Nassau in time. The biggest issue as always is the weather. We have had non-stop winds again, day and night.02/06/2009 Today we took the boat across the bay and anchored off of Volleyball Beach. We went to check out the volleyball seen. Volleyball doesn’t start until 2:30 around here so we had lunch at the Chat and Chill, the local tiki hut. This was partly to help recover from a night of first day joining on the boat. We met Kenny, the owner of Chat and Chill and spoke with him for a few hours. He has an interesting background and plenty of stories to keep you there. We did get in one game of volleyball before weather started blowing in and we expected some rain. We went back to the boat and headed back across the bay.
The plan that night was to go to the local fish fry. This is a area with about 10 shacks that are the local restaurants. We expected to see around 1000 people there, but do to the cold weather,
and I mean cold for around here, there were not many people at all. The temperature has been in the low sixties or even high fifties when throwing in the wind chill. People are just staying home. I had my first Bahamas fried fish. I wish I had a picture for you, but what they do is gut the fish and fry the whole fish including the skin and head. The fish was very good, even though it takes a little to learn how to get the meat from it, versus how we eat our fried fish where it is only meat and batter.
02/07/2009 The weather is not looking too good to leave the area. We have 20-25 knots of wind and they are calling for 9 foot seas. I decided to stay another day and play some more volleyball. We moved the boat back across the bay one more time. The good thing about being anchored off of Volleyball Beach is that we are in the lee of the island and there hardly any waves. We went ashore and took off hiking on the island. We made our way across the island and found the path to the Sound side with its eno
rmous white sand beach. With all of the wind there were great breaking waves on the beach and as far as you could see white caps on the open water. This sealed the deal for the day, we are going to wait another day. We hiked the beach for awhile. The sand was clean, white and soft. We headed back towards the volleyball area and had lunch again at Chat and Chills. The hamburgers are addicting.We did get in a good afternoon of volleyball. They have what I would call relaxed cruiser rules. These rules included: a) no one under the age of 15 is allowed to play on the adult courts, the receiving team must hit the ball at least twice before returning the se
rve, the games are played to 15 and you must win by 2 and the strangest one I ever saw was that the team is allowed to hit the ball as many times as needed to get the ball across the net. It is very relaxed and no one looses their temper. Just plain good fun. To get to play, when a game is done everyone clears the court and allows the people sitting on the bench to get on the court. If there are any empty positions, then someone can return to play another game. There are up to nine players on each side. We played one game that our team was down 14-4 and we ended up winning 20-18. It was one of the best games anyone said they saw played this year.
02/08/2009 Today I needed to make a decision about heading out. The wind was still blowing in the low 20s, but the weather report indicated the seas are down to 6 feet. I took the dinghy to the trail that we hiked the day before to check out the Sound. There wind was still strong and the waves were crashing, but the white caps seemed to be down a bit. With looking at the weather for the next few days, there did not seem to be much improvement. I decided, since I have experienced crew, I needed to find out how No Rush would take to this type of weather. We headed off with a double reef in the main and sailed up the harbor into the Sound. As always we had waves breaking around us as the cuts are usually very narrow. I was following my track that I made on the way in. That is a good function of the chart plotter. The seas were pretty steep as we left the cut, but then dropped down a bit once we were in deeper water. To
day we had the wind and waves abeam.The sailing was great and No Rush handled it just fine. I was having a problem with the auto-pilot though. It was the first time I had seen where the auto-pilot could not keep up with the boat wanting to go to weather. Every once in a while I would have to take over manual control to bring the boat back on-course. The way I resolved this issue was to let the traveler down all of the way and that took a lot of pressure off of the main sail. After that there was no problem. We discussed putting in the third reef. It was not due the heavy winds, which they weren’t. We only had about 20-22 knots, but I believe it was also because of the wave action. At this time, we could not put in the third reef, due to how the reefing lines are run. I will need to rethink the reefing system again anytime I go off-shore.
The excitement of the day was coming up when I needed to enter back through a cut onto the banks. We sailed up to Little Farmers Cay and I had a track to follow from our trip south. The good news is that we had an incoming tide with incoming winds, but had to deal with the currents and how narrow the cut is. I had Mark watching the chart-plotter and calling off how I was lined up on the old track and Roy calling off depths. We shot through the cut doing 10 knots over ground due to the wind and current while I was on motors only. We made it safely through again.
Later that afternoon we headed to shore to see if we could get any dinner at the shack I had dinner with Titus and Cliff, but it was closed. The island had a festival this weekend and I expect everyone was tired and called it a day. We walked up the hill to the yacht club and asked about dinner, but we were told the kitchen was closed. The owner did offer us a beer though. So we stayed and started chatting with him when one of his cousins showed up and then a crew from a German boat and then the cousin’s girl friend. We had a full bar again. I got talking with the German crew and Mark and Roy were in another conversation. The owner of the German boat is now living in North Carolina and had friends from Germany fly in for the “nice” weather. Christian has the same intentions of mine about running to Puerto Rico and to Trinidad. We will try to hook up in George Town on my way back. Well after a few hours of bartending, Terry, the owner, cooked up a pot of sheep tongue soup along with a piece of the local bread. It was a tasty meal from a local culture.
02/09/2009 After a good night sleep with a full stomach of sheep’s tongue soup we set off early in the morning. I have to digress for a minute. When we were in the bar last night, as we were getting ready to leave, Oti from the German boat was talking with Christian. He was asking for a translation. At one point I heard Christian say “war with stomach”. I was not sure what they were talking about until the bar tender pulled out a bottle of Cuervo Gold tequilla. Terry slid down the bottle towards me and Christian, Oti and I had one more celebratory shot for the evening. There is nothing like a good translation sometimes.
As I have indicated earlier, the wind has been blowing non-stop. Our final destination planned for today is Pipe Cay, with a stop at Staniel Cay. We were averaging 8 knots of boat speed this morning as we made it into Staniel Cay at 11:15. We put the dinghy in and headed for the local town. We were in need of ice and Coke. After a quick drink at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, we walked the quaint little village to stretch our legs. We collected the $5.00 bag of ice and $8.00 eight pack of Coke and headed back to the boat for lunch. We needed to use the hot dog buns we bought last Friday.The bakers down here don’t use many preservatives and the local breads need to be eaten as soon as possible. After lunch we went in search of the Thunderball Cave that was used for filming of James Bond movie Thunderball. Roy had been here before and was familiar with the location. He had not worked his nerve to go swimming in 69 degree water so Mark
and I took off. This cave is really a tunnel because you swim through in. In the middle of the cave is a large dome with a chimney. There is plenty of light and air. We saw many schools of little fish and plenty of live coral around the little island where the cave is located. After that good snorkel we set the main sail, pulled the anchor and made our way towards Pipe Cay for the evening. We have had reaching winds the whole time except for when we turned east to Staniel Cay and had to put in a few tacks. I like it when the weather cooperates and we can go with the flow.02/10/2009 After a fun evening of dinner, drinks and a movie, not necessarily in that order, we went for a snorkel in the morning. The last time I was here the water was clear as “gin” as described. This time it was different with all of the weather we have been having. The water was turned up and there was sentiment everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, the water was still enjoyable, but not as clear as before. The point here is that with changing conditions, when visiting someplace multiple times, there will always be something that changes. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not.
With the winds we have today, I am still sailing with a double reef in the main and full jib. I am very happy with the wind direction as we have not had to tack at all, except our trip into Staniel Cay. We sailed to Norman Cay today. I was planning on anchoring in the bay of Norman, but with the wind direction, strength and amount of waves, it worked out best to anchor on the west side of the cay. After setting the anchor, we took the dinghy in to check out the local establishment McDuff’s. While having a beer there, we had a chance to talk with the owner of the establishment. Right now it is very hard to make a living in the islands. The tourism from the US drives a lot of the business in the out islands and that has dropped off with the economy. I cannot imagine what it is like trying to make a living in these islands with the cost of products here.
02/11/2009 This morning after breakfast, Mark and I took the dinghy around to the east side of the island to snorkel on the DC-3. This was again a different experience as the tide was higher and it was easier to swim closer to the plane. After that swim, we set sails again and sails off to Allan’s Cay. I was able to shake out the reefs in the main and we set the spinnaker.
Off we went in a flurry and covered the 10 miles in a little over an hour. Allan’s Cay may be my favorite place I have snorkeled in the Bahamas. We went for a swim along the shore line where there are reefs, then across the channel to the beach with the iguanas. We did some hiking on the island and just hung out. Afterwards we swam back to the boat. Today the winds are down, the skies are clear and life is really good. I enjoyed just swimming around the area and looking for sand dollars. The water was so clear and calm, it was just relaxing, really relaxing.
02/12/2009 Today we head for Nassau. The weather man has been calling for 12 knot winds in the morning, diminishing to 5 knots in the afternoon. He was off a little, we left in five knots and it diminished to nothing. We had to motor the last 25 miles into Nassau. It wa
s disappointing (ah too bad for us) after all of the wind and sailing we did, but the water was beautiful. The seas were so flat, that I was able to take this picture of a starfish with my camera from the deck of my boat in 20 feet of water.We made it into Nassau around 1:30 in the afternoon and set
about getting ready for the guys to take off for back home. There was the normal deck scrubbing in between a few beers. The temperature has shot up along with the humidity. This is a normal occurrence with a changing weather pattern. We will now have a few days of flat or calm weather with dropping pressure until the next cold front comes through.It has been another great trip with friends on the boat. This trip we set the record for the most amount of alcohol drank in one trip. It will take some real pros to beat this one. I have had someone on the boat almost non-stop since Thanksgiving. I will miss the company.
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