Log – April 2017

Time to move aboard! We found that it’s better to make several trips from home. Fred remained aboard while Iris went to/fro with clothing, refrigerated food and frozen food, stowing and organizing the items after each trip. We did final family goodbyes, swapped vehicles, picked up mail, and went out for dinner ending our evening with a walk around the marina and a last couple of Netflix shows while we still had unlimited data!

We got off to an inelegant start while trying to leave our dock. We had very strong west winds pushing Windwalker off our finger dock. We organized the lines, but something Iris always fears (and which has happened elsewhere in the past), the final line she released got jammed between the piling and the finger pier as Fred was reversing. He had to motor back in while Iris finally freed the line with a boat hook. Tense! But we were able to make the noon PGA Blvd Bridge opening and made our way to North Palm Beach Marina for a fuel top-off. While we’d contemplated doing another ‘sea-trial’, winds and seas were high and since we had a nice clean boat and had done our sea-trial several days earlier, we opted instead to anchor at our usual ‘spot’ at the inlet and have a mellow pre-departure afternoon with off-shore prep – e.g. ditch bag, safety gear, jacklines and further checkout. Not all went smoothly as the water-maker had some issues, as did our gps, and our flag halyard. We were surrounded by a lot of sailboats staging for a gulf-stream crossing as well, waiting for the same window as we were. While enjoying the early evening Iris saw a tiny pod of dolphins go by and one did a spin and tail flip to wave us a safe trip 😉

Up at 4:30am we were heading out the inlet by 5:30, motor-sailing into beautiful conditions – flat seas, variable winds, and some slight ocean swells. Windwalker didn’t even get salty enroute. Having AIS on our chart-plotter was wonderful; there were many ships coming from all directions and we would have been taking a lot of evasive action un-necessarily had we not had the ability to monitor CPA (closest point of approach). But not all vessels had AIS so it’s not a panacea. Also vessels change direction so close monitoring remains the rule. Well offshore, we discovered that there was some kind of clog in our attempt to pump our holding tank – nothing we could address underway. Iris was concerned also that the anchor windlass air-pressure switch felt a little squishy when raising anchor – Fred had noticed the same. (But the switch continued to perform flawlessly the remainder of our trip.) We hailed Old Bahama Bay several miles out and were able to get a slip. It turned out there was a large sports-fishing tournament occupying most of the slips and some gulf-stream crossers hoping to get in were later turned away. We docked at around 3:25 at a dock that had no power; and although we had to pay for water, we couldn’t reach any available spigot. But West-End had been very hard hit by Hurricane Andrew and was still recovering. The sportsfish, however, were all in slips with full amenities. Only a few weeks before rates were $.99/foot; we paid $1.99 which was still a reduced rate. Fred headed off to the Customs/Immmigration office along with a stop at the dockmaster. We closed our float plan, took showers and enjoyed dinner at the Dockside restaurant with outstanding service by our waiter cum bar-tender. He described what it was like with Hurricane Andrew and added a lot of humor to his service. We ended our evening with a leisurely walk around the resort grounds. Animal life: We were joined by 3 different birds on our passage one of which alighted on our bimini top, and another – a yellow warbler, who settled on Iris’ arm for a few minutes. That was neat! A few man-o-war, several flying fish, 3 helium party balloons and a beach ball also passed by. Communications: Iris inserted her BTC Bahamas sim in one of our phones about 7 mi. offshore approaching West End and activated data. (BTC Bahamas coverage was outstanding through-out our trip and we found we no longer needed to use a sat-phone, or purchase wi-fi from either of the two Abacos providers. For $35 Iris purchased 15gb of high-speed data which would expire in 30 days or whenever used up. Great deal! With hotspot turned on our phone we could fulfill our internet access cravings with all our devices.)

We departed Old Bahama Bay at around 8am, after Fred had checked us out of the marina and Iris had informed family that we might be out of phone contact for a few days if we remained in our target anchorage – Great Sale Cay. Several sailboats had already left ahead of us, presumably headed west to Florida or east. We were taking Indian Rock Passage, as we had the last 2 trips – this time on a rising tide, with high at 9:14. We never saw less than 8.5′ at the shallowest spots in the passage. We had a glorious sail most of the way to Great Sale. Enroute, our AM radio emitted an awful squeal and we noticed thunderstorms in the vicinity so Iris did her normal drill of putting as many hand-held electronics in the microwave as she can. Lots of power and sail boats were headed in both directions; this was the first good weather window in several days and all were taking advantage. We passed through several ‘fish muds’ as we approached Great Sale, and the anchorage itself resembled one – with almost milky white water. Anchoring around 4:30, we were in the water for our ‘joy’ baths at 5. Not so good news – while in the water, Fred noticed that we’d thrown both our shaft and prop zincs (anodes) – both of which he’d put on a few days before at the dock. We didn’t want to go too long without those. After dinner Iris searched for a cell phone signal. Climbing up on the dinghy she was able to get a weak signal which allowed Fred to pick up some email and Iris to send a safe arrival text. This was a first for us in Great Sale! Animal Life: None Communications: weak BTC Bahamas signal

Rough night for Iris – up at midnight and then at 4am when the wind was way up and veering from the SE – usually a great direction for our anchorage but we had wavelets and things were getting bouncy. Fred awoke at 5:45 when the slot in our mast (for in-mast furling) started singing. We sound like an irritating flute and can get quite loud! We noticed a very strong burning smell which had to be from the nearest dump probably 20+ miles away. We listened to both Chris Parker for Bahamas weather on SSB as well as WX3 on VHF and decided to alter our plans. While we’d hoped to enjoy Great Sale, winds were expected to pick up greatly for several days and we’d prefer to be somewhere with communications if we were going to be stuck. So we motored out of Great Sale at 8:40 am tentatively headed for Allans-Pensacola Cay or Foxtown or Crab Cay – we’d make our decision while enroute. At least 6 or 7 boats decided to do the same thing and were all headed the same way, all of us motoring into the wind. So much for salt-free decks and life-lines. At our decision making point we decided to go to Crab Cay at the easternmost tip of Little Abaco Island. We’d only anchored there once previously in 2003, but we had a lot better charts now and thought we could find a good spot to wait out the forecast high winds. Almost all of the other boats headed to Allans-Pensacola – a cay which we love to hike but not the holding. True wind of 11-19 knots was on our nose for most of the trip, but we did motor sail whenever we could. Enroute we heard a conversation between Island Moon and Utopia, with Island Moon asking Utopia what kind of vessel it was. The owner proudly explained that he had always been a sailboat owner and then purchase a trawler. He couldn’t stand being without a sailboat, so he modified his trawler with used masts/sails he picked up respectively for about $150 and $250 and now had a motor-sailer. But he expressed dissatisaction with his creation and figured he’d once again return to owning a sailboat in the future. A little while later, Utopia passed us and Fred took several pictures. Yes indeed – quite unusual ;-). We worked our way into the anchorage around 4:30 making use of both our Dodge charts and our chartplotter which has C-Map charts including Explorer charts. The latter were perfect and we got in a lot closer, and in far deeper water than we thought existed there. Later, Island Moon – who was one of the boats who did NOT go to Alans-Pensacola and anchored much further out, hailed us on VHF asking how we got in where we were because his charts didn’t show sufficient depth. He was using the charts on his Garmin. We found a good sand bottom, set well, and prepared for some tough weather. We have no plans to move tomorrow. Wildlife: None. Communications: Fantastic LTE and 5 bars cell.

Four boats (including us) were in the anchorage in the morning, so a couple had left. Two – one a small trawler and a larger ketch, looked like they had been in the anchorage for awhile. The wind was a steady 13-16 knots from the SE with a lot of gusts 21-22 with forecast higher in our protected anchorage. We decided to do chores early. Iris made use of ‘discard’ watermaker water to wipe down salt-laden lifelines and hatches then moved to chores below. Fred solved the holding tank clog, tried, unsucessfully, to put a zinc on the shaft without SCUBA and worked on cleaning the hull. Weather wasn’t great for dinghy exploring, or even putting the dink in the water – so we did our ‘joy’ baths early and then in the afternoon took advantage of our data and hotspot on our phone to read and do computer work. By evening there were 2 new sailboats in the anchorage, settled so far out that we were amazed they were getting any protection at all. We decided to stay put tomorrow too. We have begun putting the watermaker water in our tank, now that the storage (pickling) chemicals have been flushed.

Iris got up a few times during the night, checking the wind, which was gusting around 21 knots. Otherwise all was well. Iris did website work and correspondence. It was also time to double bag a couple of days of garbage and move it into the v-berth. The water was getting too rough for enjoyable swimming with wind steady at 20+ knots all day, and chop in the anchorage – reminding us of Christmas Winds in Frances Bay, St. John in ’99. The small trawler had a dog and was the only one going ashore about 1/2 mile away. Just has we had noticed in Great Sale, the air was trash-burning scented. The waves settled slightly at around 5:30pm so we took advantage and jumped in to take our joy baths. Unless anything changes, we plan to leave tomorrow.