We can’t believe it has only been three weeks since our last post as so much has transpired and we’re excited to share! We sailed north through a few more anchorages in the Exuma chain of the Bahamas. All gorgeous scenery and crazy shallow waters, aka “skinny water” to mariners. Then we left the Exumas and sailed to New Providence, the home of Nassau and the famous Paradise Island Resort. We skipped both as there is no good anchorage around there and the marinas are quite expensive. Will do that another time. Instead, we anchored on the very west end of the island which had just enough protection from the strong southeast wind that kicked up. There was quite a brushfire on the far side of the island while we were there but fortunately the wind took the smoke just north of us.
The next morning, we planned to cross over to Andros Island and stop at a little harbor on the northeast corner. Doing so would have given us a whole day of daylight to cross the Bahama bank, a vast area of shallow water that, in places, is covered with bommies (coral heads) just dying to rip your keel off. As newbies to the bank, we wanted the best visibility we could get but also knew people cross in the dark all the time, sticking to the few charted channels. As we hauled the anchor, two lovely twin masted boats left ahead of us and I yelled to one skipper, “where are you headed” and he replied – Bimini. Just like that, Bimini was now our next destination. I chatted with the two skippers on the radio who said they were experienced on the bank and it was no problem at all. So we followed them to Bimini. The sailing was great for many hours with our Code O up. As night fell, we put that away and settled in for a few hours, we thought, of motor sailing into a bit of head wind. Ha! The wind built to the uncomfortable stage and slowed us down a lot. By the time we rounded the top of Bimini we were into a very strong south wind and desperately wanted to anchor for a couple hours of sleep. So, in the pitch black of 4 a.m., using radar and charts, I crept to within about 50′ of shore in a slightly protected spot and Tess went forward to drop the hook. Except that nothing happened! The windlass was dead. OMG! She reattached the safety line and, given the sea state, there was no choice but to either stand off and get beat up by the huge waves or idle-speed into it and at least get to the south end where the entrance to the only harbor exists. Even if I hadn’t been exhausted, the movement of the boat precluded any attempt to figure out the windlass problem.
So we motored VERY slowly into the teeth of it, taking lots of water over the bow, timing it perfectly to arrive at the entrance at first light. Of course, right then a large tug that had been anchored all night, suddenly chose to cross over toward Florida literally 100′ across our bow. No warning, apparently oblivious to us. It was then we got to evaluate the channel entrance. OMG again! I’ve never seen such a dangerous entrance. It has you cover about a half mile straight along the beach with many rocks (a once upon a time breakwater?) on the other side. I’m talking, 50′ from dry land in a channel perhaps 8′ wide. Ridiculous but we seriously needed rest. So, we did it. No problems but genuinely scary. About one hour after us, we watched a similar sized Beneteau get stuck in the sand right at the turn into the harbor. It rocked around horribly, getting turned sideways to the wind and waves and the crew raised their main sail so that they would tilt over far enough to break the keel free of the sandbar they had found. It took about 5 minutes but they managed to get off and into the safety of the harbor. We later spoke to them and they said they had no damage other than losing all the bottom paint on the lower 18″ of their keel bulb and rudder. Very lucky folks!
So, we thought we were good having made it into the harbor. We had planned to go to the anchorage at the far end but as it was very shallow in the whole place we instead tried to raise the Bimini Big Game Club as they had a large dock with many empty slips. No answer so we just went to tie up on the end. With a three knot outgoing tide and 18 knots of wind opposing, we found ourselves entirely unable to cover the last 20′ to the pilings! The bow was repeatedly pushed off despite our best efforts. So we tried going the other direction. A dockhand finally showed up and said to try the side, 90 degrees to wind and current. Success but shallow. Oh, and those pilings! No flat sides here for fenders to hold you off. Just telephone poles so we had to quickly jury rig our fenders to hang sideways and hopefully get the boat secure enough they won’t fall out of place.
After all that excitement, we decide to stay up and sightsee. Ok, turns out there’s not much to see or do in Bimini. It appears to be a sportfisherman’s hub with a few bars. As a friend later summed it up, “It’s a **ithole!” Perhaps not that bad but the only reason it still exists is because it is the closest place in the Bahamas to Florida and you can check in there. As with us, it provides a safety stop, barely, to wait out weather before crossing the infamous Gulf Stream. So, a couple days in Bimini to rest, recover and figure out that a fuse had blown on the windlass. Oh, and it wouldn’t be an adventure without a trip to a medical clinic. Turns out Tess was battling a small bout of shingles. It was too late to start any anti-viral medications (which they didn’t have anyway).
As the weather was good we headed out for home in the US of A. The Gulf Stream is the single biggest contributor to weather in the Atlantic Ocean. It moves across the top of Cuba then north up the coast of North America before turning to Scandinavia. It brings so much heat with it that Norway is habitable despite being the same latitude as Greenland, which is mostly solid ice. It flows between 3 and 6 knots, averaging 60 miles wide and you never enter it if the wind opposes current as the seas can quickly build up to monstrous heights. But none of that for us. We saw a max current of 3.5 knots which is great for shortening your trip. We arrived “home” in Boca Raton, Florida, where we spent a couple days on the hook in Lake Boca Raton. Quite the culture shock. Coming from the Bahamas, particularly Bimini, to floating among wall to wall homes costing several tens of millions was very cool. We had access to a real grocery store with more options than we could ever remember. And everything was so clean! And well maintained! American’s are so incredibly blessed to live here. All those idiots bitching all the time just need to spend some time in another country.
From there we motored about 25 miles up the ICW (IntraCoastal Waterway) to West Palm Beach. This stretch of the ICW has 13 bridges, all of which had to open for us. It’s pretty cool to call the bridge operator on the radio and have him stop all those filthy rich folks, in cars that might cost more than our boat, so we can pass through! Much of the ICW has fixed bridges at 65′ so we can’t use most of it. Large sections of the ICW were built early in WWII to protect coastal shipping from German submarines. In total, it runs 3000 miles from Massachusetts to Texas. A great deal of it follows natural watercourses around barrier islands with many canals dug to connect them. It is supposed to be dredged to 12′ but Congress has failed to allocate adequate funding in recent years so there are a lot of too shallow areas on America’s most congested waterway. In West Palm Beach we caught up with friends we’d met originally in Mexico, again in Panama and now here. Did laundry and various chores and just enjoyed civilization in the land of the free.
Next stop was Ft Pierce. We initially anchored out and enjoyed Memorial Day weekend at the sand bar with a few thousand local friends but ultimately decided that the Shearwater boat yard was just the place to address our list of lingering boat jobs. In a nut shell, we replaced our plumbing between the through-hull and the water maker/air conditioning units. This eliminated about 15 connections (failure points) and properly sized hoses and sea strainer greatly increased the flow of water. We also fixed the windlass, installed a proper hatch on that temporary fix inside the transom garage (see last post), replaced our non-working red/green navigation lights, repaired a leaky paddle board, sent our bikes off for factory service and tuneups, fixed a wiring problem at the alternator, replaced the AC vent hose with proper insulated stuff and installed fans to keep the inverter cool. And AMAZON! Woohoo, the exact item you need just shows up a day or two later? That’s crazy!
Much of that work was simply fixing or replacing work done in Central America. Though we found many skilled folks there, they just don’t have access to the right parts and always have to just make do. A great relief to have these projects done correctly with the right parts.
Being just south of Cape Canaveral, we sat on the deck three times and watched SpaceX launch rockets into the night sky. Very cool! Even better, Boeing was scheduled to launch the first manned Starliner to the Space Station in a few days. So on Saturday (June 1) we drove up to Kennedy Space Station to watch it, only to have it scrubbed at T-3:50 from launch. Toured the KSC (highly recommended) and then returned a few days later (June 5) for the 16th attempt to launch this thing. And it worked! Although we were 7 miles away, the sound was awesome. Did you know that the sound waves are fatal within 300′? I had seen a shuttle go up from Tampa when I was in high school and Tess had seen a shuttle land at Edwards AFB in California once. The Apollo Mission Control exhibit recreates the sounds and sensations of the first lunar launch and it is incredible! Do not miss it. To top it off, we watched the live stream the next day as SpaceX launched the largest rocket man has ever made, from Texas. It was the first one that didn’t blow up along the way and was a total success. Yep, we’ve become space nerds! We will come back someday and watch a launch from the Banana River viewing area. That’s where the tv cameras set up and it requires tickets well in advance.
We also toured the Navy Seal Museum in Ft Pierce. Very well done. And we went to the southernmost (in US) grape growing winery. All sweetish wines but most were very good. We each had a doctor visit as well. Tess had a cortisone injection in her ankle and I had what turned out to be small hook shaped metal shaving that embedded in the side of my foot. It had built up what looked like a big wart around it. That foot statue was on the shelf in the room and couldn’t have been more appropriate. Now we are off to St Augustine which puts us within easy reach of our peak hurricane season home of Charleston, South Carolina.
