Dry fresh water tanks, dirty laundry, and a need to full recharge the house battery bank finally forced us to pull the anchor and depart Manjack Cay. We sailed off the anchor and into a nasty squall in the afternoon on July 6th. The remainder of the short trip from Manjack back to Green Turtle, a trip we know quite well at this point, was made under power.
We arrived at the Bluff House Marina with enough time to do laundry and shower before dinner. Fortunately the squall allowed us to collect 30+ gallons of fresh water to fill our tanks. The water at the docks is metered and we have seen everything from 20 cents to 45 cents per gallon. We did pay the extra $12 to plug into shore power, the first time we have plugged into the grid since fall 2007.
On the morning of the seventh we walked up the hill to the actual Bluff House atop Green Turtle Cay. The house, built in the 50's is now the hub of the Bluff House Resort and serves as a bar and restaurant. The view of New Plymouth and the outer anchorage are amazing (see image). Earlier in our trip we spent a couple nights anchored in the harbor pictured.
After walking about, we finalized everything at the dock and shoved off around 10:00. The trade winds are still prevailing so we are forced to motor sail under the main as we progress ESE towards the infamous Whale Cay Cut and on to Guana Cay.
Whale Cay Cut is notorious because of the large breaking seas, locals call them rage seas, that can form in the cut in north winds or in time of large offshore swell. There are two inside routes, but both require ideal conditions to visually navigate across waters that are less than a meter deep at low tide. Most vessels choose to run outside of Whale Cay. We decided to clear the Whale today because large swell from Hurricane Bertha may make the area impassible later in the week.
By the time we are approaching Whale Cut the winds are nearing 20 knots and the seas were stirred up with numerous white caps in the local 3 foot chop. The area is not too rough and word from boats on the outside is that things are passable. By chance our arrival at the reef on Whale Cay is about one hour before high tide and the time is now a bit after noon. Hmm these are perfect conditions for running the shallow inside route along the southern shore of Whale Cay. Anne's not so confident about my hasty change in direction, but she agrees to take the helm as I lower the mainsail. Mainsail down and stowed Anne is eager to put the helm back in my hands as our depth sounders readings shrink like the stock market faces with $200 dollar a barrel oil. By the time Anne gives up the helm we have gone from 25 feet deep to 6' deep. Anne takes position on the bow to watch for coral heads and I'm left on the helm attempting to decipher the route from the multiple shades of green water that separate us from the seabed. While a bit stressful our run across the inside of Whale Cay was successful. At high tide we never observed less than 6" of water under our keel (4' deep) and that only lasted around 2 minutes... a long 2 minutes.
We ended our day anchored off Guana Cay in Fisher Bay.