of the halyard he's hanging from).
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| The March full moon rising from Skylark's cockpit. |
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| A photo of Skylark under the moonlight taken the same night by Rudy from his sailboat. |
Overall things are going well though this trip is turning out to be a shakedown cruise for us and Skylark. Skylark is new to us and numerous items have required repair and maintenance. We have indeed had our share of gremlins that seem to pop up every other day. As the saying goes "It's a boat, something breaks every day" or as someone recently reminded us, BOAT stands for "
Break
Out
Another
Thousand". Hopefully the gremlin will subside and we can relax a bit more. We will be heading shortly to the Jumentos Cays, a string of uninhabited cays south of Great Exuma Island. We will then visit some other remote islands and return to George Town in late April for the National Family Islands Regatta where traditional Bahamian sailboats are raced and the prides of individual island sailing teams are at stake.
