Crimson Kathryn and her crew

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve had a very relaxing stay at Great Guana Cay, spending most of our time in the north anchorage at Black Point Settlement. This large anchorage was perfect for the wind direction we’ve had all week but we did do an overnight stay at Little Bay (which is the anchorage on the south side of Black Point).

One of the great aspects of cruising is meeting fellow cruisers. Back when we were at Cambridge Cay, we met 2 couples – one from North Carolina and the other from Ottawa. The couple from North Carolina were on a boat named Moon Pie. The Ottawa folks were on Bagatelle. Both had the same boat – a Beneteau 361. It was fun to chat with these cruisers and we also gave the Bagatelle couple a tour of our boat (they want to upgrade to a larger sailboat with a centre cockpit.)

Another cool thing about sailing in the Bahamas is that it’s easy to see the same boats – over and over again. We moved over to Little Bay on Monday and as we got close to the shore, we see Bagatelle anchored!! It turned out that this sailboat is actually owned by 3 couples so we ended up meeting the second owners. We spent a bit of time with this couple (who are also from Ottawa) on Monday, exploring a bit of coral and then walking to the beach on the ocean side where you can find lots of sea glass. The winds changed overnight and we decided to head back to the north anchorage at Black Point on Tuesday. Bagatelle also made the move back to the north anchorage.

On Wednesday morning we took the dinghy to the beach to do some maintenance and repair on the dinghy outboard. As we were getting ready to head for the beach, I noticed Moon Pie was right beside us!!! So that afternoon we had happy hour on our boat with the couples from Bagatelle and Moon Pie. It was great fun to chat and learn more about everyone!!

Today (Thursday) we sailed back to Big Major! We had a great sail (even if it was short – only 9nm) and got into the anchorage a little after 11am. We’ll be hanging out here until Evelyn and Caroline arrive on Monday!! Very excited for their visit!

We left Big Major on Feb. 15, heading south a grand total of 9nm to Black Point. The wind was blowing from the east / south east – in the 20 knots range. It was great leaving Big Major – we had the jib and mizzen deployed and working well. We were moving along nicely with the wind behind us. When we turned the corner to head south east to Black Point, the wind was more upwind (which we don’t sail well). We had a great sail but not quite in the right direction. We ended up taking our sails down and motoring into the anchorage at Black Point.

Black Point is definitely one of our favourite places in the Exumas. It’s a small settlement that has managed to keep a true Bahamian flavour while providing good facilities for cruisers. They have one of the best laundries in the Bahamas where you can wash your clothes; buy supplies at the little store; have a shower; get your hair cut; have a wonderful Bahamian bbq and if you walk over to Lorraine’s Cafe, you can get a beer!! We spent our day today doing laundry and Mark got a haircut. We also bought the BBQ lunch that we took back to the boat – it was very good!!

The anchorage is quite large and by the end of today, there’s probably 50 boats here. It’s really cool being part of a community of cruisers all anchored in this lovely bay. As night falls, all the masthead lights come on. The harbour is full of lights both on the water and on shore. It’s very hard to explain how peaceful it is to be here with all these boats. We are so fortunate to be here!!

We’ll be hanging around Black Point for another week. Evelyn and Caroline arrive at Staniel Cay on Feb. 27th. We’ll head back up there the end of next week. Until then, we’ll enjoy this wonderful spot!!

I recently read an article that highlighted 50 tourist destinations around the world that are not worth visiting and the Swimming Pigs at Staniel Cay made the list. Many tourist come to Big Major Spot to see pigs – they’re just pigs! As we sit here anchored in the late afternoon, it’s finally quiet – no tour boats or planes (yes float planes bring tourist to swim with pigs – I kid you not!) are visiting the pigs.

We rode out the weekend north blow at Cambridge and that was a great decision. I need to talk about our anchor right now. At the end of last season, we were both unhappy with the performance of the 80lb Manson anchor we bought from a couple at Reynolds. We thought it would be an excellent anchor (it’s huge!!) but instead the anchor was difficult to set and it dragged a few times. We’ve already had chats about replacing this anchor for next season. Well I think the anchor has been listening to us (and Mark has figured out some tricks to make it work well). So far it has been rock solid!! It’s been setting well and holding in strong clocking wind and also in strong current areas where the boat rotates directions with the current. It is definitely redeeming itself. Will it be enough – the jury is still out on that one!!

We decided to leave Cambridge on Monday (Feb. 13) to head to Staniel Cay. We really needed more fresh veggies, milk and bread and Staniel is the closet settlement with little grocery stores. We had a great downwind sail on Monday and made the 12 nm trip in about 1.5 hours. When we arrived at Big Major (this is the closest large anchorage to Staniel Cay) the north wind had created a bouncy, rolling mess!! We decided not to anchor there and instead continued to the east side of Big Major which is called between the Majors. This is a channel that runs between Big Major and Little Major. It was a great decision and we had a fairly calm night.

This morning we made the move over to Big Major. The wind had died down and all was calm! As we came into the anchorage we slowed and started looking for a good spot – keeping an eye out for the crazy tourist speedboats as well as other cruisers coming in. What we weren’t looking for was a float plane that landed about 30 ft off our bow!!!! I can’t even begin to explain how surprised we were – a plane landed in front of us – so now you have to check the sky too!!!!

We did get into town for a few groceries and we took the dinghy out for a spin around the islands here. We’ll only stay tonight – tomorrow we’ll head down to Black Point for awhile!