A month with Jim onboard

April 16 - Long Island

Hot damn!  He finally arrived!  All our cruiser friends cleared out over the weekend, leaving just us in the great big anchorage.  We rented a car and met Jim at the Stella Maris airport at around 9:30am (about one hour overdue).  We started our day with the rental car back at the boat, where we got Jim settled in and celebrated his arrival with coconut bread French toast, bacon and champagne!

We had already decided to use the car to get to water fun spots and go to Max’s Conch Café for ‘the best fresh conch salad anywhere” …. We have yet to sample any of this delicacy of the Bahamas, so peer pressure has convinced us that Max”s is the place to make the plunge.

Our first stop was to Dean’s Blue Hole – the world’s largest at 633 feet.  We have been to see it twice, but never got in the water, so this time we decided to bring our snorkeling gear and spend the afternoon there.  Why anyone would want to free dive into a dark dark whole of deep deep water is beyond me … but it was cool to swim over the surface and look down. Quite a current and quite a temperature change.

the hole is rimmed with shallow water

the edge of the abyss!

 

Our second swimming adventure involved a hike back to a large water grotto.  Not a lot of fish to watch, but the swim was worth it after the trek thru the brush to get us there (what trail?).

 

With that much exercise for one day, we were ready for drinks and food at Max’s.  Conch fritters, conch salad, clawfish quesadillas …. All made fresh, right there.  Yum … good food just makes the day, so this was a great way to start Jim’s vacation on s/v Maja (except for the fact that we seldom indulge like this!).

Of course, several of our meals could easily rival what is offered in a 5-Star restaurant, especially when we still had fresh lobster and Hog Fish left over from our time in the Ragged Islands.

 

April 17 – 20.   Long Island

Without the luxury of a car, we were back to showing Jim Long Island by foot.  Fortunately, there are several lovely beaches on the Atlantic side of the island to explore. 

 

 

Yes, it's true .... in lieu of lukewarm water, Nancy likes ice-cold beer!

 

Fickle weather in the forecast is making it difficult to pick a direction to move, as the direction we’d like to go is not the direction the wind wants to push us.  So, the compromise was to leave Thompson Bay and move north along the coast of Long Island and try out a new anchorage every night – Joe’s Sound, Hog Cay.  Our next commitment is the Family Island Regatta in Georgetown, April 23.

 

April 21- 23.  Conception Island

 

It wasn’t a great break in the weather, but it was enough to make the 50mile crossing to Conception Island.  We’ve never visited here and have always wanted to because the entire island is part to the Bahamas National Trust. 

Caught mahi #4 on the way over to Conception.

 

Conception is a small island surrounded by a deep ocean so it’s subject to surge most of the time; we found that if the wind was from the NE, then we had a nice, settled anchorage.  But when the wind shifted to the SE, conditions got considerably more rolly.  Hence the reason you hear about people staying at CI for just a few days.  Despite all that, Conception has by far the clearest water we have yet to see in the Bahamas.  Looking into the water from the dinghy was just like snorkeling!

 

 

 

 

 

Caught mahi #5 on the way back from Conception Island to Georgetown.

Could we get tired of fresh mahi for dinner?

 

April  24-29.  Georgetown

This is the 60^th running of the Family Island Regatta in Georgetown, a race for the local Bahamians. Tankers have been bringing in class A,B,C racing sloops all week.  The family islands are the islands east of Nassau, and a total of 67 boats are entered in the race.  We have a few favorites of our own as we’ve seen Abaco Rage and Lucky Strike race before.

 

We moved s/v Maja to multiple anchorages in Elizabeth Harbor to take advantage of all the festivities.  We anchored at Volleyball beach and showed Jim the famous Chat and Chill bar.  Then we moved over to Honeymoon Beach to hang out with Bill and Mara, s/v Puddlejumper.  Next on the list was Kids Cove, which is the closest place you can drop the hook and get into “downtown” Georgetown.  So, depending on where we were anchored, we watched the races, hung out with good friends, enjoyed perfect regatta weather, and took care of boat refueling and provisioning.

 

 

April 30 – Heading North

Leaving GT and heading north signals the end of this year’s travels.  We are now focused on the crossing back to FL, studying charts and monitoring several weather sources.  We’ve got a week of unsettled weather ahead of us, so we may as well enjoy the Exumas while we are here. 

 

We traveled by sail-only today, 48 miles up Exuma Sound to Cave Cay.  The Sound was quite rolly, and we almost diverted to Cat Island b/c we’d have a better sail line, but we slogged along since our goal is to make our crossing back to FL at  Highborne Cay at the north end of the Exuma chain. We used the motor to get through the cut in the island chain, and then took the first anchorage we could find after an 11-hr day.

May 1 – Hettys Land

Love the Exumas.  You can find a beautiful anchorage every 10-15 miles, so it’s lovely to.  It would be perfect if just a few of them offered protection from a west wind.

 

After making water for 4 hours in the morning, we took a leisurely 10-mile sail to Hetty’s Land, a favorite spot and where Jim spent his first night with us in the Bahamas last year.  We were the only boat in the anchorage so that meant we also had the entire beach to ourselves!  We thoroughly enjoyed it --  collected sand dollars, went swimming, collected brush for a beach fire at sunset.

 

May 2 – May 6  Black Point

One of the ways cruisers stay connected as they move at different rates on different paths through the islands is on a morning “Cruiseheimer” net via the SSB radio (single side band).  Basically, the net offers cruisers the opportunity to check in with their current location and also to contact other cruisers on the net.  This morning, Dan checked in on the net and immediately got a call from s/v Puddlejumper saying they were headed to Black Point, so we’d meet up with them yet again at happy hour at Scorpios.

The weather forecast is dicey for a few more days as we get our first taste of anchoring in a fully exposed anchorage to west winds. Damn Exumas, such a linear chain!  Getting socked with 10-15 knots of west wind, and the accompanying swells is really not much fun at all. The boat is pitching bow- to-stern half the time, and side-to-side the rest of the time.  So why not just go it shore you may ask? Reasonable solution b/c who wants to cook on a rolly boat anyway?  Well, there’s a good reason why all 15 boats in the anchorage have their dinghy tied on the rail.  Forget the 3 ft swells in the anchorage and the fact that the bow of the boat is getting buried every 10 minutes … it’s the dinghy docks that are really scary! Thru the binoculars, you can see both dingy docks awash in breaking waves rolling in from the west.   You could get to shore, but no way to get off.  Reasonably, safely, securely. 

We’ll always remember Saturday, May 4^th, as a rocky and rolly and bouncy and windy day spent on the boat, going nowhere!.  You read, you try not to move around too much, you watch the clock because the wind is predicted to shift to the north sometime today.

And it does just that. Around 5pm, a noticeable change in wind direction was apparent, but no calming of the waters racing thru the anchorage.  Gonna be a tough night of sleeping.  Then we see s/v Puddlejumper raise anchor, and  they came along-side and said that conditions were too rough and they were going to look at the anchorage on the south side, in front of Obrien’s landing.  Cool.  They called 40 minutes later to say that the move made a world of difference.  That’s all we needed to hear!  We had the anchor up in 5 minutes and were underway!  And indeed, what a difference a change in anchorage made.  The comment: “Wow … I’m soooo glad we moved ….”  was repeated frequently thought out the night.  In the past, we have typically stayed put once the anchor is set and took a ‘grin and bear’ it approach to conditions.  Since leaving Long Island, we’ve been making a point of changing our anchorage ever day.  And it can make a positive difference.

By Sunday,  May 5, we were all ready to get to shore, even if it meant swimming!  However, Obrien’s have a wonderful beach, something akin to landing in vanilla pudding.  So we meet Bill and Mara (s/v Puddlejumper) at Obrien’s for a beach walk and stayed there through dinner.  It was such a treat to be on terra firma and to be surrounded by great people.   We know that once the west wind settles we’ll be going in different directions than s/v Puddlejumper, and we’ll really miss Bill and Mara.  It’s kinda like going to summer camp and meeting your best friend on the last weekend!  All of the sudden, you don’t want to go home!

Bill and Mara - s/v Puddlejumper

But we did finally commit to moving s/v Maja towards our staging point at Highborne Cay, northern  Exumas, where we will start our crossing back to Florida.  Resisting the temptation of a beach party on Monday and Happy Hour at Scorpio’s on Tuesday, we raised anchor at Black Point and headed north.  The final move was on and our routine was set -- every day, we made water in the morning and then sailed to a new anchorage, putting us that much closer to our jumping-off point at Highbourne Cay. 

May 7-8:  Exuma Land and Sea Park

No sane person can pass through the Exumas without stopping in the Exuma Land and Sea Park, another area protected by the Bahamian National Trust.  We spent the day hiking and swimming and snorkeling at Warderick Wells.... waving at all the big lobster Dan would love to be spearing!

 

May 10 - Time to go

Exactly 5 months ago, on December 10, we cleared into the Bahamas.  We left Highbourne Cay at 10:30am for the 230 mile crossing that we estimate will take us 48hrs.  We are hoping for mile 10-12knots of wind to baby our mail sail, and the seas are predicted to be flat.  With 3 crew, we'll travel non-stop from the Exumas, south of New Providence Island and the Berry Islands towards the Florida coast.

Good bye pretty water....

It was a mild crossing, with very light winds and a virtually calm ocean.  For most of the trip, our speed hovered around 4.5 knots, which sucks .... but once we hit the Gulf Stream, we were able to make 6.5 knots as the current helped push us north.  41 hours on engine as we motor-sailed the entire way, using the whisker pole and preventer to keep the sails out in the light winds reaching us from the stern. Best news = 30 minutes of rain during the entire passage!

Hello Florida! Arrived Sunday at 7:30am.

We decided to land in Lake Worth to make it easier for Jim to clear into Immigration.  After a couple of days to relax and prep the boat for the final leg of the trip, we'll head offshore from Lake Worth to Jacksonville, and our final stop at Green Cove Springs marina, which will officially end the 2013 sailing season for us.