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For those of you sailors who thought June was not a good
month to come over to the Abaco, due to the start of hurricane season, we say
it is wonderful so far. Although it may
be the height of tourist season for the Abaco it is not the height of the cruising
season so the mooring balls are wide open and the anchorages have been empty
and beautiful. The weather now seems to
have settled into a wonderful steady pace of east to southeasterly summer
breezes with daytime temperatures in the 90’s and cooling down to the pleasant
70’s in the evenings. The evenings are
especially comfortable now with our new customized wind scoop trapping the soft
summer breeze and throwing it down the hatch into our “near” naked bodies. (Thanks
Michelle Poerstel for fixing that up for us.)
Once we left West End and it’s tantalizing paradise beach
pool we made our way to Great Sale Cay where we were the only boat in the east
anchorage for the evening. Umm we ask ourselves “are we really alone or did we
pick a bad anchorage?” I think when you
are out in the middle of the ocean with no one else in site you question your decisions.
Well later into the lonely night we got a random call on the VHF radio looking
for anyone anchored in Great Sale Cay. It turned out that there were several
boats anchored on the west side of the island, the opposite side as us. Are we
on the wrong side? Our weather guru predicted winds clocking to the west so we
picked the east side to anchor on. Turned out that those boats were heading
back to the states and leaving at 10pm for the long night sail west across the Gulf
Stream. Once again weather guru Parker called it
correctly and we had a quite night protected from the brisk westerly winds that
kicked up that evening. The next morning we only had a short 30nm sail to our
next anchorage in Allen’s Cay so we slept in and enjoyed the summer morning breezes
and the quiet solitude before continuing eastward.
Allen’s Cay is usually the first stop for eastbound sailors
going to the Abaco. It is also an introduction to the keen navigation skills we
will need for our journey through these islands. The pathway into Allen’s Cay
is shallow and narrow. If you miss time the tide or cut the entrance short you
will find yourself hard aground. After
winding our way into the cove we dropped anchor and began our “Anchor Down”
tradition of celebrating with a bit of Rum. Those pirates certainly knew the
medicinal quality of a good stiff rumrunner.
Now we have finally reached the Sea of Abaco. If you
remember our very first blog entry last February this was our destination when
we departed Cocoa. But Mother Nature had other plans for us back then and we
ended up down in the Exumas instead. So here we are and the question is “where
to next”? There are so many places we want to visit here. Places we have been
reading about for the last year preparing for our journey. So we studied the
charts and pick Green Turtle Cay as our next destination. Once again our
navigation skills are tested by moving sand bars and shallow reefs in our path and
of course a shallow narrow opening to the anchorage.
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| Green Turtle Cay |
This one was particularly
shallow and if we missed timed the tides we would not be getting in without
considerable embarrassment. We happen to
be in a spring tide and it’s a “super” moon on top of it so the tides are at
the most extreme of the year. We slowly approach the small intimidating opening
and at the last minute we chicken out and do a 180. A power boat approaches the
opening looking like he has done this all his life so we hail him on the radio
and ask him to read the soundings for us as he goes through. 7 feet he calls
out, then 6’ 6” as he moves slowly through, then 6’ and he is through. Well we
draw 5’ 6” and change so we slowly go through sweating all the way with a mere
6” between failure and success. And we make it through. Once in we picked up a
mooring ball and found out it belongs to a local by the name of Rick
Sawyer. He happens to be the
great-great-great-grandson of Robert Sawyer one of the founders of Green Turtle
Cay. Nice guy and he was a little
surprised we knew all about his great-great-great-granddaddy. As I said we have
been reading a lot about this part of the Bahamas. And once again we celebrate
our arrival with a bit of Rum.
We moved on after a couple of days exploring Green Turtle
Cay to Great Guana Cay anchoring in Fishers Bay. We picked up a mooring ball from Troy Albury at
Dive Guana and we asked him where the good snorkeling was on the island. He indicated, “in the water” was in fact the best place. Best
come back line we have heard since leaving our good friends Jeff and Terry on
Ariel. In fact we found one of the top snorkeling
reefs in the Abaco on the east side of Great Guana Cay which was just out side
of the famous Nipper’s Beach Bar and Grill.
Good spot for lunch and more Rum after an afternoon of snorkeling.
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| Great Guana Cay (east side beach) |
We are now sitting in Hope Town. If you are looking for a
storybook settlement setting this is the place. Attached to another mooring ball we
stared at the candy-striped lighthouse built in the 1800’s and still lit up by
kerosene every night giving sailors a light for safe passage.
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| Hope Town Harbon from Lighthouse |
Hope Town is an
adorable village with pastel cottages and a short walk over to the beach. We did have an exciting time getting in the
shallow channel here and thanks to our new friend Ron on Inherit the Wind who
gave us a sounding at 5’ 8” when we draw 5’6” we made it in just fine. Now we
are happy with a mere 2” between us and the ocean bottom. Any less and we would
be tossing out stuff from the boat to lighten it up. I really must say it is
Captain King who makes all our navigating the best. He checks the tides and knows his
navigational stuff better than anyone especially the captain on the boat Last
Call a Harden that got stuck in the channel at low tide that very day. A barge that needed into the channel with supplies
for the island came and towed him clear so he could get in.
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| Hope Town anchorage |
Never a dull moment cruising as Ron says,
“you are either entertained by the boating show or you are the boating show.” Thank God we have mostly been entertained by
the boating show. More Rum.
