Little by little, we've been accustoming ourselves to the techniques needed for cruising the Bahamas. We're getting used to reading the water depth by its color, we're learning not to panic at depthsounder readouts in the single digits, and we can set two anchors almost as quickly as one. But we've been shying away from going anywhere that is marked on our chart, "intricate", "good sunlight conditions only", "high tide route", "abandon hope ye who enter" and so on. Until now.
A cold front was approaching, and we needed an anchorage well protected from the west and north. Where we were, at Little Bell Island, was probably a good spot, but there was one problem: it's in the Exuma Park, which means no fishing. Britt was getting antsy to do some more fish hunting, as was Jeff on Whish. Alex would have loved to go hunting too, but Odyssey had been having some equipment problems, so he and Penelope opted to stay put for a few days and do boat work.
The closest all-weather anchorages were in an area called Pipe Creek, a shallow archipelago between Exuma Park and Staniel Cay. Britt and Jeff both liked the looks of a snug little spot just off the southeast end of Pipe Cay; I thought the entrance looked awfully tricky, and the channel looked awfully narrow, and the whole thing was awfully shallow, but my objections were overridden, and we set a course for Pipe Creek.
The first step was just getting out of Little Bell. We'd entered from the north, but that entrance led out to the east, to Exuma Sound, and we needed to enter Pipe Creek from the Exuma Banks (west) side. We could take a Z-shaped route north and east out of the anchorage, around the island, back through another cut, and onto the Banks, but that would take extra time. As we prepared to leave in the morning, the tide was high and beginning to fall, and we would need as much water as we could get to make it into the Pipe Creek anchorage. There was a southern route out of the anchorage that would get us out onto the Banks faster, but it was a "good sunlight" route, a shallow water channel among reefs and sandbanks.
"Heck, it's high tide," said Jeff, and Whish took off. We stood by our VHF in case they came to grief, but he made it through and radioed back encouraging words, so we decided to go for it as well. I got behind the wheel, as usual, and Britt stood on the boom for a higher vantage point, holding on to the mast with one hand and pointing out the deeper water with the other. As we picked our way south, it occured to me that just after high tide, on the day after the full moon, was exactly the wrong time to be trying a questionable channel. If we went hard aground, it would be two weeks before the tide floated us again! But we squeezed between the reef and Kiss Rock (you have to get "close enough to kiss it", and we sure did) with nine feet of water, then followed the meandering channel between the shallows to the deep water beyond, home free -- until we got to Pipe Cay.
The previous week in Staniel Cay, we had joked with Keith and Cheryl on Colleen that "a real sailor navigates with a lead line". None of us actually had a lead line, as depth sounders are ubiquitous these days. But it had occurred to us as we contemplated going into Pipe Creek that perhaps a lead line would be a useful thing to have, so we tied a length of twine to one of Britt's fishing weights and marked it off with a waterproof marker. We used thick black marks for every 5 feet, and thin ones for each foot in between: a thick black mark at 5 feet, one thick and one thin at 6, one thick and two thin at 7, and so on up to two thick marks at 10 feet. We put three marks at 15 feet, and a single red mark at 5.5 feet -- just enough more than our draft to allow us to squeak by with a couple of inches under our keel if we absolutely had to.
We converged with Whish on the approach to the pass between Pipe Cay and Kemp Cay. We had a sandbar to port and a rocky shoal to starboard as we tried to stay in 12 feet in the middle -- and that was only the first step. We could see a few boats anchored just inside the pass, but this area would be wide open to the westerly winds which precede a frontal passage. According to the sketch chart in our guidebook, we needed to enter the outer anchorage and then immediately turn hard to port, passing between Pipe Cay and a sand shoal, and "follow the obvious channel" between two large flats which dry completely at low tide. It looked narrow and shallow and scary as hell as we drove into the outer anchorage, so we anchored there -- Whish, following us in, did likewise -- and dropped the dinghy so we could check it out with our new lead line.
We sounded the entrance carefully. The rocky bottom on the left looked dangerous, but only gradually came up, while the sandy right side abruptly shoaled. In the center there was a bit more than seven feet of water, but the current rushing in through the pass and across the entrance to the inner anchorage meant that we'd have to aim at the rocks to stay in the deep water. Past the entrance things got a little deeper, and the current was no longer crosswise, so it would be easier to stay in the channel. As the channel swung around to pass between the sandy flats, it shallowed again, but as long as we anchored in more than eight feet we'd still have enough water at low tide. We'd definitely need two anchors, though, because the channel was only 100 feet or so wide, and if we went swinging anywhere we'd swing ourselves aground. There were a few small-boat moorings that we figured we could get between, and one trawler with a Fort Lauderdale homeport anchored at the far end of the channel -- the deep water petered out into nothing beyond it -- but it looked like there was just about exactly enough room for our two boats.
We returned to our boats and weighed anchor. I took a few deep breaths and headed for the entrance to the inner anchorage, angling carefully into the current as we approached. The depth readout dropped steadily, 15 feet, then 10 feet, then 8 feet. I turned sharply at the edge of the rocks and into the channel as the depthsounder read 7.1, 7.0, 6.9...then started climbing again. Whew! We followed the center of the pale aqua strip and carefully dropped our anchors in 8.5 feet between two of the moorings. Whish followed behind and chose a spot closer to the entrance.
Britt was snorkeling on the anchors checking their set when a Boston Whaler with a big outboard roared up from the trawler. "You can't anchor here! This is a mooring field! It's not a designated anchorage!" Fortunately he ignored me entirely, even though I was sitting in the cockpit and Britt was in the water, because I would not have been as diplomatic as Britt. The gist of it was that the moorings were private, although the man wouldn't tell us whose they were ("It doesn't matter! They're not for rent! But if you damage one, you'll have to pay!"), and that since this area wasn't shown on the chart with a cute little anchor symbol (even though it was so shown on the sketch chart in the guidebook we have, even though there's no such thing as a designated anchorage in the Bahamas), "You can't anchor here!" After a long harangue, the self-appointed welcoming committee went down to Whish and gave them the same spiel.
A little while later, another American white guy came by in another skiff with a big outboard, and told us he was going to put that boat at the mooring near us. We said we'd be happy to shift our position so there would be more room at the mooring (we were too close, but we had planned on adjusting things after we'd gotten anchored), and he said, "Doesn't matter. My prop's stainless steel and your boat's fiberglass." He roared back to his boat, a schooner in the outer anchorage.
Well, we weren't going to leave. It was a pain getting into the anchorage in the first place, and with the tide still dropping it was chancy whether we could even get out. The time to have told us to stay out would have been when we were sounding it from the dinghy, and truth be told, we probably would have gone in anyway. We wanted to be polite, though, even if our neighbors were assholes, so we carefully repositioned our second anchor using our dinghy (making sure that we were in the exact center of the narrow strip of anchorage, since it was barely wider than two boat lengths), and drew up our anchor rodes so that we were equidistant from the moorings, leaving plenty of room. We also swam down to check that our anchors were clear of the ground tackle holding the moorings. Rude Guy #2 saw us getting out of the water and said, "I wouldn't swim...there's a hammerhead that hangs out here", which we thought just another remark meant to chase us out (and replied, "Oh, really? Cool! We'd love to see one!"), until we talked with someone else later who said there really was a resident hammerhead.
It really ticks me off, as well as saddens me, that the unfriendly people who tried to run us off are other cruisers rather than locals. (Well, they are sort of locals -- I guess they're long term visitors. When we swam under Rude Guy #1's trawler, we could see by the growth that it hadn't moved in some time.) But they are basically like us, white Americans on boats, who have come here from somewhere else, and probably originally came here just like we did, as cruisers exploring new places. Now they want to lock it up, not just to keep other people from moving there, but to keep others from even visiting there. It's bad enough that many of the islands are private, and posted with "No Trespassing" signs (and I would bet that the owners of these islands are rich Americans or Canadians or Europeans, not black Bahamians). Will the next step be chains across the cuts between islands to prevent cruisers from entering the anchorages there?
As the tide dropped, the landscape changed. The shallows became sandbars, and the sandbars grew into beaches. Bonefish skittered through the thin water, chased by a little shark (not a hammerhead -- probably a dogfish, only a few feet long at most). We swam through bathtub-warm water to look at our keel, and spread out our fingers underneath to measure the low-tide clearance. Under four inches! Then over to one of the temporary beaches, which was soft and wet and squished under our feet. The boats looked very strange, strung out along a thin aqua strip of water with sand on both sides; as we moved farther away, the water was completely hidden from view, and it looked like Windom was sitting on a beach with sand up to the waterline. We sure wish our digital camera hadn't broken -- it would make an incredible photo.
After the front passed, and the winds were strong and from the northeast, we sat at an angle to the anchorage's channel, with a bit of a heel due to the wind. At low tide we'd look out the portholes on the left side of the boat, or out over the back through the cockpit, and see nothing but sand. With the dinghy tied to our stern, it looked like we could just jump off the dinghy and right onto the beach. We were a little worried that our rudder would ground on the edge of the channel, but a check with the lookie bucket reassured us that we were still floating.
The anchorage did turn out to be a great place to sit out a front; the wind howled, but there were no waves at all as we were essentially landlocked. Unfortunately, on the calm night before the front hit, we learned the big disadvantage of a landlocked anchorage. We'd always been far enough away from shore to avoid bugs, but this night, a huge squadron of no-see-ums invaded our boats and bit us to shreds. These flying nightmares are small enough to fit through our screens, yet somehow they can inflict huge bites. They must be all mouth. We spent a sleepless night swatting and scratching, and finally got the DEET out way too late -- we're both covered with hundreds of itchy red welts. Yuck.
Pipe Creek turned out to be perfect for dinghy exploration. We zigged and zagged among rocky islets and sandbars, checking out the coral heads with the lookie bucket. At low tide we walked into the big pond in the center of Joe Cay, which had dried to a big squishy sand flat. The water left in the pond was bathwater-warm. Just off Thomas Cay, our friends on Whish were collecting conch by the bucketful (and later invited us over for Donna's Awesome Conch Fritters). We did a little diving around Pipe Cay, and Britt got a nice red snapper -- and broke his pole spear.
Fortunately, the next day was the day the front slammed through, so it really wasn't diving weather anyway. Britt repaired his spear using a length of copper tubing as a sort of splint, then covered it with several layers of fiberglass and epoxy. I baked banana bread, and we both lazed and read, and scritched at our no-see-um bites.
It was still blowing better than 20 knots the next day, but Britt and Jeff had fish to go spear. They spent the entire day at the various spots we'd reconnoitered earlier, and came back with a serious haul: four lobster, four snappers of various sorts, two grunts, a queen triggerfish (which we've always thought too beautiful to shoot, but have been assured that once we taste it we will change our minds), and two mystery fish which look like they ought to be edible. Whish came over for dinner, and the lobster alone (along with a veggie side dish) were enough to feed all four adults and two kids, so we all have plenty of leftovers. We spent the rest of the evening playing games. We started with a memory game (like Shanghai) in which Mallory and Jeffrey far outshone us adults, then played Upwords. Finally, Jeff and Donna taught us a bizarre card game called Smear, which they swear "everybody in Wisconsin and Michigan knows" but which neither of us have ever heard of before.
Thursday morning the wind finally let up enough for us to get moving again. We managed to get our anchors up without getting blown into the shallows, slid through the narrow entrance (we had prudently waited for high tide, of course) and out of Pipe Creek. We unfurled our sails as we turned southeast and had a lovely sail on a beam reach, ten easy miles to Black Point, where we anchored in the lee of the island in a nice, broad, sandy bight with no coral or rocks or any obstacles at all.