Category: Sailing Return 2021 – 22

Mark and I hope you all had a great family day and were able to spend a bit of time in person or virtually with your families. For us it’s a virtual chat – we’ll be talking with the girls tonight on messenger! We do video chats once a week to catch up on all that’s going on!!

So in my last post I talked about our water tanks and how we were going to fill our one empty tank at Staniel Cay Yacht Club! Well that didn’t happen!! We tried – we headed to the fuel dock around 8:30am Saturday morning and there were 5 boats ahead of us – and the one on the fuel dock was a mega yacht – they have huge tanks!!! We gave up after waiting over 30 minutes (and the first boat was still on the dock) and followed Daydreams out the cut and onto the Exuma Sound. We travelled a very short distance (about 5nm) to our next anchorage – Bitter Guana.

This was a new anchorage for all of us and it was a really nice spot. The island is known for it’s iguana population and tour boats bring people to see and feed them. It’s a bit unnerving to have a 2ft iguana charging at you looking for food! It’s a good thing they are way more timid then they look. We had a really nice happy hour on our boat that night and the stars were incredible!!

The next morning (Sunday) we left Bitter Guana and headed south to Great Guana Cay – home to Black Point Settlement! Black Point is known for it’s friendly people, amazing bread (made by Lorraine’s mother), Lorraine’s cafe and “the best laundromat” in the Exumas. We went there specifically to do laundry but it was Sunday – very little is open on Sundays in the Bahamas!! So we relaxed for most of the day and got ready to wait in line to do laundry on Monday morning. I decided I could hand wash most of our laundry so on Monday morning we moved from Black Point settlement to Little Bay (just south of the Black Point anchorage). It’s so nice here – super calm, a beautiful beach and only about 10 boats. Jane and Steve joined us here in the late morning after finishing their laundry! We had a lovely day looking for sea glass on the Exuma Sound side of the island.

Our next plan is to move south to Lee Stocking Island in a few days and then get to George Town by the beginning of March. We really like George Town and will spend a few days there getting supplies and relaxing.

I have lots more photos but was having trouble uploading! When we have better wifi, I’ll share some more very cool photos!!

The big blow finally left the area and we were able to leave Cambridge Cay after 6 days. It was a great spot to rest and wait out the windy days. We did see wind in excess of 25 knots (about 46 km/hr) with some pretty big gusts but we were very secure on the mooring ball. Our biggest challenge was the noise coming from our new wind generator! It made some deep vibrating sounds when the wind was really strong (which was always in the middle of the night!!). Mark sent an email to the manufacturer and it turns out that the noise we were hearing was the brakes (it was trying to slow itself down). For the next big blow, we will engage the brake ahead of time and avoid the sleepless nights. The only positive thing is that we made lots of electricity and our batteries were very well charged.

Today we left Cambridge Cay at high tide (around 9am) and made the 11nm trip down to Staniel Cay. This is the way to cruise – get going slowly and only move for about 2 hours. We were anchored right beside Jane and Steve on Daydreams ll by 11 am. We went ashore and had lunch at Staniel Cay Yacht Club and then did a little bit of grocery shopping. Staniel Cay is a very popular tourist spot in the Exumas. There are several small resorts and cabins and there are many boat excursions that come and go. The pig beach is located right here and that is a popular spot of tourists (not so popular with boaters because the tour powerboats make very big wakes and are not super courteous of the anchored boats).

Tomorrow morning we’ll head over to the marina and fill up our one empty water tank. This is our first sailing season without a water maker so we’re being careful with our water. We managed to get 18 days from our 1 tank (it’s a 100 gallon tank) and we have another just like it, so we can go a month before we would be out of water. After that, we’ll travel slightly further south to Bitter Guana Cay and check it out. We are very slowly making our way down to George Town.

Just thought I’d share a bunch of photos today! It’s very windy now because we have a cold front moving in. We’re expecting some really windy weather Tuesday and Wednesday. Today we went to Compass Cay to explore Rachel’s bubble bath and then walked along the Exuma Sound side of Cambridge Cay.

What a great sailing trip we had moving from Soldier Cay all the way down to Warderick Wells Cay. Our initial plan was to meet up with Daydreams ll at Hawksbill Cay but it turned out that they had moved down to Warderick Wells Cay to have better wind protection. We were making great time sailing from Rose Island so decided to continue on to Warderick Wells.

This part of the Exumas (starting at Shroud Cay) is a national park and just like all national parks, there are fees for anchoring in this area. We decided to anchor in the middle anchorage at Warderick Wells Cay for the night. We met up with Jane and Steve on Saturday morning and had a chance to catch up. It was really nice to spend a bit of time with them and to hear about their adventures after leaving Ocean Reef.

We decided to move down to Cambridge Cay and pick up a mooring ball there. This island is the last one in the national park. There are many things to see here, including the sea aquarium (a nice coral reef with lots of fish), Rachel’s bubble bath (an inland river that ends at a rock ledge that faces the ocean so big waves send lots of bubbly water into the river), plus lots of walking trails. We’ll be here until Thursday because we’re expecting some windy weather from the north and this location gives us lots of protection.

As for our future plans, I guess our next stop will be Staniel Cay. It’s not far from here and there is a marina there that has water so we can fill our one tank. We’ve been doing a good job of conserving our water so far this season because it’s the first time we’ve been in the Bahamas without a water maker. We certainly appreciate having big water tanks now that we don’t have a water maker. We had planned to buy a new water maker this season but that just didn’t work out! So I’m guessing it will be at the top of the list for next season!

For the first time in 22 months, Crimson Kathryn was moving under sail power only. It’s such a wonderful thing to be sailing. You can hear the wind in the sails, the waves crashing as we slice through them and of course the ever active auto helm (we fondly call Auto!) that steers the boat for us. Today was a perfect sailing day – we had all 3 sails up with wind speed varying from 9 kts to 12 kts. That’s just enough wind for us to get some speed (we do much better with higher wind speeds). The wind direction was very consistent coming from the north east which allowed us to sail a straight course to Rose Island (just east of New Providence Island – home of Nassau). We left our somewhat rolly anchorage at Soldier Cay at 7 am this morning. Sails were up by 7:30 am and we maintained an average speed of 6.5 kts.

It’s been awhile since my last post, so I’ll back up a bit and start from our slightly extended stay at Ocean Reef Yacht Club on Grand Bahamas Island. Sunday, Feb. 6th was a busy day of Covid testing and shopping. The rented car from Ocean Reef was super handy. Mark, Jane, Steve and I drove out to the airport for our 48 hour Covid test (we’re all negative and very happy about that). We did some grocery shopping and Steve filled up his diesel jerry cans. It was a very productive day!

We’re always watching the weather (mostly the wind) so we can make decisions about moving through the islands. On Sunday, the upcoming winds were looking not great for sailing (at least on Monday and Tuesday). Wednesday, Feb. 9 looked promising with wind predicted to be from the south west to north west. Jane and Steve decided to leave on Monday and motor (and possibly motor-sail) the 75 kts to White Cay in the Berry’s. So we said goodbye (for now) to our buddy boat Monday morning! Our decision to stay until Wednesday meant we had to pay for one more night at the marina but we had to leave that day no matter what the wind was doing because Grand Bahamas is one of 4 islands that has a inter-island travel restriction. If you stay longer than 72 hours, you have to get a Covid test before you leave.

Wednesday morning at 6:30am we left the dock at Ocean Reef and set course for Petit Cay (north east side of the Berry’s). Unfortunately we didn’t see that predicted wind. But we had no wind and the water was flat, flat, flat! We made excellent time under motor and ended up going further south to Soldier Cay – a nice little anchorage that we had all to ourselves!

Alright all caught up!! Today’s sail was amazing and we were joined by all kinds of sailboats! Everyone took advantage of the wind direction to get further south from the Berry’s. There was a catamaran, named Gratus, that was in front of us as we left Soldier Cay and over the course of the day, we managed to catch and pass them. That’s a big deal for this old boat!! She is so suited for sailing – heavy (about 23,000 lbs) which helps her sink into the water so she can take those waves on! The shape of the boat is designed to cut through the water, especially as the wind kicks up. This boat wants wind and she gets in her happy spot when the wind reaches 15 – 20 kts. Today didn’t give us those wind speeds but it was a great sail anyhow.

We’re now anchored on the south side of Rose Island and the plan is to leave here in the morning and head to Hawksbill Cay. Jane and Steve on Daydreams ll are already on a mooring ball at this island. We’re expecting a rather blowy Sunday and Monday (coming from the north east) so we’ll be moving a little further south, near Cambridge Cay, to tuck in for a few days. Like I said – always watching the wind!

Hurray!! We’re here. The crossing from Lake Worth to Grand Bahamas Island was pretty good but long. We left the Lake Worth anchorage around 7 pm and headed out the inlet near the beginning of the flood tide. We encountered a 1.5kt incoming current which didn’t really impact our exit. The waves were very manageable at the entrance and after a few miles out, they became even more relaxed.

As usual we didn’t see the direction of wind that was predicted – south, south east was predicted and we had more easterly wind. Our travel direction from Lake Worth was south east so we were basically heading into the wind (again!!). We were hoping to get all sails up and have a good sail across but that didn’t quite work out. We did deploy the jib and mizzen and ended up motor sailing on a slightly higher angle (if you looked at our crossing trail, you would have thought we were headed further north!).

It was a great night to cross – warm, clear and the winds were fairly low which made the waves small. Lots of boats were out – some pleasure crafts (like us) heading to the Bahamas and other places, plus lots of working vessels – cruise ships, cargo ships etc. We had a bit of moonlight in the beginning hours so we could see quite well. It’s always interesting to do a night crossing – watching the AIS signals on our plotter and looking for lights in the distance. This crossing was uneventful which is exactly what you want!

We arrived at Port Lucaya, Grand Bahamas Island at 9:30 am. We went straight to the Grand Bahamas Yacht Club to clear in through the customs and immigration office at that location. It was an interesting process this year. In my last post I mentioned the online cruising permit site – click2clear which we filled out ahead of time and the health visa requirement that we also did ahead of time. When we arrived at the dock, we were put into a slip and told that the yacht club would help us print our documents and issue our fishing license but because we weren’t staying at the club, there would be a fee for this service. Okay no worries – whatever it takes to clear in. Clearing in the boat was super easy and fast but it took about 1 hour to go through immigration for us because the immigration officer wasn’t on site. By 11 am, we were on our way to Ocean Reef Yacht Club. Jane had made reservations for us to stay at the club for a few nights.

It’s now Sunday morning (Feb. 6)! We are rested from our sail over and getting ready for the day. We have rented the club’s car for the day so we can go get our 48 hour Covid test and do a little shopping. Right now we are planning to stay here tonight and then head out probably tomorrow (Monday) to go south. Our goal is to get to the Exumas and stay there for the season. It’s so good to be here!!!

We’ve finally given up the marina life. After a month at Reynolds and 6 weeks at Loggerhead, it was definitely time for this old boat to get a move on. We backed out of our slip on Jan. 31 and headed to the fuel dock. Once our tanks were full, we followed Jane and Steve (on Daydreams ll) out the inlet and onto the ICW.

The weather on Monday was perfect- warm and sunny and a little bit of north east wind to give us an added little push down the ICW. There was a bit of traffic on the water but for the most part we were alone going south. We followed Daydreams for most of the trip down to Fort Pierce until we got to the North Fort Pierce bascule bridge. We took the lead after the bridge because we knew the anchorage we were aiming for that night. Our anchor was down and secured by 2:30pm and we were able to relaxed and enjoy our first night on the hook in 6 weeks!!

The next morning we headed out the Fort Pierce inlet (at 8 am) hoping for a nice east wind sail down to Lake Worth (about a 45 nm journey). Well we got a journey alright but not the lovely sail we were hoping for. We left Fort Pierce on a flood tide so we battled the current out the inlet. Once released from the inlet’s grip, we turned south into wind that was way more south then east. Crimson Kathryn has an overheating issue when we sail with wind on our port side. We heel over which causes the water intake to come out of the water. Our engine is water cooled so we have to be very careful to watch our engine temperature. We tend not to put sails up on this tack to avoid any overheating but Tuesday’s ocean was so wavy and with the wind almost on our nose, we had no choice but to put the jib up. It was a long sail – we had to tack 3 times to keep moving away from the shore in order to use the south east wind as much as possible. After a day of bouncing around, we made it into the Lake Worth inlet at 6:30pm. Daydreams got in about 2 hours before us so they were able to help us get into the anchorage by talking us in. Steve was also out on his bow with a big flashlight showing us where to drop anchor. We were never so thankful for a buddy boat!!! One positive from our sail down – Crimson Kathryn didn’t overheat!! The engine stayed consistently cool. All the work Mark did on the cooling system worked wonderfully.

So here we are – anchored beside the mega yachts at Rybovich Marina and waiting for a weather window to cross to the Bahamas. It’s looking like we will have a good opportunity this Saturday starting around 1 am. Our Covid rapid antigen tests are done (negative!!) and we have our Bahamas Health Travel Visa. We’re working on our click2clear cruising permit now. It’s getting closer!

Well here we are – still at the marina. Our departure date of Jan. 27th is now gone and we are staying connected at the dock because we are looking at a very cold weekend. The temperature for Saturday night is predicted to be -1. Now that’s not very cold compared to what has been happening in Toronto and Kingston, but when you are on a boat that only has heat when plugged in, that is very cold!!! A few days ago I woke up to 12 degrees inside the boat! We don’t run our heater (which is also our air conditioning unit) overnight because it is noisy and blows right on Mark, so we can wake up to some cold cabin temps. Being on anchor would mean no heat at all!!! So here we stay!

Now that we have a few more days here, Mark is looking at all those jobs that just kept moving down the list. Starting off the day, Mark worked on our new (to us) anchor. We bought this very large Manson anchor (80 lbs – meant for a 60ft boat) back at Reynolds and discovered quite quickly that it was very difficult to bring back aboard. Mark has been working on different ways to make it easier to haul the anchor back up from the water. Today he drilled a new hole in the anchor shaft to help with the retrieval process. Several tests later (and lots of noise), the anchor was coming onboard more easily! Success.

Mark also made some headway on cleaning the hull. Crimson Kathryn had a moustache (and she wasn’t too happy about it 😉) – a lovely souvenir of the ICW! We have had this brown mark on the bow since April 2020 – when we put the boat on the hard! It takes a lot of scrubbing and polishing to get the hull looking clean!

While Mark was busy working on the hull, I made spaghetti sauce and worked on my crochet projects. I also moved all of our cockpit cushions onto the deck to dry them out after the rain we’ve had for the past few days. Our enclosure has some leaky zippers and our cushions get very wet when it rains. It doesn’t take long for them to dry out, especially when it’s a nice sunny and windy day (which is what we had today).

I spent a bit of time on Wednesday getting our inreach device up and running. The device has been off for almost 2 years, so there was a bit of updating needed. I was very happily surprised that it started working immediately after the update! It only took about an hour to get it going and it’s working perfectly. Right now the device is in tracking mode, which means it’s sending out tracking points every 4 hours. It will continue to send tracks every 4 hours when we are stationary and every 2 hours when we are moving. I’m going to leave it on now until we end our season in May. We will start moving in a few days! Here is the link to our map:

https://share.garmin.com/CrimsonKathryn

It’s been an eventful few days here on Crimson Kathryn. Mark has worked very hard figuring out the best way to install our new wind generator. It was quite the process because the wind generator needed to be about 3 ft above the top of the mizzen mast. There were lots of things to consider with this installation; how tall did the aluminum pole have to be to make it steady enough so the generator doesn’t vibrate and that it misses the triatic stay when it spins; How to get the wind generator to the top of the mizzen mast and be able to remove any ropes. Also he looked at things like what type of cable connectors are needed, where to put the readout panel, how to connect it to the batteries – and I know there were more things that went into the planning.

The installation went very smoothly and took place over about 4 or 5 days. Mark was hoisted up that mizzen many times – thanks Steve for your help with this – and each time he worked on drilling holes, installing cables etc. Today (Friday) was the final installation day. With a fancy wooden brake attached to the wind generator, Mark, Steve and I hoisted Mark up first and then the generator second. There were a few minor hiccups but for the most part all went as planned. This was a big job and one of the last major things that needed to be completed before we leave Vero Beach. Now we wait for a nice windy day to see how much energy the wind generator will produce!!

Other things we did this week were to finish our provisioning- always a fun job! We had already been to Costco a few weeks ago so this phase of shopping was at local grocery stores and of course the ABC (LCBO knockoff). We now have a very happy boat full of food and drink!!

I spent a bit of time crocheting 2 hanging baskets for a couple of air plants that will eventually end up in Toronto with Evelyn and Caroline. But first they will travel to the Bahamas! It was very relaxing to crochet again – it’s been a few months and these baskets are super easy and fast (my kind of project)!!

So we are now making plans for our departure from Loggerhead Marina. We looked at storing our car here in Vero Beach but it’s very expensive so we’ve decided to drive our car back to Reynolds and leave it there for the 3 months we are in the Bahamas. We’ve rented a car for Jan. 25th so that’s the last day we’ll have wheels. We are looking at a marina departure date of Jan. 27th and are planning to cross to the Bahamas when there is a good weather window. We’ve started the process of getting our health visas and cruising license. Jane ordered rapid antigen tests that you can do from the boat (just need wifi) so we can upload our negative (🤞) test results as part of our health visas. It’s all starting to come together now!!

January 16 (a special day for me 🥳) gave us our biggest rain storm yet and a great test for our new portlights. I’m very happy to say we had no leaks from the new ones but one of the 2 remaining old portlights did leak. I think the boat is telling us to replace the last 2 with the nice new ones!! Definitely something to think about – maybe we’ll replace them with portlights that don’t open.

Right now the boat is full of beautiful flowers. It’s so nice to have cut flowers onboard – really brightens the place up. We had a lovely dinner with Jane and Steve on Saturday night to celebrate my birthday. They bought me a bottle of Kentucky bourbon (which I have been wanting to try) and it’s very smooth!!

A few days ago Mark received the long overdue wind generator. It was ordered in the beginning of December so it took a very long time to get here. Unfortunately it arrived without the cables – that box arrived today! While waiting for the cables, Mark and I worked on the 6ft aluminum pole that will support the wind generator at the top of the mizzen mast. Mark was hoisted up the mizzen 2 days in a row to make the needed adjustments and to drill holes in the mast to mount the pole. Lots of planning has gone into the installation of our new wind generator. Now that we have the cables, the wind generator can almost be installed. Turns out the power cable is very big (almost 3/4 in thick) and we don’t have the correct sized connectors, so another Amazon order has been placed.

The other big job Mark worked on was installing our new inverter. The new inverter takes our battery power and changes it into 120 volts so we can run the microwave, toaster and all our wall sockets without being plugged into shore power! This is such a nice thing – no more using the manual toaster over the propane burner or plugging our devices into the little inverter under the navigation station when we’re at anchor. The new inverter had to be mounted near the batteries and horizontal which was a bit of a challenge but Mark made it work!!

We decided today to extend our stay here at Loggerhead until January 27th. We’ve made a tentative plan with Jane and Steve to sail south to Lake Worth and then cross over to the Bahamas. Hopefully by the beginning of February, these cold fronts will slow down and better crossing weather will start to show up.