It was blustery all night with winds staying around 20 knots. The SSB was very noisy – no joy on Chris Parker. We ran the engine instead of the generator for our freezer/refrigerator run – since it would give the batteries a quick charge and take a lot less time. The engine starter struggled to start – feels like a weak battery however Fred wasn’t sure. He would need to check the connections. We stayed aboard all day – with Fred doing some internet work and polishing the stainless and Iris working below. There were sporadic rain showers in the area. No boats left or came. We took our ‘joy’ baths in the choppy waters. In the evening, we finally ran the watermaker. The TDS (total dissolved solids) reading was 490 down to 440s at stop – barely acceptable to us, but we put it in the tank. WHOs (world health organization) considers up to 1000 potable, but US generally has 500 as acceptable.

It rained at around 2am and the winds were still in the high teens. We were getting a little stir crazy but less so than we would have been in Great Sale. We didn’t cool our fridge enough yesterday and so our ‘open’ milk spoiled, although the freezer was fine, and all the cheeses and vegetables/fruits in the fridge were ok as well. Need to run it longer today and we did! The winds shifted to SSE and we saw 30 knots briefly on this cloudy day with rain off and on and winds of 25 knots during dinner. We had about 4-5″ of water in the dinghy and Fred found the leak in the hatch over the bed. The batteries seem to be charging correctly. We spent the day on chores. We ran the watermaker for almost an hour starting with a reading of 500 and ending at 445. Not good.

The winds died down and finally we had a pleasant morning. The engine was rough to start. It sounded like a car with a failing battery. We had considered stopping at Powell Cay, but the SE wind direction would make for a bumpy night – so instead we opted for Manjack. We anchored next to a similar looking boat – cutter rigged, same size and shape although not a Valiant (or knock-off). The owners of Kristali (Steve and Carol) dinghied over soon after we anchored. They were out of Palm City and had been long time cruisers (over 35 years). They had insights into what it was like in Venezuela during the early 2000s – we had a pleasant conversation. They were heading home. OK – now time to dinghy over to one of the closest beaches. Oh no – a sign for feeding pigs. Kristali told us that someone placed pigs there so that they could charge for tourists to feed them. But although we saw tracks – no piggies to be seen. We swam on the anchor and it’s set well; Fred got a new zinc placed on the shaft and cleared the generator intake of weed. And then he started to debug the engine to narrow down our issues – engine or batteries? We had our typical ‘joy’ baths and then dinner in the cockpit. Speaking of dinner, we had a ‘date’ with John and Carla for a Cinco de Mayo dinner aboard their boat, Reverie – so hoping to see them soon. The watermaker readings were 510 down to 465 after 40 minutes – consistently bad. Wildlife sightings: None. Communications: Continues to be marginal with this phone.

Many of the boats cleared out this morning, heading north. The winds had veered more to the SW, making the anchorage a bit uncomfortable. Fred checked that the engine turned over by hand easily when cold. We expect to see Reverie arrive later today. Fred worked on hull marks while Iris did ‘garbage’ management. We took the dinghy to the cut between Manjack and Crab Cay however the tide was outgoing and it was too shallow. So we turned around and headed over to Coconut Tree Cove and beached the dinghy. Time to explore – one trail took us by a dock and towards someone’s house. The other had signage and took us to the ocean side of the island which we usually get to via the northern part of the cay. Interesting trail with lots of different mini terrains – from hardwood to mangrovey, to sandy..We knew we’d be having a rough dinghy ride back against the wind so Iris asked Fred to go more slowly into the waves. A sailboat was entering the harbor and Iris said ‘it has to be Reverie!’. Sure enough, we slowed down even more and waited while Reverie finished anchoring and then stopped by to greet them. We confirmed tomorrow’s Cinco de Mayo dinner, but also invited them over for drinks this evening.

Time to snorkel on the wrecks. We dropped our dinghy anchor and snorkeled the first wreck which had a lot of schools of fish. Iris stayed in the dinghy for the 2nd wreck, which Fred did quickly and said there wasn’t much to see. On our return to the boat, Fred scraped the prop, we took our joy baths and prepared for company. It was great hearing Reverie’s experiences and we were thrilled that they’d had a wonderful trip. Wildlife sightings Lots of fish including several 2′ parrot fish at wrecks; turtles in the cut. Communications: Continues to be marginal with this phone, although better with fewer boats around us.

After our morning generator run we headed back to the cut between Manjack and Crab Cay with today’s more favorable tide. John and Carla were there a few minutes earlier and we each took pictures of the other in our dinghies. They headed back towards a mangrove inlet to explore, while we beached our dinghy and hiked around to the ocean side. As we’ve seen on various beaches in the past, as we approached probably nests, the sand-pipers faked injury to distract us from the eggs. On our approach we didn’t see any nest, but on our return down the beach two birds gave up on the distraction and stood guard around a shallow depression with 3 eggs smack in the middle of the sand above the tide line. We dinghied across the small bay to the Crab Cay beach – where we saw tracks but no piggies. Time to head back. Iris’ flag repair used sticky tape, which then made the flag stick to the Man Overboard Pole. When Fred tried to unstick the flag, the MOB snapped. Great! We stowed the pole on deck for future repair. We had a wonderful dinner aboard beautiful Reverie and then bade them fair winds back to Brunswick. Our watermaker run was in the 500s, so instead of putting water in the tanks, we started collecting it in various containers, as we would for the remainder of the trip for dishwashing, sun-showers, and general uses. Wildlife sightings Lots of fish including several 2′ parrot fish at wrecks; turtles in the cut. Wildlife sightings Birds, sea turtles, rays, nurse shark, starfish

We’d considered backtracking to Powell Cay this morning, however the wind was from the SSW and expected to stay there, so we opted to go through the Whale. Our engine start was bad again – it’s looking like the batteries. Before going through the cut we motored around Crossing Bay on the west side of Great Abaco near Treasure Sands restaurant to see if that was an option for us. It looked like a good alternative for future times when stuck north of the Whale with south or westerlies. The ocean crossing was so benign that we towed our dinghy, and we headed directly to Red Bay (Water Cay). There were 3 boats in the area but all far apart. A swim on the anchor confirmed a good set. Fred took the opportunity to fix the MOB and Iris worked on the MOB flag. Iris tried to use her BTC Bahamas app to add $ to our account for phone calls. The app rejected one credit card and then the next. Oh no! Calls to VISA fixed the situation and all was well. The winds are expected to continue to be 15+ from the SW so we’d like to stay here tomorrow as well. After dusk, Fred got alarmed at the flashing lights and lit buildings closeby. We’ll be run down by approaching vessels! Iris did a quick internet check and apparently the Red Bay Marina complex was built by the Albury Ferry people to bring workers to/fro Bakers Bay resort. But somehow things had gone awry and at least in the last few months, it had closed. So no worries! Wildlife sightings: None. Communications: Better atho’ still marginal but we were right next to a cell tower.

We were waiting for light winds in order to drop the mainsail and try and make some adjustments. Wind was light when we got up – so we headed on deck before breakfast to drop it, adjust it and raise it while getting rained upon. Oh well – it looked much better. Fred put the MOB pole back in place. After breakfast we did some internet work and chores and then decided to explore the area. We’d anchored here once previously but didn’t look around. This time we explored various little coves. The first one was near a subdivision and there was a security guard parked at the beach so we opted to keep moving. The next one was too shallow but we saw lots of rays and turtles. The third was just right! We beached the dinghy and found a trail. Iris chickened out after awhile when the trail disappeared and returned to the beach while Fred plowed on through the brush and found a campsite, and a path to a wrecked wooden bridge we’d spied from our dinghy. Joy baths and sunshower rinses with our unpotable water ended a nice day. After dark, the crews from the two boats anchored in view, rowed ashore and had a big bonfire. They may have been waving to invite us earlier but we didn’t have our radio on so wouldn’t have noticed. Wildlife sightings: Cormorants, rays, turtles Communications: Same as yesterday

We definitely have a battery issue – the engine almost didn’t start this morning.
Fred determined that the gel cells we’d purchased in Puerto Rico were at end of life.
He split the banks and kept bank 1 in reserve for just starting the engine and we’d use bank 2 for other needs. We departed at 7:45 and motored very slowly to Marsh Harbour in order to have a full freezer/refrigerator run. There were very few boats in the harbour. Our first order of business in town, after getting rid of 10 days of garbage, was to purchase our nano-sim. We then stopped at Maxwell’s superstore for some fruit and bread, and at a liquor store for some wine and tequila before returning to the boat. What a difference the phone made – wow – we have workable internet again! Our plan was to head into town for a late lunch/early dinner but we discovered that everything was closed from 3-6. We went in at 5 and headed to Iggy Biggy – oops – closed at 5. Ok – had drinks at the Blue Hole (which used to be Curly Tales), and then moved to the recently reopened Mangoes for dinner at 6. We enjoyed our dinners and were also able to purchase ice at the restaurant. Back at the boat – the voltage on bank 2 wasn’t good. Wildlife sightings: Cars! Turtle while anchoring – water looked really clear in Marsh Harbour! Communications: Strong 4g, 5 bars cell – new sim/different phone

Oh no! First thing in the morning with only -18.3 on bank 2, the voltage was down to 11.7. We have a problem. We did an early generator run while Fred researched battery alternatives. He decided that we needed to go and buy a starter battery as a backup. So we put our hand-truck into the dinghy and headed to True Value HW (where we’d purchased batteries back in 2013.) We had the store check the charges on the two batteries they had in stock and we purchased the stronger of the two. We’d not gotten more than 1/2 a block away when we noticed that the battery was LEAKING! We turned around and exchanged it for the other, less charged one. They had no others in stock. In retrospect we should have just returned it and checked another store….Back at the boat we ran the generator for a little while to put a charge on the new battery and see if it held. Now what? Should we get fuel? All the fuel docks look full with boats. Just as we were raising anchor we saw an opening at the Conch Inn fuel dock and headed directly to it. We filled up with 48 gals of diesel and headed to Tilloo Pond – a ‘new to us’ anchorage good for the expected east wind. We got there around 2:30. Fred swam on the anchor. Joy Baths. We’re now in a rationing stage given our various boat issues: we’re rationing energy so pretty much using as little electricity as possible when the generator or engine is off. This also means that we’ll always keep the engine on while sailing because we need batteries to bring the sail in/out, furl/unfurl the genoa, raising/lowering the anchor, the autopilot, and of course starting the engine. The watermaker pump failed – no watermaking tonight! Wildlife sightings: Waves crashing on the other side of Tilloo, birds Communications: LTE and 4 bars cell

We had a calm night. We decided to spend another night here and do some exploring. During our generator run Fred worked on the watermaker. The charcoal filter had deteriorated and filled the 5 micron filter with black stuff. He cleaned the filter and got the watermaker going again. Iris made reservations at Green Turtle Club marina for 4 nights starting 5/13. While we’d liked Bluff House in 2017, finger piers were preferable. And some blustery weather was in the forecast. Chores done – let’s explore. We put the engine on the dinghy and entered Tilloo Pond – finding docks and dock ruins and homes hidden off the Pond. Small tour boats and rental boats were also coming in/out of the pond to explore. We beached our dinghy near a dock ruin and immediately found a trail headed to the ocean side of the Cay. Much of the ocean side is a preserve for herons. The terrain was shrub-meadow-like with no trees. The ocean side was very rough coral, with dramatic breaking waves – and very little of the Cay had buildings. From the ridge we had a wonderful view of the pond and Windwalker. Beautiful! As we returned to our dinghy, we disturbed a heron who clearly was trying to distract us from something. Back at the boat we had a peaceful afternoon and by evening several other boats anchored nearby. Wildlife sightings: Turtles in Tilloo Pond, heron with protective behavior, 2 dolphins around our boat. Communications: LTE and 4 bars cell.

Our plan for today was to head to Tahiti Beach. Not! Fred noticed some water in the back bilge but couldn’t trace it. Battery Bank 2 couldn’t start the engine, bank 1 was able with difficulty. And we now had a couple of inches of water in the back bilge. Fred determined that we had a leak in the spring seal. (this had happened once before several years earlier when an o-ring had shifted). Thinking that we would need parts we decided to forego Tahiti Beach and head for Man O War (which has a boatyard) – to avoid returning to Marsh Harbour. But if we needed to work on the boat, the holding in Marsh was better. We debated as we motored in the direction of both and at the last minute diverted to Marsh and anchored were we’d been 2 days earlier. Fred started making calls to every place we could in Marsh Harbour or Man O War for the spring seal. No one was open on Saturday. He reached someone on Green Turtle Cay (where we were headed on Monday in any case) who said he’d look for the part and get back to us on Monday. Great! Fred moved the o-ring and we hoped for the best. No point in staying here. Let’s move to Fisher’s Bay, have a nice lunch at Grabbers or Nippers. So off we went. Conditions were awful with waves in the anchorage with SE-SSE winds. We dragged until we set. Many other boats tried to set and gave up and left! No lunch ashore for us – we stayed aboard, had a quick swim off the boat, and complained to ourselves about the anchorage. It really wasn’t that bad – we just weren’t in the mood for it! Wildlife sightings: None. Communications: Strong 4G/5 bars cell.

Continuing to not be thrilled at Fisher’s we decided to forego Nippers pig roast and to head through the Whale. We could go to Manjack or elsewhere for the night prior to going to Green Turtle Club tomorrow. After breakfast – first job was to make sure the engine could start. Then we put the dinghy on deck – which is our usual form for ocean anything! Turns out we didn’t need to do – the Whale was flat. The anchor came up sideways and Iris had to free it with a boathook. We had a lovely motor-sail with main and staysail approaching Green Turtle. Rather than Manjack, Iris had suggested we try Coco Bay – another ‘new to us’ anchorage. There were only 2 boats in the area when we arrived, each far away. Our first anchor attempt failed in weeds/turtle grass. We then found a sandy spot and got a good set. The scenery was gorgeous and we enjoyed swims and time reading in the cockpit. A Moorings motor cat anchored quite close to us after several tries, as did a Canadian sailboat. The sailboat left late afternoon. Iris noticed that the dinghy from the furthest sailboat (there when we’d anchored), looked a little bit far from its mainship – but nothing seemed amiss. But then awhile later we noticed that the dinghy was about to pass us, heading on its own out to sea! We got on the radio and tried hailing anyone in the anchorage (really just the owner or the Moorings boat) since our dinghy was on deck and the only thing we could have done was to try and swim to it. The Moorings crew was on deck and Fred yelled to them to ask them to retrieve the dinghy. So they headed over to it and captured it and we pointed them to the sailboat ahead of us. By then, the owner had discovered that he was a dinghy short and stood forelornly on his stern. They brought the wayward dink to him and left. It didn’t look like he gave them any gift for their efforts – surely it was worth a bottle of wine? Wildlife sightings: Wayward dink. Communications: Strong 4G/5 bars cell.

Low tide is at 10:30 and we don’t want to head into White Sound until mid-tide, so we were killing time. The SW winds were sending chop into our beautiful anchorage and Fred was getting antsy. So rather than just sitting there, we decided to go for a little sail by Manjack and to confirm where Fiddle Cay ended and Crab Cay started – difficult to determine from our anchorage. We raised anchor at 12:15 and entered the entrance channel around 1:15. We were docked by around 1:30-1:45 and Fred didn’t see any shallower than 8′ the entire way. Iris checked us into the marina while Fred got everything ship shape. We once again had to rent a 50 amp adapter.
It was also interesting that the water for each slip was under lock and key. So after hosing off the boat, we locked the water back up. Fred thought we’d used 100 gals. (on checkout it was only 15!). Beautiful bathrooms, enjoyed their specialty drink in the Dollar Bar, and Fred bought himself an ice cream bar for later. A/C felt good as did having electricity and great wifi. We even watched a netflix show late in the evening. However the expected bad weather rolled in with a severe thunderstorm around 7:30. We saw 40 knots in the slip and were heeled over and briefly lost power! Wildlife sightings: Fish near the fish-cleaning station on the docks. Communications: LTE/ 5 bars cell/good wifi from GTC when using our roguewave antenna.

It was a peaceful night with some rain. After breakfast Fred worked on swapping out the engine solenoid while Iris worked on a website. Then she helped him take the mattress out of our aft berth so he could work on batteries. He found that one of the batteries on bank 2 had totally failed (and even bulged). We made several texts and calls to ‘George’ – the mechanic who was going to get back to us about parts but got no response. Between intermittent rain showers we hiked to Coca Bay beach (where we’d been anchored) and then to North beach – exploring trails and roads all new to us. Back at the resort, we sat at the pool and enjoyed conch fritters and tipsy turtles. After showers and getting changed, we went out for dinner at the patio restaurant. While waiting for our table we spoke to 3 cruisers waiting in line. They’d just arrived after experiencing a wild night at Manjack Crab Cay anchorage – they said boats were dragging everywhere. They had come into the marina to recover! We watched another Netflix program in the evening. Nice day!
Wildlife sightings: Birds as we hiked. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell; good wifi from GTC when using our roguewave antenna

Iris’ birthday. There was a small thunderstorm before we got up. Iris wanted breakfast out and had Lobster Benedict at the patio restaurant. We also made reservations for ‘steak night’. After waiting out some squalls we hiked once again to Coco Bay and found a trail to the north ocean beach and several other trails and then returned on some of the roads we covered yesterday – probably walking about 5 miles. Pina coladas pool side, then showers and a very nice dinner. No tv as Iris had a birthday phone call her friend Mar. VOIP didn’t work so well and she got disconnected several times.
Wildlife sightings: Birds. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell; good wifi from GTC when using our roguewave antenna.

Iris viewed today as a continued birthday celebration as the weather was good and we were going to rent a (gas) golf-cart and explore the rest of Green Turtle Cay. We ran the fridge early and then rented the cart at 9. First stop was New Plymouth settlement, where we hoped to find George, or at least a source for the spring seal. The boatyard on Black Sound didn’t have our part, nor did the marine store – who reached George for us. Ok – we’ll have to make do. After walking around New Plymouth – unchanged from 2 years ago, we headed out to ‘new to us’ parts of Green Turtle Cay. We explored and hiked around Gillum Bay and around the the sea of Abaco side of Green Turtle – coming close to No Name Cay. Huge amounts of seaweed everywhere made taking a dip in the ocean undesireable. Next we found Bita Beach which was supposed to have good snorkeling. It was very rocky. We spoke with a couple who got married on Green Turtle 40 years earlier, and had a house there for over 30 years. They were from VA and spent several weeks there a year and rented out the house the remainder of the year. We were surprised to see ‘city water’ was everywhere. It’s from aquifers on Great Abaco and pumped over to Green Turtle. Fred snorkeled while Iris stayed onshore – rock avoidance ;-(. We returned the cart at around 3 after having explored almost every road on Green Turtle Cay – crazy that after so many trips to the Abacos we’d never fully explored GTC! After a wonderful day we took a dip in the pool and had dinner aboard. We got ready for our return trip. Iris wanted to stop at Crab Cay/Angelfish. Fred thought that was just wasting time and that we should head directly to Great Sale. We tested the GTC marina water and it was even saltier than our watermaker, with a reading of 628. No water for us! Wildlife sightings: Fish while snorkeling, and at fish cleaning station. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell; good wifi from GTC when using our roguewave antenna .

The marina office opened at 7:45. Iris was there first returning the adapter and requesting a meter reading. We were off the dock at 8:30 and out the channel at high tide. We had a pleasant motor-sail the entire way. The engine started successfully on bank 1 and the spring seal only dripped a little bit. We saw very little boat traffic but lots of seaweed and cormorants enroute. We anchored at around 5pm with only 5 other boats in the anchorage. While we’d hoped to do Indian Rock channel, once again the tide was wrong. Memory Rock it would be again. So we’d have an early departure. We really liked ending the trip last time at West End – it made for an easier crossing to WPB and a relaxing ‘last day’. Wildlife sightings: Cormorants Communications: None except for Iridium

We raised anchor at 5:45. Once again the anchor swivel jammed – while moving, Fred had to use a hammer and screwdriver to free it. We motor sailed with almost 1 knot of favorable current and went direct to Memory Rock, cutting the corner at the end. We averaged around 6.8 knots. Iris tried calling OBB by satphone but either the numbers she had were wrong or she was dialing incorrectly. About 7 miles out she called the US 800# via Xfinity Connect and confirmed that there was room for us. We arrived at 3pm! Another boat at Great Sale left after us and did take Indian Rock Channel. When we got to the marina we asked them what they drew. 6′! They touched in several places and if they’d gotten stuck, their plan was to just wait out until high tide (which was going to be late evening). OBB was much emptier than it had been at the start of our trip. We were between sailboat season and the start of motorboat season in June. We made good use of our expensive dockage, swimming in the resort pool, enjoying pina coladas poolside and strolling around. After dinner aboard, we went to watch the sunset. Iris returned to the boat and Fred noticed several large sharks in the marina but didn’t take any pictures. Back aboard we prepared for sea (jack lines, ditch bag, safety gear, etc).Wildlife sightings: Sharks in the marina Communications: LTE/5 bars cell; didn’t use marina wifi this time

We were off the dock at 6:45. We had a relatively flat passage with very few targets – although there was a tug and tow almost immediately upon leaving the marina. We had east winds of about 10 knots and had the mainsail up with a preventor to keep it from jibing. We arrived at Lake Worth inlet at 3:30 or so and were at our slip by 5. We saw land at 20 miles offshore! And had cell coverage 10 miles off shore! Clearing in took more effort than we expected. Instead of the SVRS system used in 2017, Customs and Border patrol replaced it with an experimental app called CBPROAM late in 2018. While we’d prepared our personal and boat information before arriving in the US, every time Fred tried opening the app to report in, he got an error message saying he didn’t have location turned on. Iris tried the copy of the app on her phone and we submitted our official return. But then it just churned and churned saying application pending until reviewed by CPB official. It churned for 30 minutes and we were just about to search for a phone number when we got a push notification and an email saying we were officially back in the US. Iris later looked for reviews and discovered that about half of the reviewers had the same ‘location’ issue with their phones. The work-around seemed really awkward. So it’s still a work in progress. But we were back safely! We cleaned up the boat, had a nice filet dinner below and slept in air-conditioned comfort. A lot of work ahead of us – our list is long! But we enjoyed our trip nonetheless.
Wildlife sightings: Flying fish everywhere!

Our departure had been gated by a meeting, and more importantly, by picking up and putting on our new mainsail from Mack sails. We’d been bringing stuff to the boat for several days, leaving frozen and refrigerated foods, and final clothing and electronics items until the last day. Fred went to the boat to cool the refrigerator and freezer. Iris made two trips to the boat with the food stuffs. We closed up our home, left a vehicle at the marina, and moved aboard. Iris noticed that part of the bimini stitching separated around a zipper and she made a hand-sewn repair with the bimini in place. While we debated anchoring out, it had been 2 years since our last trip and we wanted to make sure we didn’t forget anything important – so we decided to spend the night at the dock. After dinner we went for a walk around the marina. Interestingly – our trip is starting one day later than we started 2 years ago!

Fred started the engine at 8:40am and we made the 9am PGA Bridge. We were on our way! First on our agenda was to test out the new mainsail. We went out the inlet at 10am; the conditions were choppy with irregular wind. Oh oh – the main doesn’t look like it fits very well – but the sailing conditions made it hard to judge. We’ll have to adjust it later in the trip. Back through the inlet, we dragged on our first anchoring attempt and quickly reset. Our trip was a going to be a go, so Iris made slip reservations at Old Bahama Bay and sent out our float plans to family. While Iris was making drinks and Fred was in the cockpit we heard someone calling Fred’s name. Lo and behold, the beautiful motor yacht anchored next to us was Dolphin, owned by Don and Gayle Curtis – the original owners of Windwalker! We spoke on VHF – both boats agreed that we had a short window to cross with less than ideal conditions (2-4′, 10-15K+ NE with gusts to 25K) and that we were both going to go for it the next day – Windwalker heading to West End and Dolphin heading to Cat Cay.

Neither of us slept well. The crossing forecast had gotten worse overnight (15-20K NW shifting to NE, 2-4′ seas w occasional 6′) but we were still a ‘go’. Anchor up at 5:15 and out the inlet at 5:30am. The first 3rd of the trip wasn’t bad. We tried to go by sail alone, but we were moving too slowly and conditions were deteriorating so motor-sailed into ‘sloggy’ conditions with 5-6′ seas and a lot of water coming over the bow. The mainsail looked like it had dropped or pulled out. Enroute there were several ports leaking and Iris discovered that her side of the ‘bed’ was wet. We hadn’t dogged the ports sufficiently, however one of our hatches was leaking a bit. We arrived at Old Bahama Bay at 4 as planned. Marina staff didn’t hand us clearance paperwork so Fred went to Customs/Immigration without papers filled in, which was not appreciated. Iris saw Fred trudging back to the boat with an official in tow. The official stepped into the cockpit, said it looked like a boat, and got off. Fred guessed that he didn’t believe that we had no pets, guns, bicycles or paddleboards. Iris did see him board other boats – have never had that occur in any of our previous Bahamas trips!

OBB has mandatory water charges, but we decided to also splurge on electricity and turn on the A/C to dry out the boat. But we didn’t have a 50amp adapter, so Fred once again trudged to the other side of the marina to ‘rent’ one. He then hosed off the boat on his return. However we were not happy to see our starboard aft quarter covered in black soot. We didn’t see smoke, but that side of the boat was under water most of our trip and the exhaust had to go somewhere? Iris bought 15gb of BTC Bahamas prepaid data for $35 for 30 days on the account we’ve maintained for several years now. We’d brought an older phone with us but wanted a nano sim for our newer phone and didn’t want to risk cutting our old sim. The Galaxy 3 worked ok in the interim (although we would find its internet performance was marginal.) Dinner was ok at the restaurant, and we used the showers near the marina office. OBB was in flux, having just reopened at the end of March. It’s currently being managed by the condo owners while various lawsuits over ownership are in progress.

Iris got up around 6:30 trying to listen to Chris Parker’s Bahamas forecast on the SSB (single side-band). To much interference, but we had lots of other sources of weather with the internet. We went out to breakfast at around 8 and decided to sail northwest to Memory Rock and enter the banks from there since the low tide wouldn’t allow us to take Indian Rock channel. This would add at least 2 hours to our trip to Great Sale. We left the dock at 9:23 after checking out of the marina and had a really nice sail with main/genoa, making 7 knots until we made our turn at 11:40am. Genny down and motorsailed for awhile. Fred made some adjustments to the main enroute and it looked a bit better. Then we had to take the main down as well and motor into sloppy, choppy seas for the remainder of our day. We saw very few other boats traveling in either direction and heard little radio traffic. We pulled into Great Sale after dark and immediately had a chain castle when Iris got out less than 10′ of chain. So she went below to clear the chain and we completed anchoring at 9pm. We had no cell signal, but Iris called her mother via our Iridium satphone.

Animal sightings: Manatee in OBB Marina.

Just as two years ago, we’d hoped to stay at Great Sale for a couple of days and explore the beaches some more. But once again, the conditions were expected to deteriorate and we had communications needs. So we decided to move and have breakfast enroute. We raised anchor at 7:50 and Fred had to clear a swivel jam in order to secure the anchor. We were able to motorsail slightly off the wind and had a much more pleasant day making 7 knots and with a favorable current. Three brief but heavy showers cleaned up some of the salt. We anchored at around 2pm with mixed reviews of our set upon swimming on it – Fred thought it was good for the expected blow, Iris thought it was so-so ;-). Fred noticed that our shaft zinc lost two screws that had to be fixed before we next ran the engine. He tried wiping some of the soot off of the hull as well. He fixed two leaks in the toilet, and gave the shower sump a whack to get it going! We enjoyed a celebratory steak and wine dinner in our cockpit enjoying the beautiful sky with little light pollution. We plan to be here for a few days.

Wildlife: Sea turtle, dolphin, sea cucumber, waterspout. Communications: Poor internet and 3 bars cell – this is due to phone – cell towers in view!

Iris set a daily 6:30 alarm for Chris Parker. After a relaxed breakfast and some reading and internet in the cockpit, we tackled some chores. Iris repaired our American flag which had taken a beating for the last several days. Fred dove on the zincs and removed the shaft zinc so that it wouldn’t hit the prop when it would come loose. Given the forecast, we decided that today was the best day to dinghy explore – so we put the dinghy in the water and went clockwise around the huge anchorage, checking out a flock of cormorants, abandoned construction equipment and landing the dink on the beach. We went in search of a road we’d seen on google satellite maps – but all we found were trails through the woods. But it’s always fun to discover new hikes and we went in a 1/2 mile on each of the trails we found. We continued on further around the harbor before returning to Windwalker. By evening there were 9 boats in the harbor. Fred made some adjustments to the generator and the engine. He is getting concerned about the batteries, so we didn’t make water. The winds were starting to pick up with steady 15-20knots at nightfall so he put out a little more chain with 60′ at the waterline in 10′ of water.

Wildlife: Cormorants, rainbow.

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.

While it was much calmer this morning, it still was quite windy. After breakfast, Fred decided to snorkel to put on a zinc on the shaft. He figured out a technique using masking tape to keep the screws attached while putting the zinc on the shaft. It was very hard and something he usually does using SCUBA. so he stopped after the first zinc. It’s still choppy, and since we still planned on moving, we decided to leave the dinghy on deck and explore the beach at a future time. We left the anchorage around 10:05 and motor sailed into the 20 knots on the nose and associated chop. Not too many boats out and about except for those heading with the wind. Arriving in the Manjack anchorage around 2:20, there were quite a few boats – but plenty of room. We dragged on our first anchoring attempt, had a chain castle while raising the anchor, which also came up side-ways – after a few minutes Iris got it sorted out and we set well on our second try. Time to get our dinghy in the water, at last! We were quite close to one of the wrecks along the shore and we decided to swim to/fro and snorkel. Enroute we noticed that our anchor wasn’t as buried as we’d like, but it was well set. When we first visited Manjack, at least 20 years ago, there used to be a vessel against the shore. Now one can only find various parts of the boat but lots of small to mid-size fish. It was good exercise! Wildlife sightings: Cormorants enroute, ray in the anchorage, small schools of fish at the wreck; Communications – although a cell tower was in view on Abaco Island, we had to keep the phone out in the cockpit to access data – still LTE/3-4 bars Note: Iris used Xfinity Connect to make phone calls. The caller would see the calls as from our home phone. Thus VOIP worked well and we only used phone minutes and texting locally.

We had a quiet night with the wind shifting slighly more southerly. It was a gorgeous day and we had breakfast in the cockpit. Fred used some of the ‘spare’ water to wipe off the boat from yesterday’s slog. Our plan for the day is to do our Manjack favorites. At around 10:45 we dinghied to north Manjack, using the trails and ‘avenues’ to cross to the eastern shore to the deserted Atlantic beach where we hiked for a bit. We then passed by an oceanside house we’ve mentioned in past trips – it now seemed occupied – with items in the kitchen window. We continued around the northern tip of the cay via trails which were for the most part mosquito free! When we got to the northernmost bay (called the lagoon on trail signs), lots of small excursion boats were there feeding the rays and sharks and swimming with them. We continued around the northern tip sans trail to where we’d left our dink. Our ride back to our anchorage was a bit rougher as now we were heading into the wind. Par for the course. Since the tide was good for visiting the Manjack/Crab Cay beach area, we continued there directly and walked on one of those beaches. Back at the boat we had lunch, did some emails and around 3:30 went for another snorkel on the wreck. Fred continued to work on cleaning the bottom. While several of the boats around us had changed, all was calm. Wildlife sightings: Rays and sharks.

While we’d considered staying at Manjack for another day, we both listened to Chris Parker on SSB as well as checking our preferred weather sites and decided to move through Whale Cay cut to the ‘southern’ Abacos before winds kicked up some more. We put our outboard up and the dinghy on deck for our short ‘passage’. Anchor up around 10:05, we motor-sailed through ‘the Whale’ and then anchored at Baker’s Bay around 1:30 for a lunch stop at a minimum. Baker’s Bay used to be one of our very favorite anchorages when all that was ashore was the ruin of a former Disney Cruise destination, woods, and miles of deserted Atlantic beaches. However after the ‘notorious’ Baker’s Bay Golf and Ocean Club was built, the shoreline resembles that of South Beach mansions, the marina does NOT welcome non-club members and walking ashore is probably not allowed or probably not above the tide-line. So the bay is no longer visited much by those anchoring out. We decided to spend the night for ‘old times sake’. There was a small dredge making a racket during the early afternoon, but he stopped work at 3pm. Swimming around the boat we confirmed that we didn’t have a great set on our anchor however we had a lot of chain out, we hadn’t budged in 3 hours, and we were good for predicted conditions. Two other sailboats anchored near us at dusk. After dark only a few houses on shore looked occupied. Wildlife sightings: Dolphins enroute; Big ocean-going barracuda under the boat while swimming. Communications: Fantastic LTE signal/5 bars cell.

Baker’s Bay was quiet overnight and it didn’t rain. The water in Marsh Harbour is not great for swimming, so after breakfast we went for our last ‘joy’ baths for a couple of days. The anchor came right up at 9:45 and we motorsailed to the harbor, anchoring at 12:15. We were visited shortly thereafter by a single-hander on White Rose, a 39′ Rival cutter out of Ft. Pierce. He’d seen us at Great Sale, Angelfish Pt and Manjack. He was an experienced sailor and aerobatic pilot and was in Marsh Harbour to pick up his wife arriving by air. We talked boats for awhile. After he left, we put the dinghy in the water and went ashore. First order of business was the dumpster. We were pleased to see that one had been placed right at the dinghy dock! When in MH we’re always on the hunt for something and this time was no different. Fred was in search of a max-prop zinc. We tried both hardware stores and National Marine. They referred us to the Marsh Harbour Boat Yard/Yamaha, which was pretty far away. We went to Maxwell’s Superstore for some fresh lettuce, tomatoes and fruit. We intended to dinghy back to the boat with our purchases and then go to dinner later, but the harbor wasn’t too blustery so we changed course to Conch Inn Marina’s dinghy dock. While it was still quite early for dinner, we made a late lunch, early dinner stop at the upstairs bar area at Curly Tails’. Mangoes restaurant had re-opened a couple of months earlier, but was once again closed indefinitely – a disappointment. Back at the boat, Fred called the boat yard which did have the 70mm max-prop zinc so that’s our project for tomorrow! Wildlife sightings: Lots of cars! Communications: Perfect! Far better LTE/cell signal than ever had with purchased wifi.

It was hot, humid and it rained overnight. Usually Iris is the one to move to the main salon when our aft cabin gets too hot – but Fred moved this time. After our morning generator run, we dinghied to shore and hiked to the Marsh Harbour Boatyard. We’d only seen the boatyard from offshore, so it was interesting to see it up close. It was a large operation. Success!! They had what we needed so we purchased 2 prop zincs and an extra shaft zinc. We asked the clerk about an alternative route, partially dirt road, back to the harbour and she said she hadn’t walked it in a long time, but we could try. There might be some wild dogs close to the start of the road. We were trying to negotiate some large puddles, and had already encountered some dogs when a pickup truck stopped and the driver asked where we were headed. We told him of our intended route and along with mentioning the dogs, his advice was “Don’t walk in the bush”. Ok – we didn’t need more warnings if a local advised against. We trudged back, stopping at Maxwell’s for a cold drink and were back at Windwalker by 11:15. After lunch, Iris worked on a website update. At around 3:45 a line of thunderstorms came through and we put all the electronics away and closed ourselves in for the heavy rain. HOT! But it only lasted about 20 minutes. The forecast remains windy and the predicted front, one reason why we were in Marsh Harbour, hasn’t passed yet.

At 1:05am the front hit. Heavy rain, some lightening, but we didn’t check to see how high the winds were. One of our goals for the morning was to get fuel so that if we choose to continue south to the Berry Islands, as we did 2 years ago, we wouldn’t have to come back to MH. But our dinghy was in the water and the winds were a steady 25knots with gusts higher. Not only was it going to be an ordeal to get it up on deck, approaching any of the fuel docks was going to be problematic as well. We ran the generator (for the fridge) since we weren’t going anywhere soon. And waited. And waited. We saw gusts of 30knots. At 1:30 we got tired of waiting and said forget the fuel dock; we’ll get fuel another time or at another place. So we got the outboard off the dinghy and raised anchor about 1:45 or 2pm, headed to Sugar Loaf Cay. At least there we’d still have some wind protection but be able to make water and swim. We motor sailed with 28knots true enroute, dropping anchor at 3. There were 3 other sailboats and a motor yacht already anchored. Unlike our experience in 2015, we had a great set and when Fred swam on the anchor later he noted that it was a good sandy bottom. We both did our ‘joy’ baths. Although the anchorage itself was protected, something about the geography had wakes from ferries and vessels over a mile away come as large waves, which then rebounded from the rocky shore – getting us in both directions. Our dinghy was hitting the boat, and our anchor snubber fell off the chain briefly. It’s a beautiful spot, nevertheless. At 5 the power boat left and the sailboats remained. By evening the wind had gone down to about 8knots and the temperature had dropped so that it was almost chilly in the cockpit! Iris got up in the middle of the night to look for a purported meteor shower. When she saw nothing, she looked online and found that she’d missed her chance – it was the day before! Back to bed. Wildlife sightings: None. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell

The wakes were starting early and we didn’t have far to go, so we got underway at 8:40. 2 of the other sailboats were raising their anchors at the same time. We motored to Tahiti Beach and aimed for a small sandy spot. Iris missed it, so we pulled up the anchor and tried again. It helped that Fred told Iris to use the same signaling techniques she uses for picking up moorings and that did it – got it right in the middle and we set well at around 10am. There were several boats – catamarans, motor-cats, trawlers and some mono-hulls already in the anchorage. By 1pm we’d dinghied to Tahiti Beach, walked on the beautiful sand, waded, snorkeled on the anchor, Fred put on the prop zinc (using his masking tape technique), and tightened the shaft zinc with multiple, exhausting free-dives. Phew! Time for some recreation! At 1, we dinghied about a mile across to Cracker P’s on Lubbers Quarters Cay. The bar/restaurant is no longer open for dinner, and if we missed our chance this Sunday, they wouldn’t be serving again until Wed. We both ordered some very potent house rum drinks and a very unusual grilled conch entre – marinated in rum/brown sugar. Iris spoke with one of the owners who said they stopped serving dinner during the recession (except for full moon parties and other special occasions), and it’s not hurt them financially. They’ve been doing it for 18 years and so far it’s been a good season. We walked on their small beach, accompanied by a black cat. Same one we saw 2 years ago at Lubbers’ Landing? Probably not. We were back at the boat at around 2:30. Just snacks for dinner as we were full. Wildlife sightings: cat, some fish while walking and snorkeling. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell.

We left Tahiti Beach around 9:15 and were anchored in our reliable anchorage by 11:45. Fred was suffering all day with some abdominal distress (from yesterday’s outing?) so we didn’t do anything too strenuous. There was a power boat and sailboat already anchored when we arrived and a catamaran arrived at 4. Since there was about a knot of current, we only snorkeled against the current with a quick return to Windwalker and our required ‘joy’ baths. Wildlife sightings:turtle, enroute; fish and conch while snorkeling. Communications: Strong 4g, 2-3 bars cell.

One place we’d never gotten to in many trips to the Abaocs, was the famous Pete’s Pub in Little Harbour at the south end of the Sea of Abaco. Weather conditions never seemed right and we draw too much to easily get into Little Harbour except at high tide. But our goal this trip is to do stuff we either had never done or not done in awhile (eg Bakers Bay). No wind, mild weather – no excuses today. We raised anchor around 9:30 and motored towards our destination. The water near Sandy Cay National Park was unbelievably blue – we tried to capture it in a photo. Our plan was to anchor just outside the harbour entrace off a small beach. We weren’t the first with that idea and the shallow spots seemed to be taken. We dropped anchor in sand, however our chain went right over some coral and if we dragged our anchor could become fouled in the coral. So we moved and anchored further out than we’d hoped and felt more of the swell wrapping around from the ocean. But – we we only needed enough time to dinghy ashore, explore and then head elsewhere for the night. We dinghied through the harbour entrance into the very protected, small harbor and could see the attraction immediately. High cliffs on one side, no wind, and quite a few moorings. We needed to work up an appetite, so after tying up to the nearest dock, we ‘hiked’ to North Beach (where we were anchored) and the ruins of an old light house. Time for lunch at Pete’s Pub – which advertises heavily on the local Abacos VHF net every morning. The Blaster (house drink) was potent and our lunch selections were good. Many of the picnic tables in the dining area were taken, but there was room for a lot more in season! After lunch we walked towards visible caves, labeled as private property, and visited the gallery where metal sculptures were displayed. Our price point, however, was for t-shirts! Back on our dink, we went closer to the caves; the water in the harbour was clear and was filled with sea-turtles and rays. We needed better protection for the night, so we moved across the harbour entrance to Tom Curry’s Point and anchored at around 2:30. A very large ray swam by, welcoming us. If it proved to be too rolly we could still move since it was early. But we were the only boat there, some nice homes were close by on shore, and the water was calm enough. We went for brief snorkels on the anchor and then Fred decided to stay in the water to work on the hull some more. Iris looked up to see a 52′ Lagoon catamaran, that we’d been anchored next to during our Little Harbour excursion, drifting towards us. There was no one at the helm, and they were following a small pod of dolphins; some of the10 or so French passengers were also in the water trying to swim with the dolphins. A lot of fun on board but we were at anchor and they were NOT! When they were about 2 boat lengths away I yelled to the captain – you’re getting close. The ‘captain’? moved to the wheel but made no move to take control of the boat. I got Fred’s attention in the water, and he swam to the stern and yelled to the captain – why are you coming so close to my boat? By then they were about 40′ away. The man replied “What are you worried about?” and then exclaimed “I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!”. But he started his engine and pulled away, once again drifting around the Bight of Old Robinson, following the dolphins. We were to see the vessel several more times in our stay in the Abacos and made sure to avoid them. The tranquility of our anchorage had been disturbed, but we calmed down. Wildlife sightings: rays, turtles, birds, dolphins Communications: LTE/ 3 bars cell

It may not have been rolly when we anchored, but as tides changed and the winds shifted we had a rolly evening until around 11. Where to go? Lynyard Cay wasn’t going to be good with the morning’s wind, so we started heading back towards Buckaroon at around 8:45. But wait – we’d always looked at the Spencer’s Bight as this big body of water on the chart. Dodge doesn’t show this as having an anchorage, but the Explorer charts do. Let’s give it a try – this is another location that could be untenable with ocean swells from North Bar channel. But looked good for exploration given the lack of wind and wind direction. Spencer’s Bight is the site of ruins of Wilson City – once a major logging operation and community around 1905-1910. We anchored off Spencer’s Point at 9:55 in a good sand bottom. We’d never seen any other boats there, and there were none today. Time to dinghy explore. We tried getting close to the Wilson City ruins as marked on our charts – but the shore was very rocky and we couldn’t get close. We headed deeper into the Bight and landed on a shore that had a very developed ‘fish camp’ with a small mooring ball, organized dining area, propane grill, etc. This area is on Great Abaco Island so accessible by car and there was a road ending at the camp. We took the road heading out towards the ruins, we hoped – it was a pleasant hike. It looked well-traveled with tire marks. When the road turned away from our desired direction, Iris stopped and Fred continued to follow it up a large hill. He didn’t find the ruins, but a shooting area with hundreds of empty shot gun shells. It was reminiscent of the Snake Cay anchorage – deserted, accessible by car, shot gun shells – not Iris’ kind of place…. We headed back to our dinghy to further explore the bight. The next beach had a tent or canopy on it and did not seem abandoned although we saw no one there. Given the shot gun shells, perhaps we should skip that beach. The next beach was getting us pretty far from our boat – time to return to Windwalker. Back aboard later in the day Fred noticed a small vessel with two aboard who appeared to be conching near the rocky area near Wilson City, since one of the crew jumped in the water. Another vessel seemed to be fishing. We snorkeled around the boat, Fred worked some more on the hull and we did our ‘joy’ bath routine. The anchor was buried! Wildlife sightings: Large ocean going barracuda, large ray, birds on shore. Communications: Weak/slow 4G and 3 bars cell.

Strong SW winds were forecast for the next few days and there aren’t a lot of anchorages that are great for that. But Buckaroon is – so back to Buckaroon we went, raising anchor at around 9 and anchoring around 10:38. Enroute we motored slowly to we could avoid a generator run for refrigeration. We passed White Rose headed south – but he didn’t answer on his VHF. We were the only boat when we arrived. After lunch we headed to a new area around a small island and hiked on shore. We thought it was a small island – but it actually curved around and there was much to see. As is typical, we found where boaters had assembled a small fire circle and seat(s) from debris. Later we went to the main beach and walked about. By the first evening there were 5 other boats. We had a quiet, bug free night. The next morning we decided to stay put – given the forecast. We had a lazy morning. Some boats left, 3 new sailboats arrived. The crew of Deja Vous came by to visit. They’d tracked our progress on AIS and we’d crossed from Lake Worth the same time but they stopped in Mangrove. We talked cruising history, and they had done the Caribbean 1500 in the mid 90s. We did in 99 – so we had some boating acquaintances in common. They’d never anchored in Buckaroon before because they thought it was too shallow – but our AIS seems to be a boat magnet! Earlier in the day, Fred had searched online for House on Buckaroon Bay and found an ad from 1990s for a beachhouse that totally matched the ruins we’d seen the last few times here. OK – it was clear that it was now abandoned and it was time to check it out. So we dinghied to a beach closer to the ruin and Fred headed over to explore and take some pictures. It was amazing how much remained. Then we went to a second beach were there was a broken dock and waded over to yet another cabin ruin. Sad – it’s difficult to build homes on these islands and sad to see them abandoned. Deja Vous had mentioned each of the boats ‘sporting’ a barracuda under the hull. When we returned, we too had our barracuda. Fred scared it off. By nightfall we had 7 boats in the anchorage, with a pleasant bug-free night. Saturday morning we once again decided not to move. Today was going to be the most wind and not a great dinghy exploring day. During the day, even more boats came into the anchorage and there were even a couple of sailboats at Spencer’s Bight in the distance. All hiding from the wind. Fred decided to do some more in-water work and startled our resident barracuda. The wind was a steady 18+ from the south and some of the boats decided to move closer to shore and maneuvered around to re-anchor. Wildlife sightings: Large barracuda, rays, conch, starfish, fish. Communications: Strong 4G/2-3 bars cell.

Sometime in the last few days we agreed that we wouldn’t be heading back through the Berry Islands like we did in 2015, so we needed to get fuel for the return trip. We raised anchor around 9 and motor-sailed to Marsh Harbour. The tide was perfect (high) when we approached Conch Inn Marina fuel dock. As was the case last time, the dockmaster was no where to be seen; we tied up as best we could and Iris called the Inn/Marina office to get a response. We noticed that the fuel dock was not manned from 1-2 for a lunch break, so we were ‘squeaking in’ at 12:30…. After fuel (diesel and gas for the outboard), Fred had to go to the marina office onshore to pay and to buy ice. We’d just about used up what we’d brought with us. That done, we anchored near the main dinghy dock and soon after we had a brief thunderstorm with plenty of lightening. We wanted to pick up a few items at Maxwells which closes at 4 on Sundays, so we put the outboard on the dinghy and went ashore around 2:30 – getting soaked from the waves in the harbor. A boat boy wanted to help us at the dinghy dock, but we rejected his ‘services’ and tied up. Once again, instead of returning to the boat with purchases, we opted to move our dinghy to the Conch Inn dinghy dock and do another late lunch/early dinner at Curly Tails’ upstairs. It was Mother’s Day and the formal dining room was filled with beautifully dressed families. Upstairs – not so much! We were back at Windwalker around 5 and planned the rest of our trip. We didn’t totally have Monday planned out – it was Iris’ birthday and she wasn’t being decisive about where to go, but we did know that it was a good Whale Cay Cut crossing day on Tuesday and that tides lined up for entering White Sound in Green Turtle Cay. Amazingly, this was another place we’d never visited – put off by the 5′ spots on the entry. Iris made reservations for Tues and Wed at the Bluff House Marina.

Iris finally decided where she wanted to go. While she’d loved Treasure Sands (in 2013), we didn’t want to repeat the Treasure Cay/Treasure Sands experience. Next highest rated restaurant on Tripadivisor was at Firefly Resort, just north of White Sound on Elbow Cay. As we were raising anchor at 9 and heading out of Marsh Harbour, Fred suggested that we anchor off Mermaid Reef – another spot we’d never ‘tried’. So at around 10, we anchored just ‘around the corner’ from Marsh Harbour. Now – do we swim to the reef? Or dinghy there. Iris had shoulder issues that was going to make getting back into the dinghy from the water difficult – but we took a dinghy step she’d purchased several years earlier and we’d figure out how to get her back in the boat later! We tied up to one of the 4 small boat moorings and jumped in. Where is the reef? We snorkeled to a sign identying the reef – nothing to see here…then we changed direction and passed over what looked like airplane tires with tiny fish. We know this is a beginner’s reef, but surely this can’t be it. Iris saw what looked like a small hill underwater and said let’s go that way. That’s it! Lots of brain coral like features but an amazing number of fish. Large, dark parrot fish, schools of sargeant majors, and other larger schools. Ouch!!!! What’s this? We’re being nipped at by the sargeant majors. They were behaving like pyranhas! We guessed that they were all used to being fed by dive guides and wanted their payment. We fled the area chased by several schools of fish. Meanwhile, two other dinghies had arrived and there was fresh meat in the water. So they stopped following us and we continued our tour of the reef unmolested. Fred rigged the dinghy-step and Iris was able to climb into the dinghy without too much trouble. We continued on to Firefly. There was a nice sandy spot but another sailboat grabbed it minutes before we reached it. The bottom looked grassy, but we set well. There was a lot of boat traffic going to/fro Hopetown and Tahiti Beach so there were wakes. Tahiti Beach, in the distance, was a parking lot for catamarans today. While we were swimming around the boat, a couple of other sailboats arrived – all with the intention of dining at Firefly. Iris’ choice – lunch or dinner? She actually preferred the lunch menu which is served until 6. We went ashore, tying up to their dinghy dock, and seated ourselves at one of their patio tables. While dining, we noticed two waterspouts off in the distance. Thunderstorms were in the area – mainly over Great Abaco. The resort itself is pretty, nicely landscaped and quite small. The servers were attentive and we enjoyed our delicious lunches – but there was no comparison with the type of experience (or associated price) of our Treasure Sands dinner. We bought some t-shirts and an ornament to memorialize our visit and were back at the boat at around 4:40. We raised the outboard and put the dink on deck for our trip to Green Turtle tomorrow. Iris called to confirm the reservations at the marina for tomorrow. Wildlife sightings: Lots of reef fish at Mermaid. Communications: LTE/ 5 bars cell.

The weather forecast had changed since we originally made reservations at Green Turtle. We planned to go there in any case, but now there was more reason as fairly strong winds were forecast for the next several days. We’ll see – have to get there first! We raised anchor at 6:40am and motor sailed, and then sailed through Whale Cay Cut and all the way to the entrance to White Sound on Green Turtle Cay. Winds were strong but in our favor. We were coming just around high tide. We were told to hail the marina on VHF when at the outer entrance mark and did so. We were told we’d be tying up port side-to but had no idea what to expect. Fred slowly entered the channel and never saw any depths less that around 9 except when he strayed out of the channel slightly. Side-to was not really and Iris had only rigged two bow/two stern and had lines ready for springs but not attached. What we actually had was about a 2′ or less ‘finger’ on our bow and given our conditions, needed to catch the 2 stern pilings on our way in with the spring as well as stern lines. Wind was on our stern pushing us onto the dock. Not pretty. Andrew, our dockmaster, was a pro! He fended us off the dock, and when Fred had difficulty lassooing one of the pilings, he deftly jumped aboard, ran to the stern and almost cowboy style captured the piling. We were stable, sort of…..But the finger part was about 3 ft away from the boat and Iris, even when she put a rope close to the bow, was unable to get off onto the finger. The one time she tried, she fell as she headed to the office to check us in. Not a ‘happy camper’. When Iris checked in she extended our stay for a 3rd night – so we’d be here through Friday and the worst of the high winds. The staff, Andrea and Molly, both of whom Iris had spoken with on the phone, were delightful! So were the bartenders and wait staff – both at the main restaurant – The Ballyhoo Bar & Grill, and the Sea of Abaco bar – the Tranquil Turtle. Early in our shoreside order of business was showers, and then a walk to check out the grounds and a short hike to the Tranquil Turtle at Bluff House Beach. The Bluff House itself, something we’d heard about for over 20 years, was severely damaged in a storm several years earlier, and was no longer in use. We learned later that entire marina/resort had apparently been sold recently and was going to have major changes. We enjoyed our first dinner, Surf & Turf night, that evening and were to dine there all 3 nights! In the evening, Fred made some adjustments to the lines when Iris tried to get back aboard and that made how we sat in the ‘slip’ unsafe for our expected conditions. It took quite awhile our first evening to get things the way he wanted them. We were both tense and waiting for the worsening conditions.

Wednesday we found that Iris can get off/on the boat fairly easily from the bow – stepping onto or off the anchors. We’ve had to use that technique on occasion, and it worked well for Fred as well as our bow was the closest point to ‘land’ at all stages of tide. We weren’t going to pay for water, but did use extra watermaker water to once again clean up some anchor dirt and salt. Today was a chore day – Fred repaired the raw water pump, Iris repaired the Bahamas courtesy flag – which had somewhat shredded in the high winds. We’d already taken down our US flag yesterday when the winds started to increase. One thing that IS fun about marinas, is that we get to chat with fellow cruisers. We met our slip neighbors, John and Marcia on S/V Acadia on their first trip to the Abacos from CT. At the bar late afternoon, we met Sally and John on a Hatteras, from Treasure Isle FL – who vacation in Green Turtle every season. Fred also chatted with several people while working on deck. After lunch it was time to explore this end of Green Turtle Cay, and we took a hike to Green Turtle Club Marina. Iris hadn’t made reservations there because the charts showed they didn’t have a lot of depth. No longer true. We spoke with their dockmaster who said all had been dredged in the last year and that they had plenty of depth. Next trip perhaps. They had longer docks and seemed to be in a calmer area of the harbor for our current conditions. After our walk it was time for a swim in the inviting Bluff House pool and showers. Another enjoyable dinner out and back to the boat. Winds in the evening were reading steady 28 knots on our instruments. A lot of chop in the small harbour.

It was still windy on Thursday morning. Fred did internet work while Iris tried to revive her smartphone that had bit the dust a couple of days earlier. We’d been using Fred’s phone as primary because he had hotspot function and Iris’ didn’t. But hers was in a permanent reboot/blue screen loop and every technique to fix it she found online didn’t work. We told our family that if Fred’s phone failed we might not be able to make contact on our return trip and failure to communicate didn’t mean anything had happened to us. We hoped to go for another hike after lunch but had to wait out a downpour. We went for a shorter walk to memorialize our stay with pictures, then Fred worked on our dinghy, which was attempting to shed its rub-rail while Iris tried to figure out how to file an SVRS (Small Vessel Reporting System) float plan with the coast guard. SVRS allows local boaters to clear back into the US by phone (like it used to be pre-9/11). But the system doesn’t recognize last anchorage as last port of call and requests either a marina, residence or launch ramp as alternatives. So Green Turtle was going to be our last port of call prior to heading home. It was a little unforgiving in format too and Iris had to try a couple of times before it ‘took’. She later discussed SVRS with our Acadia neighbors, as they were going to be doing the same thing for the first time as well. Back for a drink and swim at the pool, we met a couple on Horizons, a very salty boat anchored in bouncy harbor. They were circumnavigators, and he’d owned the boat for 40 years! Good conversation! Tonight was Pizza night in the dining room and we shared a lobster pizza – yum! Both of us were getting anxious – how were we going to get off the dock if conditions didn’t abate some? But Fred had a plan! We enjoyed watching Netflix using the marina’s wifi.
Wildlife sightings: Rays off the beach, birds as we hiked, fish around the docks Communications: LTE/5 bars cell; excellent marina wi-fi.

Bad night (for Iris). She went to the head at 1am and stepped into an inch of water. Damn – she knew that somewhere during the trip she’d forget to turn the valve on our toilet water kit that adds ‘deoderant/lubricant’ to our toilet fixture. We use the ‘kit’ sporadically because the setup we have no longer allows it to remain on all along without bringing sea water into the boat. She was afraid she’d awaken Fred when she turned on the shower sump pump, but he slept through the racket and then it took her 45 minutes more to dry the bathroom and the cabinet area under the sink. Her fault and her problem to fix! We told the marina that we’d be heading out around 11. Fred started adding looped lines and removing those tied to the pilings to ease our exit. At around 10 we shut off shorepower and had Andrew take meter readings and Iris went ashore to close out our marina account. At 11 we got Andrew (and his assistants) attention as Fred started removing lines. The engine was warm and running and with full power Fred go us out of the slip at 11:27, backing into the still strong easterly winds. We weren’t even at mid-tide yet but it was a rising tide and we had more than sufficient depth to get out of the channel. Green Turtle Cay – White Sound – we will return! We headed to Powell Cay and anchored with about 7 other vessels already there at 2pm. Conditions weren’t ideal and the anchorage was a little bit bouncy – perhaps we were a little too far out. But we were only here for one night and had a good set. We put the dinghy in the water, walked on the various beaches – but didn’t go for our usual strenuous cross-island hike. We had time to snorkel on the anchor and our joy baths before bringing the dinghy back on deck. Tomorrow we plan to get to Great Sale Cay as we start heading home. While the gulf-stream crossing isn’t good yet, it looks like we have a crossing window on Monday or Tuesday, with the window closing with west winds on Tuesday night to Wednesday, after which there will be west winds for several days. The northern Abacos have limited anchorages good for westerlies so we were somewhat committed. Winds stayed at 19 knots with higher gusts and by evening there were 10 boats in the rolly anchorage. Wildlife sightings: Turtles and a shark swimming along the beach, birds ashore. Communications: LTE/5 bars cell from Cooperstown across the Sea of Abaco.

We sent float plan emails out in the morning and let our family know that once again we’d probably be out of communications at Great Sale. Anchor up at 7:45, motor-sailing all day. We could see that our Green Turtle neighbor was leaving Bluff House Marina, on AIS. They only drew 4′ so they could leave independent of tide. They too were headed to Great Sale. We anchored at 3:45 – underway for 8 hours. Fred swam on the anchor – far too murky to see. By nightfall there were at least 18 boats in the anchorage – all probably taking advantage of the same window Most would probably head to Mangrove Cay tomorrow, or Indian Rocks Channel or Memory Rock Passage. Iris sought a cell phone signal and was able to get out an ‘all well’ text message, but that was it. We discussed our alternatives. We could do an overnight using Memory Rock (been there done that), or stop in Mangrove (been there done that) or do Indian Rock channel west to east (new for us) and either go into Old Bahama Bay or anchor out at one of 2 iffy anchorages. We’ll decide tomorrow…. Acadia came in late and anchored closer to the entrance. A single-hander anchored very near to us. His only crew was a large dog. Wildlife sightings: None Communications: 4g for 5 seconds, 0 bars cell.

We had decided on Indian Rock Channel and had to time the tide, so we departed Great Sale at 7:15 and motor sailed towards the pass, entering the channel at 3pm. Enroute we hailed Old Bahama Bay and said we’d need a slip for the night. While Iris had hoped for anchoring out, it was a good decision because both the anchorages looked very rolly. We docked at 4:15. Acadia and the single-hander also came in shortly after we did. Oh no! Seconds after we’d docked we were inundated with no-seeums (altho’ they were kind of seeums). Never had we encountered such an onslaught since mosquitos at Cape Sable several years earlier. Also – the marina had completed its Hurricane Matthew repairs and was now charging $2.99/foot. We didn’t have a splitter for 50amp service and didn’t want to rent one, so no electicity (eg for a/c). What seemed like a good deal coming was not so much on our return. While Fred hosed off the boat, Iris changed the SVRS float plan to reflect our changed departure port. We went for a short swim at the resort’s beach and then showered. Iris had yet again an unpleasant ladies room experience with almost no shower pressure.The single-hander next to us asked if we’d mind him running his generator since he was having battery issues aboard. We said – no problem as we’d be doing the same to him later. Fred went aboard his boat to see if he couldn’t help debug the charging problem, but was unable to fix it. So the captain turned on his generator. What he hadn’t mentioned was that while he was running this on-deck gas generator, he commanded his dog to stay in the cockpit and left the boat! The dog howled while he was gone and when we later went for a walk, we spied the captain sitting at the bar. Oh well. For future reference – the restrooms and showers near the Dockmaster’s Office look lovely, clean and spacious. Use those! We used mosquito coils out in the cockpit, and even below later as we ran our a/c and tried to rid our below-decks of no-seeums. We spoke with several west-bound boaters and prepared for our next day’s passage, contacted family and updated float plans. We dined aboard. Wildlife sightings: Do no-seeums count? Communications: Excellent wi-fi, LTE, 5 bars cellphone.

We left Old Bahama Bay at 6:15am. Acadia had departed a few minutes earlier. We had an excellent crossing and AIS once again made things easy, except for one encounter with a freighter. We were on a too close approach and had the right of way. Fred hailed the vessel and they changed course briefly, but then a few minutes later, returned to their original course making our CPA (closest point of approach) a collision. Fred turned us around unti they passed, but we lost a lot of ground to the Gulf Stream in those few minutes of manuevering and we now had lost a lot of the southing we’d made. The only vessel with us the entire way was Acadia and we entered Lake Worth inlet about a 1/2 hour before they did. It was a flood tide and a wild ride through the inlet – we were doing 8.6 knots! We usually don’t pay much attention when we go in/out for the day – but it was exciting. It was still early enough – do we go to our slip or anchor out. Usually we opt for the latter, clean up after the passage and go into our slip the next day. But we decided if we made our first bridge in time we’d go to Windwalker’s home. Fred promised that we’d spend the night aboard and NOT rush to get to our residence that night. Deal. We made the bridges and were tied up by 5:45. Fred called the SVRS number to clear us into the US and it was easy. The person answering found our float plan, Fred confirmed the crew, and the guy said ‘Isn’t SVRS great? Isn’t it easy?” Yes – it was! And so we ended a great trip – one of our best. We thanked Windwalker for being kind to us!

Iris had some website work she needed to do in the morning, so kept awakening throughout the night. At 7 she got to work. After breakfast, we brought up the dinghy engine and dug out our dock lines for taking on fuel. Fred called the Conch Inn Marina but got no response via VHF. We decided to raise anchor and head over to the fuel dock – no dock hand in sight and we got ourselves tied up to the dock. Iris called the resort by phone and the operator took awhile, but finally told Iris that the dockmaster would be heading over. Finally! After fueling, the dockmaster informed Fred that he would have to go to the marina office in order to pay and drop off trash. Fred disappeared and it seemed like forever before he returned to Windwalker. By then the dockmaster had disappeared again. As we shoved off the dock, a sailboat approaching the fuel dock asked us how we contacted the dockmaster – we replied via phone. By now it was time to listen to the net as we left the harbor. Very disturbing news – a possible tropical storm was forming over the Northern Bahamas with possible landfall in FL and the East Coast on Tuesday. Where to go? What to do? We’ll have to study more this afternoon. We continued motoring to Snake Cay.

Oh no – another anchoring drill. We got to Snake Cay around noon but kept failing to set and then had a chain jam so bad that Fred had to disassemble the windlass due to a knot in the chain in the anchor locker. Whenever we fail to hand flake the chain at 50 feet (such as in multiple anchoring attempts) we’re asking for trouble. Finally, it felt like the anchor ‘caught’. Not so much. When we swam on it after lunch, it was just sitting there not doing much of anything. We didn’t recall a problem last time we were here – but the couple we met at Powell Cay had told us that they never were able to set their anchor in Snake. Let’s hope for light winds and that our chain will hold us in place. Last time we were here, we were a little worried about our security. Same again. We were the only vessel in the anchorage and mid afternoon a car drove to the ‘end of the road’ and parked. The passenger(s)? opened one of their doors and the car stayed there for 2-3 hours with no one walking around. They left at dusk. And we locked ourselves in for the night! We briefly discussed moving to an anchorage further south in preparation for a passage on Sunday.

At around 3:40am the wind kicked up and was entering the anchorage. Iris checked the anchor alarm about every 20 minutes until she got up since our anchor set was so tenuous. Over breakfast we discussed the weather; we don’t want to head to unknown anchorages in deteriorating conditions but let’s do something else! How about Man O War since we’d like to run the water-maker, use the Internet and have good holding in a NE Blow. There were a couple of anchorages that would meet those needs. Oh Oh, the chart-plotter is acting up this morning with buttons not responding. We motor-sailed to Man-O-War. Our first anchorage choice was very bouncy; we went north of the charted cable and set the anchor however there was no internet and it too was uncomfortable. But we hadn’t been in ‘town’ in over 20 years so it was time to explore and have lunch out. The dinghy was left at one of two dinghy docks. The inner anchorage moorings were almost all taken, many with bare-boat charter boats but some clearly permanent live-aboards. Our first stop ashore was to the Sail Shop. Iris bought her ‘sailing’ canvas hat there and was hoping for a replacement, but they didn’t seem to make those kinds of hats anymore.
We wandered through the well-kept streets and looked at some booths at a small church fair, ending up at Dock & Dine for an excellent harbour-side lunch. Everyone was having the ‘special’ as did we.

The tide had gone out quite a bit as we made our way back to Windwalker and we had to negotiate some very shallow spots. Next stop – back to Fisher’s Bay. We managed to find a ‘blue’ sandy spot and set the anchor around 3pm. A quick snorkel confirmed that we had a much better set than we’d had at Snake Cay. At dusk, several charter catamarans came racing into the anchorage – some heading for moorings, but most anchoring in the middle of the mooring field (a no no). Everyone else was very nervous – with some shouting heard and many owners on deck making sure the newcomers were well-set. Some of the catamarans did drag and changed location. By dark the temperature dropped quite a bit – it was in the low 70’s. We were in good spirits and comfortable. Review: Dock and Dine

Somewhere in the middle of the night the wind clocked to the NW. Depth was fine at 8′ but we’d swung 80-90′. It was Sunday – what does one do in Great Guana on a Sunday? Go to the Nippers Pig Roast! Of course we hadn’t done so since 2000 so time to check it out again. We figured all the catamarans were there for Nippers, but most had gone ashore last night and the anchorage cleared out in the morning. Perhaps Nippers will be empty? NOT!!! The place was hopping, with lots of folks bringing their luggage with them, just arriving or leaving by ferry. In the last 15 years a lot had changed: there was a very organized payment setup, along with drink tabs. Tickets in hand, the next improvement was that the buffet was indoors and overflowing as opposed to running out of food. Winds were blowing at over 20 knots so we opted to eat inside – where music was dampened somewhat, along with the breeze. There was an indoor bar running the same ‘tab’. Happy and sated, we left the bar scene and walked the roads nearby. The seas were high and breaking oceanside and the temperature had continued to drop. Back at the boat we took ‘cold’ joy baths and Fred noted that we’d dragged 15-20′ overnight but now the anchor was totally buried. The forecast was for further deteriorating weather and rain Monday through Tuesday night, so we may leave tomorrow.

Our plans for the day had included updating our Active Captain database which had gotten corrupted and to read our Sunday paper online – using OOINET. The hotspot was down all day and phone calls to OIINET went unanswered. We managed to read the paper on Iris’ phone, but we were disappointed in our internet service.

Excitement for the day was not over….Iris went to the engine room to switch water tanks and saw the ‘floor’ was wet. Fred checked the back bilge and there was LOTS of water. Of course it was after dinner and dark out. The generator vented loop had failed and sprayed saltwater all over the port lazarette. Fred replaced it. Lucky it wasn’t something worse. Review: Nipper’s Beach Bar and Grill

It began raining at 6am and all the anchored vessels were pointing E. After reviewing the weather forecast on Barometer Bob and having breakfast we decided to head to Marsh for shelter. Something is brewing that may or may not become a tropical storm. We motor-sailed over and were anchored by 10am, with somewhat of an anchoring drill. The wind was blowing 15-20 and the chain got caught on the 2nd CQR on the bow roller. Iris signaled for Fred to move forward so she could release the chain and we had a good set. But by now we were too close to another boat and a shallow spot; so we moved about 5 boat lengths further up – much better!

Great OOINET signal. The weather was still cooperating so we took the opportunity to head ashore and besides a trash-run, see if we couldn’t negotiate an extra day of internet service, since we’d totally lost a day. We were surprised to see a young ‘boat boy’ trying to help us with our dinghy painter at the dinghy dock. Fred rebuffed his services and the young man wasn’t having any luck with anyone else. I think this was a first for us in the Abacos or elsewhere in the Bahamas. We headed to the OOINET offices, where the owners were ‘in’. They granted us the extra day however insisted that the hotspot was up all day and showed us as being logged in with traffic. We weren’t going to debate it but we did enjoy talking about old times – using their services in 2000 by bringing our laptop ashore, in 2003 by renting a dongle for their network, and other tech talk. By now it was time for lunch, so we headed to Curly Tails and then on to Iggy Biggy across the street for t-shirts and some Christmas ornaments. It was a somewhat wet ride back to the boat. The captain of a neighboring sailboat came by to chat. He was south-bound. Fred worked on cleaning exhaust stains off the hull. Review: Curly Tails

It rained through the night with some high winds Water dripped on Iris’ face with the hatch closed – guess we have a leak. After breakfast it began to rain in earnest – we guessed around 5-6” at a minimum. This is stupid – we should be collecting water! We were reluctant to put it in the tanks, but we put out all of our various containers and Iris filled and refilled containers. The salinity of the water was an amazing 4-5 PPM! Good stuff, rain ;-)! After the rain abated Iris used the water to wash decks, wash hair/bathe, and she still had 8 gallons left. There was way too much static to listen to the radio altho’ the internet worked well. The ‘storm’ later formed as TS Ana. Weather no longer an issue – we’re headed south to Lynyard Cay tomorrow.

The weather continues to suck – it started to rain around 6:30am. We want to head home some way – perhaps let’s just go back the normal route and head to Water Cay for tonight. We went ashore for the ‘final’ trash run and disagreed on where to go next. Why not wait a couple of more days before deciding which way to go back and see if the winds improve for the Berry’s. We changed our plans again and headed for Buckaroon Bay for the expected W/SW winds tonight. On our way we were seeing 20-25 knots on the nose from the S – not what was forecast but ok for Buckaroon. We anchored at 1pm, sitting right on top of the same spot we were on 5/7 two years ago. The only other vessel around was departing as we arrived. The winds were too high for dinghying around, but we snorkeled off the boat. Windwalker is coated in salt! Our bilge pump alarm went off while underway; fortunately it was just a leak in our sun-shower bag. No one else arrived by dark. We also had great phone data if we need to file a float plan for heading south.

The winds abated and when we awoke the seas were flat. Iris suggested that these were probably the best conditions ever for taking Windwalker to Sandy Cay (National Park) to snorkel. Fred came up with an alternative since we were so well anchored – why not just dinghy from here? We’d be able to pick up one of the small boat moorings. So around 10, we headed for the 2 mile run, pointing in the general direction of Sandy Cay. Conditions continued to be flat, and we picked up a mooring on the ‘ocean’ side with almost no swell. There were a couple of other small vessels in the area with folks snorkeling. Just as Fred jumped in the water with his snorkel gear, his mask strap broke! So close but so far! He got back in the dink and managed to re-attach/jury-rig the strap and off we went. The reef, while pretty, was not as dramatic as we expected. There was a lot more fire coral than we’d seen in a very long time anywhere. While there were a lot of fish, there weren’t large schools. Fred missed a large ray that swam an arms length in front of us as he was investigating something else. But finally – we’d gotten here after several attempts in the past. We had a fast dinghy ride back to Windwalker to drop off our snorkel gear and the outboard stalled a few feet away, but Fred quickly restarted it and we headed to the beach to explore. By now we’d made another decision – we were going to leave for the Berry Islands tomorrow. So we brought up the dinghy engine at around 12:30 and mid-afternoon started preparing for sea. The east coast of the the southern part of Great Abaco has little in the way of shelter so we were going to have a long run, with the goal of getting to Sandy Point, an unprotected anchorage on the very southern part of the island. We put together our ditch bag, put out the jacklines, filed our ‘float plan’ with family and made reservations for the ‘renowned’ via Active Captain, Great Harbour Marina for Saturday. Iris set a wakeup alarm for 5am.

Iris got up a few times during the night and finally stayed up at 4:45 to check the weather. No wind. We were hoping for some with a northerly or easterly component. Fred got up at around 5:15 and he suggested waiting another day. Iris asked if we would leave if we were back in ‘cruising’ mind-set. The answer was “Yes”. More back and forth between us and finally we decided to go for it! We left 15 minutes late at 6:15 and raised our mainsail just short of North Bar channel. Shortly thereafter we saw several fishing boats heading out of Little Harbour. Other than that there were a few northbound sailboats. We saw 2-3′, to 3-5′ seas enroute with winds from the S at 9-10knots. After we made the turn at Hole in the Wall, then conditions were flat to 1′. We tried sailing only, but were moving too slowly. For those interested, we had phone/data coverage from up to 7 miles offshore for much of our passage and at Hole in the Wall. We also saw a good Bahamas Wi-max signal at Sandy Point. We worked our way into the roadstead anchorage and had good holding in sand in 8′. There was a slight roll that made Fred queasy. While we did not go ashore, Sandy Point seemed to have a few nice houses on the beach, and definite employment on the Disney island Gorda Cay – where we could see Disney Fantasy on the horizon. It left shortly after we anchored and ferries brought workers (and/or entertainers) from Gorda Cay aka Castaway Cay. Another sailboat anchored further offshore in deeper water after dusk. We had a quiet night with good sky.

Iris got up at around 5:45 before sunrise. The sea was calm, whippoorwills sounded onshore, and engines from the ferry heading to Castaway Cay broke the calm. This morning, it was Disney Magic approaching the Cay. We raised anchor around 6:45 and motor-sailed the entire way against adverse current and lots of shipping traffic easily identifiable with AIS. Amazingly, we had phone/data coverage for most of the way. Majesty of the Seas was visible from over 12 miles away as we approached Little Stirrup Cay. Both Little and Great Stirrup had a lot of structures on shore. We turned south along the western shore of the Berry’s and found the almost hidden channel into the protected harbor, arriving at the marina around 3pm. A dock hand helped us tie up in our assigned slip, only for all of us to realize we couldn’t reach the power/water connections. So a ‘drill’ to move us to the adjoining slip and getting us settled. Iris checked in at the office and we tentatively planned to stay a week. First order – showers! Fred hosed off the boat and we had our ritual Friday night dinner below, enjoying the air-conditioning. Then it was time to explore. A map of the area given to us at the marina office, showed a place from which to view the sunset. Halfway there, the sun had set, so Iris balked at continuing our search – maybe another day. Iris did the dishes with the remaining rain-water – 5 days worth of water – great! A sailboat docked next to us at around 8:30pm.

It’s Sunday! We’d read on Active Captain and Tripadvisor that Carriearl was the place to go for brunch. It is also the only restaurant on Great Harbour Cay that takes credit cards. It is pretty much a cash-only island, except for the marina. Anyway – Iris called and made a reservation for 11:30 and we started our 1/2 hour walk to get there. We had no idea what to expect. The proprietors greeted us and seated us at coffee table/sofa for our complimentary mimosas while we perused the menu. Another couple there left shortly after we arrived. We enjoyed speaking with the owners in the lovely setting.

Back at the boat we noted that not only had the vessel next to us left, so too had many others. The place seemed dead. It was clear that Fred was bored already. Clearly off-season is not the time to be here if boater camaraderie is what one seeks. Iris had, for the second time this trip, a severe reaction to alcohol coupled with exertion and heat. She felt like she was about to pass out after the walk and Fred quickly got her down to the air conditioning to cool down. We spent the afternoon relaxing, updating websites and walked to see the sunset, this time successfully! Review: Carriearl

Fred did some projects in the morning. Around 11 we walked the 1.3 miles to the Beach Club, where we had lunch and then walked the long beach. We were surprised to see 3 catamarans anchored off shore in large, uncomfortable looking swells. On the way back we explored the Yacht Club ruins. The Berry Islands had a glamorous history in the 60s/70s before falling into disrepair. We read up on the history when we got back to the boat: See Great Harbour Cay History. We hoped to rent a motor scooter to explore the island – and stopped by Happy People at the marina; they said they no longer rented scooters and we could pay $40 for a car or $60 for a golf cart. Neither choice appealed to us. Iris asked Hans how to walk to town and he gave her directions – perhaps tomorrow? A couple of sailboats came in – both planning their returns to FL. One spent the season in Eleuthera; the other went as far as the Turks and Caicos. We passed on the weekly marina pot-luck and ate below. Fred started campaigning for leaving on Wednesday in order to get home on Thursday so we wouldn’t be on passage for Iris’ Friday birthday. Iris had hoped to have her birthday dinner at Carriearl. Oh well. Review: Beach Club

We both spent the morning on chores. Iris worked on a good cleaning below while Fred worked on our outboard. It showed signs of problems after our long trek to Sandy Cay and he found several things wrong, including a broken tang that secures the top. Nothing a short line can’t fix. We then both worked above decks, cleaning our exterior. A Canadian couple, anchored outside the harbour, dinghyed to the marina. They said that they’d tried to head to Grand Bahama two days in a row and turned back. We discussed other alternatives since they were FL bound. Don’t know what they finally decided to do. After lunch, we used the overhauled outboard as an excuse to do some dinghy exploring. Bardot Beach (yes – she was one of the movie stars who spent time here in it’s heyday) was our destination, and we sat in the water at this tiny beach. We saw some small fish and a ray jump. Walking through the trees, we found a road which we walked a bit. We dingyied back to the marina. We ate dinner at the restaurant right near the marina – Rocky Hill Pool Bar and Restaurant – an open air affair. Food was definitely cooked to order on the grill near the bar ;-). We were the only diners, although there was a newly-wed couple at the bar. We went to sleep to sounds of thunder. Review: Rocky Hill Pool Bar and Restaurant

Iris awoke at 5am. Fred had been sleepless, anxious to leave. We discussed the weather and at 6am decided it was a go. So we crammed in breakfast, float plan, weather, route, dinghy and outboard up, checking out of the marina, and were out of our slip by 7:30! Since we would have many hours on the banks, we did our ‘sea’ preparation enroute. Naively, we hoped to anchor on the banks for the night and continue to Lake Worth inlet in the morning. Our decision point was in about 6 hours. Around lunch time we approached a freighter anchored in the middle of nowhere. As Iris was bringing up Fred’s sandwich he rebuffed her with a “Not now”. I looked around and saw a large skiff with about 7 men in it veer off their course to the freighter and head towards us at high speed. We stared at them, one of them waved and they changed course back to the freighter. We were tense. The wind was behind us (better than on the nose). When we reached our decision point it was clear that anchoring on the banks was not to be – the chop would make it untenable. Ok – an overnight it will be. Had we thought about it more, we could have changed our route to anchor off of North Bimini, but by the time that occurred to us, we were too far north to make that a viable alternative.

We continued on our way and once in the Gulf Stream, started to see a lot of shipping traffic. AIS showed us that we were on a collision course with Majesty of the Seas. Fred hailed the cruise ship on 16 and they nicely changed course to avoid us. We continued to be surprised at how many sailboats now had AIS transponders and were identifiable. We were making good time in the Gulf Stream and conditions weren’t too uncomfortable. At 5:15am, about 10 miles from the Lake Worth Inlet, we were suddenly lit up with a spotlight with another fast approaching vessel. This time it was the Coast Guard. They came up alongside, shining their lights on us and shouted their questions (due to our and their engine noises) – where were we going, where did we come from, how many onboard, any weapons, did we buy anything? Then they wished us a safe trip and sped away. We were at our slip by 7:45, called Customs/Immigration and were home by 8:45am. We went out to breakfast, then to the Port of Palm Beach to clear Immigration. We opted to sign up for the local boater option/SVRP at the suggestion of the officer so that our future re-entries will be conducted by phone. While we were waiting in the 2-way mirror ‘lobby’ once again, a Canadian couple had difficulty with their paperwork and were denied clearance. They were still dealing with the officials when our papers were approved and we were officially home!

For once, we had a pretty laid-back set of prep days and a no-fuss departure! Clothing and supplies were already aboard, and we’d loaded up the freezer and fridge the previous day. For peace of mind (ours and Iris’ mom), we activated prepaid minutes on our old Iridium Motorola 9500 satphone so we’d always be able to receive emergency texts or make daily calls when out of cell-phone reach. So all we had to do before leaving the dock was get up early to run the refrigeration, make some calls, visit Mom, and bring incidentals and electronics. We left the dock at 10:45, made the 11am bridge, took on fuel at North Palm Beach Marina at 11:30 and headed to Lake Worth Inlet.

Our plans were to do a quick check on the ocean and wind conditions, which were expected to be the same tomorrow. If the E/SE wind would permit us to go to Old Bahama Bay – that was our goal, otherwise we’d head towards Memory Rock and Mangrove Cay. The seas were ok, the wind, not so much. We headed back in the inlet and anchored around 1. The afternoon was spent on prep – ditch bag, make sure all on deck secure, jacklines, make sure that Old Bahama Bay had room, and file a float plan with Iris’ mother and Fred’s sister. We were relaxed and ready to go! Our very rough plan was to take around 6-8 weeks, start in the Abacos, continue down to Royal Island, Eleuthera, Exumas and return via The Berrys and Bimini.

We got up at around 4am and were ready to go at 4:45. However weather was not obliging. A line of thunderstorms was coming on shore and there was lightening all around. We had some more coffee and waited until 6, raising anchor at 6:15. It was very slow going – even motoring we were only able to make 3.6 knots in the SE wind. When we were within range of Old Bahama Bay, around 4pm, we hailed them and received a slip assignment. However the ‘bad news’ was that the dockmaster would be leaving at 6, which was our ETA. We would have to clear in to the Bahamas and do paperwork in the morning. We ran the refrigeration before we entered the harbor so that we wouldn’t need to pay for electricity. As we entered, the dockmaster was just locking up her office and waved and shouted that she’d see us in the morning… Fellow cruisers, all heading home after spending the season in the Abacos, helped us with our lines. Security wasted no time in getting a credit card imprint. But we were there safe and sound!

Since we had to pay for water we’d better make the best of it, so Fred hosed off the salt-laden deck. Hmmm. Found some tiny delrin balls on deck – where did they come from? TBD. The boat was clean, now time for us. Fred hit the showers first, and as he returned, it was Iris’ turn. However the ladies shower stalls were clogged with 3-4″ of pretty disgusting water. While she could have walked around the marina to another building, it was easier to just go back to the boat. While drying off, Iris heard Fred having an animated conversation on deck with someone we clearly must know. Yes – it was Don and Gail Curtis – the original owners of Windwalker, and now on their motor yacht Dolphin. We caught up for a little while; Don was pleased to see that we still had many of his improvements and inventions onboard. They headed off. We closed our float plan, handled email, and tested that our Xfinity Connect app let us call Iris’ mother over our wifi connection. Dinner at the resort’s restaurant was actually better than we’d recalled from 2013, and service was prompt and pleasant. Nature sightings: Sea birds, lots of Man’O War ‘jellyfish’, flying fish. Ships: a few but not a factor with the help of AIS.

We started the morning with Eggs Benedict, after which Fred went to the marina office while Iris made some more calls. We still had to wait for Customs/Immigration, so we fresh-water flushed the watermaker for 10 minutes and then ran it for an additional 20 minutes overboard to clear the system of the pickling chemicals. By 10:15 we were leaving the marina, officially in the Bahamas. 2 years ago we took Indian Cay Channel on a rising tide. This time we were passed high, but decided to risk it on a falling one. The shallowest spot we saw was about 6.2′ on our depth-sounder. We draw 5.5′ so we were fine. After the Barracuda Shoal Waypoint, we had glorious banks sailing until about an hour before Great Sale, making about 6-7 knots consistently, with very little chop and using our main, staysail and partially furled genny in 15-20 knots on the beam. Two other sailboats were going through Indian Cay for the first time (as we overheard their VHF conversation) and both chose to stop at Mangrove Cay around 2. We did that in 2013, and decided that we were making good time, having fun, and should keep moving. We ran the engine for the last hour, topping off our refrigeration and anchored around 7pm. We had some heavy rain after dinner, (and what seemed to be a microburst at around 11pm – lots of wind but no rain) but we were secure. Around 10 boats were in the anchorage. Nature sightings: none.

Today, Great Sale became a new destination island for us. We’d never landed on Great Sale before, although we had done some dinghy exploring on past trips. We’ve probably spent more time in this anchorage than anywhere else because we have used it as a stopover in almost every trip to the Bahamas in one direction or both. But thanks to Active Captain, we discovered that there are some old roads ashore by which one can hike to the western shore. After our morning chores (refrigeration, sat phone call, minor maintenance and cleanup), we put the dink in the water and went in search of the wrecked dock which purportedly marked the trailhead. We saw something likely with our binoculars, from the boat and headed directly to it. NOT! Major shallows between us and the dock forced us to backtrack and head back towards it from a more northerly approach. As cruisers usually do, the dock was festooned with various colorful trash from the sea, as was part of the trail. Apparently not well enough for us, because we took a wrong turn early in our walk and ended up bushwhacking on a limestone rocky surface with lots of crevices and sharp shrubs. Hitting a dead-end we took another detour and found the remnants of an old road and followed it to the beach. Ruins of what may have been a WW II Nike base – foundations and partial walls, marked the end of the road. We had a pretty beach with clear shallow water, to ourselves. We splashed around for a bit and then took the road all the way back to the dock, seeing where we’d made our wrong turn. Back at the boat, we did more chores, snorkeled a little, Fred worked on cleaning the forest growing on our hull, and joy baths for both of us. We also brought the dinghy up as we’d be on the move in the morning. Dinner in the cockpit, generator runs for refrigeration and a freshwater flush for the watermaker – since we weren’t needing to run it yet. Over 10 boats in the anchorage by dusk. Nature sightings: Several very happy turtles, tiny yellow finch on the trail, a couple of rays in the shallows.

Anchor up at 7:30am. Although we’d considered heading to Moraine Cay for a snorkeling stop, we opted to head directly to A/P. Iris used the satphone to call her mother enroute. We had very light SW winds most of the way and had a beautiful, but slow sail. The anchorage looked full when we arrived around 2:15, but managed to find a spot we were comfortable with on our second try. We swam on the anchor and the bottom was typical – grassy over shallow sand. We had a lazy afternoon. Nagging at us a bit, however, were two possible engine-related problems. The first was a continual loose connection with the tach – more of an irritant, but disruptive. And we were putting out a lot of white smoke; Fred said that the oil analysis we received right before leaving was not good. Can we really trust the engine to go somewhere down-island? This (as did our battery issues in 2013) put a slight pall over what was so far a beautiful trip…

Before dinner, Iris heard a child on the catamaran Sandy Feet, anchored behind us, say she saw a shark. We had a pleasant evening, but it was too overcast for good star-gazing. There were 14 boats in the anchorage by nightfall. First watermaker run into the tank (359 ppm). Nature sightings: Shark – near Sandy Feet catamaran.

We both slept well – it wasn’t too hot out and no storms interrupted our night. Morning chores, and satphone call made, it was time to put the dinghy in the water and do some hiking. We dinghyed to the head of the harbor with the remains of a dock and took the main trail towards the beach. What’s this? A new trail? We took a right and after a slog that may have actually been a wild hog’ trail, we ended up close to where we began. Oh well. We re-took the proper trail and spoke briefly with another couple returning from the beach. We checked out the signing trees to see the creativity of those who left their imprints. In 2013 we must have come at very high tide, for we recalled one of our favorite beaches had disappeared. It was there – past the rocks and we headed south, stopping for a lovely swim in perfect water with waves broken by the outlying reef. Time to keep walking so we continued down to the end. At the southernmost point of the beach, we gazed at a shallow bay with more happy turtles swimming about. Both coming and going we were approached by a pair of sand-pipers, one of which feigned injury to draw us away from their 3 tiny, speckled eggs lying in a very shallow depression just above the waterline. On our way back we headed into the trees as to reduce the birds’ stress.

Lunch back at the boat and then time for more chores, followed by ‘joy’ baths. Around 5:15 Iris saw a shark pass our boat and head around Sandy Feet, once again. Perhaps we were anchored in the way of its evening route.. We enjoyed dinner in the cockpit and had a lovely evening. At dusk a motoryacht came in and had difficulty getting set. Iris commented on their technique (and was punished the next day). A single-hander in a schooner set-anchor outside the anchorage very late as well. Watermaker run (360ppm). Nature sightings: turtles, sand-pipers, shark.

Our goal for today was to get to New Plymouth, Green Turtle Cay. Iris thought (mistakenly) that there was a BTC Bahamas office there at which she could buy a sim card and phone plan/data plan. We hoped to buy the card and then hang out in the northern islands for several more days and thus have data access and also not waste satphone minutes. So we were up at 6:30 and raised anchor at 7:45, leaving to a beautiful rainbow from nearby rainshowers. The single-hander schooner with pretty white sails left around the same time, also headed south. After we turned off the engine (refrigeration topped off), we sailed until a couple of miles off New Plymouth. Then our problems began. Holding is known to be poor, with just a few sandy spots where one’s anchor might grab. But this was an anchoring disaster drill for us (and Fred pointed out, well-deserved because Iris had been critical of others the night before). On one attempt we had a chain castle, on raising it our anchor swivel jammed. We stopped on our 5th attempt – knowing that we were not set but having a lot of chain on the bottom, and had lunch. OK – let’s try once more. No joy. So since we were in a spot where we could purchase wifi internet access from either OIInet (which we’d used many years previously) or Bahamas Wimax (which we used in 2013), we went with OIInet for a week because they had a stronger signal where we were. We used the time to do email, check phone messages and make some calls. Fred suggested Iris dink ashore and try and buy the sim, but she rejected the offer. By now it was around 4:30 and we hadn’t dragged. Let’s see if the anchor dug in. Nope. So we raised it for the 6th time (by far a record for us anywhere) and headed back to Manjack, dejected. Most of the vessels already in the anchorage (now around 5ish) were near Manjack; we anchored up against Crab Cay, getting a hard set on our first try. We had quick joy baths. (Iris is generally reluctant to be in the water after 5pm due to increased likelihood of sharks). Another lovely dinner in the cockpit and great star-gazing after dark with no light pollution and the Milky Way. Water temperature is heating up – Watermaker run (410 ppm). Nature sightings – none.

Another very quiet and pleasant night. After our generator run, we focused on some chores. We talked about dinghying out to the ocean reef, but opted not to. Good thing, because the weather conditions deteriorated quite a bit by mid-morning. Winds had clocked to the west (not good for this anchorage), and was increasing to 10-17 knots. We were having 2′ wind-driven chop as well. Three sailboats entered the harbor one after the other. They appeared to be together. The first anchored well away from other vessels. But the second anchored very close to us and dropped anchor. As far as we could tell, they didn’t even test it. But then the third boat put out fenders and rafted to the second. So we now had two vessels anchored in front of us; if they dragged we’d have 2 boats to contend with! We decided not to leave Windwalker and go dinghy exploring while they were out there. Conditions continued to deteriorate and at around 3pm the 3 boats left and crossed the ‘sea of Abaco’, dropping anchor a few miles away on the eastern shore. A few other boats did the same thing awhile later, probably enjoying better condition than we had. We continued to do chores, and took quick joy baths. The water was rough and not conducive to swimming or snorkeling. As showers moved through with the associated trough, we saw a few rainbows. We’ve been on the boat over a week. All good! Nature sightings – none.

Time to get off this boat! After breakfast and our generator run, it was time to search for the Manjack oceanside moorings on the reefs. We headed out on the dinghy with our snorkel gear and immediately encountered 2-4′ waves. It was overcast as well and after a few minutes out in the ocean with no moorings in sight, Iris nixed the trip. A few guys in wet-suits and a larger dinghy/engine were headed in and then later went back out. We landed the dinghy and went for a walk on the southern end of Manjack – oceanside rocks and beach, watching the guys moving around. They appeared to anchor in various spots. We never did see them tie up to a mooring. We then moved the dinghy to the eastern side of Crab Cay, with huge amounts of conch shells and a few live conch, and walked along the beach there. Since this is supposed to be a no-take zone and an ocean preserve, obviously folks aren’t abiding by it… We poled the dinghy, using our oars, in the shallows, as we headed back to the boat. The outgoing tide was very swift. Since we had to pass the 2 wrecks along Crab Cay to get back to Windwalker, we decided to stop at the closest one. Large schools of small fish were hiding in various parts of the wreck. Several boats had come into the anchorage while we were gone, but none were a factor for us. After lunch we’d considered taking a long ride along the western shore of Manjack to hike the north-end trails. But the conditions had once again gotten squally and rough, so we just took a short ride for an even shorter walk on the west side of Crab Cay. Back at the boat, we raised the dinghy in 13 Kt + winds, and then took quick joy baths. During the evening Iris read up on the Berry Islands – starting to plan the post-Abacos part of the trip. Tomorrow we plan to go to Marsh Harbour for the sim card and to do some PC work. Nature sightings: Starfish, conch turtles, barracuda, lots of fish, various sea-birds on the beaches, curly-tail lizards, and hog tracks on the east side of Crab Cay.

We were off to Marsh Harbour – so raised anchor around 8 and motored straight into the wind. Not ideal – but no choice. As we approached (sometimes impassable) Whale Cay, we raised the mainsail – just in case.. There was one sailboat behind us and several coming from the other way. Winds were 15-19 knots from the S and SE. As we cleared the pass the wind got even gustier and Fred chose to hand steer. Baker’s Bay, which used to be our go-to anchorage, was even more built-up than it was 2 years ago. The Baker’s Bay Resort is totally members-only. Even the marina no longer welcomes visitors or transients. So it’s not an anchorage we plan to visit any more, which we’re sure is the way the resort homeowners like it.

Anchoring around 1pm, we put the dink in the water, made sure that our OIInet wifi connection worked, and then around 2:30 headed into town to drop off 8 days worth of trash, and to buy our sim card and data plan. Once again we had an excellent experience at BTC Bahamas. The guard outside welcomed us, the cashier apologized that their credit card system wasn’t working so they could only take cash. We paid $16 for the sim, bought $20 voice scratch off cards and 2 GB of data cards for $30. And like last time, one of their sales folks quickly applied the cards to the phone and made sure all worked properly before we left. (Note – it’s probably time that Iris update our now totally obsolete Communications article. If one has a gsm capable phone, communications almost everywhere in the Bahamas is wonderful. And data is great for radar, making non-local phone calls, email, etc) Our next stop was Maxwell’s to pick up some fresh vegetables and fruit. The store rivals a super Walmart in size and breadth of goods, and was definitely thriving. We’d hoped to enjoy a rum punch at Mangoes Restaurant. But Active Captain listed it as closed, and sadly, it was – with no tables/chair visible in the dining room. So we kept going until we got to Curley Tails and went upstairs to the bar area. Our drinks arrived, and so did a down-pour. We’re on island time and there’s no point in getting soaked, so we ordered another round of drinks with an order of bbq riblets and conch fritters and watched charterers head down the docks to their waiting Moorings or Sunsail catamarans from our perches on the second floor. We also called Iris’ mom using the new data plan and xfinity connect. Iris asked the server for an empty plastic cup; we’d forgotten to put anything in the dinghy we could use as a bailer and we were certain there would be a few inches of water in the dink. Rain began again as we headed to the boat and we got a good soaking. No dinner for us, but we ran the air conditioning with our generator run to dry out the boat. Several strong fronts are on the way so we need to figure out where and when to go next. Nature sightings: none.

Holding in Marsh Harbour is always fantastic so we slept well on this quiet night. We did some internet work in the morning, listened to the ‘net’ for the first time since arriving in the Abacos, and decided to go to Tahiti Beach. We left around 9:20 and were anchored sometime between 11 and 11:30. This is another anchorage that is best when one can find a sandy spot. We failed on our first try but held on our second. We also were wary of the position of the cable we’d snagged 2 years ago. After lunch it looked like rain in the distance and radar on our phone confirmed it – so we swam on the anchor (not a great set) and then Fred worked on cleaning the bottom and we did our joy bath thing. By late afternoon the rain began, and we saw gusts up to 22 knots. The anchor held, but we were now pointed N – not a great direction for this anchorage. And since we’d swung, at low tide we saw as low as 5.7′ and we have a 5.5′ draft. Boats heading to the nearby docks ‘waked’ us occasionally, but otherwise all was well. Excellent wifi connection with OIInet. Nature sightings: none.

While it didn’t rain overnight, the skies remained overcast until late afternoon. Morning chores and internet/pc work done, we dinghyed across the channel to Lubber’s Quarters to have lunch at Lubber’s Landing – new to us. We were the only ones there until a little bit later. The owner stopped by when we were about done with our meals and told us that pizza night (a couple of days later) requires that one place orders the day before, so that her husband can make sufficient pizza dough. Reservations only. We explored their tiny rustic resort – boardwalks to several cabins, and then continued onto the roads. We were accompanied by a black cat for most of the way. Back at Windwalker, we switched into our swimsuits and then headed to Tahiti Beach for a walk, and then to sit in the shallows and enjoy the view. Beautiful sunset, great day! Review: Lubber’s Landing

We hadn’t had our fill of the cays north of ‘the Whale’, which we prefer for hiking and solitude. So we left 9:20 on a windless day and motored all the way to Green Turtle Cay. We had never seen Whale Cay passage so flat. The water was amazingly clear all the way with great views of the plant and bottom life most of the way. Our target anchorage was Joyless Point, near the entrance of White Sound on Green Turtle. Descriptions in Active Captain showed decent depth and slightly better holding than right off New Plymouth. But it would make for a longer dinghy ride into town. As we approached New Plymouth we decided to give it one try – perhaps the water gods had forgiven Iris for her past verbal indiscretions 😉 We found sand and the anchor held and we declared victory at around 2pm. We put the dinghy in the water and went via the narrow channel into New Plymouth Harbour and tied up at the ‘interior’ government dock. Good thing too, because the winds kicked up in the afternoon and those tying up at the outside government dock were experiencing rough conditions with bouncing dinghies. We always look for an opportunity to discard trash, and the dumpster on the dock was a welcome sight. We hadn’t been in New Plymouth since the 90’s on a charter. From far the town looked as quaint as it had then, but close-up things seemed to have changed. Paint was peeling on the colorful houses, various buildings looked in disrepair. Non-tourists driving their cars or golf-carts seemed somewhat dour. Shops were empty. Granted – it was off-season. We hiked around, checked out Curry’s and Sid’s food markets and a gift shop, checked out the cemetery, and statuary, and then found a road that took us to Black Sound, where moorings were to be had if one could enter the sound during high tide. Good hurricane hole. It was still too early for dinner, so we picked up a large package of frozen conch and ice cream at Curry’s and dinghyed back to the boat. The only downside to our anchorage (now that we were set) was the occasional rocking from the frequent ferries. Great internet connection so we did pc work in the evening. We’d be without access, except via the phone, for the next few days. Nature sightings: turtles and starfish enroute.

It was a quiet night after the ferries stopped. Thunderstorms and rain rolled through around breakfast time. We motored and motor-sailed north around leaving at 9:15 to one of our favorite spots (although not one of our favorite ‘anchorages’) and were able to set our anchor on our 3rd try – hunting for those sandy spots. When we arrived there were 2 trawlers and a sailboat. By evening there were 2 more sailboats. Our goal at Powell is hiking. We first walked along the northern part of the western shore where we saw some fish/shark drama. Then we crossed over on the main trail, to the Atlantic side with dramatics views and fairly rough seas. Back where we began, we then did the Bluff trail with great views of our anchorage. We spoke briefly with a couple from trawler Whitestar, from Michigan. They were headed back to the US, as were most people at this, the tail-end of the season. After lunch we dinghyed over to the south end of the island where there is a short trail across to a large shallow bay, where we had another long walk along the beach. We played around in the water around the dinghy, and then went back to the boat to snorkel and check on the anchor. Fred noticed that one of our shaft zincs was loose. He ended up taking it off. Had the anode flown off the shaft it could have hit the prop and caused damage. Fortunately we still had a second one on the shaft so there wasn’t an immediate problem. Nature sightings: 2 sharks – 1 around 4′ long, which chased a large fish in about 2′ of water, 1 around 2′ long on the ocean side; several sand-pipers and other birds.

We hadn’t had our fill of Manjack Cay yet. So we raised anchor around 9:10 and headed for the North Manjack anchorage, in order to hike the trails in the north end of the cay. The anchorage can be iffy, with big rollers coming in from the ocean. This time was no exception – while we set the anchor in a nice sandy spot on our first try the roll was unacceptable – too bad even for a quick trip ashore or lunch. But we still wanted to do the trails, so we motored back around the corner to an outer anchorage on the north-western tip and set anchor. A couple of other sailboats seemed to have the same idea. We dinghyed over to the Brendal’s Dive Center docks and hiked the various ‘avenues’ in the park area maintained by residents of the cay. We also went to the ocean side, as well as the beach on the northern anchorage we’d just left. The yellow house we’d seen 2 years ago was now labeled as for sale. We started hearing some loud music as we hiked back to the dink – Brendal’s had just landed with about 15-20 twenty-somethings ready to party. Not for us, so we went back to the boat for lunch and discussed where to anchor for the night. Brisk northwest winds were predicted. We’d done our ‘must do’ parts of the northern cays, so we decided to head back through the Whale planning to put anchor at Water Cay anchorage on the eastern shore of Great Abaco. Putting the dinghy on deck, and raising anchor at 2:15, we had a chain jam, so our departure was more like 2:30. The Whale was a little bouncier this time, but not too bad. It was late in the afternoon and we didn’t see a lot of traffic. Three boats were already anchored when we arrived around 5:45. Time for some conch! Iris split the frozen package in half and sliced the conch thin before pounding. She prepared in an egg wash and ritz cracker crumbs and it came out great. Our current plan was to spend another day here. Nature sightings: 3 dolphins while rounding Manjack; large spotted ray in northern Manjack harbor

The anchorage turned bouncy overnight with winds of 18-20 knots. Iris got up to see if we’d moved, but all was well. However it was rolly and the wind was predicted to get more westerly – not ideal for where we were. Where to next? We opted for Tahiti Beach again, desirous of an anchorage with a wifi connection, good swimming and good water for the watermaker (thus ruling out Marsh Harbour). So off we went around 9:30am for Tahiti Beach, motor-sailing with reefed main, and then sailing with reefed main and staysail in about 32 knots on a broad reach. Even the staysail became too much so we took it in. We didn’t see a lot of traffic on this breezy day. We were in for another bout of anchoring drills. We tried twice close to where we’d anchored previously and dragged. We moved further south, dragged and then it felt like the anchor set. So Fred put the snubber on and swam on the anchor. The tip of the anchor was in grass and the set was tenuous. Other boats in the area began to leave due to the chop and wind. We both went in for quick ‘joy baths’ and then dried off below. Next we looked we had dragged about 1/4 mi – wow. We immediately grabbed our hanging towels, shut the hatches and prepared to go to Marsh Harbour to get out of the conditions. But as we approached the entrance to White Sound we saw a visibly sandy patch and decided it give it another go. It did appear to catch – so we set several anchor alarms; the wind also abated a little bit into the mid to lower teens. We waited for awhile and by 5pm declared victory. The wind forecast sucks. We didn’t have a good hotspot so relied on Iris’ phone data to get our internet checks in.

It was quite hot overnight. Iris was anxious that perhaps we’d snagged one of the cables purported to be in the area and that’s why our anchor held. Winds were WNW veering NNW, not great for these anchorages. If we were able to take a snorkel trip with Froggies in Hopetown, then we’d go in there and pick up a mooring. However no one advertised any dives on the morning’s net and Iris called on the phone and no one answered. Of course the condition were pretty untenable for snorkeling on the Indian Cay national park reef, so that’s probably why. So off we went for Matt Lowe Cay, relieved when the anchor came right up ;-). When we arrived at the Sugarloaf Cay anchorage a large motor yacht was already at anchor. We couldn’t get a good view of the bottom due to the chop and churned up bottom and on our first attempt to anchor we definitely dragged. Our second try felt better, but when we really tested it, it skipped. On our third try we decided to get a set and just wait. We set an anchor alarm, winds were predicted to abate somewhat and if we dragged there was nothing in our way for miles. OK – time to do some chores – cleaning below and above. We used our phone data to check our email and browse. We always try and swim on our anchor when we’re in conditions that allow for it (eg tropical climate ;-)) and Iris went to take a look at around 3:30. It was partially set but we’ve had worse. Speaking of worse – the forecast is getting irritatingly worse. We’re getting a bit bored with looking for places to anchor to avoid weather conditions. Given that we’re not entirely comfortable with continuing on to Eleuthera/Exumas/etc due to worries about the engine – Fred is getting antsy. Iris is not ready to start thinking about returning anywhere! Fred wants us to be able to sail back and not have to rely on the engine if it should have problems. So he started looking at our options. At dusk the motor yacht started blasting music after sounding conch horns for an overly long time. They finally stopped the music after a couple of hours. No wildlife sightings.

Yet another wind shift overnight, this time to the east. We have to move again. So at 8am we head the 8 miles to Great Guana Cay. We hadn’t been there yet this trip and had fond memories of our lunch at Grabbers in 2013. We motored all the way, seeing few other boats and only 1 catamaran in the anchorage when we anchored at 10am. Oh oh – another grass bottom. While the anchor set well and we’d never had an issue here before, we were leary given our track record on this trip so far. Fred tested at low rpm and then we stayed aboard for a couple of hours to make sure we didn’t move. We used the time to put the dinghy in the water and Iris signed up for another week of OIInet wifi. She also called Grabbers to make sure they were open – since once again there was little advertising in on the morning net. Around noon we headed ashore for lunch, on this a pretty overcast day. We each had a couple of their signature drinks and Iris had a coconut battered fish sandwich while Fred had a hamburger. The lunch was so so and Fred disliked his hamburger. Iris thought the drinks strong, Fred thought the opposite. Afterwards we walked around the settlement walking to Orchid Bay Marina. We saw quite a few boats on moorings in Settlement Harbor. Drizzle shortened our walk and we returned to the boat and raised the dinghy engine in case we needed to move quickly. Iris felt unwell and while standing by the galley sink, she began to shake. Fred thought she was having a seizure of some kind. She drank a lot of water and felt better. Good thing because all hell broke loose around 3:30. Severe thunderstorms rocked the area for 3 hours and we saw up to 38 knots and very heavy rains. Others we spoke to in Marsh the next day saw higher than that! We probably dragged around 200 ft but somehow the anchor held. The winds quieted down at around 7. Fred had a light dinner and Iris ate nothing. We set anchor alarms because more weather was expected. Review: Grabbers Bed Bar Grill

At around 12:30am the anchor alarm on Iris’ phone started blaring. Fred double checked and we had swung in yet another direction. Iris spent the night in the salon, checking our anchor position on the chart on Fred’s tablet and the anchor distance on her phone, looking outside frequently.. We both got up at 6:30 am and wanted to get out of here! But we knew we were headed to Marsh for yet worse weather and wanted to take quick joy baths (during an encroaching thunderstorm in the distance) before we departed. Two other boats in the anchorage had already left. We hadn’t really dragged – we just had a lot of scope and had twirled around 200ft + and were back where we’d originally anchored. The anchor came up easily and we were underway by 7:30am. We had a very blustery motorsail to Marsh Harbour and were anchored by 9:30 after which we had breakfast. This was a day to stay below. Our wifi connection was abysmal. We almost called OIInet to get our money back. At around 2pm it looked calm enough to go ashore with a brief mission to dispose of several days of garbage, and top off diet coke and rum. We achieved our goals at Bristol Wine a block from the dinghy dock. We’ll complete provisioning at Maxwell’s tomorrow and get fuel and gas before we leave the area. We may go out do dinner or lunch as well in town. All is weather dependent!

Up at 6:30 with a lot on our lists. Chores done, we went ashore to top off produce and sundries at Maxwells and then headed back to the boat to stow provisions and have lunch. By 2pm we decided that we wanted to go for a long walk ashore, stopping at the HW store first. But the harbor was very choppy; we almost lost the dinghy when the painter detached at the dink end, and Fred caught it. So we were uncomfortable leaving the dinghy at the dock as all were bobbing up and down ferociously. We blew off our hike and got totally soaked returning to the boat – winds were gusting from 15-20+. Iris’ hopes for going out to dinner were starting to fade. We continued to discuss trip alternatives. Iris wanted to try somewhere new and we both had read great things about Great Harbour Cay in the Berry’s. Whatever we did, we wanted to minimize strain on the engine, so all is weather dependent. At around 5:15 the winds had abated sufficiently to consider going out to dinner. Iris called Wally’s and made reservations for 6. We hadn’t eaten there since the mid 1990’s when on a charter with friends. We headed ashore at 5:45 making yet another trash stop before getting to Wally’s. It wasn’t a 5-star dinner and our server forgot our wines and the presentation was plain. But the ambiance was beautiful and the cook always appreciates any meal out! Review: Wally’s Restaurant

We listened to the ‘net’ at 8:15. There is a big ‘low’ west of FL which will impact the area and another deepening low off the NC coast. Rain and higher winds are predicted around Friday and Saturday. Time to go ashore in search of batteries and to check things out Iris, ever concerned about trash, was eager to go to Long’s Landing dumpster. So we brought about 5 days worth with us in the dink. But where did the Long’s Landing dock go? It was a wreck, with a sunken boat and shattered wood (destroyed by Sandy). Now what? We saw a couple of other dinghies headed towards what we found out was a fairly new dinghy dock at the Union Jack landing. Very nice dinghy dock – but no dumpster. That wasn’t our order of business – getting a generator starter battery was. Our first, and last, stop for this shore adventure was National Marine – where Fred got his battery. We went straight back to the boat – where Fred hooked up the battery in order to do our generator/refrigeration run. After an early lunch, Fred installed the battery (last replaced in 2006).

Time to go ashore again – while it rained on and off. Iris was on a mission to get a BTC Bahamas (BTC Batelco) SIM card for her cell phone. Research ahead of time confirmed that a)the Xprt had the right GSM frequencies b)Sprint confirmed that the Xprt was unlocked for international use c) that international calls, texting, local calling and data were very reasonable. As we walked towards where we thought the BTC office was, we spoke with some other cruisers who told us that the dumpster was still near Long’s Landing about 100 yards from the Union Jack dock. The Batelco of 2013 was a major improvement from 2003. The security guard outside welcomed us and told us to go to the cashier. The cashier sold Iris the SIM for $15, $10 of prepaid calling, and a 30 day/1GB prepaid data plan, usually for $30 but on sale for $20. Then, the customer service/sales person in the main part of the store configured Iris’ phone with great proficiency and professionalism. Iris had selected the Xprt a couple of years earlier because of it’s world-phone capability and finally she was getting to use it! The phone would provide us with email capability when in anchorages without WIMAX hotspots and GSM coverage was available throughout the Abacos from Little Harbour all the way to Allans Pensacola and Foxtown. The internet junkie was satisfied.

We stopped off at Standard Hardware and explored, primarily because it was pouring outside. It is a very well stocked store. We looked for a replacement peg for what Iris had broken a few days earlier, but Fred said he’d make something when we get home. We returned to pick up our trash at the dinghy dock, dropped it off at the Long’s Landing dumpster and walked along restaurant row to see if there was anyplace we’d like to check out for dinner. We stopped at a small convenience store for some ice cream and then headed back to the boat.

During the afternoon, we read and surfed the internet. Iris used her ‘new’ phone to make reservations at the Jib Room at Marsh Harbour Marina for 7:15. Wed. night is Barbecue night with choice of Ribs, Chicken or Fish. (see Iris’s review at:
Jib Room). We hadn’t gone on prior stays in Marsh. The evening was enjoyable enhanced by the Rake N Scrape band and the twice weekly limbo show/contest. Back at the boat after dinner, we were unable to get a good Wimax connection. Tomorrow’s plan – head to Tahiti Beach. Tahiti Beach on Elbow Cay is favored by several cruisers we knew, and we’d never anchored there.

Another quiet night. Iris got up at 5:30 and looked at email and weather in the cockpit. Rain and wind were still in the forecast. After breakfast, Fred looked at the main battery bank voltage and was not pleased. The batteries were not holding a charge. This was similar to the failure we experienced back in 2003 after several days of hard motoring. Then, it led to a battery hunt throughout Puerto Rico. We listened to the Net while we discussed options. We clearly were NOT headed to Tahiti Beach. We used the phone to call several places that might have the Group 31 Gel cell batteries we needed. Only one place thought they might have something that fits – AID/NAPA hardware. We went ashore at noon to look at what AID had – not gel but would/could fit in the space and they were sealed batteries and they had 3. Iris spoke with one of the sales people who said that they’d give us a ride to the Union Jack dock, when she enquired about putting a deposit on a shopping cart’. While close to the BTC offices once again, Iris went to customer service to register her phone number which would enable her to create an online account so that she could add to her prepaid minutes online. They also told her that she still had 1 GB left (so she’d barely used anything in phone surfing).

Back at the boat for lunch, we continued our discussion – go or stay? Tahiti Beach offered us what we came here to do – swim, snorkel, walk, make water and a good anchorage for the forecast winds from SE/S/W. But if the batteries totally failed while there, we’d have to jump start the engine from the generator. We decided to stay and buy two of the batteries. This was going to be another expedition. (The batteries are very heavy and we had experience doing this in Boqueron in PR.) The young man who had assisted us earlier had gone to lunch. The cashier attempted to reach him regarding his offer to drive us to the dinghy dock. Iris once again pursued renting the shopping cart – but the cashier said no – let’s find the guy (and now the truck). She came up with an alternative solution – another local customer (who works on cars for a living) gave us a ride to the dock. He was quite tall, and quite strong – lifting the batteries out of the shopping cart and into his mini-van as if they weighed nothing. Fred manhandled each battery into the dinghy and then had the difficult task of lifting each battery onto the boat, then down into interior. Fred immediately tested the batteries’ charges; when he asked that they be tested the salesman said ‘all of our batteries are charged’. It didn’t appear to be that way. One of the two was way down. Fred installed them and we found a place for the two ‘used’ batteries against the mast. We only replaced two of the four batteries in the main bank. That means we’d be at 50% of capacity for the remainder of the trip. However Fred estimated that with our four batteries failing, we were at 10% of capacity – so we’d actually improved our situation. We ramn the engine for awhile to partially charge the batteries. We read and internet surfed in the evening.

Iris got up several times at night. We had fairly strong winds – up to 28 knots when she checked at 4am. We finally got up at around 7:30. After running the generator (charging the main bank) and running the engine a little more as well, Fred decided that the batteries were good. We handled correspondence and websites, spoke with Iris’ mother via Skype and stayed aboard all day due to the blustery weather. We couldn’t swim in the harbour so availed ourselves of showers below, and discovered that our shower sump pump switch was difficult to engage. We thought about leaving in late afternoon, but decided to wait til the morning. Dinner in the cockpit and our first try at one of the big ‘boxed’ wines. Actually pretty drinkable and convenient!

Wind and very heavy rain overnight. Iris saw 20 Knots+ on wind-speed but no lightening. She got up at 6 and did email at 6:30. After breakfast, Fred dinghied ashore for a trash run. We’d decided not to use our salt-water hose on the anchor and Iris regretted it; we raised a huge ball of clay and clams and it took awhle to shake it off. But we were off around 9:30, headed to Water Cay (half-way between Marsh Harbor and Treasure Cay). Winds were projected to be from the west, and the anchorage purportedly offered some wreck snorkeling. We motored over and saw another sailboat already in the anchorage. The crew dinghied over to us just after we anchored in what were NE winds with small waves whipping around the corner. They said that they had been there overnight and had explored what looked like beaches, but which were in fact rocky coral. They’d not known about any wrecks but hadn’t seen any. We did see a wrecked pier as the area had been a conch farm previously. OK – scratch that idea – we turned it into a lunch stop and then raised anchor, headed to our original intended destination of Lubber’s Quarters Cay/Tahiti Beach in the opposite direction. We motor-sailed part of the way. Our chart-plotter kept failing so we relied on our backup tablet app/charts described previously and approached the beautiful anchorage already occupied by two trawlers and a catamaran. Our anchoring was less than elegant as we dragged a significant distance prior to setting. By evening the trawlers left and were replaced by another sailboat. We both swam and Fred scrubbed the hull some more. We plan to explore tomorrow as the area is new to us and we could see the gorgeous sand-bar a short distance away. The skies were dark with more rain on the way.

The new house batteries were performing well. Fred disconnected the two remaining originals (Bank 2) from the charger. We had a great internet connection and discovered that our primary email id had been compromised sometime during the week we hadn’t had access. Time for a password change drill. Finally we could also make water again – Watermaker: 430ppm after 5 minutes, 370ppm after 30 minutes.

Iris got up at 6. We’d had very heav rain overnight. While we’d hoped to dinghy ashore and walk the 1 1/2 miles to Abaco Inn for Sunday brunch, we decided to forego the hike and had our own ‘Sunday breakfast’ aboard. Since we hadn’t been able to make water in a few days, we ran the watermaker with the morning generator run. Watermaker: 460ppm after 5 minutes, 380 after 30 minutes). The ppm was starting to creep up – directly sea-water temperature related. On prior trips Iris had freaked out over the higher ppms, but a couple of nights ago she found an in-depth article on the Nordhavn website (Making Water) describing US drinking water standards allowing up to 600ppm, World Health Org. standards considering drinking water to be 1000 ppm, and the relationship between sea-water temperature/watermaker output/water ppm. The sea-water temperature had been creeping up to the mid 80’s.

It was time to explore. We dinghied around Baker’s Rock and beached the dink. We spoke with a young woman with 2 children who was staying with friends on Elbow Cay while awaiting her husband and another friend who had just purchased a 50′ sailboat and were sailing it up from the southern Caribbean. We walked around the tip of Tahiti Beach. Iris stayed near the beautiful sands while Fred headed around the point to see the Atlantic side. There were many folks – some arriving by electric carts, others by boats, wandering on the sand bar or wading in the warm, wave-free waters. Shell-hunting was good as well. We sat in the shallow water and enjoyed the view, after which we decided to check out the roads towards White Sound and Abaco Inn. The colors and shapes/styles of the (rental) cottages and the variation in landscaping made for very pretty surroundings.

Back at the boat and after lunch, we did our swimming and joy bath thing as well as reading and web-surfing. Around 3, between rain showers, we decided to check out Cracker P’s beach bar on Lubber’s Quarters Cay. It was a long, planing dinghy ride and it started to rain when we were half-way there. After tying up at their dock, we climbed the stairs to their bar/dining room. The bar-tender (owner?) told us that peak season is June-July and that currently dinner was only served Thursday and Saturday. (see Iris’ review at: Cracker P’s Review). After pina coladas and their hot fish dip, we took a stroll down their nature trail. Iris bailed at the last 200 yards of deep muck on the trail, but Fred continued to the western shore of Lubber’s Quarters Cay. Mosquitos were in full force and we made a quick trip back to the dinghy, and a fast trip back to Windwalker. Using our internet access plus Skype-to-landline, we checked phone messages and made some calls. As we planned tomorrow’s destination, we took into account continued forecasts for West winds. Since prevailing conditions are easterly, we’d be heading to new-to-us spots. Our evening watermaker run stats: 447ppm after 5 minutes, 385ppm after 30 minutes. A beautiful blue ketch anchored in front of us at dusk.

Overnight, the wind kicked up from the North – the worse possible direction for our anchorage. The boat was moving around with stern to shore and/or to Baker’s Rock. We debated moving prior to breakfast but since our anchor was set well, we decided to wait. Fred pointed out that the ketch that had come in last night was much closer to shore than we. I went into the cockpit to see and the situation for the ketch was even worse. It was no longer in the anchorage but aground in about 3′ of water on the Tahiti Beach sandbar. We had just passed high tide so this was the worst possible scenario for the ketch. Their engine was still running, no one seemed to be taking any steps to put out an anchor or kedge off. Nor did anyone seem alarmed or called out on the vhf for help – otherwise we would have attempted to assist them. We brought up our outboard, raised anchor and were on our way by 8. The forecast winds were to be from the NW, so we planned to check out Sugarloaf Cay and if that didn’t pan out, go on to Snake Cay. Sugarloaf looked interesting, but there was some wave action, so we continued on to the northernmost of the two Snake Cay anchorages indicated on our chart and anchored. The shore looked very Maine-like with rocks, sand beaches and tall trees but with 83 degree water! We were the only boat there at 10am.

We dinghied ashore around 11. There was a dirt road leading to a BBQ area. In the opposite direction we followed the road quite awhile passing tall Bahamian pine trees and seeing and hearing many variety of birds including woodpeckers and red-wing black birds. Continuing to explore by dinghy, we went over to Cormorant Cay, (frightening a turtle who rapidly swam off) but there was really no place to walk after landing a dinghy. We saw several red and black starfish and small conch in the clear shallow waters. After lunch we read and Iris used her phone to check msgs and email. We saw cars and trucks in the distance at the southern Snake Cay anchorage site. We’d been a little disconcerted to see quite a few shot-gun shells near the BBQ area ashore and Snake Cay was clearly accessible from the ‘mainland’. We both swam on the anchor at around 2. It wasn’t a great set, but good enough. We saw lots of fish sheltered under a big box. We also saw what looked like a PVC bimini structure under our chain – perhaps an issue when we would have to move? As we were swimming another boat anchored and by dinnertime there were 3 other vessels in the anchorage. As with any dream anchorage – there are always negatives. In this case, we were attacked by biting flies that resembled deer-flies while in the water and in our cockpit. Meanwhile, below-decks, regular black flies decided our salon was just dandy. Time for the fly-swatter. We were later to find out that Snake Cay (southern point) was a major oil depot for awhile and even earlier, a lumbering facility with a significant economic impact on the Abacos. Just like we’d seen in the Chesapeake – towns come and go with industry – and clearly Snake Cay was not thriving now. Watermaker run: 414ppm after 5 minutes, 380ppm after 30 minutes.

We enjoyed a quiet, calm night. After breakfast we decided to dinghy explore a bit more as there was a passage to interior creeks and islets. The area still looked like Maine and was quite lovely and lake-like. We passed a couple kayaking into the area as we departed; a kayak would be perfect for more intimate exploration of the shallow waters. We raised anchor at around 9:30 and motored by the southern Snake Cay anchorage looking at both sides of the point which was bulkheaded from its prior history. Our goal, given the winds, was to attempt to anchor at Sandy Cay and finally snorkel what many say is the best reef in the area at the Sandy Cay National Park. We’d tried a couple of times on previous trips and the anchorage is very rolly and where the small boat moorings are was usually rough as well. This time was no different and after waiting a few minutes to see if we were willing to attempt it, we opted to backtrack to Bucaroon Bay. Bucaroon Bay was another ‘new to us’ anchorage good in west winds. We hated to interrupt the privacy of the other sailboat already in the anchorage, but using our tablet app/chart combination we worked ourselves much closer to shore and were nowhere near the other sailboat. After lunch we dinghied ashore and explored the pretty beach strewn with conch shells and lined with more tall pine trees. We did not approach what probably was a wrecked house. As we continued to explore by dinghy, we saw a ray startled by our approach as well as many more starfish and potentially conch 😉 We’d read how starfish actually eat conch by jamming one of their legs into the conch shell, inhibiting the conch from retracting its foot. Then the starfish extends its stomach around the conch’s muscle and starts digesting in place. Pretty disgusting, really.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and reading in the cockpit. 3G data coverage was flakey but Iris’ phone signal seemed strong. She checked her prepaid call balance (*44) and found that she had $5.43 remaining. Time to swim/snorkel. Iris pointed out a conch to Fred – but it was far too small – there were other types of shellfish as well. Mid-afternoon a 3rd sailboat arrived, It was a very large catamaran that we were to see again in several anchorages. Dinner in the cockpit (sans flies). Watermaker run: 423ppm after 5 minutes; 380ppm after 30 minutes. Bucaroon Bay was a totally lovely place.

Plans change with the winds. At around midnight, the winds shifted to the SE. The forecast predicted S/SE for several days. We’d hoped to try again for Sandy Cay and then move on down to the Bight of Old Robinson. We could already see whitecaps. Iris suggested Tavern Cay, just south of Lubber’s/Tahiti Beach and Tiloo Cut. We’d anchored there on our last time in the Bahamas. We raised anchor at 9am and were anchored at Tavern at 10:15, arriving a few moments after another sailboat anchored in the vicinity. The attraction was going to be some boat-accessible snorkeling spots. After we anchored we looked towards Tahiti Beach and were surprised and saddened to see that the blue ketch was still on its side, aground. Someone was still aboard her, as we saw the dinghy go to/fro the boat. OK – it’s time to snorkel. We weren’t too far from the rocks marked as the snorkel spots and checked on the anchor. Oh oh – the reason it was so easy to set the anchor was that we’d snagged a submerged (but not buried) cable running from the tip of Tavern Cay to what looked like a gazebo on Tiloo Cay’s northernmost tip. Definitely not in the Dodge book. We can’t stay here and need to free ourselves right away! Fred kept diving on the anchor until he was able to lift it and get the anchor and chain free of the cable. He nominally hand-set the anchor. Now we were both in the water with our boat not well anchored if at all. We returned aboard, and Fred started the engine and reversed on the anchor. We dragged many boat lengths prior to the anchor grabbing. At this point we were quite a distance from the rocks we’d planned to snorkel on. But we both felt we could do it and strong current didn’t seem to be an issue. (We were about 1/10th mi away when we measured on a chart later). As we passed our anchor we saw that it was a classic, perfect set. The point was down and the anchor was buried. Good thing because dragging had brought Windwalker pretty close to shallows. The small reef was pretty with many small fish and small barracuda. As we continued on, both Fred and I stopped and backed up in a hurry – that barracuda with its jaws open was one of those black ocean-going 6 footers. Enough snorkeling – we have a long swim back, once again without any conch. Joy baths back at the boat. After lunch, Iris signed up for another week of Bahamas Wi-max. Perhaps she should have waited. After making her payment, we had a lousy connection. By late afternoon we were surrounded by around 8 other boats. Not again – we also had Northerly winds – not in the forecast and not good for this location. Watermaker: 428ppm at 5 minutes, 401ppm after 30 minutes.

We slept poorly, both upset over something that had happened back at home that we learned about via the internet the prior evening. But it was actually a nice night at anchor. We were up early and raised anchor at 8:40. We noticed that the ketch was gone. Great! It must have gotten off the prior evening at high tide! Iris called ABC moorings ahead of our approach to Hope Town (best choice for the predicted winds). The going rate for a mooring was $20/night. We were told to just pick up a mooring and the owner would come by 9am the following morning if he didn’t see us around in the evening. We picked up one of the ABC moorings in the SW part of the harbour and got ready for our shore excursion. We had only been to Hope Town once previously, about 13 years earlier. Our first stop was the Wyannie Malone Historical Museum (see Iris’ review Hope Town Museum). Afterwards, Iris had picked out On Da Beach as the place for lunch. We walked and walked (and perhaps this wasn’t within walking distance?) and ended up passing the Hope Town Lodge, an elementary school in session and ended up at a cemetary. Fred was getting hungry and was tired of searching for this place. So we turned around and ended up at Harbour’s Edge with a nice harbour view. (see Iris’ review Harbour’s Edge) Refreshed, we headed towards the northenmost point of Elbow Cay. Or that was our intent. We gave up and later saw on a map that the road we were on wouldn’t have gotten us there anyway. We explored the town some more and then returned to Windwalker. By then Iris felt overheated and heat-sick. While she cooled off, Fred worked on bills and correspondence online. Some friends had suggested we go to Hope Town Lodge for rum-runners. Around 6pm we dinghied ashore but their beach bar had already closed. We didn’t want to go back to Harbour’s Edge so ended up at Cap’n Jacks (see Iris’ review Cap’n Jacks) for drinks and conch fritters. Time for ice cream! Fred had decided we needed an ice cream fix so we made a straight line for the Sugar Shack featuring Edy’s Ice Cream. Back for the night, Iris corresponded with her mother. We’d discovered that none of the text msgs Iris had sent in the last couple of days had been received. Iris’ fault – she needed to make sure +1 was inserted for the international text. No watermaker run in an enclosed harbour.

We’d heard on the net that Hope Town had cruiser trash pickup somewhere on Wed. and Fri between 8:30am and 9:30am. Fred, together with six days of trash, headed off in the general direction of docks which might be the place and found the trash truck at the government dock. Right as he was returning to the boat, a young lady with her dog in a hard dinghy, came by to ask if we’d paid for the mooring the night before. We said no and handed her our $20. We were ready to go – although Fred noticed some water in our bilge and was concerned. We released the mooring at 9:30 and motor/motor-sailed to Great Guana Cay. We saw that Caneel – the Valiant was in the anchorage already. Right after we anchored and Fred was on deck putting on the chain snubber, Jerry Stadulis (the owner) introduced himself. His crew was Mary Wesley Harvey. Caneel was 2007 Valiant 50 -114. They were headed into Settlement Harbour. We opted to stay aboard for lunch and then walk to Nipper’s to snorkel on the nearby reef. So we collected our snorkel gear, beached the dinghy at Grabber’s Beach Bar and walked to Nippers. We weren’t sure exactly where the reef was. The surf was quite rough. Fred pointed to a very rocky area. Iris climbed the steps back up to Nippers and inquired. The waitress pointed to both the location Fred said as well as another to the right. Iris balked at the leftmost reef and the rough surf – but eventually we snorkeled in poor viz on the rightmost rocks. There were fish when we could see them. But it wasn’t especially pleasant. On shore, a tractor was rebuilding the sand dunes. Dunes throughout the area had been severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy the previous autumn. We dried off and climbed the Nippers stairs to reward ourselves with drinks. Jerry and Mary Wesley were up there and we chatted some more. Jerry mentioned that they planned to take a dive/snorkel trip with Dive Guana tomorrow and we said we’d be interested. Jerry was concerned there wouldn’t be enough folks so was eager for us to join in the fun. Fred bought us Nipper’s signature house drink (see Iris’ review of Nippers Nipper’s) – which was a potent concoction with rum. We walked back to our dinghy at Grabbers while Jerry and Mary Wesley availed themselves of the Nippers shuttle to Settlement Harbour. Enroute back to the boat, we stopped at the Dive Guana dock and made reservations for tomorrow’s 1/2 day trip to Fowl Cay national marine park. They told us to arrive between 9:30 at 9:45 for a 10am departure. Back aboard, Fred snorkeled on the anchor and we both took joy baths. We had excellent internet coverage. By evening we counted over 17 boats in the anchorage. For some reason, the anchorage was very rolly. Watermaker: 458ppm at 5 minutes; 418ppm at 45 minutes. Creeping up (as is the water temperature).

Iris slept poorly once again – due to the rough water and noises. She turned on her phone’s anchor alarm app and also checked our position but all was well. Up at 6:30am – we rushed in a generator run for refrigeration between 8am and 9:20 and then headed over to Dive Guana’s dock. We enjoyed our snorkel on Fowl Cay – stopping at Grouper Alley and Parrotfish ? (see Iris review: Dive Guana Review). Back at around 1 or so, we dinghied over to Grabbers for lunch. Watch out when you drink the trademark ‘grabber’; it’s pretty potent! (see Iris’s review: Grabbers Review). We made a side-trip over to Caneel to hand them one of our boat cards, as we’d gotten Jerry’s the previous day. We were stuffed and wiped out from our exercise and the Grabber so had a late, light dinner. There were over 30 boats in the anchorage – perhaps all looking to go to Nipper’s Pig Roast early on Sunday.The winds are clocking once again – perhaps Tahiti Beach again tomorrow since we want a place with internet access to call Iris’ mom for Mother’s Day. Watermaker: 465ppm after 5 minutes, 427ppm after 50 minutes water temp over 85 degrees.

Another rolly, noisy night as the mast sang through the night. Up at 6:30. Iris made a big Sunday breakfast since we’d decided to pass on Nipper’s. We left at 9:30 hoping that Tahiti Beach would be the right spot for the forecast frontal passage and strong SE/S/W winds. We motored (as usual) and were the only boat in the anchorage. Our first attempt to set our anchor was unsuccessful. We tried again and set at around 12:15pm. Alone for now but don’t expect it to remain that way. We did chores and cleanup and after a light lunch, decided to head back to the sand bar. The outboard went back on the dink and off we went. Unfortunately, as we were sitting in the shallows, two young men who had arrived on a jet-ski decided to kite-surf around us with several close calls. Figuring we’d have a better swim at the boat, we dinghied back and already wet, decided to swim on the anchor. Both Iris and Fred arrived at the anchor and stared in horror. Another submerged, but not buried cable – this one leading between Lubber’s Quarters and Elbow Cay just in the Baker’s Rock anchorage in 7′ of water lay under our chain. We hadn’t hooked it but would upon raising anchor. Once again, Fred lifted the anchor and chain over the cable. Once again, we were not anchored. We quickly swam back to the boat and met with another obstacle. Another ocean going big black barracuda was swimming under the keel. It then placed itself right under the swim ladder. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon and we needed to move. Fred got into the dinghy and helped hoist Iris aboard like a beached whale 😉 We got aboard our boat and Fred started the engine. We selected another spot far from the cable and reanchored in 8′ in grass and dragged until it set. Iris swam on it – no barracuda and a safe set. But we were getting upset with these unmarked cables. As Iris followed the chain to the anchor, she finally spied a full-size, mature, queen conch trying to get away from the movement of the chain. She told Fred that here was our chance. But if this poor conch had survived the winter cruising season, it deserved to live. Fred later swam on the conch, picked it up and also decided to save it. Another couple of boats arrived early evening, a trawler setting his anchor close to the cable. Iris made her Mother’s Day call via Skype but no one was home. She finally got through later in the evening. Watermaker: 470 ppm at 5 minutes, 454ppm at 30 minutes.

We left at 9. Fred’s day had already gotten off to a rocky start when he was adding oil to the generator while a powerboat pass closeby and ‘waked’ us. The oil spilled everywhere in the engine compartment – big mess. As we departed the anchorage we saw the trawler trying to raise anchor and then the crew going to the bow. Perhaps they had snagged the cable. Menace. We motored to Marsh Harbour and once again saw Caneel at the mouth of the harbour. We planned on taking on fuel at Marsh Harbour Marina for our return trip, since it was a BoatUS participating marina. However the fuel dock was occupied by a huge yacht, so we radio’ed Conch Harbour and took on diesel and outboard gas there. We anchored closer to the Jib Room, hoping to get a better internet connection. Poor Fred had another oily disaster as he was adding oil to the outboard gas tank and was once again hit with a wake. After lunch, our task was to rid ourselves of more trash, and to top off our provisions at Maxwell’s supermarket – a new to us addition. Wow – the store was amazing by Bahamas standards. It had everything and was well stocked. We hauled our purchases in 4 canvas bags back to the dinghy and then to the boat. The wind, meanwhile, had shifted from the S to W. The forecast frontal passage was in progress. It cooled things off. We enjoyed our new Windwalker drink concoction (V8 Fusion strawberry/banana w rum and a twist of lime). Iris added $10 to her prepaid account via BTC Batelco online and immediately received a text confirmation. Everything about the BTC experience had been very professional. We stayed aboard for dinner and Fred spent the evening doing some PC/internet work. After dark, a large catamaran came in flashing a spotlight to find an anchoring spot. Our neighboring sailboat turned on his deck lights as did we, until they’d put down their anchor elsewhere.

The front passed overnight with strong winds. After breakfast we discussed the pros/cons of leaving or staying. Our new position brought us uncomfortably (but safely) close to the single-hander sailboat that looked like it had been in-place a long time. We went ashore for an enjoyable lunch at Mangoes (see Iris review at Mangoes Review) and then a hike over to Boat Harbour Marina to see what had changed since we’d last been there. We had a great view of the Sea of Abaco from there and could see the choppy conditions. As we were leaving Mangoes, the Caneel crew (now with a 3rd person who would be joining them for their passage back to the US) was parking their dinghy. We told them of our plans to go to Treasure Cay tomorrow for Iris’ birthday. They were thinking about going to Hope Town to give the new crew-member a taste of the Abacos as well as familiarize her with the boat. We had an extremely wet ride back to Windwalker. Iris did some research on where to eat at Treasure Cay – and set her heart on Treasure Sands Club based on TripAdvisor reviews. She made reservations for the restaurant, as well as for a slip at Treasure Cay Marina. We were going to splurge! At around 4:30 the sailor on the boat next to us sat in his cockpit and glared at Iris sitting in hers. She went below to Fred and said “I think he’s trying to send us a message that he wants us to move”. Fred called out to him, but the man didn’t respond, just kept staring. OK – it’s time to move. He was there first and anchoring etiquette would have us move if the boat there first was unhappy with our position. We did so at the expense of our expiring internet connection. Iris had made plans to call a friend in CA via Skype but was unable to leave more than a garbled message. The winds remained high over night.

Fred had a birthday card out for Iris when she awoke. Nice start to her birthday. After breakfast we raised the outboard and put the dinghy on deck. That would make docking easier at the marina, as well as making our anticipated Whale Cay passage the following day easier. We raised anchor around 9:30 and motored/motorsailed/sailed to Treasure Cay. Another sailboat passed us just as we were entering the channel, and docked immediately before us in the slip next to us. We were docked at around 12:15 or so. Iris checked us into the marina – we took water and power (splurging) and were pleased to see that we’d also have free wifi. This avoided needing to re-up on our expiring Wimax contract. Iris asked the dockmaster if the water was potable. He replied that it was the city water and some people put it in their tanks. We tasted it (was ok), and tested it (450ppm) and then put it in the tanks along with some chlorine. . Fred hosed down the boat and then we went to the beach bar to sample their pina coladas and conch fritters. Afterwards, we started to walk on beautiful Treasure Cay beach towards Treasure Sands Club – which was 3 miles away. Everyone we spoke to told us we couldn’t walk there and we confirmed it after walking less than half way. We returned to the marina, wondering if we should cancel the reservations. A stop at the golf-cart rental place made us decide to continue (see Iris review of Treasure Sands Club including our driving experience Treasure Sands Club). We took showers at the Marina and enjoyed unlimited hot, running water for a change! Back aboard, Fred worked on pc stuff while Iris read. We got dressed up and left around 6:15 for our drive to the restaurant. After a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and after returning the golf-cart, Iris used the internet to reach all of her friends/family for birthday calls. We’d thoroughly enjoyed our day at Treasure Cay and decided perhaps we should do something like this once per trip.

The marina told us that checkout was noon but we could stay longer if we liked. Iris was up at 6 wanting to avail herself of the wifi to get out an email mailing. She’d hoped to finish by 7, but the connection wasn’t great and she took a break to make breakfast and then resumed – finally finishing at 8:45. Fred took a shower while Iris got rid of trash and purchased ice – altho’ she still had some from home 3 weeks ago. We left the marina at 10:30. If the Whale looked passable then we planned to go through. Otherwise, we’d anchor at Baker’s Bay, Great Guana Cay – although since it became a resort we had no desire to see what had become of one of our favorite places. As we approached the Whale it looked like 2-4′ swells. Better than our prior trip through. We motor sailed through the Whale and then sailed on to Manjack. Iris did a bad job of furling the main just prior to anchoring. We dragged in our first spot and the anchor caught on our 2nd attempt – with our position exactly on the Dodge guide’s anchor symbol 😉 We put down the dinghy and outboard and dinghy explored mid afternoon. The tide was going out however and we didn’t want to get stuck. We walked a bit on Crab Cay and passed the two wrecks and limestone bluffs noted in the cruising guide. We’d anchored here before but hadn’t dinghy explored. More to do tomorrow.

Quiet evening with dinner below and reading late into the evening. Watermaker: 445ppm after 5 minutes, 433ppm after 15 minutes.

We had a very quiet night and a lazy morning. We decided not to move to the northern anchorage but to explore some more. We ran the generator and then took our first trip of the morning. Since the dinghy and outboard were performing so flawlessly so far on the trip, we took the 2 mi ride up to Manjack Beach and landed the dinghy near the wrecked docks. Picnic tables on the beach were labeled as reserved for Brendels (dive guides). We took some of the trails (now with signs) King’s Highway to Bay to Bay Blvd to N Bay (which came out at the northern anchorage we planned to go to next) and then walked around the cay via the beach. New to us was a small yellow house on the beach at N Bay. It was a slightly more wet return to the boat against the wind, but not bad. Lunch aboard and then it was time to take advantage of the incoming tide to explore the mangrove shallows and other beaches. The mangrove shallows were very pretty and the ‘creek’ was very wide. We saw a house and mast towards the end, but didn’t want to impose on the privacy of the owners, so turned around. Going in the opposite direction, we walked on the beaches of both Manjack and Crab Cay, then dinghied over to the closer of the two wrecks and snorkeled. Lots of pretty small fish protected from human predators by the Crab Cay Marine Preserve. Back to the boat for snorkeling for conch (no joy) and Joy baths. Manjack is great! Later in the afternoon Fred made a dinghy repair, lubricated one of the rope clutches and refurled the mainsail properly. Iris, meanwhile, did some more housekeeping down below. Watermaker: 467ppm at 5 minutes, 443ppm at 20 minutes.

Fred is getting ansy and wants to be home-bound. The weather looks like it’ll be changing by the end of the week as well. So we blow off back-tracking to Green Turtle and decide it will have to wait until another trip. Raising anchor at 9am, we motored very slowly to the north end of Manjack so that we could complete our refrigerator run. The north end anchorage can be a bit rolly, as it is right at a pass to the Atlantic. We had also had difficulty anchoring there on past trips. We couldn’t set in the grass on our first attempt, so we moved and tried again with more scope and just waited. This time we set. Once again we were the only boat in the anchorage but as usual – that was not to last. Five minutes later a small rental boat came in – many more would throughout the day. Dive operators feed sting-rays at a corner of the beach and people come to ‘play’ with the sting-rays (a la Sting-Ray City in Grand Cayman). We went ashore at around 10:30, taking Bay to Bay Blvd to Ocean Blvd to Kings Hwy to the Beach, ending at a strongly built gazebo with some roof issues. We walked the beautiful beach and spoke with a cruising couple from Naples. A ‘new to us’ house faced the beach and the couple said that in 2007 when they were last there, the owner was actively building it. Clearly something had happened as it was incomplete. We asked them how he got his materials to the site. They said that construction materials and prefab sections came by boat to the Sea of Abaco side and then were trucked down King’s Hwy to Ocean Blvd.

Our return hike was via Kings Hwy to Bay to Bay Blvd to Poisonwood. The trail ended at the yellow house facing the northern anchorage. The house and its out building were posted with signs listing all the items that were NOT stored there, so as to discourage vandalism. The pretty yellow house attracted two hummingbirds. The anchorage was now fully active – several day-tripper vessels as well as a large motor-catamaran and another sailboat. We swam off the beach for a little while and then snorkeled on the anchor (and alas – no conch), took our joy baths and had a late lunch in the cockpit. Lazy afternoon. Two boats left. A trimaran arrived; another sailboat (catamaran) had difficulty setting anchor and tried several times before success. After dinner we were visited by an assertive laughing gull. He/she sat on our dinghy outboard and begged. Iris found some bread and it caught most of our throws. We tired of the game and the gull went to check out another boat. Watermaker: 468ppm at 5 minutes, 434ppm at 30 minutes.

As expected, we experienced a rolly night wihout much wind. We raised anchor at 8:45 and motored over to Powell. There were rain showers as we left the anchorage. Powell is another place that can have iffy holding due to grass – We found a sandy spot and felt a good set at 10:15. There were two power boats and two sailboats in the very large anchorage area. The weather is forecast to deteriorate on Tues-Wed with significant rain. We’ll probably try for Allans Pensacola tomorrow and Angelfish Point/Crab Cay on Tuesday – for wind protection. Powell is another anchorage with hiking trails. We beached the dinghy near the wreck of an old dock towards the northern end and looked for the memorial for a young woman who loved Powell and died many years ago. We walked to the northernmost point we could on the western beach; Fred found a little cave he couldn’t resist entering. We hiked the well-marked (by strategically placed flotsam) trail to the oceanside – noting how much the terrain changed while crossing the island. Iris’ Tevas had worn blisters on both her feet, so she hung out by the dinghy and checked out the fish and a small barracuda, while Fred did the bluff trail.

Back to the boat for lunch, then time to explore the southern end of the cay. There is another well marked trail to the east side where we took a long walk on the beautiful, but heavily sea-weed laden shore. We came back via the same trail and did some swimming and wading off the beach with the dinghy before returning to the boat to snorkel on the anchor and do our joy bath routine. Fred continued to scrub the hull trying to remove the green fuzzy stuff that seemed to grow only on a patch on the port aft quarter – weird stuff. We were surprised that other boats hadn’t come in. It was clearly pouring on Great Abaco. To leave or not to leave for FL? West winds were forecast for W/Thurs through Friday and there aren’t a lot of great anchorages choices. We used the phone data to check weather on Barometer Bob frequently. We could get to Mangrove Cay tomorrow and do our crossing on Tuesday. Watermaker: 495ppm at 5 minutes, 454ppm after 25 minutes.

Iris woke up adamant – she didn’t want to be crossing the Gulfstream with major thunderstorms forecast. After heated discussion, we decided to head to Allans-Pensacola and we still could get to Mangrove on Tuesday and cross on Wednesday – or if plans changed, wait at Great Sale. In any case – it was time to leave and we raised anchor at 8 and got to Allans at around 10:20. Another spot with poor-holding and it took us two tries to set in the shallow water. It started getting dark and began pouring just as we completed anchoring. Maybe today wouldn’t have been such a great day to head for Mangrove or Great Sale. We stayed below for lunch and a game of dominoes while we waited for a break in the weather. Around 2:30 we jumped in the dinghy and headed in search of the trail to the ocean side. It took a couple of tries, but we found the shell-marked trail entrance. It was nowhere near as pretty as we’d remembered it from 2003. Nor were we recognizing the Atlantic side. We had at least one picture on our website with the signing tree – which had spread to include several. However we thought we remembered a pretty beach and all we saw was a fairly rocky, coral stretch with perhaps sand much further down. Either our memories were faulty (likely), or perhaps storms had washed away sand and made for no beach at high tide? We’ll have to check when we get back. The water wasn’t inviting back on the anchorage side and we returned to Windwalker at around 4.

The weather forecast is unchanged. We have a window Tues.-Wed. and then the winds shift and we can’t tell how long they’ll stay westerly and northerly. It’s not a great window since there have been severe thunderstorms in FL and in the straits of FL. But once we leave Allans Pensacola we’ll have to rely on VHF (or use the SSB and weatherfax). It’s been great using the phone/data to see the radar and the forecasts. We’re going for it – so we bring up the dinghy and the outboard and stow all the related paraphernalia. Since Iris had call dollars and over 900mb left on data, she called her mother with a float plan and sent an email float plan to her and Fred’s sister, Lynn – both listed as epirb contacts. We checked our various websites and phone messages and get ready for an early start. Iris is not entirely ready to leave yet – there’s still more than 10 days to the end of the month!

Iris checked the weather several times during the night. There was a giant blob of high-intensity thunderstorms between Florida and Grand Bahama Island, heading east. But by her check at 6am, the blob had broken up and the weather looked a bit better. We raised anchor at 7am. After we’d left the Cay, we lost our tach – and continued to do so for the rest of the day. There was a loose connection in the wire-bundle which Fred would jiggle and we’d be charging the batteries once again. Not great. Later in the day, the chart-plotter started acting up as well.As we passed Foxtown, Iris sent ‘final’ text messages. That would be it for her Bahamas phone coverage. Sailing was too slow. so we ended up motor-sailing towards Mangrove. We’d decided to forego stopping at Great Sale which would result in losing a day, and forged ahead. For much of the day we saw thunderstorms but of course we had to go through one as we reached our anchorage. The winds were clocking, probably due to the storms in the area, and we saw W to N to E to S. We did the refrigeration run using the engine so that a generator run wouldn’t be necessary in the evening. There was only one other boat when we arrived – a catamaran anchored quite far away to the south. By evening there were 8 boats – 5 sail and 3 power. At dusk, strong winds from another thunderstorm caused a couple of the power boats to drag. One in particular kept resetting and put himself right in front of us (possibly over our anchor). Fred took some pictures of the boat just in case he dragged into us during the night. We planned to be off at 4am – so prepared for sea. Jacklines installed, harnesses ready as we’d be leaving in the dark, ditch bag ready, flashlights ready for raising anchor. The forecast seas seem fine – it’s the thunderstorms that pose the potential problem. But we’re not staying here!

Iris got up at 3am and got Fred up at 3:15. We raised anchor smoothly in the dark. As we motored away, we saw that two other vessels had departed awhile after we did – we saw their running lights. We raised sail (as it was our hope to sail all the way back – which was part of our motivation for taking this window). That was the end of the smooth part of the day. About 30 minutes after leaving the autopilot failed – the wheel would only turn in one direction. We tried various combinations of turning it off, using a different console, to no avail. We were out of practice and had many, many hours to go. Could have been worse – we could have been on a multi-day passage! It just made for a more tiring passage as one of us had to be at the helm at all times. We saw very little traffic: one westbound sailboat, several small eastbound power boats and lots of thunderstorms around us. AIS proved quite useful – freighter traffic was easily identifiable as not a factor and in a particularly close tug/tow approach which would have been much to close for comfort – we altered course. Particularly frustrating was seeing the shore for several hours but making only 3 knots and little progress. We’d reefed due to the storms, the wind was unpredictable, the seas were lumpy and it was getting late. We were surprised at how few fishing boats were out – probably due to several days of very lousy weather. We did see a rainbow :-)! Iris once again did a refrigerator run during the last hour of the engine to avoid the evening generator run. Fred had hoped to get to our slip upon arriving, but we only reached the inlet at around 7pm and anchored by 7:15 at our usual spot.

We closed our float plan. Since we’d gotten back prior to our (significant) anniversary milestone – Iris made the anniversary dinner while Fred called CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) to check us in. We now had 24 hours to report to CBP in either Riviera Beach or the airport. Nice dinner, we unwound. Not so fast! We had a ‘firedrill’ as Fred thought he’d lost his glasses overboard somewhere enroute. We tore apart the boat and couldn’t find them. We faded fast – it had been a tough way to end the trip.

We had a quiet and calm night. But compared to the Abacos, it was very hot and humid. Iris asked Fred to describe where he would have put his glasses when he went below. He said the nav station. She searched again and found them lodged behind the radar display – they probably had flown around during the passage. All is good! We had a leisurely breakfast before raising anchor at 9. As we approached the Parker Bridge – a sailboat in front of us radioed and asked that we go ahead since their draft was deep and there was shoaling on the other side of the bridge. Iris called out as we passed, asking what they drew. They replied 6 feet. I said we were 5 1/2. They said there was a big problem up ahead. We’d noticed that we touched near the center of the channel last time we went through. We did see 8 1/2 – which at high meant there is a developing shoaling problem at the bridge. Our return to our slip was awkward as well. The winds were westerly and there was a very large motoryacht across the channel – so it took a few attempts to get into the slip. In addition, we’d left some of our lines and one on our port aft piling had fallen into the water and then fell off completely. What should have taken a few minutes instead took about 1/2 hour. But we were back, we were safely attached and now the clock was ticking to get to CBP. Showers, clean clothes and at noon – we headed off to Riviera Beach. The most interesting part of the experience was entering the small lobby with a few seats and a window/counter for service and clearly a two-way mirror. The sign said to push the button (which looked like a small doorbell button on the counter that didn’t seem to be attached to anything). After a few minutes the agent came to get our information and then she disappeared. We both felt like we were under observation. Soon she was back and we were officially back! We had a great trip and are glad we went. Now the projects begin.