We spent last Thursday and Friday in Bimini and were lucky enough to be invited to a birthday party the night before we left. Sage and Phoenix from C-Spirit turned 5 and 10 respectively and we were there to help them celebrate. It's been fun to hang around the kids and they are all such nice girls.
We ran out of fresh produce from Miami while we were in Bimini, so we were glad when the mail boat arrived on Friday morning. When we got to the grocery store just after noon we met quite a few cruisers with bags full walking back and sure enough, when we got there they were already out of certain things (like cucumbers). For most of the small inhabited islands in the Bahamas, the mail boat comes once a week and on that day much of the fresh stuff is bought up with the rest of it dwindling as the week goes by. I don't know how the shop owners figure out how much to order, especially with the cruisers coming in and buying up what must be significant amounts when there are a fair number of boats in the harbour. We were able to get quite a good haul of fresh stuff - at least enough to get us to Nassau where we could stock up again.
After much deliberation and discussion and analysis of weather, we finally left Bimini on Saturday morning around slack tide (10 a.m.). The trip to Nassau is around 120 Nm and the first half is over a shallow area called the Great Bahama Bank. Here the water depth is pretty much all under 20 feet deep and at first it is a bit unnerving to be sailing along and being able to see the bottom, but you get used to it. The second half of the trip is across the "Tongue of the Ocean" which is a very deep area of water that sticks up into the Bank. I will try to post a photo of the chart that shows this the next time I have wifi if I am not able to upload photos with this blog.
We had a wonderful sail across the banks, with the main, jib and sometimes the staysail. We only had to motor sail part of the way at the end when the wind died. We had two choices when we got to the northwest channel, which is where the tongue of the ocean comes up to meet the banks - we could keep going in the night, or we could anchor on the banks for the night and go through in daylight. After talking to another boat that was already anchored on the banks about the conditions, we decided to anchor for the night to get some sleep before carrying on the next morning. It is kind of a bizarre concept to be anchored out in what seems to be the middle of the ocean, with no land in sight but many boats do this and we decided we might get more sleep on the hook than taking watches while under way. Shortly after 11 p.m. we anchored along with Slow Waltz and Serenada, just beside Vita, who we had spoken to on the VHF earlier.
It was a pretty rolly night as there was some current and a light wind, but we probably got more sleep than we would have by carrying on. The next morning we got up and left at first light (around 6:30) and motor sailed down to Nassau on New Providence island. Going through the NW channel there was no buoy and we couldn't see the shallows and we were navigating completely by GPS so it may not have been much more difficult by night as it turned out. Regardless, we were happy for the bit of sleep we did get, although we were tired enough when we arrived in Nassau and dropped the anchor shortly after 4 p.m.
We anchored just south of the huge Atlantis resort, west of the cruise ship dock, north of a marina and east of the fishing and commercial docks, so there was a lot of activity all around us. After a celebratory drink to toast another successful passage, we ate supper and then fell into bed before 9 p.m. At 10:20 we awoke to the sound of... fireworks! We got up to watch the fireworks over Atlantis and wondered whether maybe it was a celebration of the Chinese New Year - the timing seemed vaguely right but we never did look it up - internet time is too hard to come by and that never made it onto the list of priorities. Anyway, let's just pretend the fireworks were to welcome us to Nassau. It was a great surprise and it didn't take us long to fall back asleep after they finished.
Monday was a super productive day. One of the main reasons we had stopped in Nassau was so that we could buy a new outboard engine for our dinghy. The prices are very good and they still sell two strokes there, which are lighter (so easier to lift on and off) and smaller (so easier to stow in our bow locker). So the first order of the day was to buy the new outboard. We had arranged to dinghy up to see our friends on Slow Waltz, as they were also buying a new outboard. The old outboard must have sensed that it was on its way out because when we went to leave the throttle wouldn't work. This, combined with the fact that the engine was only working on one cylinder, made for a very long ride up the harbour to the marina where Slow waltz was tied up. We putted along against the current, with the cover off the engine and Dave using a hook tool he had to work the throttle, while I steered with the tiller. At one point the current was so strong we were barely making way, but we made it to Slow Waltz and walked up to buy the new outboard.
Because our old one was in such a bad state, Dave went and got the dinghy and brought it to a tiny beach just across the street from the store so that we could put the new outboard on right away. In true cruiser spirit we found a plastic milk jug on the beach and cut the top off it so we could use it as a funnel to transfer fuel from our old fuel tank to the new one on the beach and once we had the old outboard in the dinghy we set off to fill up with fuel.
Our next priority in Nassau was to find a dentist to fix Dave's tooth, as he had broken a piece off one of his crowns just after we arrived in Bimini. We got directions from some locals and walked up to find the street with dentist offices and walked into the first one we saw. The dentist ended up seeing Dave after his current patient and before his lunch and filed down the sharp edges and said he was good to go until we got home - all free of charge! So check that off the list.
We managed to get groceries (the grocery store selection has improved immensely since we were here 11 years ago), enough jerry jugs of water to fill our tank and our two wash water jugs, and even do a couple of loads of laundry while having a drink and some complimentary conch fritters at the bar just above the marina before we went out for chinese food with the crew of Slow Waltz. That might seem like a bizarre selection while in the Bahamas, but it was a good meal and a change from what is readily available here.
Even though we had somehow managed to do everything we needed to in Nassau in one day (I still can't believe that), the next day didn't look good for moving on as there was another cold front with strong winds forecast to come in, so on Tuesday we walked over to Atlantis with Gwen and Guillaume from Slow Waltz to have a look around. On the way back, Gwen and I tried the conch salad from one of the stands near the bridge, where we got to watch them extract the conch from the shell right before they chopped it up with the veggies and mixed in the lime juice.
That afternoon we dinghied over to an island to the northwest of Nassau and did some snorkeling with Gwen and Guillaume. We saw quite a few fish and got to try out my new underwater camera, which I am really pleased with.
On Wednesday we spent the morning doing jobs on the boat and then went to shore to try to buy a few things. Dave managed to find a new watch (he had just broken the strap on his old one and it turned out that a new watch was easier to buy than a new strap) and we got a few more groceries and that night we went to Slow Waltz for supper. In the middle of the night the front came through with the strong winds and rain, as forecast, so we didn't get a great sleep as Dave got up a few times to check on things.
We were kind of done with Nassau and eager to move on but we slept in on Thursday morning and missed the weather on the radio, however when C-Spirit called us to let us know they were heading for Allen's Cay we had a quick look at the forecast and decided maybe we should go too, so Dave went over to see what Slow Waltz was thinking and they were up for it. By 9:15 we had the engine off the dinghy and stowed, the dinghy on the davits, the anchor up and we were under way.
The wind was right behind us but quite light so we couldn't really sail, but we motor sailed with the jib all the way across. It is about 35 miles from Nassau to Allen's Cay, which is at the north end of the Exuma islands, and there is one section called Middle Ground where there are 'numerous coral heads' according to the chart. While we went through that area I went onto the foredeck to keep a look out while Dave stayed in the cockpit to adjust our course as required. We arrived at 3 p.m. and anchored in very close quarters - by dark there were 14 boats anchored inside the cays and 2 boats to the east.
The wind came up a couple of hours after we arrived and when we got back to the boat after going for a bit of an explore in the dinghy Romana was rolling because of current and wind in different directions. Last night making supper was almost as difficult as if we had been underway! Somehow we managed to do that and do the dishes and then the wind dropped a bunch. About an hour after we went to bed we had a rude awakening from a bump on the hull. We jumped up to find that the bow of the boat next to us had hit our stern. With the crazy currents in between the cays and the close quarters the boats were sailing around all over. The skipper on the other boat had his boat hook out and every time they got close enough he would fend off. After an hour of this Dave got tired of sitting in the cockpit so he got in the dinghy and helped the other boat deploy another anchor to keep them away from us. somehow we got back to sleep just after midnight and got through the rest of the night without incident.
Today we went off with Slow Waltz in our dinghies to do some snorkeling - which for us is one of the biggest attractions of the Exumas. We saw some good coral and a ton of fish and then spent some time on the beach with the C-Spirit crew, who let us try out their stand up paddle board - I thought it was awesome. Some more strong winds are forecast to come through in the next few days so we will be looking for more protection and who knows how many boats will be anchored here tonight, but it is all part life aboard and when you can float around looking at fishes for a couple of hours that makes it all worthwhile.
I'm not sure if I will have any success posting this via internet over the cell network but I will give it a whirl and see what I can do about photos too, although they may have to wait for a wifi connection.