Spring Time in the Abacos
The month of April started out with more friends visiting us, but finished with Dena and me experiencing some real cruising adventures. Our first cruise in April found us running aground twice in 3 days. This was the first time we had run aground in the Bahamas.
The first time we grounded we were about 30 yards from the entrance to the Harbour View Marina in Marsh Harbour. There is a particular path to take to get into this marina and I missed it. However, it was low tide and we were only aground for about 45 minutes.
I got a rare picture of a family of giant Eagle Rays at Sandy Cay; each Ray is about 5-6 feet across
Two days later we were trying to creep into a beautiful anchorage on the west side of Man-of-War Cay (again at low tide) and we grounded again. However, this was not just any ordinary grounding, this was what they call a “hard grounding,” that is, we hit rocks. The water depth went from 8 feet to 4 feet in less than one boat length (about 40 feet). The depth sounder kept displaying 5.5 feet (our boat draft is 5.0 feet), but we could not move. Apparently, we crossed a thin ridge of protruding rocks which caught our keel. It was not obvious on the charts how long this thin ridge ran. It was deeper than 5 feet on either side of this ridge. A passing small power boat pulled us off the rocky ridge without any trouble.
When you do serious cruising, this 5 gallon solar water bag is an important source of hot water
A hard grounding is not good for your boat. Even though we were only traveling at about 4 knots when we hit the rocks, there was a load noise like a car crash and the entire boat vibrated from bow to stern and all the way up to the top of the mast. This is how newer sailboats are designed to take a hard grounding so that the energy is dissipated throughout the whole boat and not absorbed entirely by the keel. I can vouch that the design works, the entire boat felt the collision.
After we anchored about 30 minutes later, I dove under the boat to check whether the keel sustained any permanent damage expecting to see a chunk of the keel missing. Fortunately, there was just a large scratch on the bottom of the keel. More importantly, no water was leaking into the boat at the keel bolts.
In the last week of April we were planning to take a three week trip south to the Exuma chain of islands. This southern part of the Bahamas is much more beautiful than the Abacos but it is a very remote area with very few opportunities for obtaining water, fuel, and re-provisioning. The night before our deep water crossing over to Eleuthera on our way to the Exumas, we staged outside of Little Harbour. When we tried to “backed-down” after dropping our anchor, we could not back up. I dove under the boat to see what was wrong while Dena put the boat in reverse and the propeller was not spinning. We later found out the “key” between propeller shaft and the transmission coupling had “sheared.”
Two 3-foot long Remoras were swimming around our boat while moored in Little Harbour
It took about 6 days to find the right key material and cut it to size. We spent the whole week in Little Harbour. I must admit you could find many worse places in the world to spend a week waiting for a boat part, but very few places that are better. This delay also allowed us to see something we have not seen before. A bronze casting at the Johnson Foundry in Little Harbour. We watched the pouring of boiling bronze into molds to make their famous bronze statues at the Johnson Foundry in Little Harbour. This is an unusual event to witness.
Since we had lost a week for our trip to the Exumas, we decided to change our plans for our last few weeks in the Bahamas for this season. We will spend the rest of our time here cruising the more remote locations between Little Harbour and Green Turtle Cay and then spend a couple weeks visiting the remote Cays north of Green Turtle Cay. This area north of Green Turtle Cay is relatively uninhabited because there are very few people and thus very few facilities on these Cays. From these remote Cays we plan to continue north and sail back across the Gulf Stream to Florida.
Odyssey moored in Little Harbour waiting for a boat part
From Florida we plan to take Odyssey back to Annapolis to put her up for sale. As I suspected last year, if we keep living the cruising lifestyle, we are going to need a bigger boat (40 feet plus) with more tankage and more storage space.
There will be no “Retirement Planning Helpful Hint” this month. We all need an occasional break from planning.
The ocean side of Little Harbour
World famous Pete’s Pub in Little Harbour
Witnessing a bronze casting at the Johnson Foundry in Little Harbour
Odyssey anchored outside of Hope Town Harbour waiting for high tide to enter
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