Back to the Exumas

Woke up Sunday morning and the stalled front over New Providence Island had finally engaged the clutch and gotten into gear and moved on. Clearer skies, high winds, 20~30 knots, and cooler temperatures. Of course, when I turned on the computer and saw that Hot Springs was 16^o and it was 72^o in Nassau the air felt a little warmer, at least by 56^o. That didn't last though; bu 2:00 pm it was 31^o and 66^o, down to a 35^o difference. I would not wish cold temperatures on the folks back home but, please, give me some warmer ones.

Having nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to re-rig the secondary anchor to the way I would have done it the first time if I had actually been thinking without my head in my nether regions. The new way is better and if it does not rise to the standard of elegance it is, at least, way less ugly and somewhat more functional. Then I got to thinking about the big Manson Supreme so I downloaded a video taken underwater of it engaging in sand .... pretty impressive. I also saw that Lloyd's of London, insurers of lots of big ships, had given it an SHHP rating for Super High Holding Power. So, off went the Danforth and on went the Manson, as a test. If we don't like it we will put the other one back on the chain. I couldn't think of a better place to stow it so it, too, is back on the bow pulpit -- very crowded! Small boat, many anchors, not enough good places to put them. I think about anchors like Big John thinks about bullets: you cannot have too many when the crunch comes.

We want to leave on Monday and have been watching the weather, which does not look so great. The front has moved along but seems to be pulling stuff from the Gulf in behind it. The winds are supposed to abate on Monday, 14~17 knots,enough for us to feel comfortable leaving but still a lot of clouds, cooler air and possible rain for the next several days. At least the barometer has started to rise, going from about 29.90 last night to 30.20 today.

Got up Monday and it did not look very good; overcast with heavy, dark clouds; wind kicking up whitecaps in Nassau harbour. With the wind the modest temperatures felt very cool. It was a great day to leave the dock. A couple of years ago we would have hunkered down for another day but now we were in a hurry to leave, so we did, getting underway at 0740.

There were only a couple of other boats also heading east. One was a smallish catamaran and these folks seemed completely clueless. I almost radioed to ask them to maintain a course for at least three minutes so that I could pass them but that would have been a public rebuke and unkind, although appropriate. And then I thought that all boaters have to have a first trip and this was, I hope, theirs. So, we worked our way around them and put that boat quickly over our stern.

The wind was pretty good for sailing, which we did much of the way. We, again, elected to head south on meridian W77^o 10' and made really good time. It's really hard to sail slow on our size boat when the wind is 15~20 knots, which it was. When we made the turn for Highbourne Cay, we were about 10^o inside the wind and the foresail was useless, so we took it down and motor sailed with just the main sail.

Along the way I noticed an unsettling vibration, seemingly near the stern, right under the seat. One of the benefits of having a boney butt, I suppose, is that there is less between me and the boat, so I feel these things. My immediate concerns were motor mounts, the rudder and the zinc that I had just installed.

WE arrived and had the anchor down by 1430. From the last time here we learned that there is more and deeper sand closer to shore so we went in and dropped the anchor on what we hoped was an all/ almost all sand bottom. When I swam out to inspect the anchor it was well and truly buried, showing just a small portion of the top arch. So, we're one for one with this anchor which is always better than zero for one. We'll keep the Manson on for now. While doing that I also checked the zinc -- OK-- and the rudder -- very solid. Earlier I had checked the motor mounts -- all seemed very tight.

Carol did not have a good boat day on Monday, having done little right and much wrong, culminating in discovering that when she re-installed the bins in the forward cabin she did that poorly and they had come loose, shifted and spilled all their contents ... a big mess. I secured the bins this time; the rest was her job.

On Tuesday morning I turned on my BTC smart phone to read the WSJ and to check the weather. Nada! I called the BTC service center and was told that internet access, at least the wireless portion, is down for the entire country with no prognosis on when the service comes back up.

As the anchorage started to clear we saw this boat getting underway with a spinnaker, a sail we have never actually seen before.

On Tuesday morning we set a time and channel to try to call our friend Victoria on the SSB radio. She is in Stuart, FL, and the propagation tables directed us to the 4 MHz band which we duly selected. No luck there; I could not hear her and do not know if she heard us. We'll swap emails to figure that out. I have also discovered that our SSB handset needs replacing, the plastic coating on the curly-cord handset having disintegrated. I think that the handset wires are intact, but maybe not, or maybe not well.

Having rigged the secondary anchor, I was looking for a place to put the larger Fortress anchor and could not come up with a likely spot for it. Then came the DUH! moment: if you are truly anchor obsessive, I am, why rig the smaller of the two anchors? So out came the tools and I moved the large Fortress anchor to the side and brought the smaller Fortress anchor to the stern where it had spent the past three years. While securing the anchor hangers the magic hands struck again, dropping a very good, very expensive 11mm ratcheting wrench off the stern. This was particularly aggravating since it was a replacement for the original in the set which I had lost over the side a year ago. It seemed like it would be easy to find, shiny metal, 16-ft. down, directly below the stern. Even when it's not too windy, like today, the boat moves .... a lot. I did find it eventually, maybe 20-ft. from where I started looking. Hopefully, a good soaking in 3in1 oil will prevent it from rusting solid.

We are back again at Highbourne Cay, a place we left on January 23d. We have no particular plan in mind other than, eventually, to head south to George Town. We know that Debbie L. is not too far away so we might stop near her for a day or so. And, as Luke would have said if he were on a boat instead of in jail, " Sometimes (doing) nothing is a real cool hand."