From Bimini to Staniel Cay

Author: Miranda

Location: Northern Bahamas

 

We’ve been having ourselves quite a good time tooling around the northern Bahamian islands, and it’s about time we fill you all in on our adventures. After spending a week in Bimini with strong winds, we were excited to shake out the sails and get moving again.

DSC_1638

And, as if to say “Welcome Back!” we were greeted by two playful dolphins just a few miles south of Bimini.

DSC_1651

Dolphins

We were headed out to cross the dreaded “tongue of the ocean” by way of the Northwest Channel. The Northwest Channel is a tricky spot in which the depth falls from about 15 feet to 3,000 feet in the span of maybe a mile or two. Throw in a long “tongue” of deep water south and east of this point that works to build up plenty of big, bad waves when the winds are right, and you’ve got yourself a few days of scary sailing if you don’t time the weather conditions just right.

In addition, the channel is one of only a few ways for boats to get from southern Florida into the Bahamas (and definitely the most direct), so it can get quite crowded. Not wanting to make this passage in the dark, we anchored off a shoal on the northern tip of Andros Island and waited until the next day to have light. The anchorage was choppy and mildly uncomfortable, but we survived.

DSC_1669

 

The beating straight into the wind and waves the following day was also not all that much fun, so we veered off to Chub Cay on the southwestern tip of the Berry Islands to make for a shorter day.

We passed the time in Chub Cay by snorkeling (Pete speared his first fish! A coral hind– a type of grouper. The fish tacos were delish!), scraping off the barnacles from the bottom of the boat, and attempting (but failing) to call on our families on Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving meal at the marina of cracked conch and sweet potatoes was a little pricy for us, so we made chicken curry and gin and tonics to celebrate. I doubt the forefathers ever cooked with green curry paste and coconut milk, but hell, what can you do? We forgot to plan for thanksgiving-type foods while trouncing around Miami on our provisioning runs in the heat and humidity of southern Florida. Oops.

In other exciting holiday news, I spent the morning of Thanksgiving hand-washing my undies in a bucket. Sailing is nowhere near as glamorous on a daily basis as all these blogs show, but it’s way more fun to instill jealously in all your friends than it is to show the down and dirty side of cruising. And plus, I can’t show you pictures of my undies- that would stray much too far from my naturally classy and modest nature.

Stop snickering. Stop it right now!

P1130268

DSC_1694

It’s a barnacle playground around here:

P1130274

Chub Cay

 

Instead of hitting the malls, we spent the day after Thanksgiving on our best sail yet! Bet you can’t find that on a Black Friday sale rack! We headed to West Bay on New Providence Island with 15-20 knot winds on a broad reach, and we flew. Our average speed was 8 knots with a max of 12. I never thought it could be so incredibly exhilarating to move at approximately 12 miles per hour, but it’s quite a trip. Think of us the next time you are coasting down your driveway in your minivan at 12 M-P-Hs baby… sheer excitement I know, but remember this the next time you’re thinking, “why haven’t they made it any farther yet?”

Easier to get up at the crack of dawn when you’re met with this:

DSC_1712

Wonderfully flat seas all day- I could even read over lunch.

P1130282

P1130290

 

Just a quick night in West Bay, and we were off the next day to our first stop in the Exuma island chain- Shroud Cay. Winds were stronger, more like 25-30 knots, so we sailed with tiny postage stamp sails most of the day, but still made decent time. Plenty of saltwater blasted the decks as we beat much closer to the winds and waves- sadly our downwind fun had only lasted one day.

Beating

And since we were on topic “no-fun,” while we were reefing our mainsail, we both noticed that a tiny vertical tear had started along the foot of our sail. As we feverously tried to haul in the entire sail before it got worse, our tiny tear just keep inching up higher and higher, and before we knew it, there was a 2-3 foot tear in our mainsail. Flabbergasted, we just kept saying, “oh my gosh, we ripped the mainsail.” Pete even looked at me wide-eyed, and yelled, “DID YOU SEE THAT?” even though we were both very obviously watching the same event unfold.

On a positive note, the rains didn’t start coming down until after we set the anchor and they made for great photos.

DSC_1730

DSC_1734

DSC_1746

 

We had zero cell signal in Shroud Cay, so unfortunately, we had to hightail it to Staniel Cay so we could start calling sailmakers in order to purchase a new sail. We were fortunate to have nice conditions as we sailed from Shroud Cay to Staniel Cay with just our headsail pulling us along. We were surprised to make decent headway under just one sail, and we were only forced to motor-sail when we had to turn tight into the wind to make our anchorage.

DSC_1752

To Staniel

 

Once we arrived in Staniel, we wasted no time pulling off our mainsail so that we could repair it and (hopefully) keep sailing while we waited for a new sail to be made.

Here’s our little tear, in all her glory:

Rip
DSC_1770

Also, if you really want to get an up close and personal feel for how large that sail is that’s moving your 26 ton sailboat, try pulling it off in 20 knot winds. Good fun.

DSC_1780

 

But, we got her all patched up, and we ordered a new sail from Florida that should be arriving in the next weeks. We know that we could continue with the patched sail, but once we took it off the mast, we realized just how brittle and old it must be. Having a new sail will surely improve our performance and this is an upgrade that will certainly be easier done now than in a some other distant land. Ripping your mainsail sucks, but it certainly sucks less in the Bahamas than in the middle of the Pacific.

 

And, now that we’ve gotten that all sorted out, it’s time for some fricin’ fun already! I know you all love to see pictures of Pete as a shirtless seamstress, but let’s all cross our fingers for some pictures of good ole Caribbean fun in the sun sometime soon.

 

 

Bimini, the Bahamas- our first foreign port!

Author: Miranda

 

So, here we are! In the Bahamas!  After making a short, but tenacious, trip across the Gulf Stream to North Bimini Island. We have been anchored here for almost a week, as the winds are blowing like a banshee, socking us in.

IMG_0044

 

Let’s start with the trip over- not exactly the smoothest of sailing, but we survived. It was fine. The obvious heroines (Wendy and Belinda, remember?) of the trip were our twin Volvo diesels which pushed us straight east the entirety of the trip- from anchor up to anchor down. Yes, we spent the entire day motoring straight into the wind. So, “why cross in those conditions?” you ask. Basically, it’s by far the least of two evils. Being that the Gulf Stream runs from south to north, you don’t want to be anywhere near it when the winds are coming from the opposite direction. This makes for nasty, confused seas. So, northerly winds and the Gulf Stream are one big, bad combination. And, once the northern winter winds in Florida start, they rarely ever stop.  The winds were mild(ish), 10-15 knots, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely the weather window we were waiting for.

 

We pulled up anchor just as first light was peeking over the horizon, found our buddy boat, and headed east.

DSC_1571

 

We were surprised at just how far our cell phone signal reached, so we both took turns calling family and friends from several miles offshore- to squeeze as much out of our U.S. cell phone while we had it, and it was just plain fun to share our excitement for the day ahead with loved ones.

There were two portions of the trip when the sea was at its worst- right at the beginning and then right, smack-dab in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Any trip made below decks during the day made us both feel a little woozy, but it was especially puke-y feeling around then. Per Casey Becker’s (I know, I know Casey Harrison’s) suggestion, as we headed through the worst waves, we blasted what I like to call “weight room jams” (some good ol’ Metalica, Def Leopard, Offspring- just think back to what they used to play in your high school weight room, and you’ll know what I mean).

It’s a somewhat anticlimactic moment to find yourself entering the Gulf Stream. People talk about it as a “raging river in the ocean.” As we were getting 5, 6, 7, 8 miles offshore, Pete and I kept looking and at each other and saying “so, are we in it yet? Are we in the Gulf Stream?” There’s no mistaking the odd feeling of being sloshed around in weird directions once you’re in the middle of this “river,” but the entrance… not so noticeable.

 

Here’s our new friends from Canada, Brian and Yvonne, in Options 3.  They made the crossing with us and are now hanging out with us in Bimini.  Really great folks.  Lots of expertise, plenty of fun discussion, and great euchre players when the weather is especially yucky. DSC_1574

Headed out past Stiltsville.  I was hoping we could get a closer look at these interesting homes, but we were too far away to poke around.

DSC_1576

Some menacing, little waves.

DSC_1585

Your first time noticing that there’s no land in sight is empowering… if a little scary.

DSC_1583

Notice the lack of horizon in this picture- taken as we met a wave, head-on.  Just a little spray.

DSC_1579

And, finally, Land Ho!

DSC_1587

Pete put up our first ever courtesy flag and later we toasted our first passage (of many, hopefully) with some champagne.  Thanks Lily!

DSC_1595

DSC_1597

 

As far as life in Bimini goes, we generally see the sun pop out for an hour or two in the morning, then its grey clouds, constantly looking on the brink of rain for the rest of the day. But, it hasn’t been all that bad. We are itching to get a move on, of course, but Binimi World Resort (our neighbor here at the anchorage) has blessed with free wifi and access to THEIR SHOWERS! We haven’t been here in the Bahamas long, but you realize very quickly how fresh water is a very expensive and scarce commodity, so free (and HOT!) showers is as close to winning the lottery that you can get without actually buying a ticket.

We jumped in the beautiful, wickedly blue waters for a few hours one morning to do some snorkeling, but mostly we are using the time to do projects on the boat. Pete’s mostly working his way down a to-do list of repairs, while I’ve been focusing on getting our Pactor modem set up to send and receive email through our SSB radio. This will keep us connected wherever we happen to be. Other than the obvious social conveniences, this will allow us to receive important weather reports and maps on a daily basis from anywhere on the globe.

Getting this system all set up was no small feat. The technology has been around for a long time, but is still pretty darn cool if you think about it. Our Pactor modem will take our text emails, compress them into teeny, tiny bits of information, convert them to audio signals (something along the lines of Morse Code, but not really), then fire them to a shore station, where they will be converted back to text, and sent to all you wonderful folks. There’s both some special software on my end on my laptop and some special people working at the shore stations (thank you SailMail!) to make this all happen.

It took all of the “Idiot’s Guides to setting up your Pactor Modem… your SSB… your Airmail software… etc, etc” that I could get my hands on, but I figured the whole blessed system out! Several days of trolling through forums (because, of course, none of this software is written for a mac), I sent and received our first emails, weatherfax, and GRIB files by way of our Pactor radio. Oh, lordy, I have never been so excited to receive two-sentence email in my life!

Check out the shining moment for yourselves here:

 

With all the strong winds, we’ve also been very happy to get immediate gratification that shelling out the bucks for a new wind generator was a darn good idea. Most days, we have more energy than we know what to do with- and that’s on a completely cloud covered day. These days our poor solar panels are feeling like the uncoordinated, last-kid-picked-at-kickball to the new shining star at school- the wind genie, pumping out a consistent 10-15 amps and powering the entire boat on it’s own.

Here she is in all her glory:

DSC_1612

 

We hope to push off within the next few days, although, to where we are still figuring out.  We are looking forward to getting to the Exumas next, which are perfectly southeast of us.  Guess where the wind is coming from for the foreseeable future… you guessed it… the southeast.  And strong.  We’d really like to do more sailing and less motoring, so we might need to get a little creative in our next float plan.  Keep in touch for the juicy details.