Arrive: Norman’s Cay 11:00
Arrive: Staniel Cay anchorage 4:15
Distance: 49 nm
As we traveled, we heard
a vessel calling Exuma Park on the VHF radio although she pronounced it
Ward-er’-ick Wells and Eczema Park.
Below are some of the views we saw as we arrived at Norman's Cay ...
The marina is now in operation and we saw several very large boats docked there.
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| Entrance to marina at Norman's Cay |
As we approached the area, Clark pointed out the plane wreck
that we dove on in 2016. I shuddered at the memory. It turned out to be one of
the scariest experiences of my life. No matter how hard I struggled to stay
away, the strong current pulled me toward that dangerous, hunk of rusty metal
with sharp points everywhere.
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| currently small portion of wrecked airplane above surface |
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| 2016 up-close image |
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| some folks checking out the wreck |
We saw the island we loved in 2016 apparently ravaged by hurricanes in the interim. We remembered a lone palm tree with the park bench under it, the remains of the island now contain neither adornment.
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| 2016 image |
As we looked around the area, we could find no well-protected space to drop an anchor to hide from upcoming winds. With time to spare today, we decided to continue on to the next stop on our itinerary – Staniel Cay.
Today must have been “big boat” day. As we approached Staniel Cay, we had the pleasure of
seeing several mega-yachts owned by very wealthy people.
In the distance we could see a boat identified as "Seven Seas". This 5-tier boat (like the ones shown below) is owned by Steven Spielberg. (No picture)
We saw "Nita K", shown below, towing a chain of vessels including two jet skis.
The vessel below, named "SKAT", is designed to look like a military vessel, and it does! It is 236' long and 30' beam (wide) and requires 13' of water as its draft. As we approached this vessel, the captain called Clark and asked that he (Clark) adjust his course as we were, according to him, pushing him into shallow water although there was already .2 to .3 nm between us with more room between us than the with the big boys in the C&D canal. We adjusted by 10 degrees to give him more room. We're thinking there may have been an important person on board that required this much space for security reasons.
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| M/V SKAT |
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| "Infinity" mega yacht |
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| Infinity's helicopter onboard |
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| "Vibrant Curiosity" |
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| "Vibrant Curiosity" |
Comparing this trip to the one in 2016, we have seen many more big boats and more boats in general than we saw back then.
In 2016 we visited Staniel Cay and stopped to see the “swimming pigs”. I had no desire to experience that again. As we passed by the swimming pigs area, we could see a large number of boats anchored there.
We also passed by Thunderball Cave where, in 2016, we dove underwater into the cave with a lion fish guarding the entrance. Such memories! Pictures from our time at Staniel Cay from 2016 can be seen here.
We took some pictures of the Staniel Cay area as we searched for a place to drop anchor.
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| The blue area on land says "Welcome to Staniel Cay" |
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| Plane coming into the airport here |
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| Sunset at Staniel Cay |
10 March 2024
Multiple times today, I asked myself, “Are we having fun
yet?”
Even though the alarm did not go off today for the Chris
Parker report, I was awake and stumbled out of bed to get sunrise pictures.
Afterwards, I climbed back into bed where we hung out just relaxing to start
the day.
Suddenly Clark shot out of bed and ran for the helm as the
anchor alarm sounded. He came back running to tell me the boat was moving and
it was not supposed to be. Don’t I just love fire drills that aren’t drills. We
both had to throw on appropriate attire for running around outside the boat. I
told myself it could be worse. It could have gone off in the middle of the
night.
Clark decided that instead of resetting the anchor, we
should find a different anchorage. He found a spot in another anchorage.
Unfortunately, it offered less protection from wind and waves.
We moved from Thunderball cove to an anchorage to the west of the Southwest of Thunderball Cave. Our path is shown on the chart below via the yellow line that weaves through the picture.
From where we dropped anchor this time, we could see the boat
“Dreamer” owned by Scott whom was our boat neighbor at Marlin Bay. Clark spoke
to him and learned he was there picking up his guests.
Since by now it was 10:00 and neither of us had eaten a
single bite of food, I decided to cook us an omelet for breakfast. When I went
to light the propane stove, nothing happened. Not a single burner would make a
spark to light a burner. Had I not been so hungry, I would have thought to use
a lighter to start the flames.
Instead, I yelled for Clark to come fix the problem. I
reminded Clark that last time we had this problem, it was a dead battery for
the igniter. He pulled out the existing battery, and instead of replacing it
like I would have done, he pulled out his contact cleaner and meter to clean it
up and put it back.
Even when reinserted, only one burner would light. When I
said this to Clark, he pulled out the old battery and put in a new one. Finally
I had all three burners working.
We had planned to take a trip into town to have a look
around since we did not do that in 2016. However, Clark realized that since
today was a Sunday, stores may be closed. He tried to call the one he wanted to
visit and got no answer, so that put an end to that plan for the day.
Instead, he fixed a problem with the inverter settings. The power sharing was set for a 50 amp breaker but the inverter has only a 30 amp breaker. Whenever the inverter is doing a heavy charge using up to 25 amps of power and I need to use the microwave, it trips a
breaker. With power sharing set to 30 amps, the charger should back off to keep the total under 30 amps. Clark knew the cause of the problem and had a workaround, but since he
had the time, he decided to adjust the power sharing settings.
While he did that, I dusted and vacuumed the boat.
Later, late afternoon, I was entertaining myself with a
jigsaw puzzle app, and Clark came running telling me the boat was wandering
into shallow water because of a current shift. There are strong currents between Thunderball cave and the two adjacent little islands. See pictures above and below. Twice in one day – an anchor emergency! I thought we could
just shorten the anchor line to pull us into deeper water. Clark decided we had
to move.
We wandered around the anchorage from place to place. Unfortunately, others had the same issue, and multiple boats were repositioning at the same time because with wind against current, no boat was swinging in the same direction as the others. The current coming between the islands was pushing the boats away from the source of the current between the islands.
In addition to that chaos, we would have to allow the full swing room for every boat. Normally boats all point in similar directions. The boat pattern
today was entirely random. We could not figure out a swing radius for our boat
to know if we would collide with other boats in the anchorage on the next tide or wind change.
After two sail boats proceeded to drop their anchors right were we were planning to drop, we decided to look for another anchorage spot. We went back
to the anchorage we had this morning but
left again without even attempting to drop the anchor.
At one point I thought we might have to leave and head to
Blackpoint to find a place to drop anchor. Given the time change, we had an
extra hour of daylight to play with if we had to go to that extreme to find a
place for the night.
Finally we found a well-protected spot in a more remote
anchorage. It will be a longer dinghy ride to town but we have a lot less wave
action here than we had before we moved the second time today.
On the bright side … we have less rocking, searching for a new spot for 90 minutes brought our batteries up to full charge, and we weren’t repositioning in the middle of the night.
Here are some pictures of the new anchorage.
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