Not being able to bear the thoughts of a third night out in these unruly seas, especially alone, it occurred to me I might make more of an effort to find the trouble-shooting manual for my Perkins diesel. After tearing every leaf of paper from bookshelves, drawers, cupboards and cubbies, I finally found the book. It was only a matter of bleeding 2 valves I had missed on my fuel pump, and within an hour, the engine was running like a champ. I somehow managed to haul up the 2 anchors simultaneously while the engine was in slow ahead, and I called Road to the Isles to say I was on my way. Three hours later I dropped my anchor
I’m still not sure why exactly Annie began to take on so much water during those few days. As is typical of boats, the actual source of the leak is in a space that is too small to crawl to, so while I could see the water pouring down the inside of the hull, the precise origin of the leak remains a mystery.
With more strong southerly winds in the forecast, most boats within a 20 mile radius moved to one of the few protected anchorages in the area from southerly winds, Royal Island. There, I spent some time in the water
Over the next day or two, I thought long and hard about packing it in. It wasn’t just the leak… there were a multitude of troubles that been systematically arising, all see
After much pep-talking to myself, I decided I would soldier on. The bilge-pump was maintaining the leak, the stove wasn’t completely useless just yet, and I had no one to blame but myself on the maintenance issue. All of it still needs to be tackled, no matter where
I headed down to Current Cut for a couple of days, where I saw again what a small ocean it can be. On my second evening there, a large turquoise schooner anchored beside me, with my friend Jay from Key West aboard. We had shared an evening of music (his fiddle, my smallpipes) at a campfire gathering of sailors on the deserted Christmas Tree Island just off the shores of Key West. It was good to be reminded of some of the fonder memories I have of my months in Key West last year.
Next stop was Hatchett Bay, which eventually became known to us as Hotel Hatchett Bay (you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!). The relentless high winds kept us in lock-down in this small anchorage for a couple of weeks. It used to be a salt-water pond, being fed by blue holes (underwater caves) that lead out to the Atlantic ocean. A few sticks of dynamite later, the pond became a bay, accessible by a new opening on its western side. The holding (ability of an anchor to grab the bottom) is poor throughout the bay, so the local government, in an attempt to attract more boaters, had placed an array of free moorings to make things easier. With another front forecast, and trusting that the moorings we were tied to were strong, we decided to abandon the discomfort of small boats in storms, and to do some exploring ashore.
I had read about the Hatchett Bay Caves in an old Lonely Planet guide that had come with a bundle of charts and guidebooks in a trade for my Cuba charts and guides while I was in Mexico. The directions in the guide were vague, and as we asked around town, the first few locals had no idea what we were talking about. Even if they had never visited the site, you’d expect that they would have at least heard of its existence. It runs half a mile underground, inhabited by a flock (?) of leaf-nosed bats, and displays charcoal signatures from as far back as the early 1800’s. The earliest date I saw was 1832, and to put that in my own personal context, those names were scrawled the same year my ancestors set out from Greenock, Scotland, on a ship bound for Nova Scotia.
There was little more than an old weathered sign propped up
We all stayed in Hatchett Bay for another week or so. The small opening to escape the bay looked neither inviting nor hospitable with constant breaking waves converging and compressing into a space no more than 50 feet across.
Tom, Beth, and I took an afternoon and hitched a ride to a saltwater pond where Beth had seen rock
Once liberated from Hotel Hatchett Bay, we all sailed 20 miles south to Governors Harbor. It seemed to be geared more towards tourists than our other stops in Eleuthera. The town was tiny and attractive, well kept and well provisioned (four liquor stores). I hit up the local bakery for some specialty coconut and cinnamon bread, and the grocery store had the sweetest tomatoes I’ve had since the ones from the vine of mom’s tomato plant at the cottage. The town had decent water from many available taps along the road, which was a rarity in Eleuthera. Most available water is salty well-water, and though many locals are brought up on it, I could not stomach it. It was well worth hanging around Governors Harbor a few extra hours to ferry jugs back and forth to top up my tanks while the opportunity was there (Tom helped with his motor-dingy and
Fast-forward another couple of weeks, and My Life, Fabled Past, and Annie Laurie are now in Rock Sound, near the southern end of Eleuthera. The liquor store was perfectly placed for grabbing a beer on your way to the grocery store, which they gladly opened for you at the counter, and placed it in a small brown paper bag. Anywhere else, we may have looked like alcoholics, but not in the Bahamas. In Rock Sound, we would have felt conspicuous walking around with our hands empty.
One of Rock Sound’s attractions is Ocean Hole Park, a landlocked blue hole. It’s a big round crater with some shear cliffs for diving, with a depth that rises and falls with the tide. Fish flipped and snapped at bread crumbs we tossed on the surface, as Bahamian laughing-gulls tried their best to intercept the tosses.
As you’ve surly heard me say before though, the best parts of this journey is never the guidebook attractions. Tom and Beth made us feel right at home in their company. They were fairly well-equipped cruisers compared to myself (and even moreso when compared to My Life), and we had great times aboard Fabled Past. Pizza night, burger and chips night, movies and frozen blended drinks. I didn’t want it to end, but with an upcomin
Somewhere around the beginning of May, we departed Eleuthera and by sunset were anchored north of Highbourne Cay in the Exumas. En route, My Life caught a huge dolphin, which they repeatedly broadcast their excitement over on the VHF. They didn’t have a boathook to get the approximately 35-lb fish aboard, so I offered to do a quick sail-by and pass them my hook. Bad idea in 3 to 4 foot seas, and a minor collision resulted, but they got the fish aboard (turns out without the help of my hook) and it was the sushi I have long been waiting for.
The Exumas are all they’re cracked up t
Highbourne Cay caters primarily to yachts and sportsfishing boats (read people with money) so anything of interest to us was really below the surface. We found an excellent shallow reef (a couple of feet at low tide) for snorkeling. On some charts, it was known as the Octopus’ Garden. On other charts, it didn’t exist; the same ar
I had heard much of the lore of Normans Cay, where the drug lord Carlos Lehder ran his operation and subsequently earned a life sentence without parol plus 132 years in a U.S. prison. Stories abound of cruising sailboats during the 70’s and 80’s being chased by machinegun-wielding guards when they ventured too close to the island. I went ashore to find villas pocked with bullet holes (like my guidebook recommended) and went for what would become an epic row around the south of the island (it didn’t seem so far when I glanced at the chart) to find the airplane destined to pick up a load of cocaine from Lehder that missed the runwa
I met a wonderful couple and their young son aboard a catamaran while anchored at Normans Cay. Along with great conversation and much-needed stimulation for some positive introspection on where it is this journey is taking me, Hyde offered his expertise with any problems I had aboard. I mentioned my autopilot, and how my friend Banff had determined the motor was the weak link. Hyde spent the better part of the following day disassembling the motor, soldering broken connections, calibrating the compass, and going for test runs. By the end of the day, Annie Laurie had an autopilot! Three years and thousands of miles, and always a hand at the helm. I’m looking for
The next couple of weeks were memorable for me, as I spent much time in the Exumas Land and Sea Park. It’s a relatively small area (about 180 square miles) where all fishing is prohibited. Wardwick Wells is home of the park headquarters. Moorings were available in various locations around the cay, either for a nightly fee, or in exchange for a few hours of volunteer work. I’m not sure why, but Brendon from My Life seemed to jump at the chance to mix (by hand and shovel) and pour concrete, which the three of us did on our first day, creating another slab of the cellar floor of the headquarters. My back has been in such pain ever since, I couldn’t have done the same work the next day had I wanted to. I believe Brendon and Trevor spent the next 2 days on the same chore. I can’t say I envied them.
The highlight of my stay in the park though was meeting Phil and Zach who run a small and beautiful steel cargo boat called the Retriever between Miami and the Exumas. For two days, Effie and I joined them as we traveled around offloading cargo to various private cays in the park. We delivered eve
When the time came to leave the Park, I set my destination to Staniel Cay, home of the Thunderball grotto (where part of the James Bond movie was filmed), which I was told was not to be missed. After close to 6 hours of motorsailing, the wind increased to 25kts from directly ahead. I gave up when I realized I was making less than one mile an hour towards my destination. I turned off the engine, swung the boat around and sheeted out the main. I headed for a nearby anchorage I had spotted when trave
Laurel has been coming to the Bahamas for years, and had taken on Mike as crew. Mike was much younger and very eager to check out all the snorkeling sites, whereas Laurel seemed to posses the ‘been there, done that’ attitude. So with Laurel’s fast dingy, Mike and I were able to check out some cool spots over a 2 mile radius of the anchorage. Rocky Dundas was our first stop; a small cave, which at low tide you can swim into, but at high tide, you would have to dive under the wall to come up into the round cave with 2 storey walls and a hole in the top, where beams of sunshine descend to illuminate the stalactite and stalagmite formations. It was rough that day, a strong surge trying to take our feet out from beneath us as we struggled to stand on the shallow rocks with our flippe
I awoke early and got underway at 0700 on the day of my departure from Wardwick Wells, with an absence of farewells. Once I decide it’s time to go, there’s no waiting for anyone. I sailed for Highbourne Cay once again, through hours of thunder and lightning storms. It seemed to be just one storm, settling over the boat early in the day and relentlessly following me all the way to my next anchorage. I couldn’t have been less concerned about the lightning strikes, even as one bolt struck the water less than half a mile off my stern. It seemed like childs play after sailing the coastal waters of Florida last July.
I stopped at Highbourne Cay again, hoping to get to the store before it closed for the afternoon. It was a long row from the anchorage, against a strong incoming tide, and I began to doubt I was going to make it. A couple from a boat called Independence were taking their dog Blue ashore, and offered me a tow. I gladly accepted. In the course of conversation, they asked where I was headed, and I said the Abacos, though I was recently considering Miami, but I didn’t have good charts between the Exumas and southern Florida. They said it just so happened they had an extra set of Explorer Charts for the area, including Nassau, Andros, and Bimini, and I was welcome to have them. I made my final decision at that very moment, I was going to Miami.
I made the executive decision to change my fuel filter before it got too clogged up (I usually just wait until it’s so clogged that it shuts the engine down, but I was trying to be proactive this time). I didn’t want to face changing the filter while alone in a rolling sea. I was so sure I had it figured out this time… ‘don’t forget the 2 valves on the fuel pump, and everything will be just fine!’. I was thinking too far ahead. I forgot to fill the new filter with fuel before putting it on, and I subsequently ended up with so much air in the fuel lines, it was next to impossible to bleed all the air out. I was frustrated to tears, literally. I started thinking that the ruins on the adjacent island would make a nice little fixer-upper, and I tried to convince myself Allans Cay would be an alright place to live out the rest of my days.
To bleed the air, it really is a 2 person job to begin with, as the manually lever to pump the fuel is on one side, and the valves are on the other. I tried reaching over the top, w
So as could be expected, I eventually killed my batteries trying to start the engine. Friends from a trawler in the anchorage did their best to help, but once the batteries were dead, there was little more they could do. That’s when fellow Canadians Wanda and Corstiaan came on the scene, saying they had a little portable generator, and not to worry, they would be over in the morning and we would get my engine going.
It didn’t take long the next morning, and we didn’t do anything different than I’d been doing the last few days. It was just a matter of getting every last microscopic air bubble out of the lines, and it cranked right up. So many people, when I say I have a Perkins 4-108, say, ‘Ah, right on. Great little engine!’. I no longer think it’s a great little engine if I can never get it going after each filter change.
More to come. To be continued very shortly.
P.S.
Effie evaded almost certain death at Wardwick Wells. She came along as a group of us went over to hang out on a houseboat named Owl for the evening. Someone spooked her with a life-size and very realistic toy turtle, after which she disappeared into the night. At 0500 the following morning, it was obvious she had disappeared into the water. She was in the park wardens skiff, living up to her nickname Muskrat Willie, floating a few feet off the stern of the houseboat. The little trooper sure can swim. And, ahem... I guess to protect the innocent, I should admit now that someone was actually me.