Month: January 2024

It never hurts to give the boat a little rest after some pretty windy and wavy passages. Our crossing on Jan. 28th from Bond Cay to the east side of New Providence was good but wet. The wind came around from south to be more southwest and we were able to sail most of the 36nm. The waves were fairly big but at a good angle so we weren’t pounding into them. All in all, it was a good crossing.

We reached the east side of Athol Island at 4pm and decided not to anchor at that cay. Instead, we went across the channel to the north east side of New Providence. We anchored here last year so were familiar with the anchor holding – it would be good! We were expecting the southwest wind to clock overnight to northwest and to strengthen to 20+ knots. We were hopeful this location would be okay in that wind direction. The predicted blow showed up around 3am and really got going by mid morning. The anchorage wasn’t too bad (a bit bouncy) and our holding was excellent. It was a good place for the night but we were happy to move on in the morning.

The trip around to the south west side of New Providence was about 20nm – not too bad. The first part of this trip we had the strong winds “on the beam” which means the wind was perpendicular to the boat. This is great for speed but leads to lots of heeling. It was another wet ride with waves flying over the bow and splashing our dodger. At these times I’m always thankful for our enclosure!!!

The last leg of our trip, along the south side of New Providence, was more into the wind. The motor went on and the sails came down and we spent the next 2 hours (or so) running into waves and being slowed down by the wind. It was great to finally see the canal into Coral Harbour (which is where the dock is located) and to head in off the rough water.

The mouth of this canal has 2 interesting features – a derelict apartment building and a Bahamian Defence Force base. Once inside the entrance, the canals become quite narrow with the occasional sunken boat to negotiate. We were taking it slow through the canals as I was putting out dock lines and fenders. We were barely around one corner when a Bahamian diving boat came up behind us. Mark moved over the best he could and the boat passed us. Turns out their dock (and shop) are right across from our dock! We see a lot of these dive boats as they go in and out all day!!

Crimson Kathryn’s home for the next week (ish) is on a dock at a private home. The couple who rent out dock space (and provide a wonderful service and atmosphere for cruisers) have lived in the Bahamas for 60 years (they’re originally from Britain). They have room for 3 boats on their docks and then they “raft” other boats to the docked boats. Right now there are 7 boats here (2 just arrived this afternoon)!! Our first night here (which was last night, Jan. 29), there was a happy hour where we met the other boaters. There is one empty boat, one man from England on a power boat, a French Canadian couple on a catamaran and 2 French Canadian men on a monohull. Today we were joined by 2 American boats – one power and one sailboat. The sailboat is tied up to us and it’s a young couple on a new to them sailboat.

We’re definitely getting excited to go home on Thursday to see the girls and Mark’s Dad! Lots going on – Caroline starts a new job on Thursday and Evelyn’s “smackdown – PhD defence” is on Friday!! Can’t wait!! I’ll be posting again when we return!

We’ve been securely anchored at Bond Cay since last Saturday (January 20) but it’s time now to move along to Nassau Harbour area. It’s been a very productive week with lots of jobs getting crossed off the list. Some of the items include changing the wire lines for the dinghy lift and the mizzen boom bridle to a very strong rope called dyneema. This rope is partial made with Kevlar and is touted to be “the world’s strongest man-made fibre”. We also added 2 new chocks at the stern. Chocks are used to guide your dock lines over the rail of the boat which helps with chafing.

We’ve also done a bit of exploring north of here to a little cay called Lizard Cay. There’s a restaurant on Little Harbour Cay (this cay is right beside Lizard) but we didn’t visit it. We dinghied north from Lizard and walked along a very interesting sand bar where we found live conch crawling along the sand.

It’s been very quiet here. For the most part we’ve been on our own. One night there were 7 of us around Bond Cay – 2 at the north end, us in the middle and the other 4 were clustered at the south end. By morning, we were down 1 and by the end of the day, it was just us and one catamaran. The anchorage is so large that the other boats were very far away!!

We’ll pull out of here around 9am in the morning (January 28th). We’re taking the south route to get back out on the Northwest Providence channel. It’s fairly shallow at that end of the island so we have to go through close to high tide. We’re heading for Athol Island, which is on the north east side of the Nassau Harbour. We’re expecting some north west wind overnight and into the day on January 29th so this anchorage will protect us from that wind. This will be just an overnight stop. In the morning on Jan. 29, we’ll make our way to the south west end of New Providence to head into the dock. Crimson Kathryn will have a little rest while we fly home to watch Evelyn’s defence.

The wind has finally blown itself out (well mostly)! It’s been so windy the last few days (and nights) that we’ve woken up with our batteries fully charged – that doesn’t happen very often. We’ve been seeing consistent wind above 20knots with gusts in the high 20s. With the direction change from north to east/south east, we’ve been sitting in calm water while the wind howls around us! It’s really nice to have an island wind breaker!!

On Monday, January 22, we decided to checked out the few beaches on Bond Cay. This was the first time I’ve been off the boat since we left West End on January 14!! (Mark did a dinghy trip to West End to buy gas for our Honda generator just before we left there.) It sure felt good to go for a dinghy ride and a beach walk. The beach was small but glorious – it was a fun walk and we explored a little bit of the island. Bond Cay appears to be deserted even though we saw a few houses near the water in one corner. These places looked very wind blown and empty. We didn’t go explore them!

This area of the Berry Island chain is only 30nm from New Providence (where Nassau is). There are a few areas just north of us that we’d like to visit via dinghy but will wait for the wind to die down some more. There are several private islands around us so we can only look at their nice beaches. We are still the only boat anchored here and it will probably stay that way.

You might wonder what we do all day long if stuck on the boat. Well that depends on who you are! For me it’s been a chance to read my book and catch up on my blog posts. I’ve also done a bit of laundry (and need to do more) but I haven’t been crocheting (yet!!). Mark has been busy finishing the varnishing on the aft head threshold – it looks amazing!! He’s also done a few maintenance jobs – change the fuel filter on the engine (those kind of things).

The big issue Mark has been dealing with is our freezer. After we filled it back in Florida, we’ve been trying to get it cold enough to freeze everything. It was doing a good job on the food at the very bottom but not the best job on the second and top layers. It’s a delicate balance on a boat – you can keep turning the freezer colder but then it runs longer, using more of your precious battery power. That’s the problem we were having – juggling temp and running time. Mark figured that the freezer probably needed more refrigerant (which we had onboard) so he added some. It’s a fine line between too much and too little refrigerant (and we don’t have the correct gauge to properly measure this) so the first attempt added too much. The freezer was running all the time and consuming way too much battery power. So Mark went back and removed some of the refrigerant and now the freezer is working perfectly and not running too much.

We still have 6 days here before we will move to our reserved dock on New Providence. The sun is out today so maybe we’ll go exploring again!

Our north wind came a day early so we left Ginn Sur Mer at 6 am on Friday, Jan. 19. This 80nm trip required us to get up early so we could arrive with some light to anchor. Well that plan didn’t quite work out. I set an alarm for 4am (so we would be underway at 5am) – or so I thought. At 5:30 am we both were up in a bit of a panic and I realized I’d set my alarm for 4pm!! Okay so we started the trip a bit later than planned but that’s the way things go sometimes. We did manage to have anchor up and be heading out of Ginn Sur Mer by 6am so that wasn’t bad. The only negative of leaving was that we missed Alizarin (Julian and Brad) and Orkan (Sharon and Rick) who arrived at West End around 12pm.

It was a good day for moving south. We had set up the spinnaker the day before hoping we would have a nice downwind sail but the wind strength just wasn’t there so we had a long day of motoring. Once we were south of Grand Bahama Island, the waves lengthened out and we had a very good, uneventful trip to Great Harbour Cay. There were lots of tankers, cargo ships and cruise ships moving so we kept an eye out for them but nothing came close. We did have a nice little dolphin escort late in the afternoon. They really like to race ahead of the boat and play in our bow wake.

We arrived at Great Harbour in the dark – that’s a little stressful. We’ve only anchored here once before (and we arrived in the dark that time too) and we had difficulty getting our anchor to set. This time we headed towards the north end of the anchorage (by Rat Cay) where we could see other masthead lights. We got in as close as we dared with our lack of light, dropped the anchor and it grabbed right away!! That was a great relief. We were anchored and settled by 7pm.

Saturday morning we were up by 7am, wanting to depart at 8am to do the 40nm to Bond Cay. The Great Harbour Cay anchorage is almost in the middle of the island. To get back out and around the top is about a 12nm journey (partly over the path we took to get in). We had north/northeast wind on Saturday so it was a tough slog getting out of the anchorage and around the top end. We pounded into the waves so hard that our anchor came loose twice!! Not much fun going to the bow to secure it when the boat was going up and down by easy 6 – 7 ft, but Mark did it as quickly as he could.

Once we were around the top and heading in a southerly direction, we deployed the jib and mizzen (jib and jigger this is called) and sailed the rest of the way to Bond Cay. It was a beautiful sail – wind and waves following which was perfect. It was a very quiet day on the water, maybe because of the wind speed and direction or maybe because everyone was already tucked in somewhere to wait out this easterly blow that’s starting today (Sunday).

Our anchorage at Bond Cay is large but very shallow. It’s hard to get close to shore which makes you feel a bit out in the open. It will be good for the east and south east winds that are coming over the next several days. Our plan now is to wait here until the end of the month. We’ll move to New Providence (west side) on or around Jan. 29th and go into our reserved dock space on January 30. We’ll be all settled and secured before we fly home on February 1st.

It certainly didn’t feel like we were stressed after returning to the boat end of December, but there was always that pressing thought “got to get across!”. Now that we’re here and we have over 2 weeks to get to Nassau, we’ve definitely transitioned into island life. It’s warmer, sunnier and we have no real pressure to do anything except watch the clouds!!

When we arrived in Ginn Sur Mer on Sunday, Jan 13, there was only one other boat here – a catamaran. We anchored in a good spot that would accommodate us swinging around (the winds are always changing and same with the current). By Monday morning, we were all alone. It was super quiet. This spot is very protected so although it was windy, the water was nice and calm.

By late afternoon another sailboat came in – it was a large ketch. They anchored past us and were all settled when a third sailboat came in…another ketch!! Not only another ketch (making this anchorage now ketch cove or a ketch convention – I was calling it both😁) but a Whitby 42. Go figure! We actually know this Whitby 42 because it was for sale (for a few years) in the Reynolds yard. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go chat with them because they left early this morning.

Today has been a super relaxed day. Mark has been working on repairing the threshold of the aft head. The wood was quite messed up from years of use so he built a new walnut threshold. He started the fitting process yesterday and today he’s varnishing the wood. We’ve both been enjoying our wonderful wifi and the sunny, warm weather! It’s great to sit in the cockpit with a good book!!

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet (I don’t think) is that we bought a portable gas Honda generator this summer. We learned from last year that a cloudy, less windy season leads to major battery charging issues! The new generator supplements our wind and solar units. We used it for the first time yesterday and it worked like a charm! Batteries were nicely charged and we could even heat up some water!

We’re very happy to be in the Bahamas! We’ll spend a few more days here because the wind is not conducive to moving south. We’re also hoping that Julia and Brad will be crossing Thursday/Friday so we can have a good old happy hour with them before we move on south and they head north to Hope Town.

Well a lot has happened since my last post 4 days ago when we were still at Loggerhead. It’s been an eventful 4 days with lots of new things to tell you about.

The journey down the ICW was as expected – pretty quiet (for a change) and lots of lift bridges. Our first night’s stop was near Stuart on January 10. That was a good stop but a bit rolly due to wakes from boat traffic. It’s a very busy area because it has an inlet to the ocean – lots of boats heading out fishing! The next day we moved south to Lake Worth (Jan. 11). This part of the ICW has 6 lift bridges and 4 of these bridges open on a schedule (one and half hour or quarter hour and 3/4 hour). You really have to move along to get through these timed lifts or you end up wasting time waiting for the next opening. We were lucky because the current was going with us and we were able to do 7kts of speed, making it very easy to get to the next bridge in time for the scheduled opening.

We only had one little scare that day – we were just south of Stuart on the ICW and a power boat was charging directly at us. The ICW is relatively narrow at this point and not super deep so there wasn’t a lot of room to move over. We were well on our side of the channel but this guy wanted the whole thing. Mark was getting ready to blow the air horn at him when the boat finally slowed and passed way too close to us! We got waked pretty hard by this guy but we’re thankful he didn’t run right into us.

We arrived at Lake Worth around 1pm and decided to fuel up from this barge. The name on the barge is Pickle Rick and it hangs out in the middle of the Lake Worth harbour providing a great service for boaters. We came along side the barge, tied up and then fueled up! It was very cool and super convenient. Once we’d taken on about 170 gallons, we continued slightly further south and anchored across from the mega yacht marina called Rybovich Marina.

We were up early on Jan. 12 because we had a few jobs to do and we were planning to cross to the Bahamas that night around midnight. Our first stop was the CBP office to get our final permit to proceed clearance to leave the country!! Mark had to walk a bit to get to the office while I stayed with the dinghy (for safety reasons). It was fast and easy to get the permit and we were on our way to stop # 2 after about an hour. Our second stop was West Marine to buy a new water temperature gauge for the engine (a very important gauge!!). The West Marine is in North Palm Beach. This was a long dinghy ride on a cloudy, windy day. We dinghied back north on the ICW and tied up at a restaurant called The River House. We decided we’d treat ourselves to a nice lunch once we were finished our jobs. We got what we needed from West Marine and had a very nice lunch at the restaurant. It was a long trip back to the boat (about 5nm) with the wind in our face and water too!!

That night at around 11:50pm we pulled up anchor and headed out the inlet. It was dark but the harbour and inlet are very well lit so getting out was not a problem. We put up the main and the mizzen sails while still in the calm waters of the harbour because we were expecting that the mouth of the inlet would be too bouncy to put up the sails. We were very correct on that count. We knew this crossing was going to be “salty”, which means lots of wind and wave action. The wind strength was predicted to be 17 – 22 knots with gusts around 28kts. We saw way more wind – 25 kts most of the way with gusts about 30kts. We had too much sail out but with our newly painted slippery deck, I wasn’t comfortable with Mark going out to reef or lower the main sail. So we started releasing the sails to let wind spill out. It was a fast sail but man were we heeled over and we got pushed around by the waves. Once we hit the Gulf Stream, the waves lengthened out so our ride was a little smoother. We arrived at West End before 9am and it was a very exciting ride into the little canal leading to the marina basin. We had 25 kts of wind plus waves 5-6ft pushing us into the channel. Mark hand steered us in and it went from crazy to calm in an instant. We were in!!!! It was a very long night with a minor injury to my knee and hip (I got tossed trying to get back into the cockpit after I’d gone down below)! We decided to stay the night in the marina because we just didn’t want to go back out in that weather. It was a very good decision!

Today we moved a grand total of about 5nm south to Ginn Sur Mer – an abandoned development that has a very nice canal. We’re nicely protected in here from all directions so we’ll hang out here for a few days.

The time has come for us to cast off these dock lines (again) and continue our way south. The weather windows for crossing to the Bahamas have been few and far between in early January but we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to head over in the next 2 weeks. There was a possible window on January 13 but it’s not looking the best now. We still have lots of time to get to Nassau – our flights home for Evelyn’s defence are on February 1st.

We drove up to Melbourne on Jan. 7th to finish our provisioning and that went very well. Our freezer is now full of meat that should last us for our entire trip. It’s always lots of fun shopping for 16 weeks worth of food. Fellow customers make all kinds of comments – mostly about coming home with us to help drink all the bottles we usually have in our cart! This year was no exception. One man asked if he could come to the party and told him he’d have to go to the Bahamas and he replied “that’s sounds like a good idea”.

Yesterday (Jan. 8th) we made the long drive back to Reynolds to drop off our car. The drive north was good until we got to Melbourne – a big accident closed all the lanes on the I 95 so we had to detour through the town. This detour added about 40 minutes to our 3 hour drive. We got to Reynolds at lunch so we used our lunchtime to print our Bahamas’ cruising license forms and to get the inreach up and running. The inreach device is now on and dropping tracks (well not many because we’re not moving). It will drop new track points every 4 hours. We have a new link to the mapshare: please use this link if you’d like to follow our progress. I will share this link on Facebook and by email also.

https://share.garmin.com/crimsonkathryn

Tomorrow (January 10) we’ll be moving south to either Fort Pierce or even further to Stuart. We’ve never travelled the ICW between Fort Pierce and Lake Worth so this will be a first. We’ll be in Lake Worth by Thursday, January 11 but will not have wifi (unless we go ashore) until we get to the Bahamas. So there’s going to be a bit of time between this post and the next! Hopefully I’ll take more photos and have more to talk about by the time we get decent wifi!

(Our current wifi isn’t working well enough for me to add photos- next time.)

Happy New Year – here’s to a fantastic 2024!

We were settled back onboard Crimson Kathryn by 12:30pm on Dec. 31. We drove straight down (saving the cost of a night in a hotel) and found the boat in good condition. We spent New Year’s Eve eating a lovely pork tenderloin dinner and then falling asleep around 9pm!!

A few things were not great at our marina. The showers were supposed to be fixed before Christmas and as all repair jobs go, they’re still not working. No problem because we can shower onboard. The bigger problem is that their wifi is down 😳😳!! So here we are sitting in a Starbucks using their wifi. This first post back will need to be short!

We’ve already managed to do a few things in our 2 days back onboard. Yesterday (Jan. 1) we emptied the car and filled the boat with all the groceries we bought in Kingston. With the crazy prize of food down here (some prices are the same here as in Canada but then you have to add in the exchange) we decided to shop at our local Costco to get as much of the non-perishable items as possible. We now have a very full pantry behind our main cabin cushion. Mark washed the deck (birds were not kind to our boat while we were gone) and we filled one of our water tanks (showering onboard will use up our water more quickly).

New Year’s Day early evening was spent in the wonderful company of Julia and Brad (Alizarin) and Sharon and Rick (Orkan). We had a great happy hour and met 3 new cruisers – Gavin on a 52ft Island Packet and Cathy and Andy on a trawler (Julia and Brad are rafted with Cathy and Andy on a mooring ball ). It was lots of fun and great to see old friends and meet new people. We decided to take the dinghy down to the City marina (which is where everyone is – besides us) so we had a rather cool ride back to our marina after sunset!

Here’s hoping our marina fixes the wifi today and then I can write a longer post! Enjoy the first few days of 2024!