On Wednesday, we sailed from Bimini across the Grand Bahama Bank with a group of eight other boats. At five knots, it takes two days to cross these wide banks, with crystalline clear blue water showing sand and starfish and sea cucumbers 15 feet below.

On the second day, when it was calm and smooth, Derek and Grant were picking out details even in 30 feet:


When we anchored out on the bank at Mackie Shoal Light to spend the first night (not a good idea to cross shallow banks in the dark), we were a small "town" of sailboats with our masthead lights burning. This turned out to be convenient for those who DO travel the banks at night, as the light itself seemed to be "not functioning at this time."

We then followed New Moon

and Charisma

along with Grace

pretty much upwind to the anchorage at Bird Cay -- there was supposed to be internet connectivity there, but the marina on nearby Frazier's Hog Cay that was going to provide it and rent us a mooring ball (and maybe let me get the saltwater-splashed bedding dried out) is closed until further notice for renovations, in other words, "not functioning at this time."

We had a nice snorkeling trip to the shores of Bird Cay with Chris and Marisa (Charisma), who found a tiny saltwater aquarium style reef in a warm patch with beautiful young reef fish and all kinds of interesting small corals hiding under overhangs -- a mini-reef. Charisma and New Moon were planning on heading to Nassau the next day, Thursday, so we also continued immediately to Nassau. I teach online, and I can't be away from the internet for extended periods. Grace had been headed to the anchorage at the West End of New Providence, but a northerly swell caused the entrance bar to become iffy and George and Doris decided to divert to Nassau. Here they are (Grace, the two-years-newer sister to Parallax) under sail coming into Nassau:

The image is a little tilted because we were tossing a bit when we took it.

As it turned out, Parallax started taking on water through a forward locker -- water was filling up the locker as we pounded into the choppy seas between Bird Cay and Nassau, and swooshing through the storage bilge under our forward bunk (due to a drainage failure in the diesel deck locker), and we wound up with seawater sloshing back and forth along the salon carpet before we figured out where the leak was and fixed it.


Then we pumped out as much water as we easily could, using an emergency portable pump connected to Derek's high speed drill -- the whole time the boat was on autopilot -- and finally, once the leak was stopped and the immediate flooding pumped down to a certain level, the hydraulic steering ripped out of its mount, all the way aft. Thus, the steering for the last 1/3 of the voyage was iffy -- I steered by hand, while Derek dealt with the hydraulic cylinder to try to keep the steering semi-functioning long enough to get us into Nassau and past the cruise ship channel. Charisma was awesome, stayed beside us and offered spares and advice and moral support the whole way!

And John and Paddy on New Moon talked to the dockmaster at the marina they'd chosen, so the marina was ready for our wounded-steering vessel's approach. Nassau is a large commercial harbor, so there are permissions to obtain and commercial shipping to avoid. Here's Charisma avoiding a brightly-painted commercial vessel:

Altogether too eventful.

Friday, using a Shop Vac lent by Chris and Marisa, and while Chris and Derek were searching out hydraulics specialists and machine shops, I took 25 gallons or so from the shallow bilges under the floors, then rescued cans of food that had been soaked in diesel-scented saltwater, and re-established internet connectivity (much to Grant's delight). I also badly needed to do laundry to get saltwater out of bedding and towels, but there was some kind of island-wide water outage, the water was "not functioning at this time."

While I was pumping the water out, I listened to the local classical station and was treated to an announcement that the island's cell-phone and internet service had been interrupted but BTC was working on the problem and appreciated their patrons' patience. In other words, communications were "not functioning at this time."

Charisma invited us over for dinner and a movie in a non-diesel-soaked salon -- in their beautiful boat, in fact. They have worked on it for years and redone the complete interior, and it's lovely. It's a Challenger Anacapa 42 monohull with two cats (but not on the yards, the cats stay in the boat and there are no yardarms to worry about). Marisa made a wonderful spaghetti sauce with a little kick to it -- so delicious that everyone ate until they wanted to fall asleep, and Derek brought out his birthday present from last year, a video projector, and the scroll-like screen Grant and I made, and that worked pretty well!

We ripped the carpeting out of the flooded area last night and this morning -- Chris and Derek are working on the hydraulic steering -- next will be the transmission for the port engine. I did laundry this morning at $3/token in the marina laundromat, and the whites loads were stained orange-brown by the Nassau water utility flushing the lines. Not a uniform orange, either, but streaks of rust all over the towels and underwear. At least the water was now functioning. In the middle of laundry, Marisa came in to do a load for one of her kitties, who had gotten into the engine room and had to be thoroughly cleaned. I needed to visit a veterinarian anyway, to get more lactated Ringer's solution for our cat, so I went along with Marisa to the vet clinic, which was a great place -- the veterinarian is a Tuskegee University grad and she looks young but really knows her stuff!


Paddy from New Moon offered to shepherd our respective laundry loads through the process as she was also up doing laundry -- what a wonderful, helpful thing to do! It looks like Ella The Cat will be OK, but she keeps pushing the envelope on those canonical nine lives -- her appetite for plastic is similar to our own kitty's.

We will be on New Providence for weeks now, with internet almost all of the time.