Our Last Three Bahamas

Out of the Exumas, but still in the Bahamas, for three more hops. Our 36 mile passage from Highbourne Cay to Nassau was across the bank at about 7 knots with single reefed main and small jib. It was a pleasant journey except for the scary part – crossing The Yellow Bank, which is studded with black coral heads. The bank, but not the heads, is marked on the chart. We crossed about noon, on a sunny day and heeled about 15 degrees, which raised our pendulous keel, which was all for the good. But the tide was low, which was not so good, with depths of as little as twelve feet. So a coral head only six feet high could be a problem for us. Lene donned life preserver with harness and was tethered before the mast as lookout for the hour of The Yellow Bank crossing. I told her that with the wind direction we had, we could easily change course as much as 45 degrees to either side to dodge the heads, but we never had to change beyond 20 degrees. When we had safely crossed I gave her a kiss of gratitude and thanks; I have so much to be thankful for, especially for Lene. The rest of the passage was uneventful and easy.

Nassau Harbor could be called Paradise Island Sound. It is the channel between the north side of the large New Providence Island, on which the city is located, and Paradise Island, to the north. Here are the bridges from the mainland on the left to the island.

We checked into the Nassau Harbor Club Marina, but not before gaining permission from Nassau Harbor Control, which wanted our US registration number, length, draft, former port and next port – as if they were a local “customs” authority, though they did it all by VHF and orally. We were tied with four lines port side to a wooden finger dock extending from a concrete pier and with two more lines to starboard, one at the bow to a piling of the concrete pier and the other to a piling by the starboard quarter.

Our first stop was at Starbucks; Lene had a craving and, after all, it was the first Starbucks we’ve seen in more than 6 months! Then it was off to buy a replacement charger cord for the local cell phone and the big, well stocked supermarket. These were at the end of a much longer walk that I had thought it would be. A passing taxi driver, Elman, stopped and gave us good directions. Elman was waiting for us outside the supermarket and drove us and our $250 of food and beverages back to the marina. Elman also recommended East Villa, a Chinese restaurant which was less than a quarter of a mile walk from the marina, after we had unpacked and stowed our food. It turns out they cooked very fine Chinese food, as good as in New York, and served by a pair of classically trained native waiters, each with two spoons after the heavy metal lid to keep food hot was removed with the other hand from the serving bowl, and with both of us served simultaneously. My late Dad was a waiter by profession so I know fine service (which is so rare these days) when I see it. I told the management and the wait staff how much we enjoyed every aspect of our meal.

        Nassau is a destination with five leviathans tied up parallel to each other where this lone one was as we exited.

It has numerous resorts, restaurants, casinos, historic sites, beaches, snorkel and dive trips, a museum, an aquarium and other tourist attractions.

But on our lay day there we regrettably took advantage of none of these. Instead we took advantage of unlimited fresh water for $8 per day and thoroughly scrubbed down ILENE’s topsides and freeboard (waterline up to deck), removed rust and waxed some of the stainless, cleaned the interior and did the laundry. The only excitement came when a fender hanging aside the boat fell off. In leaning further and further over to retrieve it (successfully), eventually I fell in. Luckily I had no electronics in my pockets and was able to use another boat’s swim platform to get back up from the water. Dinner included pasta Bolognese, but the ground beef smelled questionable and was discarded (the first food that we have lost to spoilage on this trip) permitting a new innovation: chopped kosher beef knockwursts in the Bolognese sauce.

      During our 6.5 hour, 39 mile passage from Nassau to Chub Cay, the wind was too light to sail without the motor, except for two hours in the middle. It was a leisurely passage in the Northwest Channel, over the deep ocean, with no concern about not getting in before dark. Chub Cay is the most southwesterly of the Berry Island group and has a very nice marina shown on the chart. We did not stay there, however. For one thing the $3.50 per foot price for the night was undesirable. Also, a relatively calm night was predicted. Finally we wanted to leave before daybreak the next day and exiting the narrow channel from the marina in the almost moonless night would have been hazardous. The principal place for anchoring which was deep enough for us was in a piece of water NW of the channel  that ran NE from the sea to the marina. That was where I had planned to anchor. But the winds were from the SE and nothing blocked the small to moderate ocean rollers rolling through that area. Also, when coming in we saw two boats anchored just SE of the channel. We nosed in there slowly because the chart indicated not enough water and anchored next to them, but not too close, with 60 feet of snubbed chain in 10 feet of water, which would be 8 feet at low tide. There, we were moderately protected, subject to surge, from the ocean waves, by a rock peninsula jutting out to the SW of Chub Cay. There we stayed for 13 hours. And sadly, that is as close as we came to Chub Cay or the Berrys. Alphie is not sufficiently awed by the sunset.

Next morning the alarm clock woke us and after our first coffee we got underway a few minutes after 5 am, under motor, Lene at the helm, heading between the faint red and green blinking channel entrance markers for the start of a terrific 88 mile run to Alice Town, North Bimini.  With the apparent wind at 10 to 15 knots from 90 to 120 degrees off our port bow, our speed over ground was invariably more than half of our apparent wind speed. Except for the first 12 miles to the NW end of the Northwest Channel and the final five miles out in the Atlantic after rounding North Rock, north of the north end of North Bimini (try saying that fast!), it was all bank sailing, all under genoa and single reefed main and our average speed overall for the day was 7.3 knots. The route was marked by a few pillars marking off shallow spots and several big power boats passed us going our way or the other way. Once we rounded North Rock, we came close hauled and had our first taste of the adverse current of the Gulf Stream. This was slow going and so we turned on the engine. And when we did, and were heeled, our chart plotter lost its fix again. But here line of sight navigation seemed easy with the charts. The only problem was that our 2008 chart showed the channel as it existed then: a straight line through the red and green buoys and NE to midway between North and South Bimini islands. We took this course, scraping the bottom of our keel in the sand for a few feet. But we did not go onto these reefs, which were easily visible at low tide.

It seems that a new channel has been created since our chart was drawn, a sweeping curve, first east and then north. But we got in, and our experiences in Bimini, our last stop before reentering the USA, will be the subject of the next post.

Posted from Ft. Lauderdale.