currently at: Flamingo Cay, Jumentos, Bahamas
current date:  1 May 2005

Sometimes it seems as though writing about something always jinxes it! In our last update I said we were looking for weather to head east; at the time we had decided that the current cold front would snap around too quickly to the east to be a good window, but that the next one looked like a possibility to give us some northerlies we could use to go southeast. But as soon as I posted it, the weather forecast changed to nothing but easterlies for the foreseeable future. Time to rethink our plans.

The Jumentos are a chain of islands running more or less north-to-south, with shallow water to the west and deep water to the east. On the north is shallow water as well, with the islands of Great and Little Exuma directly north, and Long Island farther east. There are two "standard" ways of reaching the Jumentos from the central Bahamas: Hog Cay Cut, which is more or less the direct route from George Town but is only 3 feet deep at low water, necessitating careful timing with a high tide, and the Comer Channel, which detours via Thompson Bay, Long Island. The difficulty of returning via the Comer Channel is that it runs pretty much straight east, into the prevailing easterlies. (I'll post a chartlet next, so you don't have to try to visualize it!) On our first trip to the Jumentos in 2000 we used Hog Cay Cut; we took the Comer Channel on our way back from Dollar Harbour, and also on our way to the Jumentos on this trip.

Way back when we were first discussing destinations and plans with Ithaka, we looked at the "Mailboat Route", a route shown in Pavlidis's Exumas guidebooks that runs down the backside of the Exumas to the Jumentos. This is not a popular cruising route, partly because it pretty much bypasses the Exumas, partly because it goes through some shallow areas that require use of the tide for most boats to make it through (although not as much as Hog Cay Cut). It's also not clear to us where we could anchor and have reasonable protection, although there are a few possibilities. (The mailboat, which uses this route, travels at night, which we are reluctant to do in this area.)

Ithaka, with their 6.5' draft, nixed the idea of the Mailboat Route, but we have been considering it as a return option. Advantages are that we would be able to explore some little-traveled areas west of the Exumas - there are several cays that Pavlidis says have great diving - and we wouldn't be retracing our steps again. The disadvantage is that we'd have to play the tides to get into some of these anchorages, and be cautious about the shoal areas as we don't have very good charts of this region and would be traveling solo.

In any case, we knew we'd have to start from a point farther north, so we sailed from Raccoon Cay back to Flamingo Cay, a fast ride with the wind 15-22+ knots just over our right shoulder, and constant hits on our two fishing lines. We kept a yellowtail snapper and a blue runner, tossed back countless barracudas, and reeled in two half-snappers that had been chomped by something bigger while we were reeling them in. At Flamingo we pulled in next to the first cruising boat we've seen in a long while.

Actually, we had suspected that Blind Date was here at Flamingo. We had met Carol and Ashley years ago in St. Martin, and had last seen them in Porlamar, Venezuela; we'd heard them on the SSB and knew they were in the Jumentos, after coming up from the southeast. We let them know we were in the area and made vague plans to get in touch, but a few days ago we crossed their path as we were headed to different anchorages to weather a cold front, and just "waved" over the VHF. We knew they were working their way north, and Flamingo is a don't-miss cay, so it wasn't a surprise to see them, and it was fun to catch up with each other.

It turned out that Blind Date is planning to use a completely different route out of the Jumentos - the Lark Channel, a path through the shallow banks that leads to the Tongue Of The Ocean and Andros Island. Some of our charts show the Lark and other channels, but there's a lot of scary ground between here and there, and our charts don't have the detail we'd like. But they have the latest Explorer charts which show the channels and even give waypoints, and they had met the people that did a lot of the soundings for the charts, who assured them that it was an easy pathway.

Andros is a tempting idea. We spent time at Morgan's Bluff and Fresh Creek on our second trip to the Bahamas, but it was in the winter, and the strong easterlies made it impossible to enjoy the reefs along the east coast. Maybe this time of year it will be calmer. We've been in the Exumas so much this year that something different is appealing. Plus, the guy with our watermaker part will be in Andros before going to the Exumas, and we might be able to meet up with him sooner.

Well, we don't have to decide yet. Blind Date's leaving tomorrow morning, but we are more inclined to hang out a little while longer, because the light weather predicted tomorrow would make it a motoring trip, and we'd rather take advantage of the light winds to snorkel some of the less-protected reefs. At least, that's what we're thinking right now - by tomorrow, our plans may change yet again!