January 10th. Little Farmers to Rat Cay

The wind blew from the north east all night but in the lea of Little Farmers, it was very comfortable. Steve, Barry and I talked via VHF in the morning to time our departure.

For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to cruise here, there is more to the planning some of our day sails than others. The Exuma chain of islands is about 100 miles long and runs basically north and south. On the east is the Exuma Sound and on the west are the Bahama Banks. When possible (unless we're low on fish) we stay on the banks in the normally calm water. But there are times that the Banks are too shallow and we need to go out one of the cuts between the islands into the Sound to travel.

The complications are the wind conditions on the Sound vs. the Tidal Current in the cuts. Twice a day the water from the bank side rushes through the cuts going east and twice a day the water from the Sound heads back to the west to the banks. In some locations this current is only a couple of knots but. when the cut is small the current can be as much as 4 or 5 knots.

When there is no wind on the Sound the contrary current doesn't really matter. It just slows us down for a few minutes. However, when the wind is blowing in and the current is going out, the waves really pile up in the relatively shallow water on the cuts.

Such was the case this morning. High tide was at about 7am so all morning the current was flowing out the cut. The wind as I mentioned above, was blowing 15 knots from the north east.In to the cut.

The equation is further complicated by the length of your trip and the tidal current conditions at the cut that you plan on entering at the end of the day.

The last concern is the depth of the cut itself. For instance if the wave height is 8 feet and the shallowest point of the cut is 12 feet at low tide. and your boat draws 6 feet. Then the calculation is roughly 8 / 2 4.10 - 4 8 . or wave height divided by 2 subtracted from the meal low water. In this case the boat in question should have 2 feet of clearance. Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing a full moon so the tides are exaggerated to the tune of .3 M which translates to about 12 inches. So now there is only 1 foot of clearance in our scenario above and for most of us, a one foot margin of error is not enough.

I apologize for the lengthy explanation but I want everyone to know that there are times that we don't just weigh anchor and go. We all do our own calculations but it's nice to discuss them to double check. Today for instance, we knew that if we waited for the tide to turn, we might not be able to reach our planned destination in daylight. On the other hand, if we left too soon we would be fighting the current in both cuts.

We decided to leave about 11am knowing that the conditions here at Little Farmers Cut would not be nice. We spent some time battening down the hatches and securing everything that was loose. After getting the anchor up I tied a double reef in the main as we followed the narrow channel around the south end of Little Farmers. The wind on the Sound was due east at 17 when we entered the cut. "Fine Lion" went first and we could see that we were in for a ride. "Night Hawk" was second and they looked like a cork bobbing in and out of sight between the waves. We plowed forward into the waves. The bow went up higher with each wave finally getting to the point where we were at least on a 45 degree angle. Then we come down with a crash sticking the bow underwater for a few seconds. When it came up tons of water rushed back over the cabin. Most was deflected by the dodger but the gunnel areas were full and flooded into the cockpit so we found ourselves standing in ankle deep water.

We only took about 5 or 6 of these waves before clearing the worst of the cut and it only lasted about 2 minutes but . it wasn't fun.

Once in the sound we had about 15 to18 knots and seas of 6 to 8 feet but our point of sail was good and we angled through the waves without much problem. We caught one small barracuda and another fish broke the wire leader on one of our hand lines, but came up empty for the day. Barry had a couple of good hits but didn't hook up. Steve and Kim were the only successful anglers coming up with one Mahi.

We glided through Rat Cay Cut in flat water, lowered sails and motored around the island to an anchorage. We had everyone over to rehash the events of the day and made a meal of cheese, crackers, summer sausage and dip.

One episode of CSI was enough for me but Kathy stayed up a little later and ended up sleeping in the cockpit under the full moon.