Turn-around day
26 February 2007 | Hog Cay, Long Island
Jim Lea
Today, we started back from Rum Cay heading north. This is the extent of our trip for this year. Although we were a few miles further south in the Jumentos, Rum Cay somehow seems to be "further away", maybe because its on the path to the Eastern Caribbean. And todaywe turned back, leaving Nahanni and a few others waiting for favorable winds to carry on south. It felt a bit odd but perhaps next year. We have no reason to turn back, but have decided that we want to sail north again this spring. There are lots of places we missed that we want to visit, and, wherever we spend the summer, Estelle will need some TLC. So north it is!! We left Maine on Sept 1, arriving in The Bahamas in mid-December, meaning we spent 3.5 months en route. But we didn't try to make it in a hurry. Our plan is to be back in Maine by June 1, or just over 3 months from now. But by the time we're back from skiing and my Belize trip, it will be mid-March. So that will mean 2.5 months for the trip back. So it's time to plan for it. We will spend another month or so in the Bahamas working our way up Cat Island, Eluthera, and across to the Abacos, then back to the US, probably arriving in Savannah, Georgia in late April. Then we will follow the spring north! Yesterday (Sunday)morning, we went ashore and biked over to the Sumner Point Marina, a bit of a loosely operated affair, and, after chasing off a bunch of barking dogs, we managed to find someone on duty who gave us the password to the wireless internet connection. So we caught up on some of that stuff. I checked out the Charlottetown Guardian and laughed to see the same energy stories making headlines as this time last year and the year before that!!! Then back to the boat for lunch, and back ashore for a bike ride on the other road in the afternoon. This one was shorter than yesterday's road, and ended about two miles out of town at the construction site of a huge resort and marina complex. The site has been cleared and some excavations begun, but work seems to have stopped. Rumor in town has it that they got digging in an area for which they didn't have a permit. But it seems to have all the signs of a lot of Bahamas projects... big start, and petering out into an abandoned project. But I may be wrong. The cleared site is about 2,000 acres... like I said, huge. If it goes ahead, it will transform Rum Cay from the quiet, pretty village it now is into a very upscale resort island. With a population of just 60, it will mean a huge increase just to staff the place. If it doesn't get finished, it will leave a huge scar on the Island. Back in town, we loaded the bikes back on the boat, and dinghied across to Nahanni and had drinks. We toured their very nice boat, a TaShing 40' designed by Robert Perry, a very highly respected designer of offshore boats, and built in Taiwan in the mid-80's, when they still did good work. It is a very nice and strong boat. They plan to head south to Trinidad, across the coast of South America then back up the Western Caribbean, Panama, Guatemala, Belize, etc. next winter. We loaned them charts of the Turks & Caicos as they were headed there and had none and they will mail them back to us. And we will drop off a couple of letters to their daughter in Whistler next week. Then back too the boat for supper of steak, rice& beans, cole slaw and plantain. We are in clean-out-the-freezer mode as we will be leaving next weekend, so the meals will get progressively more unusual as we get further down. And we still have 3 meals of mahi-mahi, a complete roast chicken, and a bunch of other stuff. Just at sundown the ship from Nassau pulled out with the last of the weekend revelers aboard, a much quieter crowd than on arrival. And this morning, the normal quiet descended on the village. Today (Monday) we set out for Hog Cay, just south of Cape Santa Maria off the western shore of Long Island. There seem to be a lot of Hog Cays in the Bahamas. In fact, there is another one less than 10 miles from this one, and at least three others in the Exumas alone. We set out, raising anchor at 8:30 am, and set sail in a 15 knot broad reach with a following 2 knot current! Ideal! This is the same current that last week prevented us from getting to Rum Cay, so today it is nice to have it with us! But as the morning progressed, the wind slowly died. By noon, we had reduced form our 6.5 knots down to 3.5, of which 1.5 was from the favorable current. Just as we were finishing lunch, we were surrounded by a group (is it a pod?) of dolphins. They seemed to come out of nowhere, and swam and dove around our bow. How they avoided being hit by the bow was beyond us. At one count, I counted 18, all swimming and diving around us. They stayed with us in varying numbers for about half an hour, then they were gone as quickly as they arrived. But even at that pace, we were able to round Cape Santa Maria in the dying breeze. However as we approached our intended anchorage, we noticed that remnants of the swell were still making themselves felt. So we altered course for Joe's Sound, a snug hurricane hole into which no swell would be able to find its way. The entrance (no markers of course) is only 14' wide, and at high water it has just 6'. So we proceeded cautiously with Jeannie on the bow guiding me. But I got mesmerized looking at the rocks clearly visible on the starboard side no more than 8' away, and missed her signal. So we slowly eased up onto a sand bank. But I sensed that we could get over it, so I gunned it and we slid over and into the most beautiful anchorage we have yet had in the Bahamas! With two other boats in the anchorage, and a calm night, we quickly settled in with the Rum Punch! So began a perfect evening in Joe's Sound. Tomorrow, my plans are to do some snorkeling on the nearby reefs, and to put on my scuba gear and scrub the bottom of the boat, which is beginning to get a bit dirty. But I am actually pleased with how well it has held up so far. I have taken a few swipes at it with just mask and snorkel, but it needs some serious attention now before it gets worse. By the way, I have had a few comments from doubters about "The Fish". For a picture, go back to the blog entry of that day, and you will see I posted a picture of it when we had internet access yesterday!