Week 13; Jan 26 –Feb 3Monday was our last full day at Allen’s Cay and we finally remembered to take pictures of the iguanas. Tuesday we left all the conch and iguanas behind and had a beautiful sail to Shroud Cay just inside the boundaries of the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Fishing and taking conch aren’t allowed here. It’s in a marine sanctuary – an almost pristine environment.
We had another great sail wednesday to Warderick Wells where the Exuma Land & Sea park headquarters is located. When we arrived, we could only get a mooring in a very exposed area, but better than nothing since another strong cold front was coming the next day (anchoring is not allowed around warderick wells). Right after we tied up to the mooring ball, we heard over the radio that a ball just freed up at the north (much better protected) mooring field, several boats called the park office on the radio and requested it but were told they were too big so jim decided to call and told them we had a 25 ft. boat and they gave it to us. That’s one of the advantages of cruising in a small boat! There were many other boats there waiting for the next cold front to pass – 2 of the boats we’d met before.
We spent one day hiking the trails all over the island. It was rough going at times in loose sand or rough uneven limestone, but the scenery is beautiful. The island used to be a hang out for pirates and one of the few places where fresh water was available from a natural well. Jennifer led the way most of the day…that girl sure does have a lot of energy! There was an interesting bird here called a bananakeet. They would fly around, land on your boat and generally just hang around looking for a handout. They loved sugar and honey and were not afraid to eat out of your hand.
Saturday Jim volunteered at the Park. His job in the morning was to break up limestone with a jack hammer and his job for the afternoon was to mix cement by hand for the new slab. For all that manual labor he got our mooring free for one night. The park has a policy that if you do volunteer work for a day, you get one day’s free mooring.
We decided to attended the saturday pot luck on the beach where the park supplies the ice and folks bring something to share and drinks. The wind was howling out of the northeast and boy was it cold. Jim had been lusting for ice in his rum for days but when we got to the beach it was so cold we did not even have any ice. We just had a taste of everything, shot the breeze for awhile and went back to the boat. We lit the oil lamps to heat the boat up, got cozy, and talked about how lucky we were that it was not snowing down here, since it seems to be everywhere else.
We really miss our daily ration of conch down here. Inside the park, fishing and collecting anything is prohibited. We are back to rice, beans, and canned meat. We are getting pretty inventive with meals these days. It is amazing how good things taste when you just throw some of this and some of that together. The pressure cooker has turned out to be a wonderful cooking tool. It saves bunch of fuel, will not spill, and things always seem to taste great when they come out. We think of it as a poor man’s microwave.
Monday & Tuesday we all volunteered (we were getting greedy and thinking that if three of us put in a days work, we would get three days worth of free mooring, not so, but the adventure was worth it) and our job was to cut down Casuarina pine trees on Hawksbill Cay. It was about a 40 minute power boat ride away. Half the volunteers cut down the trees with chain saws, the other half, that would be us, dragged the branches and trunks into piles on the beach. The Casuarina pines are not native to the Bahamas, they are from Australia, and once they get started on an island they spread out and take over native vegetation. This tree is particularly bad because it’s shallow root structure along the beaches makes it impossible for turtles to dig in the sand to nest. When there weren’t that many tree limbs to drag, Jennifer and Linda got the job of collecting trash along the beach. It’s amazing how much plastic trash floats to shore on these lovely, uninhabited islands. If this island was not part of the Exuma Land & Sea Park, the trash would keep collecting here and never be removed.
The fringe benefit of doing all that manual labor was that we got to see a few local treasures that are not on the charts. The first day, we stopped on the way back over a sunken plane, pretty neat. The second day we visited a small cay where a small freighter had been blown ashore during a tropical storm. The bow was still intact but the rest was broken up against the reef. We also tied up to a mooring marking a terrific dive site, stayed on the boat and watched the big fish swim around the boat in about 20 feet of water. We almost did not find this site. All of us were looking for a small crab float without success and then finally “One Eyed Linda” said “there it is!”. She sure was proud that she was able to see the thing when everyone else could not. It was quite choppy that day.
Week 12; Jan 18 –Jan 25We left Bimini and spent 2 days motor-sailing toward Nassau. We needed the motor the first day, but not the second. When we turned it off, the boat did not slow down at all, but at least we had fully charged batteries. There’s nothing out here but water, clear water in about every shade of blue you could imagine. The first day we crossed the Bahama Banks sailing in about 10’-20’ of water and 5-10 kts. Just to make sure our little boat was visible to anyone else who might be out in the middle of nowhere, when we anchored that night in 10 feet of water, we had our regular anchor light on the bow and an extra oil lamp and LED light in the cockpit.
The second day, in the Northwest Channel, the water was as deep as 8000 feet and the wind blew about 20 kts. – no worries about running aground here. We saw many flying fish, a pod of spotted dolphins, and Jim lost his new fishing lure on this passage. Their sure are a lot of big fish out here!
The Nassau Harbor Club turned out to be a good place to stay for a few days. There was a shopping center across the street with everything we needed to restock. Starbucks offered 1 hour of free WI FI with a cup of coffee, so Jim enjoyed the chance to have good coffee every day. The non-coffee drinkers (and Jim) enjoyed a Domino’s Pizza one night. Forget the “Cheeseburger in Paradise”, this was a pizza in paradise! Almost every business including the marina had private security guards. We felt quite safe, but it made you wonder about the area. We met some other first time cruisers with kids at the marina. Jennifer had several play dates with her new boat friend, Emily. Her family has travel plans similar to ours, so we hope to see them again.
We spent one full morning in downtown Nassau, taking in the Straw Market, watching the tourists come off the cruise ships, and tasting rum in the duty free liquor stores. We managed to make it out of there with only one bottle of Bahamian coconut rum and no straw products. You had to feel sorry for some of the tourists coming off the cruise ships all wrapped up in beach towels. It was about 60 and breezy, not the tropical weather they had planned on and packed for.
The Bahamian radio stations covered Inauguration Day in the US. The people here seem to be very happy and optimistic about Obama being the new president. Jim watched he inauguration stuff on tv with some Bahamians in a restaurant while the girls went swimming in the pool at the marina.
After leaving Nassau, we went to Rose Island and spent the night. Jim thought it would be a good idea to practice reading the water to get into the anchorage. The following morning we sailed to Allen’s Cay in the Exuma Islands and anchored for the rest of the week. We had a wonderful sail in about 15 kts of wind. We learned how to spot coral heads during this trip, there were quite a few to steer around. When we turned the corner into the anchorage, we were dazzled by the many shades of blue and green indicating the different water depths. We found a spot in about 6 feet of water and dropped the anchor. Jennifer’s new friend, Emily, aboard Emily Grace was there when we got there. Yeah, another play date! Besides being a beautiful protected anchorage, Allen’s Cay is known for the large iguanas that come to the beach to greet you looking for food.
The next morning, we moved to the Soutwest Allen’s Cay anchorage. There is only enough room for one boat in the small harbor with its own beach accented with a single large coconut palm. An absolutely magical place! Linda swam into shore (without food) one day and found it a little unnerving as 3 iguanas came running toward her. Jim has mastered catching, cleaning and pan frying conch now. We’ve tried conch salad, but pan fried is still our favorite. He says he feels like a hunter-gatherer, collecting and fixing his food for the day. Jennifer is learning to fish off the boat with the scraps of conch left after Jim cleans them. She’s good at baiting her own hook and releasing the fish after she catches them.
We went snorkeling on the back side of SW Allen’s Cay while we were there. We think we agree with folks that told us that the snorkeling is better in the Exumas than in the Florida Keys.
Week 11: Jan 12 –17A week in Bimini. We didn’t plan to stay that long, but there wasn’t a big enough weather window to move on and we didn’t run out of things to do.
We met a lot of good people on and around the docks. Many were first time cruisers like us, others were veteran cruisers, like Dennis, with 25 years of experience. They all had stories to tell and experience to share. Jim even talked with some sport fishers and got some good advice on what lures work best. The guy sold him a lure and threw in some old ones and a bag of stone crab claws besides.
We only ate out once this week for “meat patties”, a cheap local favorite you can only get the day the supply boat comes in, but we had some great local food. Jim bought some lobsters one of the first days we were here and grilled them. The next day he pan fried the 6 conch he caught. It was so tender you could cut it with a fork! The stone crab claws were much tastier than the lobster, but neither beat the flavor of the conch. Linda is so glad Jim likes to cook!
Jim was really in his element here. He had a great time talking to and learning from the locals. The lobster guy showed him how to clean and “bruise” conch. The ladies in the local grocery store gave him recommendations on how to prepare the conch. Another shop keeper sold us some casaba root (sp) and explained just how to prepare it. He struck up conversations with people on the docks, on the streets and in shops and was rewarded with free advice, free lobster, free stone crab claws and free fishing lures.
Linda and Jennifer joined some other people from the dock for a “field trip” to the Shark Research Lab in South Bimini. They had a tour of the facility, overview of the research being done there and got to see baby nurse sharks and lemon sharks. Much better than science lesson from the books. The next day the folks from the Shark Lab were in North Bimini to try and catch and tag a bull shark. We watched as they put in their chum bag and baited huge hooks with chucks of barracuda and threw them in. The hooks were attached to 3’ leaders and then to about 100’ of ½” line which was attached to a big orange float. Research is not quick and easy! We waited with them for almost 2 hours before a bull shark finally took the bait and went zooming off with the line and orange ball in tow. When the Shark Lab folks jumped into the chase boat, Jennifer was invited to go along and she did. She was right there when they caught the bull shark and measured him. They didn’t have to tag him since he’d been tagged previously.
We walked the beach, checked out the shops and the straw market and yes, Jennifer got a couple of corn rows with beads in her hair. Linda will hold off on that until another island.
Week 10; Jan 5 –Jan 11Two milestones this week – the trip meter on the GPS hit 1000 nautical miles and we crossed the Gulf Stream and cleared Customs in the Bahamas.
We started out the week with a few short trips. We returned to the anchorage near the Boy Scout camp in Islamorada and spent more time with Capt. Carl. Unfortunately Carl and the other boat in the anchorage didn’t have need for any Spanish Mackerel fillets, so we ate fish for a few more days. Leaving Islamarada, we sailed on the ocean side of the keys. One of our best finds so far was John Pennekamp State Park (voted #1 state park in America). The marina was cheap with lots of facilities and had helpful staff who directed us to some of the best reefs in the park. Molassas Reef is not only the home of lots of live coral and tropical fish, but the home of a 600 pound grouper. Unfortunately the grouper wasn’t around the day we went – probably a good thing as it would have scared the wits out of Jennifer. The reef at Key Largo Dry Rocks had more live coral and more varieties of fish than we had seen so far. It also had a 13 foot tall bronze statue of Christ in 30 ft of water. Although rather awesome, the manmade statue didn’t seem nearly as magnificent as the beauty of His creation that surrounded it. Snorkeling at Key Largo Dry Rocks was a turning point for Jennifer. She no longer felt any need to be tethered to the boat while snorkeling. She didn’t even feel it was necessary to hold a hand. Jim and Linda are glad for her new found confidence, but not quite ready to let her go off on her own yet.
By Saturday, Jim knew that the forecast for Sunday would give us a good weather window to cross to the Bahamas. Our friend, Captain Carl, called us Saturday morning to suggest that Sunday would be a good day to cross. The moon was almost full and there was a cold front heading toward Florida. It sure seemed like a good time to go. We left at midnight Saturday night and motor-sailed for 11 ½ hours before we reached Bimini in the Bahamas. We got a good lift from the Gulf Stream that helped us reach Bimini 3 to 4 hours earlier than we estimated. We saw about ten ships during our crossing and Jim talked to one of them to verify that we had a decent radar return. They said they saw us quite well, which was a relief. Even though we always have a lookout on deck, its nice to know that other vessels can see us.
We tied up at a marina that was only a couple of blocks from the Customs and Immigration offices. After filling out what seemed like a ton of repetitive forms, we were clear to get off the boat and explore. First impressions – the water really is clearer than in the Florida Keys and Jennifer notes that the Bahamian people are really friendly!
Jim went conch hunting at low tide on a grassy flat across from where we are tied up and got his limit for the day in about a half hour. He still has not tried extracting the meat yet. It’s another skill he needs to pick up in this lovely low-tech world we now live in on the boat.