Returning to the Bahamas After Hurricane Season
After returning from Canada, we spent about 6 weeks in Maryland visiting with family and friends, buying needed items for our boat, and visiting with our doctors. In mid-October we flew to New Orleans to visit with more family. After spending a nice week in New Orleans, we flew to Fort Lauderdale, FL and made the hop to the Abaco area. But this time we flew into Treasure Cay airport instead of Marsh Harbour.
We flew into Treasure Cay because our boat, Satisfaction, spent the summer season on land at Green Turtle Cay, another beautiful Abaco Island. This island is the home of Abaco Yacht Services which is the best boatyard in the Abaco region for storing your boat during hurricane season.
Launching Satisfaction for the new season
This was our first time storing our boat during hurricane season in the Bahamas. I thought it would take us a day or two to get the boat ready to go. I significantly underestimated the time and effort required to get the boat ready to go. The main things that need to be done are installing the solar panels, putting on the cockpit canvas, and installing the head sail. We also underestimated the amount of time required inside the boat before you can even stay on it. I had rented an apartment for 2 nights to allow for us to get the boat ready for occupancy. Luckily, we were able to extend our apartment rental for a week as it took this long to clean and organize everything on the boat before we could stay on it.
The thing I found most frustrating in getting the boat ready is things that worked fine when we left the boat in June didn’t work when we returned several months later. Our house batteries were completely dead; something directly attached to the batteries drained their power over the summer. Luckily, we have AGM batteries which can be completely dead, but still be charged back up without any damage to the batteries. Our anchor light does not work, although this could be because of the 75 to 80 knots winds the area experienced during hurricane Matthew. But the most important item that mysteriously stopped working was our lever at the helm that switches the transmission from forward to neutral to reverse. This problem meant we could not even move the boat. We had to get a new part shipped from Beneteau in South Carolina to Fort Lauderdale and then flown on a small cargo plane from Florida to Treasure Cay here in the Bahamas. Then we had to find someone to install it.
Fortunately a calm day passing Whale Cay
Ten days after we arrived in the Bahamas our boat was finally ready to go. Now we just have to wait for good weather to get around Whale Cay in order to get to Hope Town. This is the one disadvantage to storing our boat at Green Turtle Cay. Whale Cay presents a problem because that part of the Sea of Abaco from Whale Cay to the Abaco mainland is too shallow for a deep draft sailboat to pass through. Most sailboats have to go outside Whale Cay into the ocean for a couple miles before returning to the Sea of Abaco. This outside passage is also troublesome because the ocean outside Whale Cay stays pretty deep very close to Whale Cay. This often creates big crashing waves in the area where sailboats must go outside Whale Cay. As a result sailboats must wait for very calm weather before passing around Whale Cay.
After waiting 6 days, we finally got a day calm enough that we could get around Whale Cay. It only took us four hours motor-sailing to reach our destination, Hope Town on Elbow Cay.
We have been in Hope Town for a couple weeks now and, even though most seasonal cruisers are not arrived yet, there have been many activities. We have been to several parties, celebrated Thanksgiving holiday with friends, watched the Elbow Cay box-car races, and attended an art festival at the Hope Town Lodge. It has been a lot of fun. This is why we come here and what makes the effort to store our boat here for hurricane season worthwhile.
Beautiful moon rise over Hope Town harbour
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