Month: March 2023

We’ve been inching our way north and west over the past few days and it looks like we’ll be aiming for a good crossing window next week. It’s been a great few days – travelling with Julia and Brad (Alizarin) and Sharon and Rick (Orkan).

After a very calm Monday night anchored near the Treasure Cay airport, we moved about 6nm north to the top end of Manjack Cay on Tuesday morning. We’d been told that there was good snorkeling on the ocean side of this cay but you need settled weather for that. Well we were lucky to have that kind of weather so we anchored and went exploring. There were several reefs in the area with lots of fish but the coral wasn’t very healthy. Lots of sand covering the coral heads but the fan coral was coming back.

When we returned to the north Manjack anchorage, Alizarin had joined us! We both pulled up anchor and moved along – we went to Powell Cay while Alizarin went to the west side of the Sea of Abaco to find a good anchorage for the night (we were expecting west wind overnight). Powell Cay was a good spot with lots of beautiful sand. We only spent about an hour there, exploring by dinghy but will definitely go back sometime to explore the island itself.

We left Powell and headed across to Coopers Town (on Great Abaco Island) to join Alizarin and Orkan. It was another calm anchorage and we enjoyed a 3rd happy hour on our boat this time. It’s been great fun getting to know these fellow cruisers and to learn from their experiences. We also spent a bit of time planning where to go next!! The wind has picked up over the past few days and it’s expected to get windier so we were looking for a good place to ride it out!

Wednesday morning all 3 boats headed farther north to Crab Cay. This spot offered us good protection for the north east/ east wind that we’re starting to experience now! We had a nice happy hour on the beach last night with all 3 couples – our last because Orkan took off this morning to head to West End. They plan to cross to Florida on Monday.

So we’re still anchored at Crab Cay with Alizarin. We’ll do a dinghy ride this afternoon and relax until Saturday. It looks like we’ll be heading to Great Sale Cay on Saturday and then to West End maybe on Sunday. After that we’ll watch the weather – could be a good crossing on Tuesday or Wednesday! We’ll just wait and see!!

It’s been a few days since I last posted – we’ve been having a few wifi issues but mostly, we’ve just been relaxing and taking it slow! Our visit to Hope Town was fairly short – arrived on Sunday (March 19) and we left on Friday, March 24. It was a great stay and we had fun with Julia and Brad plus 2 new friends – Francois and Josee.

During our stay at Hope Town, Mark had the opportunity to participate in a race as crew on a large 45ft catamaran. Our friend Brad joined Mark aboard the cat and they raced against 7 other sailboats. They did 2 races in the Sea of Abaco. The captain of the catamaran was an avid racer but in the first race, he cut the corner too close and picked up the race marker (a very large float) and dragged it about 100ft!! They came in second last in that race!! But they redeemed themselves in race 2 by winning!! Mark and Brad had great time!!

On Friday, March 24th, Crimson Kathryn and Alizarin (Julia and Brad’s boat) left Hope Town and headed only 1.5nm south to anchor near Firefly Resort. There we met up with Rick and Sharon on Orkan. Orkan is another boat from our boatyard and they are from Ontario! We had a wonderful dinner at Firefly – good food and great conversation!!

On Saturday we all headed north – us and Alizarin went to Marsh Harbour while Orkan went to Great Guana Cay. We managed to get our laundry and shopping done quickly and we left Marsh Harbour just after lunch. We headed north to an anchorage called Red Bay. This spot gave us good coverage for the south wind that was predicted. Both Alizarin and eventually Orkan joined us in this lovely anchorage that was calm and wonderful!

Sunday morning we woke to find our wifi box (it’s a cellular device) dead!! No wifi for us! We tried everything to get it to work but the 4 year old device was done!!! It’s a super good thing that we were only about 1.5 hours from Marsh Harbour so we could easily head back there to get a new device on Monday (of course they’re not open on Sunday – it’s the Bahamas!!).

That leads me to today – Monday!! After 2 great days at Red Bay, we pulled up anchor early this morning (before 7:30) and headed back to Marsh Harbour. The Aliv store (Aliv is the phone provider we deal with here) was about a 30 minute walk from the dinghy dock so we were prepared to spend our morning in Marsh Harbour. We arrived by 9:30 and barely got off the dock when we saw an Aliv outdoor stand! Crazy! They were hanging out by the dinghy dock to help cruisers (and anyone else who happened to go by)! It was awesome!!! We had our new device and were all done in about 15 minutes!!! We thought it would take at least 1.5 hours to do this job – we got so lucky!!

We left Marsh Harbour just after 11am and immediately pulled out our main sail and jib. We had a fantastic down wind sail all the way to the whale cut. We even managed to have an excellent video chat with Evelyn and Caroline as we sailed through the whale cut! The wind direction and speed was great and we managed to sail the entire day, right up to our anchorage!

We are now anchored just west of Green Turtle Cay and it is so calm!! Alizarin is at Green Turtle Cay and Orkan is still on the south side of the whale cut at Great Guana Cay. I think we will all meet up again on Wednesday when we head to Powell Cay.

Our time in the Bahamas is quickly coming to an end for this season. In the next week or so we will be looking for good crossing conditions. For now we’re having fun exploring parts of the Abacos that we haven’t visited in the past!

It’s been a very fast couple of days since we left Spanish Wells. On Friday, March 17th we motored over to Egg Island so we could be ready to make the 59nm trip to the Abacos early Saturday morning. Egg Island was small and offered good wind protection for the south east predicted wind. We were one of 4 boats when we arrived around noon and by night, there were 9 of us.

It was a very long night!! Although we had some wind protection, we had terrible swells and waves wrapping around and into the anchorage. We bounced and rolled all night! The only positive thing I can say is that we were able to leave at 7am Saturday without hesitation because we were wide awake from all the rolling!!

Our sail north to North Bar Channel (an inlet at the north end of Lynyard Cay, Abacos) was crazy! We were expecting good wind from the south (and a bit from the east) and waves about 1.5m in size from the east. We ended up getting way more!! Winds were in the high teens most of the day and the waves swelled up to 2m by midday. We did some crazy surfing down waves as they crashed in behind us. It was a “sporty” ride and that kind of travelling is very tiring (especially when you haven’t slept well the night before). The fun part was heading north with lots of other boats. We even passed 2 of the boats that were in the same anchored as us! We cleared the North Bar Channel a little after 4pm and made it to our next anchorage by 5pm. We were in the Abacos!!

Today (Sunday) we motored the 8nm to Hope Town and were super lucky because our friends Julia and Brad got us a mooring ball in the harbour! It’s great to be back at Hope Town and really nice to be on a mooring ball. A fairly good storm is predicted for the next couple of days so we feel very safe and secure here in the harbour. Time to relax for a few days!

Evelyn and Caroline caught their WestJet flight home on Monday, March 13 at 2 pm. We had the best visit and I know they had a fantastic time exploring the Exumas with us. The boat is way too empty now and we will definitely miss having them onboard. Mark and I spent Monday afternoon getting the boat ready to leave the marina on Tuesday morning. We did more laundry; washed the decks; filled our water tanks and did a bit more grocery shopping.

Early Tuesday morning, we left the Nassau Harbour Club marina and were headed out of the east end of the harbour before 8am. The winds were predicted to be from the west at around 15 knots so we were hoping for a good sail to Spanish Wells. We put all sails up just after we passed Rose Island and had a great sail most of the way to Spanish Wells. We also had the tide with us so we saw some pretty good speeds!! Just after lunch, the rain caught up with us but it only lasted about 30 minutes. This was the first rain we’ve had in a very long time!!

We arrived at the Spanish Wells south anchorage around 3pm and we anchored close to shore. We were expecting strong north east winds on Wednesday and Thursday so we wanted to be tucked in for better protection. Wednesday was a cool, windy day so we just stayed onboard and relaxed. That night we had a fairly good rainstorm and it was a great temperature for sleeping.

Today (Thursday) we decided to head into Spanish Wells. We’ve been here several times in previous seasons and it is one of my favourite towns. There are lots of colourful homes and the community has many little shops and restaurants. We had a great walk around the town and ended our visit with lunch at Budda’s Snack Shack.

In the morning we’ll be pulling up anchor and heading about 7 nm southwest to Egg Island. We’ll anchor there for the night and then cross over to the Abacos on Saturday. Our plan is to hangout in the Abacos, visit with our friends Julia and Brad and then make our way back to West End by the first or second week of April. We’ll jump off from there and sail all the way up to St. Augustine (avoiding the ICW!!).

Our final weekend with the girls has arrived – way too quickly. We’ve had the best time and managed to explore all the areas we thought the girls would enjoy. We did travel back up to Cambridge Cay and we had a perfect day for our visit to Rachael’s bubble bath. We also walked a few beaches on Compass Cay and spent some quality relax time on Cambridge.

On Thursday (March 9) we had a great sail up to Shroud Cay. All 3 sails were deployed and we saw speeds in the mid 7 knots. We anchored around lunchtime at Shroud and did a little exploring in the mangroves. Unfortunately it was low tide when we arrived and we could only go into the creeks a very short distance before they became too shallow.

Friday we made our way north to Nassau. We anchored for the night on the north east side of New Providence and came into the marina this morning (Saturday, March 11). The girls and I did a bit of souvenir shopping in downtown Nassau and tonight we’re going out for dinner. We’ll have one more full day together before Evelyn and Caroline fly out on Monday!!

It’s hard to believe the first week of Evelyn and Caroline’s visit is almost at an end. We’ve been having the best time and have explored Cambridge Cay, O’Brien Cay, Black Point and Staniel Cay. The weather has been perfect but the wind has been quite low so we’ve only managed one sail. Our days have been filled with swimming, snorkeling and walking. And at night we’ve played many games of scattegories!!

Our original plan was to stay at Cambridge Cay for 5 nights (leaving today – Sunday, March 5) and then to head south to Black Point. Well our batteries had a different plan. We woke Thursday morning to some very low batteries so we decided to motor to Black Point to charge them up. We replaced our old batteries with new lithium ones back in November. Lithium batteries charge at a higher rate so the charger on the solar panel needed to be adjusted to match these settings. We were not getting great charging from the panel so Mark changed some of the setting on the solar panel charger and now we are doing great!!

Before we left Cambridge, we did manage to spend some time snorkeling the sea aquarium. We also explored the little bay at O’Brien Cay. We spent a good deal of time in the sun and all of us had a bit of a sunburn by the end of the day.

On our way to Black Point, we made a short stop at Bitter Guana Cay. Here the girls had a chance to see the iguanas that live on the island. They also walked the beach! The anchorage here was a bit too bouncy and rolly so we moved over to the anchorage at Black Point. We did a bit of grocery shopping on Friday, plus walked out to the blow hole just north of the Black Point Settlement. It was another hot, sunny day! We decided to have dinner at the Black Point Yacht Club’s Friday night happy hour. This is a new restaurant that has a great view of the harbour and the sunset. We had delicious food, some really strong rum punch and a great view of the sunset!! The next morning (Saturday) I did some laundry and we decided to head back to Staniel Cay – we really needed milk, bread and veggies. Black Point was very low on everything- they didn’t have a mailboat this week!!

We were fortunate to be able to sail back to Staniel Cay on Saturday and arrived just after lunch. We went ashore to find the Staniel Cay grocery stores also very low on everything. We did get milk but no bread and very few veggies!! Oh well!

Today we snorkeled an area called the cookie jar (which Mark and I had snorkeled just before the girls arrived). We went very close to slack tide and had a great time. We saw lots of healthy coral and many fish – including a big barracuda. We also saw a sea turtle cruising around the coral.

On Monday we’ll try to get some bread from Staniel Cay and then we’re heading back up to Cambridge Cay to explore the island itself and maybe go to Rachael’s bubble bath on Compass Cay!

For the first time, both Evelyn and Caroline have joined us in the Bahamas. Caroline has been down 3 other times but this is Evelyn’s first trip!! They left Toronto on Monday Feb. 27th early morning and took a WestJet flight to Nassau. After a 3 hour layover, they boarded a small inter-island flight on Flamingo Air and headed to Staniel Cay. Evelyn and Caroline loved this little flight – small plane (only 15 seats) with a great view of the Exumas.

We had arrived at Staniel Cay well in advance of Feb. 27th and were all ready for the girls’ arrival. We headed to the airport (okay it is an airport but it’s basically a fence and a couple of buildings!!) and waited for their plane to arrive! It was a bit late but they got in around 5 pm. We had an awesome rib dinner that night and sat out on the bow looking at the stars.

Early Tuesday morning we pulled up anchor, filled our water tanks at Staniel Cay Yacht Club and then headed north to Cambridge Cay. We’ve had the most unusually calm weather this season – many days of low to no wind and Tuesday was one of those days. We motored the short 15 nm and arrived at Cambridge Cay at lunchtime. After lunch we did our first exploring. We took the dinghy over to Rocky Dundas – an island near Compass Cay that has amazing caverns. The weather was perfect for exploring and we saw tons of fish, coral and of course, the caves! We also dinghied over to the south east side of Cambridge Cay and swam the coral reef out there – lots of fish and the coral was definitely better looking then last year.

Evelyn and Caroline have 2 weeks with us and we plan to see as much as we can in that time! Today we’ll be exploring the sea aquarium and doing a reef drift (you float above the reef with the dinghy in tow) in the afternoon. We have another amazingly calm day!!