S/V Sienna Belle

Vessel Name: Sienna Belle
Vessel Make/Model: Lubeck Natascha 44
Hailing Port: Islamorada, Florida
Crew: Rich & Carol Beliveau & Richie Chapman
About:
We are Capts. Rich and Carol and baby Captain Richie. We live and work at the Florida Sea Base, a high adventure Boy Scout camp. Rich runs the sailing program and Carol drives a 46' dive boat. We are preparing our boat for an open-ended circumnavigation beginning... who knows... [...]
Extra:
Sienna Belle is a 52' LOA steel schooner that was built in Germany in 1988. She is one of about 20 - production steel sailboats are rare to say the least. Systems are 24v and metric. Keeps things interesting. We bought her in the end of 2005 in Ft. Pierce and finally took her home in March of [...]
03 October 2010 | Bildge
29 August 2010 | Islamorada
13 December 2009 | Bahamas/Florida
13 December 2009 | Bahamas
06 December 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama
21 November 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama Island
16 October 2009 | Islamorada
22 September 2009 | Dry Tortugas
07 September 2009 | Islamorada
26 August 2009 | Islamorada
03 August 2009 | Islamorada
Recent Blog Posts
03 October 2010 | Bildge

More Power

Well I started the process of giving us a little more juice from the engine. Our friends Mike and Kelly (mainly Mike) the electrical guru has helped us on several electrical projects. They are heading to wide open ocean cruising for the next ten months, so it is time to let the sparks fly on my own and [...]

29 August 2010 | Islamorada

At Long Last - A New Companionway Hatch

We've been doing many projects to the old girl and Sienna Belle is looking great. Carol is busy pursuing a nursing degree and no longer has any "free time" for the blog. I am NOT and I repeat NOT the literary genius that Carol is, but I will do my best to keep anyone interested in what is happening to [...]

13 December 2009 | Bahamas/Florida

A Crappy Day in Paradise

The trip to the Bahamas was amazing. Beautiful beaches, incredible people, tons of places to explore both inhabited and uninhabited, great new drinks to experiment. You know, typical vacation, right? Mostly. Enter the Boat Factor. Like most of "us", traveling to and from our vacation spots includes [...]

13 December 2009 | Bahamas

Bahamas Deep Draft - Abacos

I put up a post on the SSCA discussion board offering deep draft Abacos information if anyone was interested. Got a few bites and here is what I posted.

06 December 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama

Bahamas... continued

So the trip was fantastic. We carved out a beautiful deep draft route through the Abacos and never kissed bottom even once. Made it all the way to Hope Town. However, in our quest to be conservative knowing how the weather can be this time of year, we started our voyage west a bit early... Maybe too early. We are in West End and have been since... ummm.. when did we get here...? Last Thursday I think. Maybe Wednesday... Anyway, today is Sunday and we are hoping to depart tomorrow; it looks like a tiny weather window will open up for a very short time tonight and tomorrow through Tuesday. But none of the forecasts have been very accurate as there has been a front toying with us; becoming stationary then moving on, stationary then moving BACKWARDS!!! It seemed like it moved on yesterday when the winds went from 23+ out of the south to 28+ out of the north - instantly! But its still blowing a lot out of the north and east this morning. Guess there are worse places to be stuck, right? Good thing we like Conch. Conch salad, conch fritters, cracked conch, conch scorch... starting to feel like Forrest...

21 November 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama Island

The Bahamas - At Long Last

Can't believe we are finally here! We have been trying to make this trip during November for three years now and have been shut down each time by wind. Not this time, the weather couldn't have been much more perfect, by any means. The Gulf Stream crossing was a little spunky about a third of the way [...]

More Power

03 October 2010 | Bildge
Well I started the process of giving us a little more juice from the engine. Our friends Mike and Kelly (mainly Mike) the electrical guru has helped us on several electrical projects. They are heading to wide open ocean cruising for the next ten months, so it is time to let the sparks fly on my own and hopefully not burn the boat down again.

Mike rewired the back of our engine for us and removed the mysterious "black box". The previous owner told us it was there, and if the boat wouldn't run there's a 100 amp fuse inside of it to check. Nobody really had a clue as to what it really did except for trying to start a fire.

One morning as we are getting ready for work I smelled smoke. I grabbed a pair of shorts and flip flops. I now have the proper attire donned to battle a boat fire. I popped open our engine cover doors to see flames bellowing out. Carol is freaking out a bit and grabs the powder fire extinguisher. Me being an ex-navy firefighter grabbed a kitchen towel and smother the flames. The extinguishers work great but they are very corrosive and extremely messy. Since we have the floating potential rust bucket as in all steel boat I chose the towel. It seems some retard (me) left the key switch on and of course the batteries as well. Something in the "dreaded black box" decided it was time to do something destructive and poof there it went.

Mike threw both Carol and I off of the boat and went in with a pair of wire cutter and a flash light. 3 hours later we no longer have a mystery box. He wired the boat for an AC Delco type alternator, a single wire that pretty much makes it an idiot proof system. I proved him wrong on the idiot proof part when we were getting ready to go to the Bahamas last year. (did you know if you hook the negative lead to the positive block and the positive lead to the negative block on your alternator you'll literally kill your isolator) who'd have thought.

I was in a hurry the night before around 10:30 pm with a half a bottle of Captains Morgan in me and seriously screwed things up. AC Delco alternators are pretty tough though. It didn't kill the alternator, but did the isolator. I noticed as we were leaving the channel that we weren't making power. Electricity and rum aren't a good combination. Mike came out in his dingy and rubbed some spit on the alternator and poof off and running again. He made serious fun of me and called me a few choice names but it was well deserved.

Our only issue with the AC Delco is we aren't getting enough juice out of it. I went to our local mechanic/ diesel repair (R&R Diesel in Stock Island) and spoke with Bill. He suggested a BIG 24V truck alternator that gives 80 amps. 80 amps doesn't sound like much power, but it is really 160 amps. Being 24V everything that draws energy is pretty much cut in half. Bill said it should work fine and keep everything topped off.

On our trip while in the Bahamas we smoked the alternator by trying to charge both banks at once. Not a good idea with the little alternator, another smoky situation in the middle of nowhere.

I installed the new PTO pulley this morning, and will pick up the new alternator from R&R Tuesday. It is a work in progress but I'll get it figured out or we'll have a marsh mellow roast on the end of the T-Dock. Fingers crossed we'll have everything together by next weekend. I'll get pictures up when finished.

R&C

At Long Last - A New Companionway Hatch

29 August 2010 | Islamorada
Rich
We've been doing many projects to the old girl and Sienna Belle is looking great. Carol is busy pursuing a nursing degree and no longer has any "free time" for the blog. I am NOT and I repeat NOT the literary genius that Carol is, but I will do my best to keep anyone interested in what is happening to the old girl (not Carol, Sienna Belle) up to date.

We contracted American Marine, Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale to construct the door/ hatch for the boat. The old opening was hard to get in and out of when out at sea and even harder to see around if the hatch was up. The new construction was thought of from an ad in one of the sailing magazines. Looking at the overbuilt door assembly in the pictures was something we felt we needed while pursuing our dream of a circumnavigation. It is of serious construction, watertight and has good visibility while underway. The door assembly comes with a dead bolt to make it more difficult for unwanted intruders as well as esthetically pleasing to the eye.

The company in the ad was out of the west coast of Canada. They have a great reputation to go along with a well built product. American Marine were sailboat newcomers but were willing to give it a go. We had Ron (one of the owners); Ryan (the engineer) and Reggie (construction) all do the two hour drive to the middle keys for measuring and fitting. They were nice enough people and knew what was going on.

I ripped all of the old doors off so they would have accurate places for measuring and to make their jobs much easier. I felt they were more than capable of the job and had seen much of their normal production work in the fitting area of their shop. All the measuring was complete and they headed back home to get to work.

Probably a month later they had the first fit before actual assembly and finishing of the door. Unfortunately nothing fit or was even close. They ripped everything apart and went back for try two. A month or so later they came back with a much closer fitting product. Still not perfect but close. We tried several things to get a better fit and with my welding/ manufacturing background I knew it wasn't going to be perfect. I wish I had the right equipment and a fellow do it yourselfers help of Mike Lucivero we could have had a great product in a short time. Needless to say we didn't and went with construction with our fingers crossed.

Probably a solid three months later we got the call the door was finished. I went and picked it up even though they volunteered to install the door. I had a feeling there would be issues and to be honest if I was working on it alone I'd be in better shape. As you can see below they were close but not quite perfect.









The door really looks nice but their geometry was off just a little. Being the metal guy that I am there was two things I could do. Rip apart the door, re-weld everything, repaint everything and of course cuss the entire time redoing the process. Or I could make shims and remount the door making the geometry correct. I chose the latter.

I went to Marathon and got with Aluminum Extraordinaire, Attila from "All Design, Inc." to lop off a couple of shims for me. Pictured blow are the shims mounted to the old opening. Everything screwed and countersunk to allow the door to fit properly.

photo here

I installed the door and predrilled everything for ease of assembly after I covered everything in Life Calk sealant to keep us dry from the elements. As anyone knows who works with this stuff as soon as it is applied it will pretty much jump all over everywhere without so much as anyone touching any surface. I am usually pretty good with working with this stuff, and had only one mishap while doing the install. The corners hit the top off the wood and smeared a little bit. The door was awkward and I lost my balance a bit. I screwed everything back down with Life Calk oozing out everywhere. It went pretty well and I think we have a great seal (much better than before). I think the integrity of the door is very good and the overall construction was very good. Below are pictures of the completed door/ hatch. I still have a little clean up to do, but overall the project is complete.

photo here

The hatch splits and stays down while underway still enabling access in and out of the boat or flips up for even easier access.

photo here

In closing, would I recommend American Marine, Inc.? Yes, they are a good bunch of people and this was a little out of their warm and fuzzy zone. They learned a lot working on the Sienna Belle and also that not all boat owners are retards. They have a great product and more than capable craftsmen. They are easy to work with and pay close attention to details of the finishing. Geometry was a little shortcoming, but not bad for their first attempt. The cost of the assembly was 3,000.00 dollars and a boat ride to the reef line, about 1000 less expensive than their Canadian competition.
I would also like to thank Steve and Carol, Sienna Belle's previous owners. There hasn't been one project I've dove into where the boat wasn't right to begin with. SB is my 5th project boat and will hopefully be my last. On all of my previous boats there has always been a pile or mess of mistakes where someone took shortcuts or just totally messed something up and put a band aid on it. We really wish we knew you when you had the old girl and became our sailing friends instead of a wealth of distant information. The offer still stands if you ever want to join us with the girl.

I hope I haven't bored you to death with the project. Let me know if there's anything else you want to know about.
R&C

A Crappy Day in Paradise

13 December 2009 | Bahamas/Florida
Carol
The trip to the Bahamas was amazing. Beautiful beaches, incredible people, tons of places to explore both inhabited and uninhabited, great new drinks to experiment. You know, typical vacation, right? Mostly. Enter the Boat Factor. Like most of "us", traveling to and from our vacation spots includes our boat and all her gear and all the bugs that come along with said boat on said vacation. We all know the cliche about fixing boats in exotic places but sometimes we would like to just burn that rotten cliche right out of our brains. Case in point; the head. Somewhere right about the middle of our precious vacation the head backs up. And, I must admit, it backed up under my...watch. Now, my husband and I, along with our crew of one are all highly experienced on boats of all types and it is thoroughly engrained in the collective gray matter NOT to flush anything not of a biological nature so yes, I admit, I was a little miffed when the other half demanded to know what I had flushed. Nothing that I wasn't supposed to flush, thank you very much. Now, I do understand his jumpiness on the subject because he is the dear that fixes the heads on the fairly uncommon breakdowns.

That evening, or maybe the next evening, said head comes apart. Rich was suspicious of the problem - we've had similar symptoms before and carry a good stock of replacement parts for the specific problem that we usually have with this particular head. Nevertheless, to expedite this repair, the head must come off of the pedestal and be pretty well ripped apart. Didn't work, the head still would not flush and was becoming rather explosive with back pressure by this time. So, the logical deduction was that it really must be clogged. I swear I didn't do it.

After the highly odiferous task of taking apart the plumbing and watching too much stinky black water ooze all over our pretty boat's interior and guts out comes the arsenal of tickle sticks, threaded rod, small rigging wire attached to a cordless drill, our brand new water hose and so on. Absolutely nothing would make the blockage budge. After two days of this battle both under the water and above, Rich had resigned to the fact that we were under armed for this war and that we would have to use the remaining functional head for the rest of the trip. Could be worse and I was actually feeling extremely grateful that we indeed had a second head on our otherwise fine ship.

Fast forward to our return to the U.S. - land of Home Depot and West Marine. Rich decided that we would need a snake to solve the problem. After considering the CO2 powered versions he decided that might cause more trouble than it was worth although he was pretty fed up by that point. We settled on the standard hand crank version and triumphantly returned home to our fine ship with shoulders back and snake in hand. Fine ship tossed off any attempts to conquer said blockage with that wussy little snake faster than a two year old pony can toss a green rider. This was getting ugly(er). The snake just was not going to cut it. Literally.

I should add that Rich has amazing boat karma and is much braver than I when it comes to taking things apart and getting truly destructive when it must be. He has no fear of what might break in the meantime or that it might not go back together as easily as it came apart. Me, I'm already thinking we might be looking at a haul out to fix this little clog. I should also add that our vessel is steel and the German designers that built her enclosed the head plumbing in a pseudo sea chest. Pseudo because it holds no water - at least it's not supposed to unless there is some sort of catastrophic failure with the plumbing. Then the sealed sea chest theoretically would capture the leaking water and prevent the boat from sinking. Problem is, you can't see what's going on inside until it's too late.

So, we had no idea what that sea chest held or how all this plumbing was put together - and we were happily in denial - until the intake fitting broke off below the top of the sea chest. Uh Oh. Now we had no choice but to take it apart and find out what our little treasure - I mean sea chest held. Of course by this time the thru hulls were plugged from below while we explored. It's a good thing it was the weekend because I really was ready to stop the whole process and schedule a haul by this time. I've never been disappointed that Rich is braver than I when it comes to getting destructive, it's always paid off but this time even Rich was feeling a little squirmy with the situation. He says; "call the old owner and find out if he knows what's inside of these boxes". I got drafted to make the call because he was once again covered in... doo. I should mention that Steve and Carole, the former owners, have been angels about answering their phones when we call and have always explained as much as they can as well as they can. We really don't call unless we are truly scared - usually once or twice a year - but nevertheless, we are grateful to them every time. Although, this time Steve made it clear that no, he never had that chest apart but clued us in to what was in there as he had taken apart the boat's primary sea chest - where the major systems including the engine - get their cooling water...

Turns out, there were just the two innocent looking hoses clamped to standard fittings. So we're not going to need to haul after all and that silly broken fitting is definitely not the end of the world. Yay. We also now realize that this is way beyond a simple blockage and we are going to have to rebuild the entire system which is exactly what we did. Did I mention that we had to cut a 4"x12" section of our tiled floor out to access all the bolts on the side of the sea chest? We did. I couldn't watch.

Finally getting around to removing the old hoses, we were stunned at what we found: Complete and total blockage the entire length of the discharge hose; about 2.5 feet. It was like cement; there was no way we could have cleared it without total replacement or explosives. I, meanwhile, felt somewhat vindicated having my untimely biological function proven coincidental. But I kept that to myself. We realized that we were looking at 22 years of build up, that this likely was the original plumbing from when the boat was new.

After replacing all of the fittings, hoses, sealant and so on, the head has officially been conquered; hopefully for the rest of our time with this vessel and we intend that to be for a long time to come.

Bahamas Deep Draft - Abacos

13 December 2009 | Bahamas
Carol
I put up a post on the SSCA discussion board offering deep draft Abacos information if anyone was interested. Got a few bites and here is what I posted.

We left Islamorada and, at the last minute, decided that that Abacos might be a better choice to accommodate our draft rather than "maybe" being able to get into the ever-changing Bimini channel and then trying to find deep enough places to go from there. The charts and plotters certainly confirmed this. So, we headed straight for West End, Grand Bahama. There, you will land at the Old Bahama Bay Marina, with a super easy entrance - jetties on both sides, only one set of lights, a total no-brainer. Can be done at night. The controlling depth is 10 feet or so at the entrance and stays around that depth throughout the marina. The slips are large, well built and easy to get into. None of the marinas were busy (probably the time of year) and we never made reservations and always had our choice of slips. You can check in at Old Bahama Bay and of course there is fuel, free (and strong!) wifi, restaurant, etc. Slip C29 was a straight shot in for our 52' LOA boat. The marina is very secure, we felt very safe leaving the boat there to explore Freeport and whatnot.

From there, we headed north to Memory Rock in order to get on the bank; a review of the charts will show that Indian Key and the next cut are not even possible for over 5'. Memory Rock is about 18 miles north of West End. The cut getting onto the bank also had plenty of water with lots of wiggle room. No markers, follow the charts. BTW, we found that the Maptech paper chart kits were highly accurate and consistently showed water some three feet deeper than low tide "real" numbers. Yay. We also carried the Explorer charts but they are much older than the Maptechs that we have aboard. If we go again, we'll definitely get the newer Explorers as they really are THE source but the Maptechs were good too - they never got us in trouble.

It's pretty remote in this area; it won't be long before you won't see land. We then headed almost due east to Mangrove Cay for the night but had mechanical issues about 5 miles before we reached Mangrove. Ah, the beauty of The Bank; get off the rhumb lines (see charts) and drop the hook just about anywhere in appx. 20' of water at least in this part of the bank. We had planned to continue on to Sale Cay but detoured to Grand Cay for oil (long story, ended well) located to the northeast of Mangrove Cay. We also considered Walker's Cay but found out later that it is completely closed down with the exception of three people; a police officer, customs and immigration. But they don't even want you to anchor there, apparently. The chart showed better water at Grand Cay anyway and was more on the way so that proved to be a good decision. We anchored about a mile outside in about 12 feet of water. The tide was high. While we were dropping the dink, a local came out in a skiff offering to help us in if we chose to come in, local information, whatever. Though it kind of freaked us out at first this proved to be the warmest greeting of our trip. We dinghied into the town and found a classic working village with NO tourists in site. The waterfront was bustling with the entire local fisherman returning for the day with their catch, the supply boat being off-loaded and so on. We got a few looks for sure but it was all very friendly.

There was a decent dock with plenty of slips but we could only have gotten in on a high-high tide and we had no plans to pull in at that point yet anyway. The anchorage was calm and protected enough. Note that the anchorages on the charts are wayyyy out from the Cay. We dropped the hook at 27.11.961 and 78.18.351. In the morning, we noticed that the tide had dropped and we were still at low tide from what we could gather but we still had 3.5 feet under the keel. After getting our mechanical issues dealt with, we finally pulled the hook at about 10 a.m. and took off.

Our next leg was the only close call, depth-wise, that we experienced. According to the charts we could jump on the rhumb line from Grand Cay and go. It was only a minute or two that the depths were down to a foot under the keel - eek! I spun her around and tiptoed out our old track for about a mile and then hooked it to the east. Plenty of water from then on out.

Next stop was Spanish Cay at 26.55.994 and 77.31.697 and about 44.6 miles from Grand Cay as the crow flies. According to the charts, we could have pulled into the dock there but since we only needed sleep and planned to head out the next day, we just anchored. Again, deep water, over 10 feet and nice protection from the north and east, primarily. So far, the anchorages that we had chosen had been all but deserted and this trend continued.

We left Spanish at about 8 a.m. with the increasing understanding of the gravity of "The Whale"... this is a cut that is required to pass by sailboats that wish to continue on to Marsh Harbor. You have to pass from the protected waters of the Bank to the Atlantic and then back in. Wide, deep and simple enough but, if there is much wind, what the locals call Rage will develop and you need to sit back and just wait for things to settle down before making this pass. You will hear reports of, and can request "Whale reports" via VHF and make your decision. We were able to get through though the winds were creeping up all morning and were hitting about 18 knots from the northeast when we started around. All told, the entire leg is only about 5 miles but we are told it can get really ugly. We found 4-5 foot swell with 1-2 foot breakers on top. Reminded us of the Pacific. Due to shifty shoals in the area, we suggest sticking with the marked channel (formerly a cruise ship channel!) on the east side of the pass rather than dropping straight south.

Once you get through the Whale, you have pretty much reached the famed cruising grounds of the Sea of Abaco. We were getting tired and were thinking of places to anchor when the Orchid Bay Marina on Great Guana Cay beckoned from the charts... Yep, plenty of water, $1.25/foot and no reservations necessary. We are such suckers for a good marina! We found another easy entrance and easy access to the slips. There are also moorings just outside of the marina in the bay that we might have been able to use - a 6 foot draft definitely could have gotten in. They are $15/day. DON'T MISS Nippers Bar and Grill! An amazing place and the Nipper Juice truly is deadly... We spent T-Day at Orchid Bay, rode the ferry to Marsh Harbor for fun, exploration and parts, of course - $50 round trip, btw, ouch. We thought we might want to anchor or dock at Marsh Harbor but after seeing how busy and relatively crowded it was over there, we declined. It's also rather shallow so our options would have been limited. We could have gotten into the Boat Harbor Marina, with its channel on the other side of the peninsula but it was not really what we were looking for after having a look on foot.

When we did move, we headed to Hope Town. We found crossing that area of the bank a little uncomfortable at low tide with anywhere from 3-5 feet under the keel for a good part of the way. We slowed down, went a bit off the rhumb line to Point Set Rock and found nice depths again couple of miles from the rock. From there, we had our choice of anchorages but picked the west side of the Parrot Cays with 10+ feet of water and decent protection. I think the ferries made a game of waking us, however, even though we were off the rhumb line. Fortunately they are fairly small boats (under 50') and stop running early in the evening. We dinghied into Hope Town the next two days and, according to our hand-held sounder, very possibly could have gotten Sienna Belle into the harbor and onto a mooring but we were happy where we were and the mooring field was pretty full. The no-see-ums in the Bahamas are treacherous and mostly, we had no problem with them being out at anchor.

We dinghied over to Man-O-War Cay - don't miss it. A deeper draft boat could get in behind the outer island but probably not into the harbor proper at least not without a high tide. MOW is a dry cay but is very picturesque, clean and not overrun with tourism by any means. They build boats there still but not the schooners of days past.

We also dinghied down to White Sound to see what the surf looked like. Bring your boards. A deep draft will not get in there by any means. This area was strewn with McMansions and development was rampant. The marina was standard fare with lots of high dollar power boats tucked in.

I should note a couple of things specific to our trip. We only had three weeks to get there and back so we did not get to explore as much as we would have liked to. And, the primary purpose of our trip was to shake down Sienna Belle and all the new and old equipment on her. That we did but this is another story entirely. We had weather creeping up on us so decided it was time to make our way west again.

Upon leaving Parrot Cays and Hope Town, we backtracked through to the Whale. It was high tide this time giving us plenty of water under the keel and allowing us to follow the rhumb line through. Average tide swings are about three feet, BTW. This time through the Whale was almost flat calm. We made it all the way to Center of the World Rocks and anchored between them and Veteran Rocks at appx. 26.55.246 and 77.56.247. Then we continued onto Mangrove Cay going north around the Sale Cays; our gut told us not to mess with the shorter route around the south of these Cays because of depths. We stopped for the night and snugged up pretty close to the island with over four feet under the keel at low tide. We anchored on the northeast side of the island. The next day, we had a fantastic sail back to Memory Rock with winds on the beam approaching 20 knots. Long story short, the leg south back to West End sucked but we made it and sailed Sienna Belle harder than we've ever sailed her 54,000 pound butt before. But that really was the point. Four days (!) later, we got our weather window and crossed to Ft. Lauderdale.

In summary: The people are delightful. Not once did we touch bottom. There are anchorages all over the place that will accommodate deep drafts. There are enough marinas around to accommodate deep drafts. And, though we didn't do so much exploration, there are dozens of deserted cays with good enough deep draft access that would not require dinghy rides of more than a mile or so. Would we do it again? In a SECOND!!

Bahamas... continued

06 December 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama
Carol
So the trip was fantastic. We carved out a beautiful deep draft route through the Abacos and never kissed bottom even once. Made it all the way to Hope Town. However, in our quest to be conservative knowing how the weather can be this time of year, we started our voyage west a bit early... Maybe too early. We are in West End and have been since... ummm.. when did we get here...? Last Thursday I think. Maybe Wednesday... Anyway, today is Sunday and we are hoping to depart tomorrow; it looks like a tiny weather window will open up for a very short time tonight and tomorrow through Tuesday. But none of the forecasts have been very accurate as there has been a front toying with us; becoming stationary then moving on, stationary then moving BACKWARDS!!! It seemed like it moved on yesterday when the winds went from 23+ out of the south to 28+ out of the north - instantly! But its still blowing a lot out of the north and east this morning. Guess there are worse places to be stuck, right? Good thing we like Conch. Conch salad, conch fritters, cracked conch, conch scorch... starting to feel like Forrest...

The Bahamas - At Long Last

21 November 2009 | West End, Grand Bahama Island
Carol
Can't believe we are finally here! We have been trying to make this trip during November for three years now and have been shut down each time by wind. Not this time, the weather couldn't have been much more perfect, by any means. The Gulf Stream crossing was a little spunky about a third of the way across but my hunch tells me that was a benign crossing from the stories we've been told. We did have a light north wind that made for the little bit of the action that we did see. None of the waves we crashed through even made it to the cockpit.

We left Islamorada at 10 a.m. with a little bit of drama; the alternator was not putting out any power at all. I'll let Rich tell the story but, long story short, it's all better now and Rich has a new nickname...!

Our original plan was to head to Bimini but the more we thought about it, considering our draft primarily, we decided on the West End and the Abacos. After we finally left Hawks Channel, putting the alternator debacle behind us, it was about 2 p.m. putting us here at 11 a.m. Not bad. This beast of a boat was consistently hitting 9 knots all the while dodging cruise ships and freighters. Dark comes early here this time of year; about 5:30 so most of our crossing was under the cloak of darkness. Our old radar is still working great and was very helpful for this trip. I still prefer a radar overlay on my chart but, considering that the range was set at 12 miles all night, that wouldn't really work so well on top of a chart anyway.

Tacktick's depth sounder does not like quadruple digit depths. I need to figure out if there is something wrong or if it's doing what is supposed to showing the depth at 50-60 feet for the majority of the Gulf Stream crossing...

Sienna Belle was a delight as always, she burned about 50 gallons of fuel, we didn't even bother putting up a sail as we headed into it the entire way. Other than the alternator issue, no other major, or minor for that matter, problems.

None of us slept much on our loose watch schedule. It's tough to get into a watch schedule when you're only traveling for a day. We were pretty tired by the time we got here, exhausted actually. We are berthed for the night at Old Bahama Bay marina; $2 a foot but very nice and safe. Apparently that is expensive here. The entrance is a piece of cake, deep water, big slips, full amenities including wifi. We pulled in, did customs, signed up for Skype (!) got a bite to eat at the restaurant on site and crashed for a couple of hours.

We took our friend Bruce with us. Many of you know him and know that he had quite the year this year. One that he would rather put behind him. So we thought we would help him with that. Made him leave his dog Girl at home, however. We miss her a lot but just not up to the poop and hair.

Tomorrow we will fuel and head out to the bank and to the Sea of Abaco. Sale Cay is our next anchorage of record but I think we'll stop for the night before there as Sale is some 60 miles away and we are here to take it easy, right? We plan to be in Marsh Harbor for T-Day. Hoping that Mike and Kelly from Ciao Bella show up, that would be the icing on the cake.

I'm thinking I might actually get some surf time in. Would that not be the shit or what????? OMG!

I haven't been writing much here lately - we tackled a literal avalanche of projects that coincided with this trip - not a good idea, but anyway - I'll be getting caught up on that blogness during this trip, I hope. Unless the waves really are primo...

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