Bahamas: Chubb Cay Anchorage

Day 265

April 1, 2016

NM Today: 86

NM Total: 4044

Time Traveled Today: 10 hours 49 mins

We said farewell to Bimini at 7:45 this morning and headed on our way to the Berry Islands. Winds caused the waters to churn on the passage out of the marina, but once we rounded the point, we had following seas to move us along without much rocking of the boat. We had a long day ahead of us and the less rocking along the way, the better.

Clear waters and blue sky made travel pleasant. The lack of anything to look at besides clear water and blue sky quickly made the trip rather boring. As components of our navigation equipment we have our new-for-the-loop chart plotter and our old GPS. Clark likes to use both to track where we are, how far we have gone, and how far to the next waypoint. For long trips we find it comforting to see how much progress we have made since the last time we checked the” distance to go” and “time to get there”.

We entered the full route into the new chart plotter before starting on our way. However, for the GPS, we only enter one waypoint at a time so we have the stats on where we are in relation to the next milestone and how long it will take to get there. Clark handed me the chart book and pointed to a waypoint he planned to enter and asked me to read the coordinates out to him when he was ready.

When ready, he turned to me and asked, “79?” “No”, I said, “78.39”. He entered the numbers I gave him for longitude and latitude, but when he told the GPS to “go to waypoint”, the “Bearing to waypoint” did not agree with our course. The GPS showed that we needed to be pointed to 187 degrees whereas our course line to our destination was 110. We checked and double checked the digits multiple times and even rebooted the GPS.

Finally we figured out that we had entered the coordinates in reverse (lat for long and long for lat) I am not sure where we might have been headed. When we figured out what was wrong, Clark of course blamed me for giving him the longitude first instead of the latitude. “Well, if you wanted the latitude, you should have said so instead of saying ‘79?’. Next time ask for the latitude”, I countered, “instead of prompting me for information you don’t want!” With that finally settled, we got the proper “bearing to waypoint” reading and looked at the “time to waypoint”.  I groaned. The time to the next waypoint calculated out as several hours away (like 5), and we had several more waypoints to get to after we reached this one.

We ate breakfast underway. Afterwards Clark gave me the helm and went down below for a pit stop. I could see something off in the distance but I could not figure out what I was looking at. For the life of me it looked like a submarine. I grabbed the binoculars for a better look and then I was convinced I had a submarine (above water of course) in my sights. I excitedly told Clark what I had found and said he needed to take a picture when we got closer.

“Are you sure that’s a submarine and not the North Rock marker?” he asked. How disappointing to discover that my submarine was just a pile of rocks with a marker on top. I told him to take a picture anyway as it would make for an interesting anecdote for my blog.

 

North Rock (Submarine)

When he stood up to take the picture, he gave me the helm and said, “Look for heads!”  Frantic, I exclaimed, “Heads? Huh? What are you talking about? I don’t understand!” I got no answer as he was busy focusing on his picture taking. As I stared out into nothing but blue waves, I wondered what kind of heads might pop up out of the water. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

After he got his picture, I gladly gave him back the helm and asked him what I was supposed to have been looking for. What I got back in response was, “It’s shallow here and the chart indicates rocks in the area.” “So am I supposed to see rocks sticking out of the water”, I asked, “Potentially”, he answered. Great. Immediately I started thinking about us hitting a rock and taking on water and all sorts of equally ugly scenarios. Although I should have one on hand already, I started writing down a list of items to put in a “ditch bag” should it come to that. Thanks Clark for the scare! I definitely needed that at the beginning of a long day boating in the Atlantic Ocean.

Miles from Bimini the water continued to be shallow – as shallow as 12 to 14 feet. I found that to be amazing. The ocean waters near New Jersey are far deeper than that even in Raritan Bay. By the time we reach New York harbor we see numbers over 100 feet deep. Someone told us before we came here, “There’s plenty of water in the Bahamas. It’s just not very deep.” Later in the day, as we approached our final destination, we saw depths of over 1000 feet deep. That more than made up for the deep-end-of-the-pool numbers we had seen earlier in the day.

Yesterday I had the “groggies”. Today I gave in and took a nap. Waves rocked the boat continuously, so I had to come up with a sleeping arrangement that allowed me to sleep without falling off the bench seat. Even though I wanted a nap, I needed to be nearby should Clark want / need something, so going down below was not an option.  I placed one foot on the floor to stop me falling out of bed should it become rough. That worked well. At first I just laid on the bench seat in la-la land but finally I succumbed and was out cold.

Because we left Bimini so early and therefore had breakfast at an early hour, I decided to make lunch just after 11:00. That was fine but by 3:30, after my nap, it seemed like a good idea to find snacks for the two of us. I made my way down below clutching the railings firmly as I went to see what I could find. It is a very good thing that I had such a strong grip on the railings as the stairs had become slippery from sea spray and my foot slipped on the way down. My grip saved me from a potentially bad fall.

I always use bags to carry items up and down the stairs when under way. With my bag stuffed with treats, I made my way back up top to share my bounty with the Captain. We started with cheese and crackers. Later in the afternoon we broke out the raisins for a second snack.

As we traversed deeper waters, Clark noted that the flying fish started appearing again. He had seen them on the trip from Florida to Bimini. I han't been watching at that time and missed them. After he said the fish were flying again today, I stared out into the ater trying to spot one. Clark saw several but every time he said, "There's one!" I could not find it with my eyes until it was too late and it was back in the water. Finally I got to see one and then another.

The flying fish are small and dark in color thus making them hard to spot. Clark said they look like dragon flies to him. With the wing action they more resembled humming birds to me. They truly are flying fish. They come out of the water, probably scared by the boat passing by, and shoot across the water several yards before dropping down into the water once more. As the fly they only hover a short distance above the water. Pretty cool really!

After over ten hours of our rocky-rolly cruise, we could see islands “Cays” on the horizon. Yay! The end of a very long day was literally in sight. The anchorage we had decided on already contained a number of sailboats. We found a spot and dropped anchor for the night at 6:45 – almost 11 hours after we pulled out of Bimini.

Chubb Cay Anchorage, Bahamas

We did not go ashore or get off the boat. This is just an intermediate stop on our way to Nassau. From a distance Chubb Cay looked like a ritzy place as compared to Bimini. The houses here appeared to be of a much nicer quality. As Clark said, though, you don’t really know until you get on the island and actually have a look around.

Since it was already late when we arrived at the anchorage, my first duty was to get dinner on the table. Clark suggested we eat "up top" but I did not have any interest in carting the food up there. I just wanted to eat and be done with it. After dinner and before washing the dishes, we went up top to sit and enjoy the stars, the view of Chubb Cay, and the cool breeze.

At 9:30 I declared that the dishes needed to get done as well as my blog, so I could go to bed before midnight. I barely managed to make that goal.