I haven’t written as we have been quite busy and distracted lately. We spent four days in Blackpoint doing laundry, snorkeling and enjoying Christmas dinner with about 50 other cruisers. It was a good dinner and we met Steve and Jane on REFLECTIONS from Ontario Canada. REFLECTIONS is a CS36 and this is their first year down so we were comparing notes. During their trip south they were advised on several occasions to turn back as they had recurring transmission problems and spent some major boat bucks getting them repaired at various places along the way. They are now glad they kept going and made it to the Exumas.

We snorkeled by dinghy with WHITEBIRD on the south side of Blackpoint and somehow missed the myriad of sharks that frequent these waters. There were quite a few small schools of little fish that were interesting. Before returning to the boat we took a dinghy tour to the far end of Blackpoint, on the south side, where there is an anchorage with good protection from the east, north and some of the northwest. The BTC coverage was less than stellar and very confusing as the Google FI phone and the BTC phone both had three bars but an E indication. WHITEBIRD has LTE and SEA JULES has 3G and E at times. After some research E is roughly an indication of 2G, H and H+ is an indication of 3G and LTE is you guessed it, LTE. I fiddle with the settings quite a bit and am able to get H and H+ intermittently but it seems to reset to E quite often. Not sure if it is my phones or the tower, but tend to think it is the phones as others have LTE and 3G. We may stop in at the BTC office in Staniel Cay on the quick stop before heading north. Before leaving we “borrow” 30 gallons of RO water from ZURI as they make something like 45 gallons per hour or something and are quite generous. Good to have Stephen and Estelle as friends. They are off to Georgetown in the morning with guests that have to catch a plane.

I am going to take a couple of days of vacation so we can spend some more time in Warderwick Wells. This is in the Bahamas National Trust Land and Sea Park and is an area without cell phone coverage. Who needs a working cell phone anyway? At the park office you can buy 24 hours of medium speed internet for $10.
We leave Big Majors Spot and head for Sea Aquarium Coral Garden at O’Brien Cay near Bell Island. It is quite a sail, for a bit, in 20 kts of wind and then as our course is heading more upwind we take in the head sail and motor sail the remainder. SEA JULES continues sailing to the last minute and then has issues furling and ends up with some tatters when completed. By this time it is quite rough and we decide to go hide behind O’Brien Cay. In the anchorage there is a large super yacht taking up most of the area so we head a bit further south in the open area to anchor. OUR DIAMOND is the lead boat for depth sensing and it is a steady call of 10s and 8s until it becomes 6s and 4s and then CRUNCH; we are aground in 3+ feet, sandy bottom. SEA JULES turns around and decides to anchor where they are while we spend the next 30 minutes working to get off a sand bar. Good thing for low tide rising! We get off and decide to hide behind Little Halls Pond Cay even further in from SEA JULES. They follow later and we anchor in 20 feet (not my favorite due to the amount of chain we have to put out which means our windlass, named Robert, has more work to pull anchor. As the afternoon wears on we find out we are in the cut between Bell Island/ Cambridge and parts north that all the fast tour boats use as a super highway. We have lunch, a nap and after a conference with SEA JULES decide to move further north to Emerald Rock in the Exuma Park. The main point is to go out on the high tide at 3P so we don’t have to go through the shoals again at low tide, and also to get away from the tour boats. Of course the wind is abating so we see several dinghies heading to the Coral Garden as we pass, bummer, but we will be back.

We motor to make Emerald Rock just before sunset and anchor among 7 superyachts with about 5 jet skis each having races against the better advice of the park warden calling on the radio stating jet skis must be operated at idle in the park boundary. They finally call it a day and we have a great dinner and watch the moonlight create shadows of fish and boats on the bottom as the water is so calm. In the morning we get a mooring in the Warderwick Wells Park. We were here last year with the kids on a charter cat and had a great time. Rusty proposed to Stephanie here so they were excited to hear we were going to visit the park again. The next couple of days are spent hiking to Boo Boo Hill and snorkeling Emerald Rock and the Park Rangers Garden. No sharks but quite a few large (4 foot) rays and lots of reef fishes.

We have happy hour the last night and meet quite a few folks. One of the boats is captained by one of the guys that commissioned SEA JULES which is another small world story. In the discussions Mike finds a sewing machine that can be borrowed in the morning as I had said I could fix the sail but our machine was left in Jacksonville with Stan and Annie of KOKOPELLI. The sewing machine story is quite convoluted as it was stated as a giveaway machine, with the caveat of pay it forward when requested in the future. Later it was a “borrow” and in the morning it was a borrow of a completely different machine which actually needed to be serviced to be useable. After Mike gets the machine sorted out I spend about 20 minutes adjusting, and breaking two needles and more adjusting to the point where it might work. An hour and half later I get the suncover of the headsail repaired and do not spot any major damage. Good thing the cockpit is SEA JULES is so big as their headsail was quite large also. Just as we are wrapping up the sewing machine “broker” shows up with another machine to “adjust”. At least this one is a more familiar Sailrite machine, even though quite old. The guy is quite adamant that I should adjust the timing for it to work but I hold him off long enough to get the thing set up, threaded and actually make a couple of stitches to see what I have to work with. Two tension adjustments later it is sewing through 8 layers of Dacron without issues. They begin to call me the sewing machine whisperer, but it is just people that try to force the material through the machine. A walking foot machine does the work so let it. I let the guy photograph a few pages of the sewing machine manual so he can make further timing adjustments down the road. Good luck to you sir.

After sewing machine classes we drop the mooring lines and head for Staniel Cay on the sound side to try fishing again. Mike always says afterwards that we were definitely fishing as if we caught anything we would call it catching. I get the point as we both are skunked again. Back to mac-n-cheese for me.

WHITEBIRD calls to let us know they are between Big and Little Majors Spots to grab a hidey hole from west wind and weather that is expected January 2. This area is not typically used much but we decide to anchor near them and good thing we did. The anchorage off Pirate Beach for New Years Eve is a cluster of about 20 superyachts and about 100 other boats. The Staniel Cay Yacht Club is swamped with big and little boats. We spend 30 minutes holding position in high current to get on the fuel dock for diesel and water (still no water maker joy). Not to brag but I was quite impressed by my boat handling in 2.5-3 knots of current. Back to anchor near WHITEBIRD but that creates friction for the viewing and partying of New Years Eve. We end up spending the evening on SEA JULES with WHITEBIRD and DUCHESS. Matt and Joyce run the 32 foot Allied Sailboat DUCHESS out of Albany New York. Peter and Cathy start calling them the young guns as they are in their early 30s and just quit working to go sailing for a year or two. We are all amazed and thinking where we were in our early 30s, not sailing in the Exumas that’s for sure. There are some very good impromptu fireworks from Fowl Cay Resort at cruisers midnight (9PM) which are very visible over the hills of Big Majors Spot so Lana is thrilled again. After that it is back to the boat and an early retirement. We welcome 2018 from behind closed eyelids hiding bloodshot eyes. Tomorrow is the 43rd annual New Year’s Day Cruisers Regatta which WHITEBIRD signed us up for while we were out of communications in Warderwick Wells (at our request).