Depart: Rose Island Beach anchorage near Nassau, Bahamas 10:50
Distance: 34 nm
We had an awful night last night as a squall showing as a red area on the weather radar passed through the area north of us. The winds were from the east, but the waves were coming from the north, which was an unprotected direction, hitting us broadside. The effects of the storm started at 2:30 and stayed with us until 6:30 in the morning. The highest intensity of the storm hit around 3:30.
While Clark seemed able to sleep through the storm, I could
not as I was too worried about the rocking and concerned that the anchor might
give causing us to start drifting. Every
once in a while the boat would pull against the anchor, and we could feel the
boat shudder. Clark said he hoped the line was not catching on the rocks. Of
course that did not help my feelings of insecurity.
As the storm intensified, the boat rocked so hard that things
rattled back and forth with the waves. We both jumped when we heard a large
crash right next to the bed. One of my plastic crates with art supplies in it
fell from the top of the shelving to the floor. Boom! Clark shot out of bed
like lightning to investigate. After that, I could not stand all the worry and
commotion with the lights off. It seemed less disconcerting with the light on.
About 4:00 a.m., when I thought Clark was fast asleep, he
suddenly jumped out of bed and ran for the upper helm. That made my heart race.
After he opened the hatch to the upper helm, I heard an alarm sounding from
there. He had placed our naughty, wolf-crying smoke alarm up there to get it
out of the cabin. Apparently, besides all its other complaints, it did not
appreciate getting damp from the rain!
Just as things started to settle down, my alarm went off. It
was 6:30 and time for Clark to get up and listen to the “Chris Parker” weather
report. I tried to get some more sleep, but it was useless. The sooner we got
out of here, the better.
I worked on the blog in the morning until 10:30. Clark ran the generator to help bring the batteries up in charge.
We had two choices for today, stay here or move on. I told Clark I could not take another day in this hell, so we better get going. I have never been more thankful than I was last night that we suffer no ill effects of seasickness. The only thing worse than what we had last night would be feeling ill on top of it all. Clark says that people aren't as likely to get seasick with their eyes closed.
We left late morning because Clark said the cloud cover should
be less leaving when we did. Our trip today was across open water with about 4
hours of watching the water with an eagle eye looking for rocks at depths to
cause us a concern. Cloud cover inhibits the ability to see ahead to scope out
what is coming up. Determining which dark area may present an issue is much
harder than it sounds as the water is so clear that things under water appear
closer to the surface than they actually are. Clouds darken the water reducing
visibility.
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| Porgee Rocks Navigation Aid marks the start of the paths to the Exumas |
For a portion of the trip across Yellow Bank, we needed to use Visual Piloting
Rules, VPR. The chart showed a dashed line
on the route for the areas where we were on our own to look for rocks! The X's shown on the chart below are known rocks.
I think it very strange as we travel the waters here that I have seen almost no sea life or birds. I look down from the helm, and water and rocks are all I see. We took no pictures until we arrived at our next anchorage area. We see few motor vessels and many, many sailing vessels.
Dinghy Exploration of the Islands of Highbourne Cay
We did have some wave action yesterday evening, and I worried we would have a repeat of last night's rocking, but thankfully that did not happen. It was just some passing boats.
When Clark got up to listen to the "Chris Parker" weather report, I got up an took a sunrise picture.
With a boyish grin, Clark announced this morning that we were going island exploring. We left about 10:30 after Clark had pumped up the batteries with juice from the generator.
First we went to see Allen’s Cay where the iguanas hang out. We have seen plenty of boats while in the Bahamas but not people. We found some today!
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| Allen's Cay |
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| Island formation |
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| People with the iguanas |
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| Iguana on beach at right side of picture |
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| The majority of the boats here look like these. |
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| Not sure of the attraction here - but a whole lot of people exploring the area! |
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| "Sweet Caroline" "Johnny Live's" "favorite song" |
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| Black dot on beach is an Iguana near center of picture |
Expecting to spend a fortune if we ate at the restaurant, we stopped back at the boat to grab lunch before heading out again. After lunch, we headed to the dinghy dock at the Highbourne Cay Marina to have a look around. We stopped to see Allen’s Cay and the iguanas in 2016 when we were here before, but we never ventured into the marina at that time.
Clark said the marina charged $6 per foot. We saw some pretty large boats in there. If we stayed at the marina, we could use bicycles to tour the island; otherwise, the island is private and off limits.
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| Approaching the marina |
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| Fuel dock |
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| We found where the motor vessels hang out! |
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| The dinghy dock |
At $5 a bag, we disposed of a smelly, buggy garbage bag – good riddance to that. We poked our nose into the store at the marina. I was amazed to find that they had whole wheat bread as I was anticipating Wonder Bread or the equivalent. We decided to buy the bread even though there were no prices marked on anything. The one loaf cost us $7.00! Everyone told us to use cash in the Bahamas. The store only took credit cards!
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| Portion of wall in store Map of the islands |
View looking up the hill toward the restaurant.
Since we had seen all that the island had to offer us, we headed back to the boat with our precious bread. Clark showed me a picture of today's touring.
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| Yellow line shows our travels See red triangle on left side as our boat indicator |
After that we hung out on board for the rest of the day. Clark took a dip under the boat to look at the stabilizer fins. The side he wanted to examine, however, was on the shady side so he did not have good visibility. What he could see were two very large fish enjoying the shade of the boat close to where he needed to inspect. Not having any idea what species they were, he decided not to bother the fish and came back onboard.
At sunset we had a beautiful view in the sky and entertainment on the water.
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| Like a motorized skateboard for the water |
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