Category: Back Cove

In late February Chris Parker, our weather source, forecast that the first few weeks in March would be plagued by a series of cold fronts with South/West/North components. In general, it gets hard to find comfortable anchorages in the Bahamas with this sort of forecast. And so when we hear, “…with wind from the west…” we look for a marina.
In part because of the forecast we chose to head north via Eleuthera, as it offered a more interesting set of marinas than the northern Exumas (Highborn and Nassau). Our first hidey-hole in Eleuthera was Cape Eleuthera Marina, which I mentioned in a prior post. As it turned out, we might have been as comfortable in Rock Sound, which is protected from the west. Friends who weathered the same front we did, said Rock Sound was OK.
When we left Cape Eleuthera we had 48 hours to find protection before the next front, again with strong westerly winds. We decided to head up to Spanish Wells with a stop at an anchorage half way there. Alabaster cove was quite nice. Calm night so setting the anchor wasn’t critical. It did set, but only half buried in sand before catching in underlying hard pack. Apparently this is typical of many Eleuthera anchoring spots. Anyway, some dolphins came by to wish us well so we took it as a good omen.
The next day we passed through Current Cut (more on this later) and came into Spanish Wells and Yacht Haven Marina. Very well protected and a nice marina, albeit a bit expensive at $2.50/foot. At that time, we figured a 3-5 day stay until the weather pattern improved. I must have forgotten Chris’s forecast for a series of fronts through mid-March. Well, we have been here 5 days and will likely be here 3-5 days more. As I write this we are just emerging from a series of thunderstorms passing over. Still raining pretty steadily. Not much wind but that is coming. So far, the fronts have been rolling over us every 48 hours or so, and are predicted to continue through Thursday. And that is about how far the forecasts go. Here is a picture of the next one:

With each of these fronts the winds clock from SE > S > SW > W > NW etc. The winds are strong enough from each direction, 20 knots or so, that, if at anchor, one has to move with the wind shifts to find protection. And of course the wind shifts usually occur just after midnight. Hence our choice of protected marinas vs anchoring during these weather patterns. But it is getting old.
We hope to leave soon and either explore the Berry Islands or the Abacos, depending on what sort of weather and sea states emerge once this pattern of cold fronts subsides. Meanwhile, we are enjoying Spanish Wells. Now, back to Current Cut.
This cut is the most direct route to Spanish Wells from the South. It can carry upwards of 8 knots at max flow. And lots of private and commercial shipping passes through here. Slack current is preferable, but not so easy to compute as it is affected by winds and tide levels. Also better at high tide as there are some shallows as one approaches from the East.
Our best estimate for slack current that day was 1pm. We got there 10 minutes prior and the current had already reversed and was ebbing outbound at 2 knots. No big deal but I am not sure when slack tide did occur. For our cruising readers, slack tide at the cut is estimated to be 1:30 to 2 hrs after Nassau tide. In our case, my best estimate is that slack current occurred at 1:40 after Nassau high tide. Based on discussions with other boats passing through with us, slack lasts about 5-10 minutes.

There are a few turns in the cut, and with any current at all, the eddies can push you around quite a bit. Plenty of room to fishtail as long as you have the cut to yourself. In our case, we met a cargo ship just at the narrowest portion of the cut. He generously gave us more than our fair share of the channel. Thank you captain, whoever you are.

The first week of March is living up to the saying, “In like a lion”. When the forecast is for winds with a “W” in them, meaning with a west component, we usually find a protected place to go hide in. Currently NNW 18-25Kn/gusting 32. Our weather here is being driven by the bomb cyclone that is currently blasting the US east coast. As it pulls away the trailing winds are touching us. We are getting off easy, but still a bit uncomfortable.
This says, “marina” to us so a few days ago we crossed over from the Exumas to Eleuthera and Cape Eleuthera Marina. That crossing, from Staniel Cay, was quite pleasant. Winds under 10 knots and calm seas, perfect for fishing, except we didn’t catch anything. Frustrating as all the other boats following us in had Mahi aboard. Hamburgers tonight I guess.

This is a very nice marina, although the entrance is open to the west. Since there is some westerly component to the current winds, we are getting some slop in here. We are not moving much but the sailboats next to us are bouncing around a bit. I would guess that if the winds were directly out of the west, and above 15 knots or so, this place would be uncomfortable for small boats. Luckily, strong west winds are quite unusual,…except for this week and next.
The winds are predicted to lay down tomorrow and Tuesday, before again blowing from the west. Since the forecast is for 20 knots or more directly from the west on Wednesday, we will bail out of here and head up to Spanish Wells. We had planned to cruise the leeward coast of Eleuthera as we wandered north, but I don’t like the options for anchoring around here with 25 knots out of the west predicted; Rock sound is crowded now and Hatchet Bay has more underwater hazards to anchoring than I care for.
So we are headed to a marina in Spanish Wells for a few days. The town is supposed to be attractive, with some nice restaurants. We will play land vacation for a while, rent a car and see the sights. When the weather improves we will head over to the Berry Islands.

We spent quite a bit of time in the park this season. A few days in the North field horse shoe, a few at Emerald Rock and nearly a month at the Cambridge Cay mooring field. We volunteered as mooring field hosts for the month. In return for a free mooring we represent the park in the field. Our primary duties include providing information about the park in general and Cambridge Cay in particular. Most importantly, we collect the mooring fees from the boats. We have no way of knowing how many of the visiting boats would pay voluntarily if we were not there, but I suspect we more than paid for our presence with the extra income we were able to provide to the park.
The park has a new administrator, Joe Ierna who, along with his wife Nicola will provide re-energized management to the park. We were able to spend some time with Joe and Nicola and the park wardens and learned lots about the park and their plans for upgrades. New buildings, new generators, etc. And most important to cruisers, new mooring ball systems. In the past, the park moorings had a great reputation for quality and maintenance. Over the last year or so, maintenance had lapsed and moorings were failing. We witnessed a large trawler break free from its mooring at Emerald Rock in a not so strong breeze. And when we moved to Cambridge I dove on the moorings in the field and found one so frayed it was ready to break. Good news is, while we were there the park wardens dove all the moorings and repaired or replaced the bad ones. I dont know the schedule for the new moorings but it shouldn’t be too long.
One good thing about the moorings in the park is that the water is so clear it is easy to dive and inspect the entire mooring system. I think most of the risk of a mooring failure is at the top of the mooring, where boats can damage the pennant. But the shackle can wear as well. This is a shot of me inspecting the mooring we sat on for a month at Cambridge. It was in about 25 feet, which is about my free diving limit. Everything looked good down there.
Most of the moorings are designed for cruising boats, 65′ or less. A few are for large yachts, up to 150′. The park collects as much as $150 per night for the use of these moorings so it brings in much needed revenue.

The big boat mooring is next to ours, so the boats need to pass fairly closely. Once they are attached, there is plenty of swing room. One yacht had their guests depart via sea plane. Quite the shock to see it land next to us.

The take off was even more exciting!

Sea plane departs Cambridge
One of the great pleasures of spending a month with the park was getting to meet some of the Bahamians that work there. One day Jay, one of the wardens, and Geo, a Defense Force soldier, came by in their boat en route to Staniel Cay and invited us along. Since Staniel Cay is the only resupply town in the area, and we had no other way to get there, we jumped at the opportunity. After shopping, we all stopped at the yacht club for lunch. A fine time was had by all.

After a January spent mostly hiding from cold fronts, February was perfect Bahamas winter weather. Winds from the ENE-E-ESE all month. Mostly 10-15 knots with a few days of 20-25. Nothing with a W in it. This makes for comfortable cruising on the Exumas bank and provides plenty of anchorages.
This weather makes kayaking, hiking and snorkeling, our usual pastimes, fun and easy. We bought two kayaks at West Marine before we left the states. They have turned out to be excellent. Comfortable, good tracking and decently made for mid-priced boats. We kayak most every day that we can.
Hiking on the islands is Lisa’s favorite activity. I join her for the easy trails. This photo was taken by her taken from atop Cambridge Cay.
We try and snorkel whenever we can, and I continue to try my hand at under water photography. I am terrible at it. My excuse is that my eyesight without my glasses is so bad that i can’t see the view finder.So I dive and guess at what I am seeing. Sometimes I catch a fish in the lens by accident. When Evan and Grayson were with us they chased a lobster for an hour or so before spearing him. Made for a nice appetizer.

A run on the sound side of the Exumas is always an opportunity to catch something. Our first fish off Privateer. This one was about 25 pounds. For the fishermen, we caught it at 9 am in about 400 feet just outside the cut north of George Town. Trolling a rubber ballyhoo with a blue streamer about 200 feet behind the boat at 7.5 knots.
We got at least ten dinners for two from this fish. delicious.

January in the Exumas has been a bit of a weather challenge. We left George Town on 2 January and headed up to Cave Cay Marina to dodge a strong cold front. Winds to low 40’s. When that cleared we went up to Black Point and had a few nice days, enough time to buy some coconut bread from Mom. Yea! From there we went up to Warderick Wells. Again a few nice days, but mostly very windy, which tends to rock the boats around quite a bit. We then moved over to Emerald Rock but the swell and chop was pretty unpleasant there as well.
Our next stop was Cambridge Cay, where we volunteered as mooring field hosts for the park. In return for a free mooring ball, we collected mooring fees from other cruisers, inspected the moorings, and kept an eye out for poachers. We did get a few nice days, including a great snorkel dive at the aquarium, but then another strong cold front loomed. Our mooring looked strong, but with another bout of +40 knots coming, we knew we would get more sleep back at Cave Cay.
So that’s where we are now, about to leave and go back to Cambridge Cay. Weather looks promising. Meanwhile, we are re-thinking the logic of spending the entire winter down here. January has been pretty much a weather dodging experience. We hope February will be a bit gentler.

So here is a truism of boat ownership; New boats are no more reliable than well-maintained old boats. Not a very scientific analysis on my part, but we have owned a few old boats and now have a new one. Between the infant mortality of new equipment, and we are mostly beyond that now at the one year point, and systems complexity, the probability of failure is at least as high as for an older less complex boat. This new boat is significantly more complex than our prior boats, although the last sailboat was about the same size and had similar systems.  While the systems themselves are much more reliable, because there are so many, one still stays busy fixing things. No matter what boat you own, bilge pumps still fail occasionally, and if you have five of them, the likelihood of a failure goes up. The good news is, Krogen installs nothing but the best subsystems in their boats, so that helps a lot.

Start with our engines. The sailboat had a normally aspirated non-electronically controlled Westerbeake W100 diesel. It had 3000 hrs when we bought the boat and about 4000 when we sold her. Never stopped running other than for bad fuel or bad mistakes on my part. Our new engines, yes we have dual engines, are turbo charged, electronically controlled and have the latest in environmental protection systems.  You can’t buy a simple diesel engine now, even if you wanted to. Our engines run fine but we spent the last three days here in NPB getting an all new engine ventilation system installed. All under warranty, and with great service from Krogen, but still a pain to deal with. I guess that is one reason why I specified twins to begin with.

Our hydraulics system is a marvel of engineering. We have pumps on both main engines and a boost pump on the genset. The boost pump provides increased power to the thrusters while the main engines are at idle during docking maneuvers. The hydraulics also power the dual windlasses and the stabilizers. On the one hand, the powerful windlass is great, on the other hand, I need at least one of the three engines running to power it. The stabilizers are Lisa’s favorite system on the boat. With her tendency to seasickness, stabilizers are a game changer for us. So far, they have worked flawlessly. But they had better because in anything other than a mill pond the lack of stabilization can get miserable quickly. Other than the basic physics of how hydraulic systems operate, I have no idea how I would fix a failure. The Trac hydraulic training course is only available on the West coast, but I may go. That said, ABT Trac is one of the best marine companies in the business. Their service is outstanding.

The challenge of complexity is not just from the increased probability of failure but the demands it puts on me to be able to repair anything when we are away from civilization. The hydraulics system is one example, our nav system is another. I could go on. So I tackle most any failure with the understanding that to be self-sufficient I need to be able to fix most anything on the boat, with assumption I can, or at worst, will do no harm. It doesn’t always work out that way.

The reason we are sitting here today instead of making progress to the islands is a case in point. I changed out the raw water pump on the genset and apparently got something wrong. One of the gears driving the pump is press fit on an eccentric shaft and I don’t have  a gear press on board. I should have stopped as soon as I saw the challenge, but then again, it was a challenge to my self-sufficiency credo… Anyway, the gear got loose and the pump failed. The pros will be here on Monday to repair my screw-up. Meanwhile, we sit. Next time I will just let the pump seep a little. They all do sooner or later.

As to our progress south, we will miss the window tomorrow. No idea when the next one will present itself. I hate time and schedule pressure but we have committed to meet the boys in Georgetown in two weeks, so lets hope another window opens. Even a crack will do. What Lisa might call a “least bad” window.

Let me say this, radio procedure on the ICW is terrible. I am sure everyone knows that Channel 16 is for initial hailing and emergency calls only. It is not for negotiating passing plans. Or chatting, or anything but initial hailing. So why do my fellow cruisers feel the need for such long winded Ch16 conversations about passing each other? Please, if anyone is out there reading this, call on Ch16 and go immediately to Ch17. Better yet, call on Ch16 using low power. Ch17 is low power by design.  And no, being on a remote portion of the ICW does not change the rules. Last week we were 20 miles offshore, listening to ICW passing discussions on Ch16.

Travelling on the ICW requires two VHF radios. Period. End of discussion. One on Ch 16 and one on the local bridge channel. North of Florida, the bridge channel is Ch13, which works out well because that is the channel the tows and barges use. In Florida the bridges use 9 but there is much less commercial traffic on 13, so maybe not so important to monitor 13 as well. Most radios will dual scan 16 and 13, leaving 9 available for bridge calls in Florida.

Way too often we are unable to hail a boat because the skipper forgot to change back to Ch16 after a bridge call. Often there is a lot of close quarters maneuvering as multiple boats wait on a bridge and communications can be importatnt. If a boat has only one radio and it is tuned to Ch09 or 13, then they are missing calls on Ch16 and it is inappropriate to call them on the active bridge channel.

To close this rant, let me say that there is no need, nor is it proper radio procedure, to convert a radio call into a polite conversation. Please, if you can’t get off Ch16, at least do not fill the airwaves with useless banter. Comments like, “have a nice trip”, “nice pass” and even “please” or “thank you” have no place in marine VHF. If you feel the need to be polite, do it on Ch17. Or better yet, save it for happy hour at the bar later. Practice getting your message across in the fewest words possible.

Thanks for listening.

 

We went to bed assuming the next day would be a lay day as the forecast was for thunderstorms. Not my favorite. But when I checked weather at 6 am, the worst forecast I could find was for 25% chance of showers. That’s about as good as it gets for the central Florida coast, so we launched. As it turned out, the weather was beautiful for the entire trip. How we go from a forecast only 24 hours old calling for a 90% chance of thunderstorms to clear and dry I have no idea.

The trip was easy, no shoals, just a few bridges and initially, not too much traffic. But by mid-day, it became more and more of a zoo as we got near Jupiter Beach. Anyone and everyone who owned a fast runabout was buzzing around us, surely paying little attention to other boats around them, and probably drunk. I dont think they realize how long it takes to stop or turn an 80,000 lb vessel.

We have a rule that we never travel on the ICW on the weekend. We will add the Friday after thanksgiving to that lay day rule.

North Palm Beach is our designated re-provisioning and Bahamas jump-off spot. The marina is great and we are surrounded by good stores and restaurants. I have a fair amount of deferred maintenance to deal with and the John Deere folks need to come by and trade out yet another set of leaking raw water pumps. Very exasperating.

From here we have a few choices of routes to the Exumas. An overnight would get us to Shroud Cay or thereabouts. Or a long day plus a few hours could get us to a spot on the banks to anchor and get some sleep. If crossing the stream does not look good, we will move south to Miami, either in the ICW (yuck, 22 bridges) or outside along the coast (much nicer if the seas accommodate)

 

We have been dodging weather for the last few days so were happy to snag a couple of days at Vero Bech City Marina. We got there just in time for the cruiser pot luck thanksgiving dinner. We knew little about this event but it is apparently a big deal among the ICW cruisers. Must have been more than a hundred people at the dinner. Cruisers w land houses near by brought main dishes and those of us on boats brought sides and dessert. A great feast for all. We ran into some old friends, made a few new ones and attached faces to boats we had been crossing paths with for the last month coming south.