The time came for us to say goodbye to Hope Town and continue our journey south. We left after lunch on Jan. 30th and sailed south to Lynyard Cay. Just as we were leave Hope Town harbour, we noticed a small sailboat named T for two leaving ahead of us. We helped this solo sailor (Mark from Ottawa) pick up a mooring in Hope Town and we’ve chatted with him a few times onshore. We radioed him and he decided to tag along with us down to Lynyard. That night we had a little happy hour on our boat with Mark and we came up with a plan to buddy together across to Eleuthera on Wednesday.
At 7am Wednesday morning we jumped off from the Abacos heading to Egg Island, Eleuthera. We had a super calm day which meant a very long motor! Lots of tankers were out and also a few sailboats. Mark on T for Two followed behind us and we were occasionally in contact via the radio. His little 28ft boat was powered by an outboard motor so he had a hard time hearing our radio hails.
During long passages like this one, Mark likes to get the fishing rod out. We had been underway for a few hours when Mark hooked something really big! I have never heard the reel feed out so quickly!! I thought we would run out of line! Mark quickly grabbed the rod and started to haul the fish in. I saw it jump out of the water once and it was a big one! Moments later the darn thing broke the wire leader and took off with our lucky lure! It’s actually kind of fortunate that this fish got away – not sure how we would have got it onboard!!
About halfway through our 52nm trip, Mark and I decided to not stop at Egg Island but to continue on to Current Cut. This would set us up nicely to get across the bight of Eleuthera and into Rock Sound before a big blow that is predicted for Saturday-Sunday. Our friend on T for Two decided to stay with the original plan so we left him at Egg Island. We continued to Current Cut and anchored there on Wednesday night.
Today (Feb. 2) started off with an easy pass through Current Cut (this cut can have a strong current if you don’t time your passage well). It was another bad wind day so we had to motor again. We decided to head for Tarpum Bay – an area of southern Eleuthera we haven’t seen. All was going well until we were about 2 nm from our anchorage. Mark was down below and I was at the helm when the engine started making an unusual sound (never a good thing)! Within minutes that sound abruptly stopped and the engine temperature soared upwards!! Quickly I turned off the engine and Mark scoped out the damage (in the incredibly warm engine room). It turned out the pulley fell off the water pump. This is very fixable but not when the engine is hot. So you might be thinking well it’s a sailboat – just start sailing!! If only we could have but unfortunately the wind was on our nose and useless for us! So Mark did the best he could to reconnect the pulley (basically hammered it back on) so we could limp into the anchorage. What should have been a 2:30pm arrival, turned into a 3:20pm arrival and a big challenge to set our anchor without our engine. It took some ingenuity on Mark’s part to set our anchor (he used the dinghy to pull the boat backwards to dig in the anchor) and here we are! It’s a lovely little settlement and we will do some exploring tomorrow morning!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 