Bimini and Great Harbor Cay April 13-23, 2016

We left the anchorage outside of Boot Key about 8:15.  It was a long slog, 8+ hours to Rodriguez Key where we anchored on the south side this time because of the NE swells and the light east winds.

Wish I would have gone in another ½ mile closer to shore but the crab pot line was pretty close to where I could have anchored.  So we stayed put and watched a sailboat go exactly where I was lusting to move.  But another sailboat anchored way out from us so I guess its no big deal.  It’s a calm, gentle night.

I spotted a really large loggerhead turtle as we were coming in to the anchorage.  Then, a few minutes later, a big sting ray leaped clear out of the water.  It looked like one of those stealthy B2 bombers.  What a hotbed of aquatic activity there is here.

The flag hoist design

We worked on a makeshift apparatus using a pulley I found on board and one of our tall antennas.   The goal is to be able haul up the various flags we have to fly.  A quarantine pennant when we first arrive on the Bahamas, and then the Bahamas courtesy flag after our passports are stamped.    It took a comedic three attempts before we had something functional.  I suspect the gentle rocking back and forth at anchor on a sunny tropical day exacerbates ones mental sharpness.  That or we’re getting old.

Trial run hoisting a flag

So were now drinking wine.  Early.  Before the sunset.  A deviation of normal behavior for us but I am getting up and leaving well before 6AM.  Mary is sorta, kinda, getting up too.  We want to cross over before the winds and swells kick up from the north.  The general rule is to never venture out in the gulf stream when thee are north winds or a northerly swell.  The Gulf stream speeds north and when there is wind or swell from the the north it can get rather unpleasant out there.  We prefer pleasant.

We left Rodriguez Key between 5:15 and 5:30.   Mary was up on the bridge as we began motoring out through the reefs. It took us abut 40 minutes traveling on a dark night to make it through and out into the open ocean.  We began seeing the horizon get lighter as we crossed over the Molasses Reef.

Not quite in the Gulf Stream so we are bouncing a bit

We had 3-4 foot seas hitting us obliquely, almost beam on.  So I turned more easterly, trying to get into the gulf stream to add 2-3 mph to our speed and help us get out of the pounding waves.  We finally were in it about 30 miles off the coast, traveling at a sizzling 9.5 mph.

Two yachts passing us on their way to Bimini

After about 70 miles of the 120 mile mile trip we finally did hit smoother seas.  We were alone for the most part except for several container ships and a few yachts all racing past us.  Two Bayliner 4788 cruisers passed us and lo and behold we found ourselves tied up next to them in Bimini at Blue Water Marina later .  I met them briefly the next day before our fateful decision to leave that afternoon.

The Bimini harbor channel had been dredged recently so its configuration was a bit different than last year when we came through.  We did see a short distance of 7 foot depths, otherwise it was all 10-15 feet.

We called Blue Water Marina and JR, the dock master (one of the best) got back to us.  They turned down our request for a T head and instead put us in a large slip near the end of the dock.  We were able to bow in and noted a side benefit of having a large area to port so we could take the dinghy down if we decided to buzz around Bimini.

All tied up at Blue Water Marina, Bimini

After JR had us all tied up and plugged in he escaped before I could tip him.  Then "we" (convention has been that only the captain can step off the boat to clear in to the country) went directly to Customs down the road and had to fill out 3 forms and pay $300 for a cruising permit.  What we forgot was to get the three additional forms while we were there.  Those forms are necessary for Immigration which is located in the Administration and Police building a few blocks down the street.

When we arrived at the Immigration office the guy there asked where our forms were and we confessed ignorance.  Obviously taking pity on us doddering old folks, he  muttered something unintelligible and then, with a smirky smile, gave us the the missing forms to fill out.

Of course we had to borrow a pen which triggered another humorous scene.  But once we had everything filled out, he stamped our passports and off we went.

Not sure how she obtained these. 

Mary walked back  to the marina.  I turned left towards the BTC (Bahamas Telephone Company) office.   BTC was closed  so I went back to the marina where Mary was fondly munching on Oreo's she somehow finagled from the Marina office.  Distracted by the Oreo's she forgot to ask for the wifi passcode.  I guess one should never underestimate the profound effect of Oreo's. 

We eventually obtained the passcode and I got the wifi running but its terribly slow.

We struggled a bit to get the Bahamian courtesy flag up on that initial design of a flag pole.  It stubbornly refused to operate like we thought it would.   But after a few more tweaks we had it flying properly.  After that we sat in the salon and cooled off.  Until the salon A/C stop working.   I was too tired to try and fix that today so its on the agenda for tomorrow after we visit BTC.

Weather looks to be icky over the weekend and into early next week.  Strong N to NE winds in excess of 20 mph which will kick up the seas. There are no decent anchorages offering protection from Northerly winds save Great Harbor in the Berry Islands which lie about 90 miles to the east across the Bahama Bank.  

Starfish off our bow.  Its a big one!

 We did see several large nurse sharks cruising around the marina and our boat.  And oddly enough, a large starfish was right under our bow.  And of course the rays were swooping around too.. 

Tax Day.  It's always ominous even for non tax things.

We walked to the BTC office this morning.  They open at 9:30.  Perfect for us..  We now have a new BTC phone number.  Just needed a new SIM card for the phone we had bought here last year.  It was less than $10!  With an operating phone we can get an internet connection almost everywhere except in the middle of the Bahama Bank.

Weather reports are all indicating this cold trough will sink south and cause some squalls, thunderstorms and high winds from the northeast.  But today looks benign.   So, do we hole up here for maybe up to a week, or make dash out on the Bank, for Great Harbor which lies about 90 miles east of Bimini?   We can handle 3-4 foot seas but it’s a 90 mile journey east to Great Harbor.  That’s usually a two day trip for us which means we’d anchor somewhere out on the Banks.  Not very comfortable anchored in seas like that though.

After much deliberation, we decided to just, “Screw it.  Lets go.”  So we did.

A few hours later I was still able to access the internet through the superb BTC (Bahamas Telephone Company) cell network and received updated weather forecast.

You can see what’s coming.  I  wish we could have a few hours prior.

Rain and storms and we are heading right into it.

Keep in mind our die was pretty much cast.  This low pressure trough was now predicated to move into the Bahamas a day early.  We were faced with being on the Bank in 3-5 foot seas with severe weather.  There was no place to hole up because our travel speed tops out at maybe 8.5 mph.   And we would never make it back to Bimini before dark.  Wow.  What an ooops moment this was.

We couldn’t turn back so just steered towards a place called Mackie Shoals which is an area of depths between 8-10 feet, shallower than the usual 15-25 feet..  We made it after dark in rolling seas, put out 150 feet of chain and the snubber and sat back to bounce around watching a a parade of lightning spewing dark clouds race by.  Much of the lightening resulted in strikes on the water but thankfully not very near us.  But still near enough to witness.

Around 1AM the swells had reached well over 5 feet with a very short period and we couldn’t sleep because it was pounding so bad.  It seemed a wise move to just go the last 50 miles now and get into the protected area off of Great Harbor Key which would provide us lee shore in the stiff easterly winds and heavy swells rolling under us which at this point were minimally 5 feet..

This wouldn't be a good story without some rain.  Yes, it it started to pour.  And I mean pour hard.   We had one of our spotlights on so I could see at least a little bit of the bow and anchor roller through the drenching rain.  The boat was heaving up 5-7 feet every few seconds causing great slabs of sea water to squish up over the bow as the boat fell back down into the sea.

I love boats and things but never envisioned being out in a big storm, naked, trying to retrieve a 150 feet of heavy anchor chain not to mention a large anchor while bounding up and down 5-7 feet every few seconds.  Describing this as exciting, is a pale, understated word that doesn’t come close to doing justice to the experience.   But isn’t this what memories are made of?  And good sea stories?

I eventually got all the chain aboard and secured the anchor.  Mary was up on the fly bridge operating the shifters to move the boat forward so the chain would slacken up giving me an opportunity the use the windlass to reel it aboard.  Quite an adrenaline rush!

I set the auto pilot to steer the boat and just settled down to read.  Sitting in the captains chair wasn’t easy, just too much pitching back and forth, so I quickly much moved over to one of the couches and read, keeping an eye on the chart plotter and radar every few minutes.

Amazingly around 3AM I picked up 5 vessels on radar, one with a concerning CPA (Closest Point of Approach).   Usually at night the Bahamian mail/supply boats that supply the various islands with food, parts, mail etc., are plying the Bank.  They rarely if ever initiate any radio calls so they are just flickering lights in the distance and radar contacts.

I altered course a few degrees and safely passed the one boat off our port side about ¼ mile.  We were pitch poling (dipping down at the bow and then rising up again as the next wave pushed the bow up) so badly the contacts would vanish for several seconds before reappearing.  Like I said, wild night

We motored from about 2AM until 8:30 when we anchored at Great Harbor.  The trip, in those early hours, was a wild, pounding, ride.  Pitch black except for the lightening all around.  Pouring rain, on and off, and howling wind.  The swells were easily 5+ feet with a few probably over 7 feet.  Mary hung in there for a few hours but eventually went (more like crawled) to the stateroom.  I continued reading, letting the auto pilot steer the boat because it would do a far superior job than I.  And it doesn’t get tired.

Sunrise about 20 miles from Great Harbor Key.  Seas have calmed considerably

.

I woke Mary up around 7 after making sure the coffee was made.  The seas had calmed considerably over the last few hours as we approached Great Harbor Key.  We meandered our way in through the coral heads and dropped anchor almost in the same spot we had last year when we came through here.  Not surprisingly there were half a dozen boats anchored as we pulled in.

After setting the anchor and opening up the boats hatches (we lost a hatch cover sometime during the night), windows and doors, we headed to bed.  Slept until 2PM, and woke up to a sunny day with breezes, not a howling gale.  Think we’ll probably just stay aboard tonight.  We have to make water, and wash the boat down to get rid of all the salt.  Also have to do a load of laundry, wash dishes and the usual post storm clean up.

Anchoring in Bullocks Harbor, Great Harbor Cay

We are, however going to have a “we made it alive” celebratory cocktail watching the sunset tonight.

I washed the boat down last night while the water maker was making water.  And Mary did laundry and we both showered.  The water maker had to run quite awhile.

We had our sunset cocktails before I started the generator and we ended up going to bed at 9:30. 

We lazily got up around 9:30 and didn’t do much all day.  The wind was blowing hard.  Hard enough that I didn’t really want to fight getting the dingy down.  Besides that, the water was pretty rough so we just stayed on board and did a few chores, cleaned up some more and I started doing some blog notes but discovered a whole chunk of notes missing.  I’m guessing I either saved the wrong copy or lost them in Google's Blogger, which sometimes gets confused trying to decide to save something thing when an active session times out and you come back to it thinking all is well.

We were going to watch a movie from our online stash of video and while I had the router on, I checked for wifi signals and sure enough there was an open wifi access point with a decent signal.  Strong enough to stream Youtube videos.

For some reason Netflix wouldn't sustain a connection though.  Oh well.  But we'll leave the boat router on and use that marginal connection instead of using the Bahamas phone which, since we had it a few days ago,  has burned through 1.5GB of data.   Mary and her videos … ugh

This morning I found out SAT TV is now officially dead.  DISH has changed how their satellites snd signals and our unit does not have an RF7 board which prevents the ability to add a software patch for us to track satellite 119.  In days past we could also track satellite 110 but all that has changed now.  Our only recourse is to buy a whole new satellite antenna (several thousand) or switch to DIRECT TV.   Oh my!

Even though the wind is howling like yesterday we managed to get the dinghy down and went over to the nearby Marina to see if we could tie up.  And take a bag of garbage.  We were able to do both successfully.  Also noted the Active Captain couple, Jeff and Karen were here.  We always seem to bump into them at some point.

We walked over to the east side of the island and had lunch at the BeachClub, a little tiki bar/restaurant on the beach.  It was actually pretty good… just as I remember from last year when we swung through here. 

Mary ordered a burger and forgot to say, “plain”.  She sent it back cause it had all manner of stuff, tomataoes, ketchup, onions, mustard.  But they were good enough to give her another one.  Plain.  Just meat between two slices of bread.

After, we walked back along the beach and then dinghied back to the boat.  Put the dinghy up right away (all on the battery I should mention) and had a cocktail before watching a thrilling episode of The Donna Reed Show.

We do have fair internet access but Netflix cant quite seem to keep a stable connection so there is no access for us.  And the satellite no longer works so all we have are movies.  How will we ever survive.

Stayed on the boat all day.  I didn’t wake up until after 9:30.

We took advantage of the lull and worked on the fly bridge table.  The backing laminate was delaminating so I removed what I could get off, and we had cut pieces left over from the aft stateroom back shelf.  So we assembled a backing plate like a jigsaw puzzle.  I finally got the screw holes drilled and aligned, and then put a coat of varnish on the whole thing.

We used the battery powered circular saw and the Dremel off the inverter and everything was fine.  The Dremel only draws 1.5 amps at top speed and we do have new batteries.

Heard from Alan, the previous owner of the boat.  They are cruising up to Alaska in their motor home, one that Alan found somewhere and refurbished as only he can.  They intend to reach Homer before heading back to the states.

I chatted with KVH and confirmed for the third time there is absolutely nothing they (KVH) can do to rectify our problem.  There is simply no effective update of the equipment we own.  Mary, finally accepting the inevitable, has begin to investigate our only viable alternative, DIRECT TV.

Moon rising at Great Harbor

We finalized some planning for the summer.  We are making our way up towards Norfolk where we will cruise down to Charleston with Jack to meet up with Jen and Dave and of course Jonah for a week in Charleston.

This morning we took the dinghy to the Blue Hole.  It's about 2.5 feet deep for a ways until you get to the hole.  Imagine a typical Bahamas shallow water bay with a very deep colored hole right in the middle.  The Blue Hole.

Next we rode by the DC3 plane wreck.  It's mostly viewable at low tide.  Well at least one of the engines.  I have (had) plenty of pictures. 

Then we went around the point and headed to a small beach.  I jumped out to pull the dinghy in to shore and then decided we’d come back later with chairs and drinks.  Only thing was I had our Bahamas phone in my pocket.  My shorts pocket to be exact.  I mean who thinks about a phone in shorts when jumping into the warm ocean near a pristine beach?  I sure didn't.

Bet you can imagine what happens when a phone is immersed in salt water.

Ok, so we can replace the phone easily enough.  However I was taking pictures with it.  The blue Hole, the Plane wreck and a bunch of other pictures are essentially gone.  So no pictures!

So we located the local BTC office.  Its by the fuel dock, about a mile from the marina.  We dinghied into the marina, and they gave me directions to the office and we walked up there where a nice lady sold me another Samsug J1 phone.

It was $100 last year.  Now its $145.  But it is an improved model she told me.  Waterproof I thought of asking but didn't.

She asked me what the phone number was and, I embarrassed for a moment couldn't tell her.  I really didn't know.  So she had to dig through the system to find it.   I wrote it down now because its not entered into the phone as an item to look up because she couldn't do that using the activation method that had to be employed when the existing phone number is not known.  We sure do cause trouble.  

We wandered back up to the marina pool/bar where proprietor Paul was not really open but gave Mary a beer anyway.  Before that though as I was strolling the docks past the Active Captain boat, a lady asked if I was her new neighbor.

Active Captain to the left, Poor Old Harry to the right

She lives on a 1979 Pacemaker aft cockpit boat named Poor Old Harry.  Nice one too.  Robin and I got to talking and she joined us for a drink up at the pool bar after offering to drive us to that little tiki bar on the beach we had visited earlier, BeachWalk.  It's near the airport where she was headed.  She forgot her phone on the plane and was hoping they would have it at the airport.

Cell phones seemed to dominate our day.

We declined the ride, but had a nice conversation with her.  She lives on the boat by herself (it doesn’t go anywhere) and talked us into attending the pizza party tomorrow night.

The pool bar is really a sort of dilapidated pool and old bar.  A little fixing up would go along way to make it really inviting.

We returned to the boat and I let my phone update itself through the wifi connection I found as we packed some drinks and chairs for a trip to that little beach.

Idyllic little beach we found.

Leaving the beach

It was superb.  We were out of the wind, and the water was calm, where as in the bay where we are anchored, the winds had picked up kicking up a big swell.

We were back at the boat before sunset.  I put the fly bridge table fully back together (we had striped the backing off and re-attached some new laminate with epoxy), and then we grilled steaks, watched Donna Reed and went to bed.  Think we leave. I think,  Friday!

Entering Great Harbor Marina 

We were supposed to be at the marina office by 10AM the next morning.  We had to place our pizza order with the dock master.  In person.

 At 11:30 we came into the marina but could not locate a place to tie the dinghy.  There are a few slips with ladders but they all were occupied by small boats right against the ladders.  The docks are high, too high for Mary to get off.  So we decided to chuck it and just started back to the boat but then we had second thoughts and went back to try again.

Rufus just hanging out in his truck

I ended up letting Mary off at one of the condo piers across from the marina.  Some of them have ladders and then I went to Slip 46 and started to tie up but Rufus, an old gentleman who tends one of the little shops there offered to let me tie up to his boat which was near a ladder.  So I did.

A couple, from one of the sailboats in the anchorage didn't and instead tied up the high piers.  I was on the dock and so I tried to help the lady up off her dinghy onto the high concrete dock.  No need.  She was a strong woman and pulled herself right up.

Mary ordered the pizza and then wanted to walk the beach.  I had to get back to the boat for some chart work and to go through the engine room since the next leg of the trip includes a good 50 miles in the open ocean.

The fabulous Great Harbor Beach

So I left her on shore and she ended up walking a good portion of the beach on the east side of the island.  And of course found plenty of dead things to collect.

I went back to the boat and found an alternative to Little Harbor for anchoring called Lynyard Cay which is a few miles north.  That’s a 90 some mile trip, most of which is on the ocean,

So I ducked into the engine room and found everything ,looking good.  Then I checked the hot water heater … Oh my.

We seem to have a leak.  But more importantly an antifreeze leak in the heat exchanger part of the water heater.  Oh boy.

We can probably make it back to Florida with a leaky water heater, but not the antifreeze / heat exchanger.

The heat exchanger in the hot water heater takes circulating antifreeze from the engine and uses it to heat water.  If we have leaking antifreeze the engine will eventually not have circulating antifreeze and will over heat.  So I’m scrambling to find a ½ barbed pipe fitting  to bypass the antifreeze lines into the hot water heater.  Hope to find one on the island.  I done have one.

I went back to the marina and found Mary just returning from the beach.  I tied up to Rufus’s boat again and we headed over towards the poo to wait for the pizza.  Since we aren’t in the marina per say, they are calling us on VHF channel 14 which means I have to carry a VHF handheld radio with us.  And alas, the pool Bar is still not open.

As I was returning from a short walk to the “closed” marina store searching of water/beer, the pizza had arrived where Mary was sitting in a little cabana.  As soon as it was on the table we had a swarm of flies.  Weird.  We ate a few pieces and then packed up the dinghy and headed back to the boat to finish it.  Well, we ate a few pieces on the way.

Winds are still high, but beginning Saturday it looks like several days of mild weather.  Saturday looks like a good day to leave.

Tomorrow though I have to try and find the hardware store and ½ barbed fitting.  Should be fun!!  There is a hardware store here.  Or so I told.  We’ll find out tomorrow.

I took some more time this morning to rummage around in my spare parts boxes and found, a few brass ½ barbed pipe fittings, exactly what I needed.

Bypass installed and leak free

Confirming there was indeed an anti-freeze leak, I removed the antifreeze lines which were connected to the water heater's heat exchanger and put a ½ barbed hose fitting between the the two hoses thus by passing the leaking heat exchanger fitting on the water heater.short circuiting the engine coolant which was heating water in the ater heater.  A trial run showed no leaks!    I'm pretty sure its the brass fitting not the actual heat exchanger so that should be an easy fix.

Given that I didn’t have to go into town to buy plumbing fittings, I left the boat (Mary didn’t want to go) around 2 and went into the marina.  Got rid of the garbage, talked to a few people and gave boat cars to Lila Blue and Leap of Faith, two couples we met earlier.  I thanked Rufus again for letting us use his boat to tie up the dinghy.  Then went to the grocery store and bought a few things before heading back to the anchorage and our boat.

We loitered around until cocktails, decided to leave very early Sunday when the seas are supposed to be calmer.  We did some laundry, made water, and, well watched Donna Reed since we haven’t yet tackled the satellite issue (moving from DISH to DIRECT).

I was having trouble linking my new physical phone to my BTC account and after repeated efforts to navigate their, ah, stubbornly inane web site, I decided to just go in to the BTC office.

It was rolling pretty good in the anchorage so it was a wet ride.  We went by this family again who are on a big ketch out in the anchorage.  They have a cute little girl and all three of them are crammed in a small hardshell dinghy with a 3 horse engine.  He, or in this case they, have been fishing or crabbing near the cut into the marina basin.  Not real talkative.  He’s the guy who refused Rufus’s kind offer to tie up to his boat.

Tied up in the unused slip 45

We tied up to the ladder this time in slip 45 because there were no boats there.  Mary, armed with some cash made a beeline to Happy Peoples (little store) for ice cream and I started walking to the BTC store but stopped to ask some people in a the back of a pickup truck if it was open.  Nope.

Marina store.  With Ice Cream

I turned around and found Mary still munching on her non-Oprah approved ice cream.  We  decided to walk to the Beach Club tiki bar for a beer since we wont be here for another year.  But on the way I suggested we walk to Carrie Earls, the Boutique B&B/restaurant where we had so much fun the last year with Jeff and Judy.  It was about the same distance so we turned left up the beach and spied the twin thatched little cabana's marking their place.

The pool at Carrie Earls

Waiting for a drink by the pool at Carrie Earls

Walking back from Carrie Earls

We walked up and sure enough there was Angela who said no, they were not open until 6 but she would bring us a drink out on the pool deck.  So we grabbed a few chairs and had a smallish glass of Kalik debating whether to stay for dinner.  That menu was scrumpish.

The only issue was time.  They chef didn’t start cooking until 6pm which would mean we’d have to grab a taxi back to the marina in order to get back to the boat by 8.  If we wee lucky.

Dinners here, as I remember, are not rushed affairs.  In the end we elected to skip it and head back.  Angela wasn’t around and all I had were 20 dollar bills, so two, 8 oz. beers cost us $20.  Oh well.

We made it back to the marina, grilled something and retired about 9:30.  We were leaving at or before 5AM because I was figuring on at least a 13 hour run tomorrow morning.  Seas were predicated to be calm in Northwest Channel, but the forecast varied for the ocean.