Crimson Kathryn and her crew

It’s been a whirlwind start to this sailing season – lots of good north wind moved us south at a good pace! We arrived in the Bahamas on November 29th and the plan is to leave Clarence Town at 6 am Jan. 15!! The on and off again crossing window has reappeared with good north/northeast wind that should move us along nicely for a roughly 28 hour sail to Turks & Caicos. We should arrive at Southside Marina, T&C by 10am January 16th (nice way to celebrate my birthday 🎉).

Our stay here in the Clarence Town harbour has had its ups and downs (and rolls, rolls, rolls). During our 7 day visit we explored areas we hadn’t seen before and we met some nice sailors on boats near us. We had one beach get together with a French Canadian couple who have lived in Connecticut for the past 30 years but are now wanting to return to Canada! We did a bit of fresh produce shopping with limited success. Most of all we spent the time watching the wind (via our wind apps on our devices) and being rolled back and forth by the incoming swell! I certainly won’t miss that motion.

As far as boat jobs go, we did very few – we really needed a break from jobs. Mark focused on fixing minor leaks!! Mark fixed one of these minor leaks in the aft head hoses by tightening the hose claps. We discovered a small leak in our watermaker system after our second time making water so Mark did a repair on that! And lastly, Mark worked on a slow diesel leak we have on the engine. Hopefully today’s fix will stop that pesky leak.

This is our last day (and night) in the Bahamas. It’s been a great 7 seasons of exploration – visiting most of the island chains over that time. Now we head for the Caribbean!! More blue water and white sandy beaches to come. First stop Turks and Caicos.

What an anchorage!! We’re starting day 4 in this harbour and the rolling is non-stop. We moved from our first spot due to the swell coming in and around Strachan Cay, causing the boat to roll side to side. We’re now much closer to the Clarence Town side of the harbour but the rolling hasn’t stopped. It was so bad this morning that our coffee pot tipped over, spilling coffee everywhere.

We went into town on Jan. 9 to buy some fruit. A supply ship was at the government dock when we arrived on Jan. 8 and another was in the morning of Jan. 9. Unfortunately both ships brought other supplies – not produce. We did manage to get these cute little bananas and a few plantains from the agricultural co-op. The fruit sold at the co-op are grown on the island!! We’ll go back on Monday or Tuesday to see what else they might have for sale. We were told that they should have some papaya at that time.

Yesterday we got off the boat for a few hours and that was lovely! We explored the south east side of the harbour and found a very cool deep water area that leads to the ocean. The water was about 45ft deep in the centre of the pond and it was surrounded by shallows. We went at low tide so couldn’t take the dinghy all the way to the ocean. We did get a good walk in along the beach. We’ll explore that area again at high tide!!

Our good crossing weather is starting to disappear. Jan. 14 – 15 is now a no go because the wind strength and direction has changed. There is still a possibility to cross Jan 16 – 17 but we’ll wait to see what happens as we get closer to those dates.

You got it!! This past week has had great northerly wind that has allowed us to get all the way to Clarence Town so quickly!! We’re in a great spot to say Bye to the Bahamas and Hello to Turks and Caicos.

We made a quick overnight stop at Black Point on Jan. 4th where we did some laundry and picked up a few items from the little grocery store. We were up and moving just after 6 am on Jan. 5 to sail south to Lee Stocking Island. It was a lovely sail on the banks but it became a lumpy mess when we exited Galliot Cut onto the Exuma Sound. The wind direction wasn’t great for us – it was almost too far forward for us to sail (we don’t sail upwind well) and the strength decreased a bit. We decided to bail early and take the Bock Cut which was about 2 nm north of the more popular cut at the north end of Lee Stocking Island. Once in the calm water of the Exuma Banks, we quickly made our way to our anchorage on the west side of Lee Stocking. Anchor was down just in time for lunch!

We stayed for 2 days and on day 2 (Jan. 7) we did a few jobs. In the morning I made chili – a great meal for passages. Mark decided to tackle a water leak we discovered a few days earlier. It turned out that the aft head seacock (the hole in our hull that allows us to empty our holding tanks) was the leaky culprit. Mark went to work on repairing the leak but unfortunately the whole cone shaped valve came off! Imagine water rushing in and filling the bilge! Fortunately we had 2 bilge pumps that easily kept up with the inbound deluge. I quickly grabbed all the wooden plugs we had and Mark managed to plug the 2 holes covered by the valve. It took a few more hours to get everything secured and working properly. It was an exciting morning!!!

Our anchor came up before 4pm on Jan. 7th and we made our way (in a nice rain shower – cleaned our decks!) onto the Exuma Sound to make the 84nm overnight journey to Clarence Town. We had great conditions – northwest wind strong enough to move us along at 7+ knots. We were going so fast in the beginning that our eta to Clarence Town was 4 am (way too early because we didn’t want to arrive in the dark). As the night wore on, the wind speed and direction changed and we slowed down. We sailed all the way into the Clarence Town harbour and anchor was down by 8 am.

Looking ahead we are seeing a good crossing window for Turks & Caicos on Jan. 14 – 15. If predictions hold, I’ll celebrate my birthday in T&C!!

Christmas and New Years are over. We had an awesome visit home – stayed with Evelyn until Christmas Day and then moved to Mark’s dad for the rest of our stay. We spent Christmas Day with Evelyn, Liam and Caroline and had a wonderful breakfast. We then went to Mark’s Dad’s (the 5 of us) and had a tourtiere dinner! We had great family visits and many dinners out! It was loads of fun and the time flew by.

Our return to Nassau on Dec. 30 was easy and on time. On Dec. 31 we did some shopping to get ready for our journey south. The winds were predicted to be north/northeast starting Jan. 2 and lasting 3 or 4 days – great conditions for us to move along the Exuma island chain. Mark spent New Year’s Day working on the new pulley system for the engine. He’s been working on this for awhile now – it’s been a difficult job needing special tools. Mark has “fabricobbled” these tools to get the old pulleys off the engine (44 years these parts have been on and they didn’t want to be removed). After all that work removing the old parts and installing the new one, it didn’t work properly. There was a wobble in the pulley system! So the old one went back on! We spent our last happy hour at the dock with some of Carolyn and Nick’s friends. It was a little New Year’s Day afternoon party and it was really nice to meet these people.

We got off the dock at 8:30am Jan. 2 – waved goodbye to Carolyn and Nick and made our way the 44nm to Shroud Cay. It was a beautiful day for a sail – sunny, warm and good wind!! We had all sails up and were cruising along at 7+ knots. There was lots of boat traffic out with us so we had lots to watch!

Things sure have changed in the Exumas. It’s been 8 years since we first cruised in the island chain and the visitors are not the same! During that first season back in 2017, we had many anchorages to ourselves. The anchorages we shared were full of sailboats and a few trawlers. As we approached Shroud Cay, the difference was clear to see – the mega yachts have moved in!! We’re talking boats that range from 30 m to 100m in length. Most are anchored much further away from shore so if you look hard, you can see the sailboats tucked in closer. There were over 10 of these big boats at Shroud Cay with another 5 at the next cay south. Most of the time these boats are not an issue but sometimes they have guests aboard who are not very respectful in an anchorage. They will buzz around on their water toys (seadoos, hoverboards) and set-up tents on the beaches (expecting everyone to stay away from their area!). At night these vessels are lit up like Christmas trees – that’s kind of pretty when it’s seen from a distance. We only spent one night at Shroud so we weren’t bothered by the mega yachts.

On Jan. 3 we had another great sailing day. We moved south to Staniel Cay where we met up with Allyson and Jack on Double Vision. We met Allyson and Jack at the Nassau dock and have kept in touch. We had happy hour onboard their 50ft catamaran and saw one of the best sunsets we’ve seen in awhile. It was fun chatting with them and hearing about their Christmas adventures.

Today (Jan. 4th) we’re heading only 10nm south to Black Point. We’ll do some laundry there and relax a bit. The next day we will move to Lee Stocking Island to tuck in near Norman’s Pond Cay to wait out some west wind.

It’s our last night in the Bahamas before we fly home for Christmas. This week has gone by quickly with a few interesting moments. Our dock neighbours on the 51ft catamaran spent the week going back and forth to the airport – family arriving and departing 4 out of 5 days!! We met their sons and had a nice dinner out with them and Carolyn and Nick. They left this morning, heading for Georgetown.

The big event of the week was the arrival of a 50ft Jeanneau sailboat. The solo sailor aboard this boat is a 79 year old German man, named Michael, who sailed up from Puerto Rico. The big scary part of his story happened as he was heading into the Staniel Cay area of the Exumas. As he was coming in through a cut near Bitter Guana Cay a rogue wave hit him from the stern. The cockpit filled with water and the wave took out his dodger. Worse still he lost his sail drive (basically it’s his propeller shaft and propeller). He managed to limp into an anchorage using only his jib because his main sail had been damaged earlier in his trip north. He also lost his phone in all the turbulence!!

It took a bit of time and effort but Michael managed to get hold of a towing company. His boat was towed from Black Point to our dock overnight!! He arrived here around 9am Dec. 20 and after we had his boat secured along side our boat, he was able to relax. Now the job is to get his boat into a shipyard to be repaired. One good thing happened this morning. Michael was looking at his generator and found his phone! It didn’t end up in the water and it still works!!

We’ll have one more happy hour tonight with Carolyn, Nick and Michael. It will be a small gathering but that’s a nice way to end our week. In the morning we’ll head to the airport for 1pm and be back in Toronto by 7:30pm.

Next post will probably be in 2025!! Merry Christmas and happy New Year!!

We’ve been on the dock now for a week and it’s been super rainy. We’ve only had one day where it didn’t rain (Dec. 17th) during the day so I was lucky that I picked that day to do laundry. There’s only a solar dryer here – lots of clothes lines!! The days are pretty low key as we open and close our hatches and cockpit many times with the intermittent rain. Jobs are progressing but few are completed yet. The new cockpit compartment is probably one day away from being done. The pulley job on the main engine is proving to be more difficult than Mark had anticipated. Lots of parts not wanting to come off and others needing special tools Mark doesn’t have! Fun stuff.

One job that has been completed is the installation of 2 little 12volt fans in our cabin. With all this rain, the aft cabin has been quite warm at night. Mark mounted and wired the fans back at Reynolds and now he has added speed control switches for each one. It was a mostly comfortable job, reclining on our bed!! It took a bit longer than expected (a typical boat job) but last night we used a little fans! And it was marvellous!!

The two French Canadian couples left on Monday – heading further south to the Exumas. We’ve now moved onto the dock so no more climbing over the big power boat. Not going to miss that!! It’s nice being on the dock. We will stay here now until we leave sometime in early January.

Our 5 pm happy hours are continuing each night and we’ve had a chance to meet everyone who is staying here right now. (There’s only one other occupied boat here at the moment). Allison and Jack are on a 51ft catamaran and their 2 sons have joined them in the past 2 days. We’re heading out for dinner tonight with them and Carolyn and Nick (our hosts) to celebrate Allison’s birthday. Should be fun.

Our jump down to New Providence was quite good considering the wind and wave conditions. We left Bond Cay on Dec. 11 around 8:30am and we expected our trip to take about 7 hours. Leaving Bond’s south inlet was a bit tricky because we were heading to low tide. It’s a bit skinny (shallow) through that passage and we did move some sand at one point! Once out in the deeper, wider inlet, the waves were piling up and we had a bouncy ride until we got into deeper water. We had a lovely day – bright sun and very warm. Although the wind was on our nose (it was a motor trip), it decreased in strength over the day which helped the waves lay down a bit so our motion was smoother.

Our original plan was to anchor for the night and head into the dock on Thursday morning. It turned out that we made good time crossing south so we went straight to the dock on Wednesday at around 3pm. It was very calm by the time we entered the channel to our dock space and Mark had no trouble pulling along side our power boat rafting buddy. Right now there are 6 boats here, rafted up in twos. There are 2 French Canadians sailboats in front of us and one of the couple from those boats helped tie us up to the power boat. The 2 French sailboats will be leaving soon – they’re just waiting for the strong winds to die down a bit. Once they leave, we will be moving to dock wall. The owners of the power boat are gone right now and when they return on Dec. 25, they will be leaving soon we can’t still be rafted to them.

So we have 10 days on the dock before we leave! What will we do with all that time?? You guessed it – boat jobs 😁. We started yesterday (Dec. 12) with a job that I didn’t even know was on the list. It’s a fun, smaller job that (for a change) has easy access and good light!! We’re adding a new compartment in the cockpit. The original wind, speed and depth instruments were housed right beside our main companionway. The access to the back of the instruments (to turn them on) is a small compartment that is near the galley area. These 3 instruments no longer function so we decided to remove them, cut a hole and put a nice new hatch to cover the space – instant waterproof compartment with access from the cockpit and inside the boat!! Very cool! We’re going to add a 12volt usb power supply so we can charge the inreach, our communication headsets and our wifi box. We’ll also be able to store small items in there! The job is going well but will require a few more days until it’s complete.

Other jobs on the list include installing the air conditioning units and the new pulley system for the main engine. If it stops raining (we’ve got a rainy week coming up), the rest of the teak can have semco applied and we can start working on the non-skip paint for the deck. We’ll see if the weather cooperates for us!

One of the nice things about this lovely dock space is that it’s at the home of a British couple who have lived in the Bahamas over 50 years. They are super gracious hosts and always have a happy hour each night at 5pm. We’ve had 2 happy hours and have now met everyone who is currently here on their boats. It’s a very fun hour or so where we share stories and experiences and just relax. It’s a nice way to end our day!

We left Great Harbour on a calm Friday (Dec. 6) morning and motored the 35 nm to Bond Cay. As I said in my previous post, we’ve spent some time here at Bond over the years so we’re quite familiar with this area. This time around we decided to get as close as possible to shore so we’re nicely tucked in at the south end of the cay.

It looks like we’ll be here for a few days due to the wind direction. We also don’t want to get down to Nassau too soon (a week or so before our flight is enough time on the dock). While we’re anchored at Bond, we decided to get some jobs done and the # 1 job was to get our new water maker running! When we bought the boat it came with an installed water maker. We used it for our first few seasons down here but when our generator died after our Covid hiatus, we got rid of that old water maker. It wasn’t working very well and needed the generator to operate. Lots of boats down here have a Rainman portable water maker and we’ve heard great reviews about these systems. It is easy to buy water in the Bahamas but now that we’re heading further south, it was time to invest in a new system. We went with a Rainman but got the “naked” version, which means it’s not portable.

The first part of the installation I’ve already talked about because it was done at Reynolds. This part of the installation required some ingenuity. Mark had to make some brackets and supports for all the levers and gauges that needed to be mounted with the compressor unit. Mark gathered all the necessary supplies, including our portable generator and we loaded it all into the dinghy so Mark could do the metal cutting and grinding on shore instead of on the boat. It took him a few hours but all the newly created brackets and supports worked perfectly. By 4 pm this afternoon (Dec. 8), we were making fresh water for the first time – very exciting!! It’s a bit noisy but the fact that we can make about 35 gallons of water in an hour is worth the noise!

So tomorrow Dec. 9th will bring another day anchored here at Bond. We have a few more jobs to pick away at. I started applying the semco to our exterior teak today so I’ll continue with that job. Mark will spend a bit of time working on the wiring to our wind instrument – it quit today so that needs a bit of attention. We’re watching the wind very closely because we’ve got a northern system moving in on Thursday that won’t subside until the beginning of next week. If possible we’d like to scoot down to Nassau this Thursday, just as the strong winds are starting. Time will tell!!

It’s been a lovely couple of days anchored here at Great Harbour Cay. The wind has been strong from the north but we’ve been nicely protected in our anchorage. The biggest challenge for us is to get into the island mindset – slow down!!

On Tuesday the wind was down enough for us to head over to the beach on Cistern Cay. This was a 2 part adventure. Firstly we wanted to get off the boat and walk around a bit and secondly, Mark had a job to do (of course). The hoses to the toilet in the forward head needed some attention. Salt water and urine combine in the hoses to create calcium chloride deposits which constrict the flow of water. Every couple of years, Mark takes the hoses off and beats them up a bit to loosen the stuff. It’s a messy job but at least it’s only needed every couple of years. Our beach destination was perfect for this job and for a little walk – little being the key word. It was a small beach.

With cleaner hoses, we left the beach and did a dinghy tour around the area. First we stopped at the plane wreck which was hard to miss as it was sticking out of the water. The plane, a DC 3, was apparently a drug running plane that crashed years ago. That’s the story anyhow. It was interesting because it was very visible. We next went around to the west side of Cistern Cay and saw a few boats anchored there. It was a bit bouncy so not sure why those 2 boats chose to stay in that anchorage. Our last stop was the blue hole. A blue hole is a very deep spot amongst shallow water. This one is well over 100 ft deep and it is surrounded by water that’s about 3 ft or less at low tide.

Today, Dec. 4th, we decided to go into town. The settlement on Great Harbour Cay is called Bullocks Harbour. It’s a laid back town (like most of the Bahamas) and we were able to walk all around with little traffic. The plan was to get a good walk in and also check on the supply boat. The boat usually comes in on Wednesdays and Fridays but it hadn’t arrived yet today. We walked to the grocery store and were told that the boat didn’t come today because of the weather but should be here tomorrow. Okay – we were planning to leave tomorrow but instead we’ll stay and hopefully get some fresh produce on Thursday.

After our visit to town we decided to dinghy over to the marina which is just south of the town. We tied up there and went for a really good walk all the way out to the airport. It’s a small airport but does have an international arrivals side so there are flights from the USA. We were looking at the runway when Mark commented that they must be expecting a plane (there were a few waiting cars and people around). Mark had barely finished saying those words when a little plane landed just behind us! He was right!!

Tomorrow we’ll head back to the grocery store if the supply boat shows up. On Friday we’ll be heading south to Bond Cay. We spent a bit of time at Bond Cay last season waiting to cross to Nassau for our February flight home for Evelyn’s defence. Our goal for this stay at Bond Cay is to get our water maker up and running!!

Our jump down to Great Harbour Cay was exactly what we expected!! We had strong northeast wind that pushed us along at speeds ranging from low 6 knots up the low 8 knots. It was a gray, cloudy day but the rain held off which was nice. We left Ginn Sur Mer around 6:30 Saturday (Nov. 30) morning and arrived at our anchorage in the dark at 7 pm. We’ve anchored here before in the dark so it was easy to drop the hook into a good sandy spot.

The first day of December was a very rainy one here. Great way to clean off our salty deck from the sail down. We had decided the night before that we were going to do absolutely nothing on Dec. 1. We have been going hard without a true day long break since we left Canada on Oct. 27!! And we’ve travelled over 420 nm in 8 days. Some time off was definitely needed!! We started our day with a super slow breakfast. Mark made himself some French toast and topped it with some whipped cream! We drank our coffee and relaxed with our devices.

The extend of my activities for the day was to do some dishes, clean up the cockpit from our travels and lastly I decorated the inside of the boat for Christmas! Mark ran the Honda generator which we greatly needed after a long sailing day that had no sun and not enough wind to keep up with our energy expenditure. It sure felt good to not travel somewhere and to not do boat jobs.

Our anchorage is fairly large but well protected from the northeasterly wind we’re getting for the next few days. There are 2 other boats with us – one large power boat from Canada and one other sailboat. It’s very quiet here and with the rain yesterday and the strong winds today, we haven’t seen anyone moving around. Hopefully Tuesday will be a better weather day and we will be able to explore the area.