Slogging Through the Lower Bahamas

These lower Bahamas  from Turks and Caicos to George Town, are not tourist destinations except for people who really want to get away from it all.  They are conveniently located stepping stones between the mid and upper Bahamas and the Virgins or Puerto Rico. We made six passages in seven days, aggregating 248 miles.

On the first day out I caused us a bit of excitement by my stupidity. I had put up the small jib before we cleared the Sandbore Channel, out of the west end of Providenciales and the Turks and Caicos, to aid the engine. And I used the thin yellow lines that I had tied to the clew of that sail and run to blocks on the toe rail and then aft, to pull the aft lower corner of that sail downward and outward more than the sheet on the car on the cross-boat track allows.

Good idea (from another Saga owner) for getting more performance out of that small foresail when the wind is aft of the beam. But when it was time to hoist the main sail, which requires Lene to steer straight into the wind, this thin yellow line was left unattended and loose. It somehow flogged a bend of itself (two thicknesses) into the block, between the sheave (the wheel itself) and its housing, jamming that block. As a result, I could neither ease the sail out nor trim it in; and more problematically, I would not be able to furl the sail at the end of the day. So what to do? Donning life preserver and harness and clipping onto the jack line, I went forward with knife and ice pick and cut the last foot or so of the line, used the ice pick to pick out fibers from the log jam and cut the loose fibers off. I asked Lene to tension the sheet so that if and when the jam gave way, the sail would not jerk out and pull me overboard. We were heeled at about 35 degrees and water was splashing over the bow, cooling me off. After about a half an hour, it worked.  Hence plan B, to lower the sail on the bouncing foredeck and gather it together so it did not wash overboard, was not needed.
The 47 miles went by quickly. From noon to 4:30 the half hourly readings showed we made a steady 8 knots. But the destination, Abrahams Bay, in the SW corner of Mayaguana, is coral head strewn and the outside reef stops the big waves but not the wind. We entered the Bay through its safer, wider western entrance, but this left us anchored five miles from town, where we were supposed to check into Bahamian Customs. A ten mile round trip dinghy ride that evening was not going to happen. Instead, we became illegal aliens in the Bahamas from Mayaguana until George Town, except that we did not step ashore but once.

Next morning’s excitement came when the GPS couldn’t get a fix. All of its other chartplotter functions in showing us our direction, speed and many other things depend on its knowing where it is. What to do?  I went into the pieces in the lazarette where the antenna connects, like I had watched Herve, Grenada Marine’s electrician do, but the best I can say for these efforts was that I was able to put things back together again.  Plan B again:  We have two very old hand held GPS devices. These do not have chartplotter functions, but if they work, slowly, using lots of AA batteries and working from only three rather than 12 satellites, they give you a fairly accurate digital display of your latitude and longitude so you can find yourself on the chart. So we filled them with fresh batteries but first of them would not start at all, no way. So remove the fresh batteries and put the dead unit in the garbage. The second unit, to the left of its more powerful big brother in the photo, took a long time, but came to life at last, and eventually got a fix!  

Well they always act slowly at first, especially when you start them at a great distance from where they were last turned off, which it this case had been Long Island Sound. I think they are checking their internal logic saying “They can’t be that far away, can they?” Next step was to put in waypoints, the place where you want to go, so the toy can tell you the direction to steer to get there. I used to know how to do this, but we haven’t used this unit for at least ten years so there was a new learning curve. Half way through climbing this curve, the boat’s chart plotter got its fix. So we were off.

Soon after, we learned that Avatrice had incurred a much more serious problem than we: failure of her transmission. The sails are great for the open waters but in narrow twisted channels through reefs, you want your engine. I was able to give them, from our cruising guide, via VHF, the names and phone numbers of some diesel repair guys on the islands we would be passing and suggested they call in to The Coconut Telegraph, a SSB network. Later, we heard a call on a different net for any sailors to please give them assistance. We have not heard from them since then but hope to connect with them later on their trip to Maine. 

At the end of this day we anchored off West Plano Key and bought a nice sized Grouper from three boys in a rowboat with an outboard, who cleaned it and, at our request, brought half of it to “Tamera Sue.” $20. The boys said they were from the Dominican Republic and worked (sunup to sundown  seven days a week, no doubt) from a “mother ship” which was anchored about three miles away, where they lived. This was a six week trip for them. West Plano Cay is a beach.

Then it was the 50 miles to Landrail Point, on Crooked Island. Wind too light and behind us so a motor sail, mostly motor, to another beach. But it has a pretty lighthouse, don’t you think?

Next day it was 40 miles to Clarencetown on the southern end of Long Island. Here we took our only lay day of the week and went ashore. This sign:

says it all, except it says more than it all, because the “historic sites” are the churches, and its post office and police are the government complex, and the restaurants are two in number, only one worthy of the name. At Rowdy Boys we had lunch and devoured their wifi via the iPad. Here is the town, home to about 200 of the 3000 folks who live on the island, taken from the Church steps, Lene lying on the wall lower right, ILENE, anchored behind the trees to the right.

The two churches are vaguely similar and interesting. The first, built by an Anglican missionary, recently had part of its roof blown off in a hurricane.   

The second, built by the same man after he had converted to the Roman Catholic faith, has an even more commanding presence, on a higher hill but it too has suffered damage: the cross on the right steeple is missing.

Friendly people. Some boats stop here at night—generally after sailing northwest, with the prevailing winds behind them, like us. Others leave in the evening to sail at night, when the winds are lighter – generally those heading SE, into the wind.

Next the length of Long Island, along its SE coast, from Clarencetown to Calabash Bay, 49 miles. On this trip, I miscalculated our time of departure and did not figure on an adverse tidal flow, or that it was a beat. So we had to motor sail a good part of the way in order to make sure we got into Calabash Bay, past the unmarked invisible but charted reefs, well before dark. Another beach on another blowy night.
 And finally the 24 miles on broad reaches, from Calabash Bay to George Town, Great Exuma Island, where we had fun. The subject of the next post.

Posted from Warderick Wells, Sea Land Park, Exumas, Bahamas