Author: crimsonkathyrnandcrew

We made it!! 170 nm from Clarence Town to the Caicos Banks in 28 hours. The wind was northwest the whole journey with the waves pretty much in the same direction. We had all sails up and we were cruising along in the low 7knots for most of the time. It was a very quiet trip – only a few other AIS signals (boats in other words) were out on the water (mostly cargo ships) and we were fortunate to have a clear night with an almost full moon so even the night portion of our passage was easy.

The whole trip was 180nm (from Clarence Town to South Side Marina) and the last 10nm or so getting into our marina was a bit more interesting. The Caicos Banks are very shallow and have lots of coral heads and rocky areas to navigate. As soon as we crossed into the Sandbore Channel (this channel separates Providenciales and West Caicos and gives access to the Caicos Banks), the water depth dropped down to 20ft or so. Very quickly the depth decreased to less than 15ft, but not to worry – we had great visibility (through somewhat sleepy eyes!). Turks & Caicos still uses an old school radio arrival system. Each entering boat must hail “Provo Radio” when you are 12nm away from the islands. We did that and got no answer – it was early. So Mark tried again once we were actually on the Caicos Banks but still no answer even though we heard Provo Radio hailing other vessels. We decided to just do to our destination, South Side Marina and not worry about Provo Radio. We took our sails down about 20 minutes from our turn into the shallow route to South Side. Just when we were back on course, Provo Radio hailed us and went through a crazy number of questions (mostly ones we’d already answered online through Turks & Caicos’ online clear in). This delay definitely caused us a bit of precious mid tide time!!

Finally the questions were all answered and we were ready to turn onto the course to enter South Side Marina. We had been warned to come in no later than mid tide but preferably at high tide. Unfortunately high tide on Feb. 21 was 6 am and 6 pm – we were entering around 11am. All was good for the first part of the 2nm route with depths in the 10ft range. Mark slowed us down as the depth dropped to about 8ft and when we were in this part of the route, we ran aground!! Even though we were going fairly slow, we got stuck hard (and we were going to low tide – not great). Mark quickly hoisted the main sail to try to heel us over so we could motor off (either forward or reverse) – no luck! Up went the jib and we began to bounce and rock in place. Slowly we moved forward and were off the high spot. The rest of the trip into the marina was a nail biter – our draft is 5 ft (we need at least 5.1ft to not touch bottom) and at one point our depth metre said we were in 4.9ft of water!! I guess we were plowing sand at that point!! We finally reached the entrance green and red buoys and turned into the marina basin. We were secured to the dock and settled in by about 11:30am.

After lunch Mark had to check us in through customs and immigration. The 2 officers were at South Side earlier in the day so they had to return to check in us and 2 other vessels. Only the Captain of each ship goes ashore to check in – everyone else is supposed to stay onboard. So I cleaned up the interior of the boat (did dishes, put the main cabin back together because we set it up as a bed when doing long passages, removed all the pillows that were securing items during our passages) and then got connected to the wifi. Mark was back aboard by about 2 pm with our stamped passports but no cruising license. The officers didn’t have time to do that so they’ll come back later to give us our cruising permit for the 5 weeks we’ll be here.

It was a great trip over and to celebrate we ordered dinner from the on-site restaurant (Bob’s Bar and Eats), brought it back to the boat and had a bottle of bubbly!! Now we have 2 weeks to explore Providenciales before Donalda and Bill join us on March 7th to March 19th. Evelyn, Caroline and their friend Samantha will be aboard from March 20 – 27 so we’ll have lots of company here!!

We’ve enjoyed our stay here in the harbour at Clarence Town. The weather has been great – sunny and hot. We’re finally starting to see more normal temperatures for this time of year (28 degrees today) and we went for our first swim of the season.

We decided to go to shore on Saturday, Feb. 17 and it was the first time we were off the boat since leaving Big Major on Feb. 13. It felt good to walk around! The last time we were in Clarence Town, we were with Caroline and our friends Donalda and Bill Stevens. We were anchored on the west side of Long Island and rented a car for a day. We drove down to Clarence Town and had lunch at the Flying Fish Marina (it has a nice restaurant). The town hasn’t changed much in 4 years but it does seem a bit more deserted.

On this visit to town we were looking for Erica’s bakery. After much searching, we finally found the little shop relatively close to the dinghy dock (figures). It was a great little store with fresh bread and amazing pound cake! On our way back to the dinghy dock, Mark stopped at the little gas station to get an ice cream. While we were waiting there, we met 2 other couples from the anchorage. One couple was from Michigan and the other couple was from Germany and Switzerland. The Michigan folks were on their first Bahamas’ visit and the European couple were on their way back to the Dominican Republic where they store their sailboat. We had a great chat standing in the shade and ended up inviting both couples back to our boat for happy hour (which lasted until after 8pm). It was very interesting hearing both couples’ stories.

Today we went back to shore for some last minute items. We bought gas for the generator and the dinghy and filled a few water jugs. We went back to Erica’s for a few items and we checked out the Packing House! This warehouse sells local produce so we bought bananas and 2 papayas!! We arrived back at the boat just before lunch and spent the rest of the day getting ready to depart in the morning. I made chilli and banana bread for our passage and we have lots of leftovers for quick meals while underway.

It’s now 8pm Monday, Feb. 19 and we’re pretty much ready to pull up anchor in the morning. We’re hoping to leave around 6am and sail the 180nm to Turks & Caicos with a good northwest wind. We might pick up some cell signals as we travel past some of the outer islands but I’m not counting on it. It will take a few days to get wifi sorted in Providenciales but hopefully the wifi at South Side Marina will be good. Next post will be from Turks & Caicos in a few days! Don’t forget you can always reach us on the inreach device and follow our trail as we move along.

Well like all good plans, this one was flexible. My last post said we were heading to Lee Stocking Island and then George Town. The wind favoured us going a different route so off we went heading east across the Emuxa Sound to Cat Island. We left the Big Major anchorage around 6:30am on Tuesday, Feb. 13 and headed to the cut just north of Staniel Cay (Big Rock Cut). It was a perfect wind/weather day for sailing the 54nm to Cat Island with the wind on the starboard aft quarter (wind and waves behind is called fair winds and following seas!). We had all sails up and with really good speed, we arrived at our new anchorage near New Bight, Cat Island by 4pm.

It was a quick overnight stop and we were up early again on Feb. 14 to make the 40nm jump to Conception Island. It was another downwind sail with the wind out of the northeast so it was on our port aft quarter. The first part of the sail was behind Cat Island so the waves were very small. We were really moving with all sails up and were sailing very flat (not heeled over) because of the wind direction and the small waves. Mark decided it was time to do some fishing. We’ve had good luck in this area in the past and Mark jokes that we seem to catch a mahi mahi in this general area once every two years. Well it was 2 years ago that we caught a mahi crossing back to George Town from Cat Island and wouldn’t you know, we caught another one crossing in front of the south end of Cat Island. It was a big one – 40 inches and 11 lbs. We had a very lovely Valentine’s dinner – fresh fish!!!

The last island hop of this new route was going south from Conception to Clarence Town (which is on the south east side of Long Island). We were expecting the wind to shift more to the east and to decrease in strength over the day. We decided to only deploy the jib and mizzen which worked great for the first few hours but it didn’t take long for the waves to build (probably 1.5m waves) and our speed to drop. We turned into the wind (that was exciting with those large waves) and Mark hoisted the main sail and we continued to Clarence Town. The wind didn’t decrease and we made really good time, arriving around 4pm. We followed the supply ship into the harbour so we might be able to get some fresh produce.

So what’s the plan now – we’re in a great position to make the 30 hour (180nm) passage to Providenciales (Turks & Caicos). The wind is looking good for a downwind sail leaving here around 6am on Feb. 20 which should get us into South Side Marina around 12pm on Feb. 21. We’re watching the wind and weather closely!

Since leaving New Providence, we’ve had some great sailing days. The wind has been strong and the sailing has been salty (lots of water on the deck) but we’ve made it all the way to Staniel Cay and are now waiting for the south wind to turn west so we can jump down to Lee Stocking Island and then George Town.

Our first stop after leaving the dock was Hawksbill Cay (Feb. 8). This island is inside the Exuma Land and Sea Park. We arrived in the afternoon and had no trouble finding a good spot to anchor amongst the mooring balls. There were 4 other boats already in the anchorage and we were joined by a few more later in the afternoon. It was a calm, quiet stop. It was nice to be back at anchor!

We took our time leaving Hawksbill in the morning because we only had about 28nm to travel south to Staniel Cay. It was another salty sailing day with the wind blowing 15 – 20 knots from the east. Unfortunately, we were heading south east and the wind direction made it very difficult for us to sail. After trying for over an hour, we ended up motor sailing with just the main sail still up. This was the first time we’ve been able to sail on that tack (boat heeled over so the port side is out of the water)!! Mark’s new engine thru hull worked like a charm and the engine stayed nice and cool because it had loads of water! We got into the anchorage at Big Major around 2pm and found a good spot to anchor.

Saturday morning (Feb. 10) we launched the dinghy and headed to Staniel Cay. It was laundry day!! It took most of the morning to do our laundry but while the clothes were in the dryer, we managed to get to the little grocery stores and to pick up our bread order!! My friend Jane told me about this bakery on Staniel that you can email in your order. I did just that on Friday afternoon. We ordered so much bread: 2 plain loaves, 2 coconut loaves, 1 cinnamon raisin loaf plus 2 chocolate chip banana breads and 2 coconut banana breads! All these loaves are now in our freezer to be shared with our guests when we are in Turks & Caicos!!

It’s Super Bowl Sunday (those of you who follow football are probably very aware of this) – we had no idea until we saw all the booze moving around Staniel Cay on Saturday. Everywhere we looked, someone was carrying a case of beer and other bottles. I forgot to mention that the laundry mat is also a liquor store (strange I know) so there was lots of action there. There will be several parties on the island tonight! Time to light the boat up like a Christmas tree so all those drunken fools in powerboats don’t hit us on their way home tonight!!😁 We’ll celebrate by not going to a party and relaxing on our boat instead.

Our plans for getting to Turks & Caicos are starting to take shape. On Tuesday, Feb. 13, we’ll jump down to Lee Stocking Island. The next day we’ll get to George Town and then wait for favourable wind to either jump to Conception Cay or maybe go the south route to Long Island and then Crooked Island. It all depends on the wind!!

It was a very quick trip home this past weekend but an incredibly satisfying visit!! Evelyn is now a PhD and Caroline is enjoying her new job! We had a fabulous dinner with Mark’s Dad, Caroline, Evelyn and Liam (Evelyn’s partner). All in all it was an awesome trip home but now it’s time to make some serious distance!! Turks & Caicos is calling!

We arrived back at the private dock on Sunday, Feb. 4 around 2pm and saw that another sailboat had come in and was rafted beside us. It turned out that a third sailboat was coming in so we were being moved from the dock position to the outside position (because we were leaving before the other 2 boats). It wasn’t difficult to reverse from the dock and get out of the way so the second boat could be pulled to the dock. The new arrival moved into the middle spot and then we slowly came along side them. We are tied to the middle sailboat with spring lines and also to the dock and shore with a bow line and stern line – nice and secure! This 3 abreast set-up means Mark and I have to walk over 2 other boats to get to shore – not my favourite thing to do!! The last boat (the one tied to the dock) is in rough shape and their decks are very cluttered which makes it challenging to cross.

Early in the week, we had decided to stay until Thursday (Feb. 8) because of weather (it was a very good decision). Starting Tuesday and continuing today, the Bahamas has had some crazy high winds! On Tuesday night some places saw hail and wind gusts of 65 knots. Our friends Jane and Steve are in the Exumas and they lost a solar panel in the storm that night. We’ve been super lucky here because we are so sheltered that we haven’t experienced any really high winds.

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a large grocery shopping (basically since we left the USA) so our fridge was pretty empty when we got back. We teamed up with our rafting partners (the boat beside us), Caroline and Mario (from Montreal) and rented a car from a friend of the dock owner, Carolyn. On Tuesday we drove into Nassau and bought lots of produce and other yummy items. We also stopped at a liquor store on our way back!! It’s really nice having access to a car – last night we had pizza from Dominos. Mark and Mario picked it up!!

Our plan now is to leave here around 8am tomorrow morning (Feb. 8th) and head to Hawksbill Cay. We’ll continue to move south the next day and stop at Staniel Cay. We probably won’t have any wifi at Hawksbill because it is inside the Exuma Land and Sea park (no cell towers), but we’ll be back in business once we reach Staniel.

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.