currently at:  Raccoon Cay, Jumentos, Bahamas
current date: 27 April 2005

The weather here has been alternating between blowing stink from more or less the east, and calm, pleasant days of light wind and bright sunshine. This is a good thing, because the anchorages here are mostly just lee anchorages, coves scalloped out of the west sides of the cays. We have had every one of them to ourselves since Flamingo Cay, having apparently left even the fishing boats behind. Every once in a while we see an outboard skiff with a few men in it, maybe going to or from Duncan Town, the only community in these islands, but other than that we're the only two human beings out here. Amazingly enough, we still get along with each other (at least most of the time).

The Jumentos seem wild and remote, and in some sense they are. Duncan Town has about 70 inhabitants and no scheduled air service; we're about 12 miles from there, 80 miles (by boat) from Clarence Town on Long Island or George Town on Great Exuma, the nearest towns of any real size, and perhaps 200 miles from Nassau. And yet we are connected to the rest of the world over our SSB, listening to NPR's Morning Edition via the American Forces Network over breakfast, talking with friends on the marine band and ham nets, and sending and receiving email twice a day. We have ice for our cocktails, and fresh vegetables and fruits to go alongside the fish we catch and cook. It's hard for us to imagine what it must have been like in the late 18th century, when these islands were settled by British Loyalists who no longer felt welcome in the Colonies when they became States.

Many Loyalists were from the plantation states, and it probably sounded like a good deal to them to pack up and start new plantations on these exotic, unknown Bahamian islands. After all, other Crown possessions in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, were lush, mountainous islands with rich soil that easily produced crops such as sugar cane and fruits. Why not the Bahamas?

Well, as anyone who has ever been here knows, despite being geographically close to Jamaica, the Bahamas are geologically unrelated. These flat limestone cays don't have much soil to speak of, no freshwater creeks, and pretty much nothing grows here other than scrubby trees such as poisonwood. And yet people came, bringing their slaves, expecting to make a living off the land.

We've seen Loyalist-era ruins on many of the Exuma cays, and we are seeing them here in the Jumentos as well. In the Exumas, though, at least Nassau, the big capital city where supplies could be obtained for (of course) a high fee, isn't that far away. I can't imagine what it would have been like trying to settle down here. But people tried; on Nurse Cay, near some ruins, we found an inscription carved into the limestone, "1866 J M", and here on Raccoon Cay we have seen pasture walls of limestone rock that extend across nearly the entire island, and the tracery of foundations, outlines of buildings that are long gone.

And so are the Loyalists, who for the most part packed up and left when they realized that these scrubby islands were unsuitable for agriculture. The Bahamians living here today are descendants of their slaves, who were left behind. (Which incidentally is why there are only about a few dozen different surnames among Bahamians - the slaves took the last name of their owner. So on Great Exuma, for example, about every other person has the last name Rolle!)

We're getting close to being ready to leave as well. We're looking for the next good weather window to cross toward Crooked Island, and then we'll work our way back north and west. Our big motivator is our watermaker, which had a critical part failure about a week ago. We made a temporary fix, but the company warned us that it may only continue working for "a few days or weeks", so we are headed toward a rendevous with one of their reps who will be cruising in the Exumas in a few weeks, carrying a new part for us. In these uninhabited islands, we can't obtain more water - we did find some inland water holes on Nurse Cay, but when we tested them for salinity they pegged the meter, too brackish for drinking. We got one rainy squall at Buena Vista Cay and deployed the rain catching system Britt built in Florida out of a shower curtain and some bungee cords - there are still a few bugs in the system, but we managed to get several gallons into our tank. For now, we're babying the watermaker and making a little every day to balance what we use; our small tank is about full, which will give us about a week's reserve if the watermaker gives out altogether - enough to get somewhere we can buy water.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/27/2005 [link]  3 comments Post a Comment

We had been hearing Miss Cassidy on the SSB radio quite a bit as they check in with the Caribbean Weather Center's morning weather net (which is mostly pleasure yachts). They are out of Long Island, Bahamas.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/25/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

The last batch of larger photos are fish portraits - and one of us.

Blue tang and elkhorn coral
Two conch
Yellowfin grouper
A barracuda and a bar jack
Lobster at home
Wary fish (mostly grunts and snappers)
Stoplight parrotfish
Nassau grouper
Tiger grouper
Tiger grouper hanging out in the elkhorn
Big school of big horse-eye jacks
Spotted eagle ray
Southern stingray and several bar jacks
Southern stingray and bar jack (and Ilana - just looking, I swear!)

And if you're wondering what we really look like under the masks and snorkels... (photo by Bernadette Bernon)

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/21/2005 [link]  1 comments Post a Comment

currently at:  Flamingo Cay, Jumentos, Bahamas
current date: 20 April 2005

The Bahamian fishermen refer to the Jumentos islands and the reefy banks to their west as "the fishing grounds", and it's easy to see why. The 90-mile string of small cays that makes up this chain is uninhabited except for the southernmost island, Ragged Island - which has less than 100 people. Huge expanses of underwater reefs are washed by tides coming from the deep water to the east of the cays. Uninhabited islands + underwater structure + good water circulation = lots of sea life.

We are really happy to see that things are still this good here. When we first cruised this island chain in the spring of 2000, there were no detailed charts. Steve Pavlidis's On and Off the Beaten Path, with its remarkably accurate sketch charts, had only been out for a couple of years. This is what he says in his introduction to the Jumentos:

I have a nagging feeling deep down that I shouldn't tell anyone how to get to this lovely, unspoiled island chain.... This is my favorite island chain in the entire Bahamas. Giving away the navigational information to allow cruisers to have a safe, enjoyable, memorable cruise through these cays is like giving away my daughter. Please take care of her.

The latest Explorer Charts, though, include the Jumentos, and on the SSB nets a month ago we heard there were eleven boats at just one of the anchorages. This contrasts with our experience in 2000, when we saw cruisers other than our traveling companions only twice, and we heard from a woman at Ragged Island that there were eleven boats in the entire Jumentos chain. (Of course, eleven boats is a small number compared to the huge congregations at the popular anchorages of the Exumas and the Abacos!) Maybe it's because we're at the tail end of the cruising season and many boats have already left to return to the US or continue toward the Caribbean, but so far we haven't seen another cruising boat since we entered this island chain.

What we have seen are Bahamian fishing boats - four different ones, so far. The typical Bahamian fishing outfit consists of one big boat - the mothership - trailing anywhere from two to five skiffs. The mothership anchors, and two men go out in each dinghy: one to drive and one to dive. In season, they dive for lobster. We talked with a couple of fishermen off a boat from Long Island anchored near us (that's the Bahamian Long Island south of the Exumas, not the one in the US!), who told us that now they are spearing grouper and hogfish and collecting conch.

When the fishing boats came back from their morning expeditions to transfer their catch into the mothership, Britt estimated that he saw close to 100 fish. And that's just one morning's work! But when we went out on our own small-scale expedition, we still saw lots of sea creatures - including grouper, hogfish, and conch. (No really big grouper like we saw at Samana, though, and there were more empty conch shells than live conch.)

In fact, within ten minutes we had dinner and the next day's lunch, as Britt jumped from the dinghy straight into a school of large bar jack, and shortly thereafter a school of yellow jack came swimming straight at me. After that, I went for triggerfish, since Britt had mentioned to me the day before that he was about ready for triggerfish sausage for breakfast. It was short work, as there were more triggerfish than we've ever seen in one place. Britt traded his spear for the camera (get ready for more underwater photo posts!); I just went sightseeing.

We love seeing large schools of fish, and the site we'd chosen off the northwest corner of Flamingo Cay had lots of them. Grunts, gray snappers, and mahogany snappers schooled around the reefs, and every so often a school of bar jack whipped through. We saw several fish we hadn't seen further north, including Spanish grunts, porkfish, and hogfish. (Hogfish are extremely tasty, but also easy to catch, so they are usually fished out in populated places. Oddly, the porkfish and the hogfish are completely different species. There's also a cowfish, which is not edible so far as I know. The barnyard is rounded out by the mutton snapper and sheepshead. I don't think there's a chickenfish, though.)

The most interesting fish encounter we had was with a three-to-four-foot-long Almaco jack, the biggest fish we've ever seen up close on a reef. It came in from the north, swimming straight for me; after it checked me out, it circled Britt a few times. It seemed totally unafraid, coming very close - within a few feet.Then it swam back where it came from. Obviously the jack was curious about these strange-looking "humanfish"!

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/20/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

More pictures from our upload frenzy (Second try.)

Sailing and land exploration - see, we take pictures above the water, too!

Negotiating the passage between the reefs into Samana (photo by Douglas Bernon)
Samana sunset
Ilana on a beach at the southeast end of Samana
Anchorage at Samana Cay
Ithaka in a squall at Samana
Windom sailing downwind (photo by Douglas Bernon)
Windom at Dollar Harbour, surrounded by mudflats
Britt and the mudflat mangroves at Dollar Harbour
Ilana stuck in the mud at Dollar Harbour
Rolfe, Ilana, and Kristen (and an iguana) explore a cave at Bitter Guana Cay
Iguana at Bitter Guana Cay
Windom at anchor at Bitter Guana Cay
Sea salt from a limestone hole on Bitter Guana Cay - seawater splashes in and evaporates, leaving salt crystals
Britt at one of the natural wells at Warderick Wells (photo by Rolfe Spiegel)
Britt doesn't jump off the cliff at Warderick Wells (photo by Rolfe Spiegel)
Whiptail lizard at Warderick Wells
Curly tailed lizard at Warderick Wells

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/18/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

currently at:  Flamingo Cay, Jumentos, Bahamas
current date:  18 April 2005

It seemed to take forever, but we are finally back in the Out Islands, eating fish and exploring deserted beaches. This is what we go to the Bahamas for. But it's not the only reason that people come here. In the past few weeks we've been reminded that there are as many styles of cruising as there are cruisers, and what makes us happy and relaxed may drive another couple crazy - or vice versa.

In the past few weeks we've reconnected with friends on two other boats that we had originally met our first year out. Neal and Stephanie on Rhapsody share our love for the remote places, but this year because of family concerns they opted to stay close to Staniel Cay, where they could fly out at a moment's notice if necessary. Most of the time they spent anchored in Pipe Creek, an archipelago of small islands most of which are privately owned. Because they were there all winter, they met and became friends with several of the area's permanent residents. That's something that we are rarely able to do; most locals (or expats who have become local) aren't going to bother making friends with cruisers who are there one day and gone the next - and who can blame them? 

Eric and Susan on Elysia have taken this one step further. Last season they spent most of their time in George Town, a big cruising mecca where there may be as many as 400 boats at the peak of the season. They put down multiple anchors in a very protected part of the harbor, and in the summer they left their boat there and flew back to Ohio, where they have family and where they consider "home". In September they flew back to George Town and took up residence in their boat again.

Susan says they don't really feel like cruisers any more - their boat hasn't moved in over a year. They bought a small center-console open powerboat as a "super-dinghy", so they can comfortably zip across the harbor to town, or go out into Exuma Sound for fishing trips. No way could they sail anywhere trailing that! But they're integrated into the local community, invited to weddings and so on. And they are part of the core of cruisers that come every year for the whole season, doing volleyball and the Cruising Regatta - and since nearly everyone else (like us) passes through George Town at least once, they meet them when they come through.

I don't know. I envy the friendships they have made, the real connections with the communities they become a part of. In a way, the lack of this in our cruising life was one of the things that drove us to return to Colorado. On the other hand, we are not satisfied by the summer-camp atmosphere of George Town, and even the less-populated Staniel Cay area seems crowded to us.

At the moment we are parked at a remote island in a remote part of the Bahamas, where we have seen only two Bahamian fishing boats and zero other cruising boats in the last few days. Trolling over the deep reefs of the banks here has been a fishing frenzy; we've caught seven fish (and released all but two) and had probably as many quick hits and fish that wriggled off the hook. (We kept a yellowtail snapper and a blue runner, two fish that we have never managed to spear because they are so darn fast. And boy, are they tasty!)  The water is clear and beautiful. I suppose in a few days we will be wishing for another boat to come by, other people to talk with, but for now we're enjoying the solitude - and the fish!

PS: Our email problems have been partially solved. You can use either my KG4EYP address, or any of the windom.netrack.net addresses given on this website, and it should get to us - but no matter which address you use, you must first register at http://www.winlink.org/accept. Once we reply to your email, you'll be in the system and won't have to register again.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/18/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

currently in:  George Town, Exuma, Bahamas
current date:  14 April 2005

Over the past few weeks, our refrigerator has been slowly becoming more and more inefficient, requiring more run time to accomplish less cooling. Earlier this year,40 minutes of compressor time would result in 10 hours of cold fridge; now the compressor was running for well over an hour four or five times a day, using up our battery power and driving us crazy. (The compressor chills down a holding plate which keeps the box cold, kind of like a mechanical hunk of ice. A temperature probe monitors the plate temperature and triggers the compressor when it warms.) At first we thought that it was just the hot weather and our less-than-perfect insulation. As things got worse, we thought that perhaps the temperature probe was in a bad place, and moved it, but the fridge performance continued to deteriorate. One day we left the boat for four hours just as the compressor began to run; when we came back and it was still running, the plate temperature not even close to where it needed to be, we realized that something was seriously wrong.

We emailed the company that had made our refrigeration system (Glacier Bay) with our symptoms: long compressor run time, inability to get down to cold temperatures, lower than normal amp draw (power drain). They confirmed Britt's guess that the refrigerant gas had leaked out of our system over the past five years - normal behavior, according to them - and provided instructions for topping off the refrigerant level.

At the time we were near Staniel Cay, which we doubted had a refrigeration repairman, so we waited for the next front to pass and headed south toward George Town. As it happened, the front's windshifts had beaten down the usual big waves in Exuma Sound, and we had two lovely sailing days, pulling in to Elizabeth Harbor on Sunday afternoon. Our disappointment at not having the time to go snorkeling for fish (and of not catching anything on our trolling lines) was tempered with the realization that we didn't have a working fridge to keep any fish in!

On the George Town cruisers' VHF net the next morning, we asked for information on getting a refrigerator topped off with more coolant. The good news was that George Town has a refrigeration repairman; the bad news was that they have only one, and he's very busy; the good news was that although this type of work requires a certification in the US, the Bahamas will sell cannisters of refrigerant gas to anyone.

Several people in the harbor had worked on their own refrigerators, and were happy to give advice. Ed on Joybells loaned Britt a leak detector; with it, he determined we had no big leaks in our system. This meant that probably tiny bits had just leaked out over time, rather than there being one sudden failure, and that just refilling the system would be all that was needed. Eric on Elysia told us that we could get the gas and the necessary flare connector at the big hardware store three miles west of George Town, and suggested that we could get by without a gauge set by simply watching the amp draw and adding enough coolant to bring it up to the former level. (We'd met Elysia a few times during our first cruising stint, but hadn't seen them since 2001, so it was fun to make contact again.)

It sounded pretty straightforward. But as anyone who has ever owned a boat knows, even a simple fix is always complicated. Britt had to make not one but two trips to the hardware store to get all the pieces needed to put together a hose to connect from the gas cannister to our system - and since we're not carrying bikes this year, he had to hitchhike. Fortunately, hitchhiking is an easy and accepted way of traveling in the Bahamas, and he had no problem getting rides (as well as interesting conversation with a variety of Bahamians). Once he got the gas and the parts and assembled a hose that could connect the gas cannister to the suction side of our fridge system, we hooked things up and started the compressor running.

The instructions in the manual had presented a bit of a paradox: in order to determine the correct amount of refrigerant to add, the holding plate temperature had to be below below 30°, but we couldn't cool the plate to 30° without first adding refrigerant! I monitored the amp draw while he controlled the gas flow, adding just enough to bring the amp draw near its former level of 34 amps. This jump-started the cold plate, as it were, and after a half-hour of compressor time it was down to the magic 30° level. Now we could follow the instructions, checking the sight glass on one of our refrigeration components and adding refrigerant just until the glass was full.

We let the compressor run until the plate looked fairly frozen - about 24° on the probe. (The plate is filled with a chemical that freezes at 26°.) At that point we turned off the compressor...and crossed our fingers. As the day went by, we anxiously glanced at the fridge readout, watching the numbers climb. Five hours later the plate temperature hit 30° and the compressor tripped on; we both dropped our books and alternately watched the temperature readout and the clock. The numbers on the readout obediently ticked lower and lower with gratifying speed, reaching 24° in only 20 minutes. Hooray! No more listening to the compressor slug on for hours! No more having to run our engine for power every other day!

We have a working refrigerator again, hooray. Now all we need to do is catch some fish to put in it!

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/14/2005 [link]  3 comments Post a Comment

Currently at:  George Town, Exumas, Bahamas
Current date: 11 April 2005

A real update will come later. For now, two things:  first, our email abruptly and completely stopped working on Thursday April 7th. If you've sent us email since then, we have it - we made an internet connect today from George Town - but if you want to reach us from now on, it's a two step process:  you must register your email address at http://www.winlink.org/accept and afterward send your email to kg4eyp [at-sign] winlink.org.

(I have an elaborate forwarding system set up to manage things so that we can continue to use our normal email addresses, and so that people can send us email without having to register their addresses, but apparently it has all tumbled down like a house of cards. Hopefully we'll be able to repair things eventually. And speaking of internet woes, we also have noticed that our posts seem to take many days to appear. With luck this will show up soon!)

Second, for those of you who would like to read about the events we've been writing about from another perspective, check out Ithaka's log entries from the time we spent together in the Bahamas:  The Paradise Across The Stream and Hunting at Samana.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/11/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

currently at: Sampson Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
current date: 5 April 2005

After a tour of the central Exumas stretching from Warderick Wells in the north to Cave Cay in the south, we dropped our guests off at Staniel Cay. Now we're ready to head south again, back down to George Town and then further south and east, to the Jumentos and Hogsty Reef. Too bad the weather doesn't agree; right now it's howling 20 knots from the east, with the wind expected to shift southeast, which is even worse for our plans. The forecast is grim until the weekend.

But if you're the type who damns the torpedos, you're not going to have any fun cruising the Bahamas. It's not just waiting for weather: everything here is done on island time, and you just have to get used to it. For example, Rolfe and Kristen were supposed to arrive at Staniel last week on the Flamingo Air flight out of Nassau at 12:35. At 2:30 the plane landed, but they weren't on it; they'd been told it was full, and as it turned out, it was empty. But they found another plane and arrived a few hours later. On the way back, their pilot showed up only half an hour later than promised, but other travellers weren't so lucky: a group of Canadians returning from a sea kayak tour had been waiting at the airstrip for four hours, trying to arrange a plane after their original pilot told them he was "too tired to fly today."

When we saw them off again at the Staniel airstrip we walked back via Natajia's Ice Cream Parlour. We'd rung the bell on our way out, and got no reply; this time, a few minutes after we rung, a young women came out from the house next door, unlocked the store and showed us what was in the freezer. We walked back sharing a pint of strawberry ice cream; so what if we got it a bit later than we had intended?

In George Town a few weeks ago, we took our laundry to the cleaners who had promised that clothes brought in before 8:30 would be ready late that afternoon. Well, maybe. When we returned at 4:30 we were told there was a problem with the boiler, and that we'd have our clothes in the morning - assuming it got fixed. We didn't mind waiting, though, because the our propane refill was also delayed; our tank was across the island somewhere, the truck had had a breakdown, "come back tomorrow, it be ready."

If you approach everything with the idea that it's going to take twice as long as you expect, you'll be fine. Of course if you have a tight schedule, this isn't going to work - which is why cruisers are rarely on tight schedules. Windom was supposed to be going south; Undine II, next to us, was supposed to be going to Rock Sound, Eleuthera, and Sea Kata, behind us, was going to head to Nassau. Instead we're all sitting here at Sampson Cay drinking blender drinks (Ron on Undine II makes a mean pineapple-mango colada) and talking about everything except the stupid weather. But that's okay; we're living on island time.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/05/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment

currently at: Cave Cay, Exumas, Bahamas
current date: 30 March 2005

[Note: I submitted this post by email six days ago, and it hasn't been posted yet. If the email ever goes through, you'll see this twice - sorry!]

We haven't been updating much lately, because there hasn't been much to update about. We exited Dollar Harbour a lot more gracefully than we entered, sailed to Thompson Bay, Long Island via the Comer Channel (which is not so much a channel as a broad area of 7-9 foot water), and then pulled in to George Town to accomplish chores: groceries, laundry, propane, and rum. (Not in order of importance.) The weather patterns coincided perfectly with our needs and we left George Town in comfortable sailing weather to head north to pick up our friends who were flying in to Staniel Cay.

Rolfe and Kristen are with us now, and have been gracefully putting up with all we've been putting them through; bumping bottom in a shallow spot on the banks, snorkeling in raging current, dinghy rides through breaking waves, and sleeping in what is optimistically called the "aft stateroom" in the Caliber brochure but in actual fact is smaller than most people's bathrooms. (Possibly the rum is a factor.) And, speaking of bathrooms...

(Warning, toilet talk a-head!)

In addition to the aft stateroom our boat has an aft head, which is a somewhat strange phrase because the word "head" as applied to marine toilets comes from the traditional location of the latrines in the "beakhead" - a platform at the bow, or forward end, of the ship. (And rather than "aft" it should be "after"; aft is the counterpart of fore, and after the counterpart of forward, but most people use aft as an adjective as well as an adverb, and so do I.) We had noticed that the head was not flushing as well as it might be, and since the forward head must be reached by walking through the forward cabin, i.e. our bedroom, we decided it would be a nice thing to do to make sure it was in fine working order before our guests arrived.

So while at anchor in George Town, we rebuilt the aft head, using parts from a spares kit we have. It's not a big job, really, although there are lots of little bits that all need to be disassembled and reassembled in the proper order, and we were done in a few hours. Then we tested it: it had gone to not flushing well to not flushing at all. Oops. (Moral:  Don't fix it if it ain't broke.)

Through some experimentation we determined that in the process of removing parts for replacement or cleaning, we'd shaken free some of the crystalline deposit that builds up inside the various hoses. This deposit is made from the interaction of urine, seawater, and the fibers from toilet paper; it's tan, more or less odorless, and as hard as rock. Every few weeks we flush vinegar through the system as a way of fighting this deposit, but obviously it hadn't worked as well as we could hope. The chunks of crystal had wedged themselves somewhere downstream.

So bit by bit, we disassembled each piece of the plumbing system and cleaned it out. This was accomplished by whacking each length of hose with the handle of a hammer. Really hard. Over and over. Eventually the shower of gunk from the end slowed and stopped; we squirted freshwater through the hose and reassembled it to the system, tested it, and determined that there was still blockage further down the line. So it was on to the next section of hose. Anyone familiar with boats will know that this makes it sound much easier than it was in reality, because plumbing hose is stiff, hard to slide over the various fittings, and almost always located in near-inaccessible parts of the boat. For example, to get to the hoses, we have to move all our canned goods. Our morning project stretched into afternoon.

Finally we had all the plumbing cleaned out - or so we thought. A few days into Rolfe and Kristen's stay, their toilet stopped wanting to flush. Oops. Time to unpack all the canned goods yet again and examine the hoses. This time, fortunately, Britt quickly discovered that some crystals had lodged in the Y-valve, a sort of fork in the road that determines whether waste goes into the holding tank or is flushed overboard. Holding our noses, we cleaned out the Y-valve. And now the aft head is working again. We hope!

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/05/2005 [link]  0 comments Post a Comment