Though everyone thinks of the snowbird's route as going south, in truth the real problem is the going east. From Florida to the Bahamas is more easterly than southerly, ditto from the western Bahamas to the Exumas, and once you're in the Exumas it's southeast all the way to George Town. With the trade winds relentlessly blowing from the east, it's a hardscrabble fight for every inch of easting.
It seems like the cold fronts just aren't making it down this year, unlike last year when they kept us constantly on the lookout for protected anchorages. It's kind of discouraging; if we're having a hard time simply making it down the Exumas, what are our chances of getting clear to the Caribbean? No wonder this route to the Caribbean is called "The Thorny Path." The prospect of battling our way east all winter is getting less and less appealing.
We cheated on our first leg by going northeast from Andros, which let us sail not too close-hauled all the way to New Providence. It was a spirited sail, fast and bumpy, over the deep Tongue of the Ocean, a subsea canyon which, during the last Ice Age, drained the plateau formed by the curve of Andros and the Exuma Banks. When sailing across deep waters, we always throw out our trolling lines. We had great luck, hooking three mahi-mahi, and landing two. (I fought valiantly with the one we lost, and it was at the side of the boat, Britt ready with the gaff, when in a sudden spurt of energy it bucked and writhed and jumped right off the hook.)
After anchoring at Rose Island, a few miles east of Nassau, we set to work processing our catch: Britt filleted, while I worked in the kitchen. Even though one of the fish was quite small, two mahi is a lot of meat, and since we don't have a freezer we need to use other methods of preservation. I picked a few nice fillets to pack against the fridge's cold plate, which would freeze them fairly well, and stuffed a few in baggies down at the bottom of the fridge for eating over the next two days; the rest I cut up for ceviche (raw fish salad marinated in lime juice) and gravlax (pressed, salt-cured fish with dill), which will last for several weeks in the fridge.
We stayed at Rose Island the next day. The anchorage was exposed and we bounced around a lot, but the wind was howling, and staying put seemed the lesser of the evils. The following morning we gritted our teeth and headed out into the blow. After picking our way through the shoals and reefs that lined the area, we beat south, sails reefed, until finally it was time to turn and motor directly into the slop. Fortunately the shallow Banks water didn't kick up very big waves, and when we drew near to the islands we got some protection. It was good that the motion settled down, because we had a lot of cleaning up to do.
All that bouncing around in the 20-knot easterlies had knocked over our bottle of Chlorox, and the flimsy cap had broken, spewing bleach all over the forward cabin (our bedroom). Ironically, the item most saturated with bleach was our laundry bag, which at the moment contained nothing but a few white clothes, as I'd washed everything else in Fresh Creek; but quite a bit of Chlorox had made its way out onto the rug, and the whole place reeked. Britt had cautiously opened a few hatches to try to air things out, but of course since we were still bashing to windward, a lot of seawater came in with the air. All in all, it was a mess.
But we were, at last, in the Exumas, and we dropped our anchor into the clean sand off Shroud Cay just off the tiny beach where we anchored last year. This, incidentally, is the first anchorage we've revisited since Fernandina Beach back in Florida. It's a good thing we explored last year, because this time we were too busy cleaning up Chlorox to enjoy it much. The fifteen gallons of fresh water we made during the trip was put to use rinsing the bleach off the rug before it ate its way through; restored to its place in the cabin, it now looks like a few shafts of sunlight are falling across it, and it's only when you notice that the sunlight doesn't move that you realize that it's really a big bleach stain. Oh well, we need to get a new rug anyway.
We also had another major project on our mind. Our dink has never been the greatest at holding air, but lately we'd noticed it going seriously flat very quickly. We needed to hole up for a few days and patch the dinghy. With the strong easterlies we'd been having, this anchorage was a little rolly, so we decided to continue south (and east) to find a better spot.
Finally, we were sailing south in the lee of the Exuma islands, across the luminous turquoise water we remembered so well. Other white sails were scattered across the turquoise, most also heading south. Despite the hard angle to the wind, it was a lovely sail, and it was with regret we started the motor as we turned dead into the wind for the last eight miles to Warderick Wells.
We anchored in a bight on the western side of the island, between two lovely beaches. Half a dozen other sailboats are here also, and the mooring field on the northern end of the island is doubtless full; dinghies are pulled up at the beaches and I can see people out on the trails. We, however, are going to be boat-bound for a few days while our "car" is in the "shop" -- in this case, half-deflated on the foredeck, propped up with the spinnaker halyard and a few straps to the lifelines.
In addition to patching the holes -- we found a few that might have been made by a fishhook in the mouth of a thrashing fish, after being gaffed and tossed into the dinghy as per our normal procedure -- we need to install a keel protector. The hard bottom suffered a lot from being dragged up on beaches, so we bought a strip of reinforced rubber to protect it. Then since we had to remove the outboard to hoist the dink onto the foredeck, we might as well do the engine maintenance which is probably long overdue.
We hate to give the impression that all we do is work on the boat 24 hours a day, although that's what it's been feeling like lately. But we're cheered by email from friends who write about fixing leaky roofs and busted transmissions; whether you live in a boat or a house, whether you drive around in a truck or an inflatable, you still have to deal with the inevitable process of entropy. Stuff breaks, whether you're in Warderick Wells or Walla Walla. And even in the middle of fixing it all, we still find the time to enjoy the clear blue water, watch the sunset, and gaze at the stars.