We've been stuck in George Town for over a week now, trapped by unrelenting easterlies. The wind speed rarely drops much below 15 knots, and it usually hits the mid-twenties a few times each day. One day we hiked up to the ridge of Stocking Island, the island which forms the northeast boundary of the harbor here, and at the high point it was probably blowing upward of 30 knots, sandblasting our legs with beach sand carried up from the windward beach fifty feet below. The dark and turbulent Exuma Sound was dotted with whitecaps and did not look like a fun place to be in a small boat.
Being anchored in the harbor isn't so great either. Stocking Island gives decent protection, but things are still a bit rolly, especially after the wind shifted toward the southeast. (A bunch of northbound boats made a break for it after the windshift, including Whish, but we want to go southeast, to Long Island.) A few boats are anchored on the west side of the harbor, near town, but that's a rough place to be in these winds. The problem is that the only alternative, if you want to get in to George Town, is a mile-long dinghy ride through 2-foot chop. Nobody gets into their dinghy without full foul-weather gear and a bailing bucket. If we keep our weight back and run our dink at just under planing speed, the bow lifts enough that we ride up and fall off most waves, but we still get damp from the spray, and every once in a while the whole thing threatens to tip over backwards. Our friends with smaller dinghies and smaller motors generally get soaked.
On a day when we wanted to do laundry and buy a few groceries, we moved the big boat over for the day, to give us a shorter dinghy ride, then moved back to the other side to anchor for the night. Even then, we still had to contend with the passage into Lake Victoria, the lagoon where the dinghy dock is; the channel goes under a bridge and is very narrow, and when the current opposes the wind, it whips up some rather intimidating standing waves under the bridge. I misjudged these waves once and we got completely drenched.
Our time in George Town wasn't a total waste. We braved the dinghy ride to town one evening to attend a talk and slideshow on research exploration of underwater caves and blue holes (http://www.bahamacaves.com). We caught up with friends on other boats, got some email and uploaded some web page updates, and topped off our perilously low supply of coconut rum.
The big event of the week was a rather wild "Margaritaville" party on the beach put together by Bodett. There were free margaritas, presumably to insure adequate lubrication of the crowd, and there were all sorts of good potluck snackies as well. Things started out G-rated, with dancing to Jimmy Buffet and a salute to the flag of the Conch Republic, but rapidly got out of hand. There was a tropical attire contest and a coconut bra contest, both featuring mostly the same set of barely-dressed contestants of whom the indisputable star was a woman from the ludicrously misnamed La Petite. (Maybe her boat was small.) There was a limbo contest, which Britt did pretty well in, and a weird event, in which we declined to participate, where cruisers put quarters between their buttcheeks and aimed them into a coffee can. I don't think anyone woke up the next day without a headache.
After a few too many days stuck in George Town, we moved over to Red Shanks, an anchorage area in a cluster of small cays just a few miles southeast of George Town. It's like a mini-harbor within Elizabeth Harbour, and around regatta time it's packed with a hardcore crowd who return year after year, but now that the "season" is mostly over we easily found space for us and Severn Star, who we hooked up with again. Red Shanks is well-protected, almost land-locked, and even though the next day the wind rarely dropped below 20 knots (we recorded a max of 27), we hardly bounced around at all.
The smooth anchorage was just a nice bonus. The real reason we moved to Red Shanks (other than for a change of scenery) was to be close to the ruins on Crab Cay. Crab Cay was settled in the 1780's by a Loyalist from west Florida. We heard that the plantation which he built there was actually a "feeder plantation", growing food to support a cotton plantation on the mainland of Great Exuma. It was abandoned around 1830 and now only ruins remain.
Sara and Kevin on Severn Star had gotten a copy of a hand-drawn map of the ruins and trails from another cruiser. We explored nearly every trail, and investigated every remaining structure. The main house had been built of bricks which were later scavenged, so only a foundation was left, but large parts of the rock outbuildings and garden walls were still standing. The rock used was local limestone, which erodes easily, so in many places the mortar between the rocks was in better shape than the rocks themselves.
We also visited the cove where the wreck of the Exuma Pride sits. According to Pavlidis's guidebook, during a gap in regular mailboat service, a bunch of George Town businessmen bought this boat to set it up as a mailboat, but there were "business squabbles" and it mysteriously sank at its mooring. Now it's just a big rusty boat shell.
Another apparent benefit of moving to Red Shanks is that my allergies seem to be lessened. I've been suffering from some sort of allergy for the past month; it ebbs and flows, sometimes mild and sometimes really annoying. For a while I was convinced it was something on the boat, mold or mildew. This theory was scotched when I sneezed continuously during our walk on Stocking Island. No wonder things seemed worse while we were anchored in the lee of that island with 20 knot winds blowing that pollen right into our boat. I guess whatever plant I'm allergic to doesn't grow in great quantity over here in Red Shanks.
It's now April 15th, four days after I started writing about being stuck here, and we're still stuck. Today's forecast from the Nassau Met Office is 20-25 knots from the southeast, gusting to 30. Great. About the only thing this weather is good for is our wind generator. We're making water for several hours each day, using our computers heavily, and in general burning power with abandon.
April 16th update: the wind slacked off somewhat, so we thought about going, but it was cloudy and drizzling all morning. There are a lot of reefs and shoals in the eastern end of the harbor and we'd much rather have some sunlight so we can see them, so we decided to stay put. Then, shortly after lunch, a big squall hit. We were in the calm before the storm when it hit the main anchorage area; when we heard the frantic VHF traffic ("Mayflower, you're dragging!") we looked over and saw a dark cloud over George Town. Within our anchorage, the boats west of us were facing west, while we and the boats around us were still pointing southeast, so we knew it was coming.
Sure enough, the wind piped up and we swung around. The problem was that we had anchored fairly close to the small cays which form the east end of Red Shanks, since the wind was from the southeast at the time. The tide was dead low, exposing a sandbar very close by; we were not at all confident that there was enough depth east of our anchor to keep us floating. And if our anchor dragged, we were only a few boatlengths from hitting the limestone shore of the cay.
The curtain of rain moved rapidly across Red Shanks as Windom turned in the wind. We anxiously watched the depth drop, but fortunately when our butt was pointing toward the sandbar, we still had a little more than 6 feet. Then the rain hit and the wind howled. The waves didn't build much -- I bet it was much rougher out in the main harbor -- but the wind whipped the water's surface into pale aqua foam ribbons. The depth readings swung wildly between 5.0 and 7.2. Ordinarily we're aground at 5.4, but we didn't feel any bumps, so I think the turbulence was just fooling the transducer. It was still kind of scary, though, to look out the companionway and see a sandbar and a rocky shore only spitting distance away.
Being boat-bound isn't totally miserable. We're splicing lines, polishing stainless steel, reading, and baking bread. But we're more than ready to get out of here.