Ilana, getting email and updating the website in the Staniel Cay Yacht Club bar.

currently in:  Big Major's Spot (Staniel Cay), Exumas, Bahamas

Staniel Cay isn't exactly a big city - in fact, there are probably fewer than 200 residents - but compared to all the uninhabited and barely-inhabited islands we've been to, it's a metropolis. So we've been taking advantage of the town's services: we've dumped our garbage, bought a few fresh vegetables (the mailboat arrived this morning, fortunately - I expect that they'll be down to a few scrubby potatoes by tomorrow afternoon), and left off our laundry to be done by one of the local women. And best of all, we got an internet connect!

Much to our astonishment (and delight), the Staniel Cay Yacht Club has wireless internet. This leads to the rather amusing sight of yachties scattered around the bar, drinking beer and busily typing away on their laptops. We uploaded a bunch of photos and made a few small updates to our website.

First, the photos. These are all a bit larger and higher resolution than usual, since they didn't have to go through our usual agonizingly-slow method of connection, but none are larger than 80K:

• Two barracuda and a yellowtail snapper
• Gray snappers hanging out among the soft coral
• A Queen Triggerfish on the reef - nice eyeliner!
• A Red Hind (a type of grouper) wants to know what the heck is going on with this camera thingy pointed at him (this one is my favorite)
• Diving out of the cave at the Rocky Dundas
• Queen Conch striking an artsy pose on an underwater sand dune
• "Boo Boo Hill", where cruisers leave carvings and paintings with their boat names, at Warderick Wells
• Hanging out by the crystalline waters of a Shroud Cay lagoon
• Ilana, Bernadette, and Douglas on a Shroud Cay beach
• This is what a good anchor set in Bahamas sand looks like

(If I made an error in any of the URLs, you should be able to find all the photos here.)

For those of you interested in the technical details:  our new camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P150 digital camera, with an underwater housing ("Marine Pack") for taking all these nifty snorkeling shots. At 7.2 megapixels the pictures are huge and much higher resolution than we can reasonably put out on the web, so we crop and shrink them, but we are hanging on to our favorite shots in high resolution just in case we manage to interest anyone in publishing them.

Second, while rummaging through my computer I found a little file I'd written some time ago and never uploaded: The Sailing Cheat Sheet. This may help my landlubber friends, and anyone else reading this log who is completely at sea, as it were, about sailing terms. It's linked from our Articles and Links page, to which we've also added a link to Ithaka's website. If you've only looked at our log entries and never poked around the rest of our site (linked from the nifty menu at the side), please look around!

These tiny birds called bananaquits will eat sugar out of your hand. (At
Warderick Wells ranger station)

currently in:  Warderick Wells, Exumas, Bahamas

When we were just starting out cruising, we met lots of cruisers who had been out for years, either full or part time, who spent every winter cruising the Bahamas. Sometimes we asked why they never went farther afield, and the response was usually along the lines of:  "Oh, we went to the Caribbean once. But the Bahamas are better."  Of course we privately imagined there must be some other reason, that perhaps they didn't like going offshore, or so far, or to countries where they used different currency or maybe spoke different languages, because of course the far-away Caribbean seemed more exotic and interesting. But you know what?  We went to the Caribbean once - and the Bahamas are better!

It's our third visit to the Exumas, but it never palls. Sailing on the lee side of the Exumas is the most perfect sailing imaginable, as the islands block the waves but allow the wind unfettered passage. The water shades from deepest blue to pale turquoise over pure white sand, a palette unique to this place. We can look down from our boat through the lightly rippled water, and clearly see our anchor chain 25 feet below. The water could be a bit warmer, and there are sometimes too many boats in an anchorage for our liking (what, FOUR other boats? Horrors!), but so what? 

Part of our enjoyment comes from being with people to whom this is all new. We love it when Douglas looks around and says, "This is the most beautiful anchorage I've ever been in," (which he's said every time, I think!), or when Bernadette exclaims over the amazing colors of the water, because it makes us look at these things afresh. We're doing the same things we did on our first trip here - we visited the iguanas at Allan's Cay, we dinghied up the tidal creeks of Shroud Cay, and we snorkeled Jeep Reef and the Sea Aquarium. But they are all still as beautiful as they were four years ago. (You can read our old logs via the archive page.)

We lucked out and had some perfectly calm weather to go snorkeling in, allowing us to dink several miles to the really great stuff some distance away. The Sea Aquarium is a marked site with easy snorkeling and the tamest fish I've ever seen - I've never before gotten close enough to a yellowtail snapper to spear it. (Which I can't do, of course, since this is part of the Exuma Land and Sea Park. Smart fish!) At Jeep Reef, which we did on our first visit as a tank dive with our friends on Odyssey, I dove down to peer under a ledge and found a huge turtle, apparently fast asleep. In between dives, we stopped to walk along the sugary sand beach of Osprey Cay, avoiding the bluff at the end guarded by a nesting pair, and marveled at the large numbers of juvenile conch sitting on the seagrass, barely underwater, just below the low-tide line.

Yesterday a front blew in, so we hiked instead on the trails of Warderick Wells. We're anchored in the south anchorage, which we had admired from the shore on a previous visit but never been to by boat, and it's incredibly beautiful and well-protected - and far less crowded than the mooring field on the north end, or the Emerald Rock area on the lee side.

But we'll be getting into the crowd soon enough, as we're heading to Staniel Cay. On the weather net we heard that there are 66 boats anchored at Big Major's, a good anchorage near Staniel, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are close to a hundred altogether in that area. But it's time to visit civilization, if only to buy a few more groceries, do laundry, and see if we can find an internet connect. And then we'll be off again, to find more of the beauties of the Bahamas.

An underwater tunnel leads from the south anchorage at Warderick Wells
through narrow Hog Cay, coming out in Exuma Sound. From the anchorage, the
cave is like the mouth of a sea monster, spewing out waves and spray and
making ominous crashing noises. Swimming through at slack high tide on a
calm-weather day turned out to be less scary than it looked from outside.
--
NOTE: My email is sent and received through a VERY SLOW link. Please DO NOT
quote my message back when you reply. Please DO NOT include attachments.

We are currently in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, which is a no-fishing
zone. No seafood for dinner! But Britt is still enjoying snorkeling
because we bought an underwater casing for our new digital camera. Here are
two Gray Snapper with French Grunts in the background.

Bernadette, me, and Douglas, at the edge of one of the lagoons of Shroud Cay.

Doug and Bernadette of "Ithaka" dinghying up one of the mangrove-lined
creeks on Shroud Cay. These shallow, clear tidal creeks are fish nurseries;
juvenile snappers and grunts darted back and forth, hiding in the mangrove
roots when we got too close. In places the sand-and-grass bottom was
covered with conch. (Shroud Cay is part of the Exuma Land and Sea Park, so
no conch fritters for us.)

On our first visit to the Allan's Cay group of islands in the Exuma chain,
we didn't have a digital camera, so it was great to have the opportunity to
revisit the islands and watch the indigenous residents pose.

currently in:  Chub Cay, Berry Islands, Bahamas

After a very pleasant crossing of the gulf stream and the Great Bahama Bank, we are tied up in the Chub Cay Club marina well in advance of the cold front expected to come through this evening. The wind slowly died as we motorsailed onto the banks, until the mainsail was really more for decoration than for motive power or stability. The water took on that lovely hue that told us we were in the Bahamas, and as the sun set it became glassy, reflecting the myriad stars.

We'd been talking on the radio occasionally with other cruisers making the crossing, and as most of them were going only as far as Chub we decided to do the same, so we could meet them in person. This plan also had the advantage of allowing us to get some sleep; we anchored somewhere between Mackie Shoal and the Northwest Channel Light around half past midnight, and at 6 am the small waves generated by the slowly building southwest wind woke us. Twenty minutes later, we were on our way again, this time sailing.

It was a really great sail, smooth and flat and reasonably fast. The one thing it conspicuously lacked was fish - although we got two strikes they both wriggled off before we'd even touched the rods. (The night before, going onto the banks, we got a humongous strike that ran out all the line from one of the rods and then broke the steel leader! It turned out that the leader had a spot of corrosion, and that's where it broke. Got to check those leaders.)

The first time we came to the Bahamas we also came here to Chub Cay to clear in. That was our first Bahamian port, and man, was I nervous going from the deep blue off-soundings water to the clear blue-green of the shallows. And then there was a narrow channel to the marina itself, and that scary docking stuff... But this time we were old pros at reading Bahamian water, and have had a good deal of recent practice coming into and out of docks, so, to quote the book I've been reading on this passage (Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian), "it was was as easy as kiss my hand."

There are about a dozen cruising boats here at the marina - they make out like bandits, I think, because these weather windows usually close with the bang of a cold front, and the standard anchorage here is unsuitable for a frontal passage, and you have to go into the basin to clear customs and immigration anyway. (Actually, you have to go to the airport now. When we were here before they did it dockside. But Britt took the bus in, and now we are all legal.) Ithaka is on one side of us, Cattleya is across the dock, Lucia is behind us, and another boat just came in while I wrote this paragraph.

Tomorrow it's supposed to blow 20-25 out of the NW, so we may stay put - or we may move around to the anchorage on the south side of the island, where we might at least get some snorkeling in. The next day, if the forecast holds, might be good for moving south. We'll see. But we're in no rush - we're finally HERE!

currently in: Allan's Cay, Exumas, Bahamas

They say that once you've learned, you never forget how to ride a bicycle. We are happy to report that apparently you never forget how to cruise the Bahamas. Three days after checking into the country, we are in Full Cruising Mode. More specifically, we're in Fishing Mode.

The cold front blew through during the night, while we were tied up in the Chub Cay marina. The next day, after a long walk on the beach to assess the anchorage on the south side of the island, we moved Windom all of two miles, out of the marina basin and around to the anchorage. We dropped the hook in ten feet of clear water just off the white sand of the beach, and when we turned off the engine and breathed in the stillness it was as though all the muscles in our bodies relaxed at once. At anchor in a quiet cove in the Bahamas - that was it, what we'd been working toward ever since we got into the RV and pointed it southeast, and here we finally were.

So naturally, despite the chilly weather, we had to jump into the water with our pole spears. Just for practice, which it quickly became evident we need. But even if we're not yet up to free-diving to 40 feet, we enjoyed our little excursion and saw lots of grouper, porgies, and angelfish. We saw one ocean triggerfish, an odd-looking disc with fins that swims at a stately pace, and I saw an octopus hiding in a cave. Then Britt saw a big crustacean-leg poking out from under a ledge; I dove down and saw a mammoth lobster. My spear bounced right off its carapace, only knocking off one leg (we need to adjust the rubber which has a little too much give and therefore not enough oomph) but Britt dove down and finished the job, swimming back up with difficulty - and with one of the biggest lobsters we'd ever seen.

The next day, underway in the deep waters between the Berry Islands and Nassau, we hooked a mahi-mahi. I was closer to the rod and jumped on it; what fun it was to reel it in, to see the iridescent flashes of green and blue as the fish fought and leaped and finally tired. (And tired me out, too!) We didn't quite have our usual fish-catching method down, though. Our spray bottle of vodka had a hidden crack, so when I sprayed the booze into the mahi's gills I ended up getting it all over me instead, and the thrashing mahi sprayed blood on our side decks, something we try to avoid. But soon we had our fresh meat aboard.

With all this bounty of the sea, we're delighted to have folks to share it with. We'd been looking forward to finally meeting Douglas and Bernadette on Ithaka, as our paths have almost crossed several times. (They are fairly well-known cruisers, as Bernadette had been an editor of Cruising World and her columns continue to appear in that magazine; they also have a website, which most of you folks probably know about already!) We'd seen them in Newport, Rhode Island, as they left the harbor to set out on their cruise, and we'd exchanged a few words over the radio when we passed in opposite directions several years later near the Colombian island of Providencia in the western Caribbean. We have several cruising friends in common - when we finally got together and compared notes it amazed us how many there are! We've been to many of the same places and have had many of the same experiences, including that of being full-time cruisers who decide that they want something beyond full-time cruising. Both we and they are setting out for the second time after a long break ashore, and it's great to talk with people who understand our perspective and share our opinions - as well as our lobster and fish.

Now we're sitting in the Allan's Cay anchorage after sailing a little more than 40 miles to cover the 32-mile straight-line distance...okay, we took the scenic route, tacking this way and that rather than motoring, but it was a lovely day and we had lots of time. We'll hang out for a few days and eat the rest of the seafood in our fridge - so we can go fishing again.

A lobster tail that's as big as a bottle of wine is the perfect size to
share with friends (along with the bottle of wine!)

currently in: the gulf stream
latitude 25°41.178N, longitude 79°34.509W at 1430 EST Feb 9th

At the moment we are motorsailing southeast at about 5.8 knots, in light wind that's just north of east (or so it seems by our dubious instrumentation); we're headed quite a bit south of our target, but the current is sweeping us somewhat to the north, and we're hoping that either the current will become more powerful, or that the wind will execute its promised southerly shift soon and we'll be able to motorsail on the opposite tack.

Motorsailing - motoring with our mainsail up - may seem like a compromise, but it's a smart compromise. We can point much more directly into the wind and make more speed than sailing would allow us to. We can't go as close to the wind as we could without a sail, but it's faster and far more comfortable this way, as the sail keeps us slightly heeled and we slice through the waves rather than wallowing this way and that.

Quite a few boats left earlier than we did. Many of them turned around, citing too-big seas, uncomfortable conditions that slowed them so much that they didn't think they'd make their destinations in time. We suspect that some of them left too early - the wind speed was still dropping, and the wind shifting east from north, during the morning, and conditions in the gulf stream were probably worse earlier. But we also saw one boat turn around only a mile in front of us, when we were about five miles from Miami. On the radio we heard them say that it was too choppy, they couldn't make any speed and they were too comfortable. We'd seen that they didn't have a sail up; maybe if they had, and had fallen off a bit so that they could motorsail, they would have weathered the conditions with more ease. The seas are barely 2 feet, and it's really not bad at all with a little sail up.

The thing is, for a sailor, the fastest (or most comfortable) course may not necessarily be a straight line. It's not really intuitive, but if you fool around with a little vector math - just drawing lines on a chart - you can see the effects of working both with and against the current and wind. If you can make 6 knots a little off the wind, but only 4.5 knots going straight into it, taking the longer course may only cost a short time - and it may actually be faster. And when you factor in the comfort level, it's hard to justify bashing yourself and your equipment. This is especially true on longer passages, because wind and sea conditions are likely to change during the passage. In particular, when you're crossing the gulf stream, which rockets north, it makes sense to head a little south before you hit it, then allow it to take you a little too far north when you're in the thick of it, then correct your course on the other side, when you don't have to fight it. This is the "S-curve" shown on the charts and in the guidebooks, and it really does work.

Oh! I just felt us "tack" - Britt noticed the wind coming around a little more to the east, so he changed course so that our main would fill from the right rather than the left. Now we're going with, rather than against, the current: we're making 7 knots on a course of 071° - and because we'd been steering "too far south" before, we're almost right on course for North Rock, which bears 072°. We've still got 21 miles to the mark, so even if we end up too far north, by the time we get closer the wind should have shifted more southerly, and we should be out of the main current, and it should be easy to make a bit more easting.

Of course, North Rock only marks the end of the first leg. It looks as though we'll get there late in the afternoon, which will be great, although we're not worried about getting there after dark as we have both radar and computer navigation. Then we've got another 75 miles to go to Chub Cay, and if the weather and daylight hold out tomorrow we may push on the 35 further to Nassau.

Here's the view from the top of the lighthouse at Boca Chita!

currently in:  Miami Beach, FL

It was like deja vu all over again. Coming up to Miami, we finally crossed our previous track; although we'd gone both up and down the Caloosahatchie River by Fort Myers, that didn't really seem like closing the loop as much as did pulling into the familiar anchorage behind the man-made islands off the Venetian Causeway.

Getting off the dock at Boca Chita was a bit more exciting than we liked, with a strong wind pinning us down and boats all around us. We sprung the stern out - this is a maneuver involving holding the bow on the dock by a line, and steering forward "into" the dock, which kicks the stern away from the dock. It had worked well in Juangriego on the Venezuelan island of Margarita, but here we had Tortuga behind us on the dock, and when we finally backed away our bow swung back toward the dock with the wind and nearly hit the other boat. We also have the problem that the line holding Windom's bow is from a high cleat, while the part of the boat that tries to hit the dock is the "dolphin striker" under the anchor platform, which probably shouldn't be subjected to that kind of stress. (Nor should the sailors driving the boat!) Nothing broke, nothing hit, but we're going to have to rethink un-docking strategies. Once we sorted everyething out, we had a brisk and bouncy sail to Miami, hard on the wind to Coconut Grove and then motoring the rest of the way to the anchorage.

Miami Beach is a great place. We visited the fancy gourmet foods store and the really good hardware store that had been our mainstays on the previous visit, walked over to the beach side just to see it, saw two movies, had dinner with our friends Chris and Edith, who live here, and even managed to poach a little wireless internet access by pulling out the laptop in the middle of the Lincoln Ave. pedestrian mall. What we used the net access for, of course, was downloading weather forecasts. Things continued to look good, so this afternoon we lifted anchor and motored through the Venetian Causeway drawbridge to get fuel at the Sea Line Marina. We had a little confusion about where the fuel dock was, and then we had to turn around and pull in the other way, but I managed not to hit anything and we tied up for fuel and water. One of the attendants was a woman, and she was pleased to see us - "Hey, you're the second chick driver I've seen today! You did great!  98% of the people who pull in here have the guy driving, so it's cool to see you at the wheel!"  She even gave us a 5% discount for having a chick driver. Okay, it was actually the Boat US discount, which was very nice of her because our membership has expired, so we appreciated it very much! Then we had to go back through the bridge, which obligingly opened for us again. What a feeling of power it is to make all those cars stop just for us.

If all goes well, we'll be at Chub Cay in the Bahamas by Thursday, slipping in before this next cold front - along with several dozen other boats waiting here at Miami Beach or in the anchorages at Key Biscayne. The radio chatter is all about, "Did you download the weatherfax?" and "What time are you planning to leave?" Tortuga's going to Bimini, though - maybe they'll catch up with us in the Exumas later on - and Summer Wind's decided not to go at all, so hopefully we'll meet some of this fleet to socialize with. Cross your fingers for us and wish us a placid gulf stream.

Here we are tied to the seawall in "Keyhole Harbor" at Boca Chita Key, which
is part of Biscayne National Park. The lighthouse is just decorative (but
very pretty!)

currently in: Boca Chita Key, FL

Boca Chita is a nifty little island that used to belong to the wealthy industrialist Mark Honeywell. In the late 1930s he built a retreat here, pavilions and buildings and an ornamental lighthouse made of coral block. Then his wife died from injuries she received in a fall here, and he sold the island, which was eventually obtained by the federal government to be part of Biscayne National Park. Access is only by private boat. It costs $15 a night to tie up in the harbor here, with a payment machine (that dispenses Sacajawea dollars as change, but doesn't accept them as payment!) apparently adapted from a parking garage system. When we arrived on Thursday there were only a handful of boats here, but it filled up on the weekend with local boats, and now - Sunday morning - nearly every boat on the seawall has another boat rafted to it. We've got a small Catalina on our side, a tiny daysailer shoehorned in between us and the trawler behind us, and a couple of fancy powerboats in front of us.

It was nice to sit out a front in a place where we could get off the boat and walk around, but this island is so small that even at a meandering pace we can cover the place in half an hour. We stopped to identify the birds (ring-nosed gulls and royal terns, which have black ruffs that make them look kind of like Dilbert's pointy-haired boss) and to watch the current rip through the cut between here and Elliot Island to the south. We chit-chatted with people on other boats and spent quite a bit of time socializing with Roberta and Tucker, on the trawler Tortuga - they may also join us for the crossing to the Bahamas.

Which I'm sure you are all dying to know when it will happen. And so are we! At the moment it's looking like we might have a brief window before the next cold front on Thursday, but if things play out like they did last week, it might not happen. So in the meantime, we've decided to move up to Miami Beach, to the anchorage we used in January 2001. We've got some friends there, we might be able to go in and see a movie, and most importantly it's an easy place to leave at night, so we can get an early start and make Bimini in a day if we end up with a short window.

currently in:  Boca Chita Key, FL

Sorry to disappoint our vicarious stowaways, but we're not in the Bahamas yet. (And we're twice as disappointed as you are, believe me!)

The National Weather Service's recent extension of forecasts from three to five days out is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we can now get a forecast on Saturday for Wednesday's weather. On the other hand, by the time Wednesday rolls around, chances are things will be entirely different. And that's what happened to our weather window.

To cross the gulf stream from here we need light winds somewhere between SE and S, or moderate SW to W winds, or even an absolute calm. The northerly current (it has always amused me that meteorologists call wind flowing south-to-north a "southerly wind", but oceanographers call water flowing south-to-north a "northerly current"!) kicks up big waves with any north in the wind, and although our course is northeast we'll need to steer basically due east, as the northward component of our course will be taken care of by the current. The problem is that the wind typically blows more or less out of the east, and when it veers to the west it signals the prelude to the passage of a front - which results in it blowing like stink for a few days from the north. But just before the front, if it's moving slowly enough, and if it comes long enough after the previous front that the big waves in the gulf stream have laid down, there's a weather window.

On the weekend it looked like Wednesday and Thursday would be such a window, with predicted winds of E-SE 10-15 knots (for you landlubbers out there: a knot is roughly 1.1 miles per hour) switching to SW, and then to W, with NW winds blowing in on Friday. As late as Tuesday afternoon it still looked good; the predicted winds for Wednesday were now due east, which was not so good, but only 5-10 knots, which was. Seas in the stream were predicted to be 2 ft or less (also good), and Wednesday night was to be SE at 5, Thursday SE 5-10, Thursday night W 10-15, with the north winds coming sometime after midnight. Our plan was to leave relatively late in the day on Wednesday, so as to take advantage of the lighter and more southerly winds, sail overnight and arrive at Chub Cay sometime the next afternoon.

But on Wednesday morning, it was blowing hard from the east, hard enough that we noticed it even in the protected canal on Blackwater Sound. The forecast for the day had morphed into E 10-15, and more ominously the reported winds at Fowey Rocks, a weather monitoring station on the reef outside the Keys, were east at 18 knots. Too much to motor into, so we made a Plan B:  Thursday still seemed okay, but we wouldn't be able to make it all the way to Chub Cay before the front. But if that afternoon we went the 13 miles to Angelfish Cut, the nearest exit from behind the Keys, then we could leave the next morning early, and make Bimini with decent light to enter.

The problem was that as we put the routes together, we realized it wouldn't be possible. To make it in time we'd need to leave before dawn - and Angelfish is a tricky cut with a narrow channel that is actually too shallow for us to traverse without a little help from the tide. And guess when low tide happened to be on Thursday? 

Well, we didn't care. We decided we needed to get going, even if it wasn't to the Bahamas; Miami's not far, and there are a few interesting spots in Biscayne Bay. The Andersons have cruised Biscayne Bay many times and decided not to come along, but we left that afternoon and anchored at Pumpkin Key near the cut.

Thursday actually turned out to be more east winds and bumpy seas - we went out Angelfish to maybe snorkel on a reef, but we couldn't find the reef moorings we wanted, and it was sort of icky weather anyway, so finally we went back through Angelfish, put up the sails, and sailed to Boca Chita Key. It's part of Biscayne National Park, with a protected harbor that is inexpensive to tie up in, and we figured it was a good place to wait out the front, where we could easily get off the boat and walk around. So that's what we're going to do today!

We were working on the boat this afternoon (still planning on leaving
tomorrow!) when we were visited by this manatee! It's the biggest one any
of us have ever seen - also the most beat-up. Notice how half its tail has
been scalloped by close encounters with boat propellers.