I’m actually writing this today. I’m skipping the northern Exumas post for now, to bring you up to our present. We are back in the Berry Islands, enjoying our final few days before we start the process of closing up Indigo Lady for the season.
We arrived at Alders Cay on Sunday the 19th. Alders Cay and nearby (almost attached) High Cay are one island group further south in the island chain than we got last year. We spent the night and the following morning walked the beaches on Alders Cay and Bonds Cay (one island south of Alders). Funny story from our one morning at Alders Cay. Dave enjoyed his morning coffee in the water sitting on one of our floaty seats. As always, he rinsed it and laid it out after he was done with it. Shortly after breakfast, a rain shower popped up with a gust of wind that blew the floaty overboard. It would have landed on the beach we were going to explore, but instead of waiting, Dave donned fins, mask and snorkel (and nothing else!) and swam out to rescue it. With floaty safely stowed, we went for our beach walks, then returned to Lady for lunch and shortly afterward set out for our old stomping grounds at Hoffman’s Cay.
I refer to Hoffman’s Cay as our “old stomping grounds” because this is the third year in a row that we’ve been here. It’s interesting how familiar it feels here now. We were here in March of 2020 with my folks (before heading back to the US due to the pandemic), in late July/early August of 2021, and now June of 2022. Yesterday morning we walked the mile-long beach (at low tide) on the north end of Hoffman’s and saw our familiar friends the rays, sea turtles and trigger fish in the shallows, plus various seabirds and some lizards on shore. This year, in addition to gulls, terns and osprey, we saw a gorgeous heron. Yesterday afternoon on the rising tide we dingied over to Turtle Bay and up the mangrove creek. We weren’t able to get as far up the creek as in the past because the mangroves have encroached on it a little more. We saw the largest variety and quantity of fish and other sea life in 2020 with my folks. Last year we saw hardly any sea life there; this year was somewhere in between. This morning we walked the trail across to the Atlantic side beach and saw that the wreck of Low n’ Slow is still high and dry. I need to verify it from last year’s photos, but I believe it’s in the same spot as last year, but last year we noted that Mother Nature had moved it quite a distance from where we’d first seen it in 2020. I wonder how long it will be before she batters it beyond recognition. This year we saw three seaturtle nests on the beach (see the picture above)! Every year there has been a different experience. Tomorrow we may revisit the Blue Hole, or opt to walk the long beach again, or maybe snorkel the ledges. Regardless of our decision, we will enjoy the beauty of this island.
Our time here in this remote part of the Berry Islands is short this year. By Saturday night we want to be anchored back in Bullocks Harbor at Great Harbor Cay. Last year we took two days at anchor there to start cleaning and prepping Lady for closeup, then spent two more days in the marina finishing up, staying at the nearby guest inn those final two nights. That plan worked very well, so we are repeating it this year. Tomorrow we will likely head a few miles north to Soldiers Cay and either stay there a couple of nights or move Friday up to Great Harbor, behind the Stirrup Cays, and then continue to Bullocks Harbor on Saturday. Why gun it when we can dub our way back slowly? We’re hoping to catch up with our friends on Wildly Intrepid somewhere between here and Great Harbor Cay, but those kinds of things are so weather dependent. Our fingers are crossed.
It’s been a short season, but enjoyable. We’re on the cusp of pleasantly warm and unbearably hot; not a bad time to head back to New England where we will cruise the Gulf of Maine on Dumbledore. New adventures await!h
On Friday I will post about our time in the northern Exumas. That will probably be my last post from here in the Bahamas, since next week will be quite busy with closing up the boat. So check back on Friday. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other.
We’re safely back home. Let me back up and get you from our final days in the Bahamas to now.
I left off with the day before we were to return to Bullocks Harbor at Great Harbor Cay, and I promised to tell you about the repair Dave was working on. I’ll start with the repair.
Our holding tank wouldn’t pump overboard. Worse yet, after some testing and troubleshooting Dave suspected the tank had become pressurized due to a blockage, most likely the intake to the macerator pump that pumps the tank overboard. A full, pressurized holding tank is bad because whatever needs doing to fix it requires opening the system, resulting in sewage leaking into the boat. Doesn’t that sound fun? Inevitably, when Dave initially opened things up, there was a little spray, but very minimal (I’ve read other cruisers’ horror stories). After that he was able to control the leakage so that it leaked into the bilge (that’s below the floors) which drains overboard. The blockage was where he expected, thankfully, and he eventually cleared it using a hose and pressurized saltwater (which forced more sewage into the bilge). Then he had to replace the pathetic macerator pump that had been problematic for a while anyway. I don’t know how he did it. It was a stinky job and I had to stay in the breeze in the cockpit the entire time to avoid getting sick. Dave’s a trooper! All told he spent a little over 3 hours on the repair and cleanup, that includes cleanup of himself. I followed his cleanup by mopping the floors and walls in that area with bleach water. Glad that’s over!
The following day was Sunday and we returned to Bullocks Harbor. Monday we met the Immigration officer at the marina and extended our visas. We dropped by Brown’s Garden later in the afternoon for snacks and drinks and a final conversation with the owner, Ronny, before we left. That was our last bit of fun for the trip. The rest was all work.
We were monitoring tropical storm Fred and decided that if he were to hit the Berries, it would likely be the coming weekend, so we changed our flights from Saturday to Friday hoping to stay ahead of Fred. (Fred ended up staying far enough south to have no significant impact on the Berries.) Then we changed our inn reservation to match and started preparing the boat and ourselves for our departure. We got a good amount of work done Tuesday while still at anchor in Bullocks Harbor where we had a delightful breeze coming through the hatches. Wednesday morning we brought Indigo Lady into the marina to get her tied up properly for the remainder of hurricane season and to complete the rest of our closeup tasks. We also got our Covid tests, which are required for re-entry to the US by airplane. Conveniently, the woman who conducts these tests is at the marine M-F starting at 10am. Much of Wednesday and Thursday are sweaty blurs- 8 hours each day dripping sweat the whole time. There was a breeze, but we had to go out to the cockpit to avail ourselves of it because it was from the wrong direction to blow into the boat. Thank goodness we’d booked the inn, which was mere steps from the marina, because it had blessed air conditioning plus a small fridge and microwave. We had prepared dinners in advance and were able to reheat and enjoy them in the comfort of our room at the inn. And we could take real showers! By 5pm Thursday, Lady was buttoned up and we waved goodbye to her.
Friday morning a taxi took us to the tiny airport and our 8am flight arrived about 8:30 and departed for Nassau by 8:45. Fortunately, the Nassau airport wasn’t very busy and, despite what looked like long lines, we made it through flight check-in, security, and US Customs pre-clearance in time to sit for about 45 minutes before boarding our Bahamas Air flight to Fort Lauderdale. We were back on US soil by 12:30, in our rental car by 1:30 and at my cousin’s house in West Palm Beach to retrieve our car by 3:30 after a quick lunch at Five Guys (oddly, I was craving a burger and fries, go figure). We chatted for about half an hour with my cousins then headed to our hotel where we took much needed naps. Dave stayed in for the night while I went to meet my cousins Susie and Sarah for dinner at an outdoor restaurant nearby. It was a brief get together, but most welcomed. Saturday morning we started our 2-day drive back to NH, stopping for the night in Rocky Mount, NC. We finally arrived home at 10:30pm a week ago Sunday night. Phew!
We’ve spent the past week getting our land lives restarted and recuperating from the hot, sweaty, busy final days in The Bahamas followed by the long drive home. We did see my family soon after our return. Since we’d been on two airplanes, I ate at a restaurant (even though it was outside, it was in FL), and there was very little masking at any of the rest areas or takeout restaurants at which we stopped, we decided to take Covid home tests before seeing my family, just to be extra safe. Negative- yay! Most of the grudge work of returning to land life is done and now I’m itching to settle back into my land routine and to reconnect with friends and family on a more regular basis.
I’ll probably post once every 2-3 weeks while we’re at home. I believe I promised some diving video slideshows, and I will get to those. I have a couple of other posts planned, such as one displaying the art of the art trail we walked at Manjack Cay (I took a lot of pictures), and I want to create a map of our travels this short cruising season. If there’s anything you’d like me to post about, let me know in the comments section or email me and I’ll try to accommodate your request.
Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
Grab a beverage and find a comfy seat; this is a long one.
The Berry Islands are a small chain of islands about 57 nm (nautical miles) SE of Freeport on Grand Bahama and about 72 nm east of Bimini (or about 115 nm east of Miami). The island chain is bordered by the Northwest Providence Channel, the Northeast Providence Channel, and the vast, shallow Grand Bahama Bank. The northernmost islands are Little and Great Stirrup Cays, owned by Royal Carribbean and Norwegian cruise lines, respectively. Royal has dubbed Little Stirrup as “Perfect Day at Coco Cay.” Cocoa Cay is full of beaches, beach bars, water slides, and even a hot air balloon. Great Stirrup is set up as more of an adventure island with ziplines and such. This is from what we’ve read and seen as we’ve cruised by them (7 times thus far). The only town in the chain is on Great Harbor Cay, just south of the Stirrups, population around 400. The Stirrup Cays provide employment for a very large portion of the town. One local we spoke with estimated about 75-80% of adults are employed by those cruise lines in some way. Currently, the cruise lines do not offer excursions to Great Harbor Cay. In town there are two small grocery stores, several restaurants, a marina (one of the best hurricane holes in the Bahamas), several rental properties/inns, an air strip, a bunch of privately owned houses outside of town (owned by foreigners), and lots of friendly people. At the southernmost end of the island chain is Chub Cay, which is a big sport fishing spot that gets a lot of traffic from high speed powerboats from Florida, plus they also provide sport fishing charters for those who fly in. The inbetween islands are either uninhabited or privately owned. I’ll let you look at a map and try to count the number of islands that make up the Berries; I stopped counting at 45. The Berries are not a tourist hot spot, except for Chub Cay, but they do have their regular visitors by land and sea who appreciate them for their quiet, remote anchorages and friendly town.
From Explorer Chartbook: Near Bahamas
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may recall that Dave and I were here with my folks, on Indigo Lady, back near the start of the pandemic in late March/early April of 2020. There are worse places to be stuck for two weeks during uncertain times, but I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to return and enjoy them differently this year. Yes, the pandemic still rages on, but the Bahamas figured out a way to reopen their borders to the much-needed tourists. Just like at home in the U.S., we follow whatever mandates each island group has in place at the time.
You don’t come here for the abundant daytime activities and the night life. This is a place where you meet and talk with the locals and get to understand their way of life. When we were here in late May this year, we biked the southern half of the island, walked about town, and met Ronny and Gaynell who own and run Brown’s Garden restaurant. We returned here from the Abacos in mid July and spent a few days anchored off town again. We returned to Ronny’s & Gaynell’s restaurant. The day we lunched there, Ronny invited us to come back for a cookout that evening that was a sendoff for his wife. She was promoted and would be spending a couple of years mainly living and working in Nassau, visiting with Ronny on weekends as one or the other of them would fly over to the other island. What a sacrifice! But they have plans and are working towards them. It was very sweet of Ronny to invite us and Gaynell introduced us to his family. This is the kind of experience one has on an island like this. Had we been here earlier in the cruising season, we would have availed ourselves of the socializing that goes on in Great Harbor Cay Marina. We heard that they do a group cookout on Fridays and pizza takeout on Saturdays. Alas, the marina was mostly empty when we returned in July; only a few boats stopping for a night or two.
We left Bullocks Harbor the morning of July 21st and started our trek down the eastern side of the island chain to spend some time at those quiet, secluded anchorages. We weren’t in a rush, so we took three days to get to Little Harbor Cay, the furthest south we planned to go. My post from July 24th takes you from Bullocks Harbor through our running aground and to the anchorage behind Little Gaulding. We spent two nights at that anchorage, which we did not enjoy because of the current and opposing swell. The morning of the third day we caught the rising tide down to the northwest end of Little Harbor Cay where we anchored on the west side of the island just below the NW point. It was another sandy-bottom, clear water anchorage and well protected, so it was blissfully calm. There was only one (very large) boat moored bow and stern. We stopped by briefly to say hello as they were heading off in their tender one morning. Turns out the owner of the boat also owns Big Gaulding Cay and they were heading over for a cookout. He graciously invited us to come over, but we weren’t in the mood for a hot day ashore so we declined. We spent three nights anchored here.
While at this anchorage, we found the little trail across to the Atlantic side and walked the beach. We dinghied over to the west side of nearby Comfort Cay to explore the underwater blue holes someone had told us about. Dave explored the blue holes snorkeling. We weren’t sure about the holding for dinghy’s anchor, so I stayed aboard just in case. I wasn’t terribly interested in this blue hole anyway. When Dave finished, he said he was glad he checked them out, but wasn’t interested in trying to move Lady over there to dive them with the hookah. He’s done his share of deepwater diving and is more interested in the reefs these days. After the blue holes, we decided to act upon the real reason we chose to go to Little Harbor Cay- the opportunity to eat at Flo’s Conch Bar. The restaurant was established in 1993 by Chester Darville, who returned to the island of his upbringing after almost 20 years. His mother, Flo, was the head chef until her passing in 2011. The family and workers are the only inhabitants on this island and they occupy a couple of buildings next to the restaurant. Other than a “camp” on the north end of the island, there are no other signs of civilization. Flo’s is not always open, so one has to make a reservation in advance. Unable to reach the restaurant by email, phone, or VHF, we stopped by after our blue hole excursion to arrange to have lunch there the following day. The restaurant is renowned for its Bahamian dishes and they did not disappoint! We did in fact have lunch there the following day, having arranged to have “a little of everything.” We enjoyed conch fritters, lightly battered and fried fish fingers, coleslaw, and Bahamian peas and rice, accompanied by a rum punch. Delicious! We also got to enjoy conversation with a lovely family who was also lunching there. The son/grandson (about 9-10 years old) regaled us with his knowledge of all things science. He was a joy! Lunch was so huge that we ended up bringing leftovers back to Lady that served as lunch the next day. “Dinner” later that night was cheese, crackers and pepperoni, quite late because we were still full from lunch Flo’s was certainly worth the trip!
Flo’s Conch Bar
The following day we caught the afternoon rising tide back to Hoffmans Cay where we anchored and stayed for 10 days. Hoffmans is uninhabited and the epitome of a quiet, remote anchorage. The only other boats we saw were a half mile or more away and anchored either off Little Gaulding or White Cay. A bit different than last year when we shared the anchorage with several boats also waiting to see what the pandemic would bring for cruisers. It is also much hotter here in July and August than it was in late March/early April. The temperature might get as low as 84-85oF overnight and as high as 89oF during the day (only saw 90oF once). There was a period of several days with very little breeze, making it feel even hotter. The days kind of run together at this point. Most days we did at least one thing off boat, but we spent a couple of really hot, nearly windless days onboard in the shade of our solar panel roof, in the hammocks, dipping into the water to cool off as necessary. Most afternoons were spent in the hammocks, followed by dinner and then either games, a movie, or the Red Sox. We also tended to basic chores and some projects.
Over the course of our stay at Hoffmans we walked to and took a dip in the blue hole on the south end of the island. This blue hole is on land and is fed by the ocean from an opening on its bottom. Someone we met said it’s around 55’ deep. We walked the Atlantic side beach twice, the second time visiting the stranded power boat we saw last year. It has moved! We dinghied into a little bay full of sea turtles and up into the mangrove river on the rising tide. Last year we saw a bunch of fish among the mangrove roots, but this time we saw only a small school of needlefish and a couple of other small fish. Last year we’d seen a school of bonefish in the bay, so this time Dave set up to cast for them but, alas, there weren’t any. We snorkeled the ledges around two small beaches in sight of our anchorage. We didn’t see as much big life this time, although we did see a couple of trigger fish and a 5-6’ shark, which we thankfully only caught a glimpse of before it swam off. It wasn’t close enough long enough for us to identify it properly, but it was probably a reef shark. We walked the long, northernmost beach (also anchorage side) a couple of times. It’s only a “long,” one-mile beach at low tide. You can wade out into the water quite a way in a couple of spots and be standing on exposed sand. At the far end there is a remnant spit of coral that sort of forms a little bay where we saw a baby shark, very whitish and only about 2’ long, likely a juvenile and no idea what species. These walks also revealed one good sized ray, one barracuda, and several trigger fish, all right up in the shallows, plus a bunch of yellowfin mojarras (had to look those up) and little crabs that would scurry away from our feet and burrow into the sand. Along the shore there were many curly-tailed lizards, laughing gulls, plus we saw some sort of heron and an osprey. Our last day at Hoffmans we decided to snorkel off the long beach to see the sealife from in the water. Of course none of the big stuff graced us with their presence that day, but it was a fun and cooling way to spend a hot couple of hours.
Before we knew it, it was time to head back to Great Harbor Cay. As I write, we are two thirds of the way back. We spent Thursday night anchored off Soldier Cay again. This time we snorkeled to the beach and around the southern point and took a brief walk ashore. Last night and tonight we are anchored in Great Harbor behind the Stirrup Cays. Tomorrow we return to Bullocks Harbor. Monday we will go to Immigration to renew our expiring visas; we’ve spoken to the immigration officer, who is expecting us. Then we start the process of closing up and securing Indigo Lady for the next 5 months or so. We’ll do some of the closeup prep at anchor in Bullocks Harbor where we can benefit from the breeze, but the final couple of days we’ll need to be on a slip in the marina. We booked a room at the nearby inn for those final two nights.
I’m not sure if I’ll have the time or energy to post next weekend. Maybe I’ll knock off something when we’re back in the U.S. and at the hotel next Saturday night. Dave is having an interesting day today, with a couple of troubleshooting/repair jobs, one of which I wouldn’t wish on anybody. You’ll have to wait until next post to find out what that is.
Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Our stint at Manjack Cay was our last touristy hurrah before heading back to the Berry Islands. We left Manjack the morning of Friday, July 9th and arrived at Great Harbor Cay in the Berry Islands mid-afternoon on Friday the 16th. Our focus at this point was readying ourselves and Indigo Lady for the two days we would take to get back to GHC and we decided to do most of the preparations at Marsh Harbor.
We arrived at the little bay anchorage just outside of Marsh Harbor on the afternoon of Saturday the 10th. We spent three nights and three very busy days there. Sunday-Tuesday were all work, especially for Dave. In late June Dave discovered there was a leak in the port engine room around the rudder post. It was small, but no leak through the hull is good and small ones have a habit of becoming bigger, so Dave wanted to repair it before heading back to GHC. That repair took from 9:00 am – 7:00 pm Sunday (some of that time was waiting for JB Weld putty to dry). Monday morning we walked to Maxwell’s Supermarket for some final provisions. Back onboard I tended to the unpacking and moving around of provisions while Dave started cleaning our hulls. I made him stop about 2/3 of the way because it was late and he was exhausted. We barely mustered enough energy to heat leftovers for dinner and listen to music in the hammocks before bed. We got little sleep that night due to a storm that started around 11:30 pm and didn’t finish until after 3:00 am. Once again, the storm came from the only unprotected direction in the anchorage, making it bouncy and noisy with the waves hitting the hulls. We dragged ourselves out of bed just after 8:00 am Tuesday. Dave managed to finish cleaning the hulls after breakfast and I did some interior cleaning. Though tired, we decided to make the short 6 nm hop over to Hope Town knowing it would be a bumpy ride. It was, but it was short, and we were rewarded by a calm afternoon and night on a mooring and a final loaf of coconut bread from Vernon’s Grocery.
Wednesday morning we headed over to Lynard Cay. This was the first place we had anchored when we arrived in the Abacos in late May and it was now our launching spot for the return trip, retracing our steps around Hole in the Wall to Cross Harbor, then the following day from Cross Harbor to GHC. Lynard Cay to GHC is a 16-20 hour trip that we could do in a single shot, but I prefer to avoid overnight passages when they’re not necessary and it was not necessary in this case. The weather routing apps we use looked good enough to set out as planned at first light the next morning. We agreed that if conditions weren’t good we’d turn around and try again the next day.
As planned, we set off Thursday morning at 6:30 am, just as the sun was rising, and stuck our nose out into the Atlantic. The conditions weren’t perfect, but seemed doable, better than our trip up anyway. Conditions deteriorated about 2 hours out. We’re still learning how to apply all aspects of a forecast to a planned route. A forecast of 2-4’ seas from the SE with an 8 second period is based on the average top 1/3 of waves and assumes open water with no other influences; there can still be waves shorter or taller and from other directions. We did not account for the wind chop, which layers wind-driven waves over the predicted ones, and on that day the wind and seas were from different directions, which means we had waves from multiple directions- “confused” seas. On top of that, we were heading almost into some of the wave sets, which shortens the wave period making it bumpier. We chose to continue anyway for a few reasons. First, despite the bumpiness we were making better time than the trip up because the wind and some of those confused seas were more off our stern and giving us a bit of a push; it was only going to be an 8 our trip and we’d already done 2 hours. We knew when we made the turn to go around Hole in the Wall we would have the seas completely behind us and once around the point we’d be in the lee of Great Abaco where the water would flatten- that was another 2 hours of the trip. So I had 4 more hours of bumpy conditions to suffer through (the bouncing doesn’t really bother Dave). I’d taken one seasickness pill but should have taken two because I still wasn’t feeling great, mostly tired, and all I could do for 5 of the first 6 hours was stand and stare at the horizon waiting for the torture to end. Onward we trudged. I rejoiced when we made that turn to go around Hole in the Wall! We anchored in Cross Harbor by mid-afternoon and got a nap in before dinner (which I’d had the sense to prepare in advance) and we got a good night’s sleep. The next morning, Friday the 16th, was much better. We left at about the same time of the morning and had following seas the entire 8 hours. We were anchored in Bullocks Harbor by 3:00 pm and in the hammocks with celebratory drinks shortly thereafter.
We’re currently exploring the Berry Islands for the remainder of our time in the Bahams, which is quickly nearing its end. We have booked flights back to the US for mid August. We will pick up our car from my West Palm Beach cousins and start slowly driving home, stopping to visit family and friends along the way, assuming the stupid Delta variant of COVID doesn’t get any worse.
Next week I’ll tell you about our time in the Berry Islands. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
The photo is a spoiler. We ran aground yesterday. Oops!
We’re fine. Indigo Lady is fine.
I’ll back up a little to bring you up to speed.
We left Bullocks Harbor at Great Harbor Cay on Wednesday to hang out in the eastern Berry Islands for a while. On Wednesday we rounded the Stirrup Cays and decided it was a bit too bumpy to continue to Hoffmans, so we ducked into Great Harbor (not to be confused with the cay of the same name). Great Harbor is a shallow bay formed by the back side of Great Harbor Cay, Little and Great Stirrup Cays and Lignumvitae Cay. There were perfect conditions for this anchorage so it was nice and calm with crystal clear water over a sandy bottom. There was a cruise ship on Little Stirrup (aka Perfect Day at Coco Cay, owned by Royal Caribbean), but that is so far away it had no impact on us. We had the anchorage to ourselves. The water, being clear with a sand bottom, was cool and refreshing, a nice change from the warm, turbid waters of Bullocks Harbor.
Next morning, Thursday, we hauled anchor around 10am to head for Soldier Cay. It was another gorgeous day this time with good sea state and light wind, so the Soldier Cay anchorage was comfortable. We got another sandy bottom with clear, refreshing water. We walked on the tiny beach at low tide. The rocky north end, plus the small rocky islands north of Soldier are nesting areas for laughing gulls and other birds and they have chicks now. They were not happy when we dinghied along the shores to go snorkeling, and they let us know it by swooping over us. Fortunately none of them lightened their load over us. It was low tide rising for a shallow snorkel. If some of the reefs we’ve dived on were “nursery” reefs, this area was for “newborns.” We saw the standard reef fish, but most of them were so wee! There was a smattering of full-sized reef fish, but mostly tiny ones. So cute! Our big fun here was swimming along the rocky shore toward the cut, kicking as hard as we could to get as far into the cut as possible, then riding the incoming tide back inside. Fun! We did it twice.
Yesterday morning, Friday, we hauled anchor at 7:30am for the high tide through the shallow cut to Hoffmans Cay. We’d done this in reverse last year during the pandemic when we hung out at Hoffmans before heading back to the US. No problem. We cruised the length of Hoffmans and decided to try for the next batch of islands down for a more protected anchorage given that some squall activity was heading our way for this weekend into Monday or Tuesday, possibly from the exposed direction. We should have stayed at Hoffmans.
We were on the falling tide, about 60-90 minutes after high, when we had to navigate a short, shallow cut between Saddleback Cay and Big and Little Gaulding Cays. The shallow draft route marked on the charts conflicted with the notation that said to hug Saddleback about 20’ off its shore. We opted to steer closer to the route line. Mistake! Had we been one boat width (25’) closer to Saddleback we never would have grounded. Had we been half a boat width closer to Saddleback, port hull would have grounded, but we would have wiggled off using starboard. If we’d arrived at peak high tide instead of an hour after high, we wouldn’t have grounded. But ground we did. We were only moving 3 kts, there were no waves, and the bottom was sand and weeds over hard. So we just ground to a slow stop. Dave tried to back us off with the motors. Then he hopped in dinghy and tried to pull us backwards and off. Unfortunately neither effort worked, especially since we wanted to move backwards while the current was pushing us forward. Nothing to do but wait for the next high tide to float us off. The second high tide would also be about half a foot higher, so we knew we’d have plenty of water to float us off, and we were only 0.25nm from our intended anchorage. So close, yet so far!
We were very lucky that not only was it a soft grounding resulting in no damage, but it was also a calm day. We entertained ourselves with some boat tasks in the morning and early afternoon. About an hour before full low, Dave got into the water to walk around the boat to check for depths near and beyond the boat, and to check her hulls. She was sitting fine with no damage. Port was in shallower water than starboard. Deeper water was only about 20’ off our starboard and about the same behind us. We knew starboard would float first and were pretty sure the incoming tide would push us backwards. Dave kept tabs on the water level and when it reached dead low, marked the distance to waterline on our boat hook. This allowed us to check how quickly the tide was rising as the afternoon progressed. We retired to the hammocks mid-afternoon to read and enjoy a drink as the water rose. For once, they weren’t swinging.
Around 5:30pm, Dave noticed that the water was at the waterline on starboard and that starboard bow was bouncing up and down a bit- movement! For the next 20 minutes we sat at the helm station, watching and waiting as we slowly rotated toward starboard. We considered trying to motor the port side off, but then decided not to bother, mother nature was taking care of it. By 5:50pm we were fully afloat, started the engines and proceeded to the anchorage. Anchor down just after 6:00pm.
Phew!
We’ve learned some lessons with this. First, don’t ignore your gut instinct. Dave’s gut had hinted at maybe not attempting the passage on the falling tide; he ignored it. He won’t do that again any time soon. We also should have thought through the discrepancy between the charted shallow draft route and the notation to hug the Saddleback shore and at least split the difference between the two. I was on the bow spotting, which is important in shallow route areas, but with the current pushing us from behind, that hump we grounded on came up too quickly for us to respond, another reason to not tempt fate on a falling tide, even if it is only “shortly” after high. At least for today, those lessons have stuck. We had set an alarm for 7:00am intending to backtrack 2 miles to a more sheltered anchorage south of here. We awoke to overcast skies with 15 kt winds and 3’ choppy seas from the SW (of course, the exposed side of this anchorage). Today’s planned route would have passed through three shallow spots, two of which we were unfamiliar with. Bouncy water is not good crossing shallow areas, even on the high tide, because the bottom of a wave trough can bounce you off of the seafloor. Overcast skies means you can’t read the bottom as you proceed, also a bad idea in shallows. So despite this anchorage being a bit uncomfortable, and not certain our anchor won’t drag if a squall kicks up, it was still the lesser of two evils. Dragging isn’t fun, but we know how to handle that, and there’s deep enough water around us to give us time to respond to a drag even at low tide. Getting stuck in the shallow with squalls threatening would be very bad.
Next week I will backtrack to our final days in the Abacos and the two day trip that got us back to Great Harbor Cay, which is what I’d intended to cover this week. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 