After a leisurely start this morning we continued on to Great Sale Cay. This is one of the few decent stopping points on the Little Bahama Bank, the shallow sea area north of Grand Bahama Island. It is possible to anchor almost anyplace on the bank, but for safety reasons one needs to keep lots of lights on all night so passing boats can see you. We normally burn a single anchor light at night when we are anchored, but doing so out in the open calls for more lights.
We passed a few small islands today, none of which are inhabited. This is a remote part of the Bahamas, and we are not getting any cell phone signal. There really isn’t much out here. I got a photo of one of the small islands we passed, shown below.
Great Sale Cay is another uninhabited and unremarkable island. It has some mangrove swamp areas, a few small scrub trees, and not much else. There is good anchor holding in sand, and there is decent wave protection from the east and north but no protection from the west. There is a photo of the island shown below.
During the night a thunderstorm came up and wind and waves came from the west. That is the unprotected direction in this spot. The thunderstorm had a good light show and we heard a little thunder, but there weren’t any lightning strikes near us that we were aware of. After the storm passed the waves became stronger from the west, and we spent the night with the boat pitching up and down. Cruisers call this ‘hobby horsing’ after the hobby horse toys we all had as kids. It was a restless night, and we were ready to get going the next day to find a more peaceful anchorage.
About a year ago we replaced our anchor and chain with a much bigger model and after a night like this we are very thankful we did so. The new anchor didn’t move an inch.
We started this morning in the marina at West End. The people here are sure friendly, a common comment about people in the Bahamas. We were able to get our data connection fixed (the cell phone company hadn’t turned on our connection) and I got the bilge pump issue resolved at least temporarily. The marina checkout was at 11:00 AM, and we got both of these problems fixed right at that time. A few minutes later we pulled the lines in and departed for the marina.
When we arrived in West End yesterday we flew a yellow quarantine flag which is still a requirement for international travel. After checking in through customs we changed this to a Bahamas courtesy flag, shown below. The Bahamians are proud of their independent country and this is the appropriate flag to fly to respect that. We also changed our burgee, the flag on our bow, from our normal Gold Looper flag to the Royal Marsh Harbor Yacht Club burgee. This is the place to fly a club flag, and while we are AGLCA life members we are also members of the yacht club here in the Abacos.
To get to the Abacos we have to cross the Little Bahamas Bank. This is an extensive area that is not very deep water, but is essentially a mountain above the surrounding sea floor. The sea floor is thousands of feet deep around the bank, and the bank is mostly 10-15 feet deep. A few spots poke out above the water, one of which is shown below. There are dozens of these small, uninhabited islands spread out over the 200 miles or so of the bank. This one is Indian Cay, just north of West End.
A unique feature of the Bahamas is called blue holes. The seamount that forms the Bahamas is mostly calcium carbonate deposited as shells of sea creatures in an ancient ocean. These become limestone which can be penetrated by water. The water forms a deep path to the ocean, and this turns into a blue hole. Blue holes can form on land, or in the shallow water around the banks. We saw what we thought was one today as shown in the photos below. The color in the photos doesn’t do it justice as it was a deep blue in the center.
After crossing about 20 miles of the bank we decided to stop for the night at Mangrove Cay. This is an uninhabited island consisting of mangroves, little high ground and few trees. It has nothing to recommend itself other than a decent anchorage with good anchor holding. It is exposed to winds from the southwest which are predicted tonight, but these are not expected to be very strong. With our late start it will work fine as a stopping point for the day.
Along the way we passed a large sailboat, and talked to them over radio a few times. We met them yesterday at the beach in West End. They are a couple who had previously circumnavigated the globe on a sailboat, and in their late middle age adopted two special needs boys from an Asian country. The boys had been abused before their adoption, one very severely, and we are thankful they have such saviors. They reminded us of our nieces, Lili and Molly, who we cherish greatly.
Today was a short day owing to the late start. Tomorrow may be short also as we will only go to Great Sale Cay as there are few acceptable stopping points after that until we get to the Abacos.
This morning we departed the Lake Worth anchorage at first light for the Gulf Stream crossing. The winds are forecast to be moderate from the southeast, but waves are expected to build to 3-5 feet later in the day. That’s more than we like, but it isn’t unsafe. The next several days have similar forecasts, so we decided we would go out into the ocean and decide if it was workable. We did that, and pressed on.
The anchorage was very quiet as we started out, as shown below. There was almost no boat traffic, just a couple of fishermen heading out early.
After transiting through the inlet we were in the Atlantic. We were treated to a great sunrise view, which helped us decide to continue on.
We encountered the Gulf Stream almost immediately after entering the ocean. That surprised me, and the current velocity was stronger than predicted. I did not expect to get into the strongest current until midway through the crossing. The waves were about as predicted, and the wind was lighter than expected. As the morning wore on the wind became a little stronger, but the waves were about the same. Surprisingly, the Gulf Stream current seemed less after the midpoint of the crossing. I guess it doesn’t always flow in the same spots.
The last hour of the crossing had us on a heading with the waves directly on the side of the boat. These are called beam seas, and they cause the most uncomfortable ride. We have stabilizers that take out much of this motion, but these were unable to fully keep up with the sea conditions.
Finally we had West End in sight. It was a welcome sight. I was surprised again that the water was still over 1000 feet deep just a mile from the harbor entrance.
After landing in the marina, and checking in with Bahamian customs, we set off for the beach bar. It was a welcome respite from being on the boat.
We are having trouble with our Bahamas phone, and with one of our bilge pumps. We will need to sort these out before continuing tomorrow.
After 12 days in a marina in North Palm Beach we departed and moved down to Lake Worth today. It isn’t a long trip, but it will shorten the day tomorrow for the Gulf Stream crossing. We are anchored tonight about a mile south of the inlet in a very large anchorage in Lake Worth.
Before departing the marina we filled the water tanks and stopped at a fuel dock to top off the fuel tanks. We bought just over 200 gallons of diesel which is what we used on the trip down from Jacksonville. We did not pump out our holding tank as we will dump that in the ocean tomorrow.
Just after departing the fuel dock we crossed under the PGA Boulevard bridge. The photo below is looking back at it. The ICW here is narrow and there is lots of boat and commercial traffic. We did not need to have the bridge opened as it had 24 feet of clearance at this tide level, and we need just under 23 feet, but the commercial tug behind us needed it open. It is fairly painless to open a bridge with just a radio call, but some bridges have scheduled openings and it can be painful to sit and hold position while waiting for them.
After passing out into Lake Worth we had an uneventful trip down to the ocean inlet. The northern part of the lake is wide and shallow, and we really can’t stray outside the dredged channel. After reaching the area near the inlet we passed Peanut Island, shown below. This island was formed from dredge spoils when dredging the commercial harbor, and it is a common place for people to beach their boat and spend the day. On weekends there is little room for another boat to get in to the island.
Just past Peanut Island we got a brief view of the ocean inlet, shown below. We will go out here tomorrow.
We are anchored tonight in the southern half of Lake Worth. This area is an enormous anchorage extending more than a mile each direction from us. There are hundreds of boats anchored here, some derelict and abandoned, and others occupied with people who might otherwise be homeless. A view of the anchorage are shown below. There is a move afoot in Florida to restrict anchoring to 30 days in any position. That won’t affect us, and I think it is a good idea to control the abandoned boats in front of very expensive homes.
We have been watching the weather, and it looks like Tuesday, May 4, will be an acceptable day to cross to the Bahamas. The key weather components we look for are no fronts or persistent thunderstorms, winds below 15 knots, and no north component to the winds. More on that below.
As I write this post we are in North Palm Beach, Florida. The key marine feature here is a large lagoon called Lake Worth. It is mostly seawater, but it is separated from the ocean by barrier islands. It has a first class ocean inlet used by large and small commercial ships. Surprisingly there are few of these types of inlets on the east coast of Florida, of which I would only consider using six of them (St Johns River, St Augustine, Fort Pierce, Lake Worth, Fort Lauderdale and Miami). In addition there are passes through the reef in the Keys that would be acceptable to use, but these are again surprisingly few.
The crossing itself is dominated by the Gulf Stream. This is a flowing current of warm, tropical water that naturally runs from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic. It is mostly 60 miles wide, about 800 feet deep, and can flow as fast as 5 knots. When you are crossing in a boat that normally travels at 8 knots you have to pay attention to this. By the way, the Gulf Stream is the key factor that keeps the northeastern US and northern Europe in temperate climates. I have heard the warm water of the Gulf Stream causes thick fog banks in the winter when the air temperature is colder than the Gulf Stream water.
I mentioned waiting for no northern wind component. It may not seem intuitively obvious, but wind opposite a flowing current can build huge waves. Huge. As an example, winds of 15 knots usually result in 2-3 foot waves, but if there is a north wind in the Gulf Stream (which flows north) it can easily cause 15-20 foot waves. Our boat can handle that without problems, but we can’t.
When we enter the Gulf Stream the water will be moving north. The prediction for Tuesday is under 2.5 knots, and we will also be moving north with it. One might think the shortest route is a straight line from Lake Worth to West End, the port where we plan to arrive in the Bahamas. A straight-line course is shown below, 55 nautical miles. The problem is to hold this course we would need to turn south while in the Gulf Stream to hold our position on the course, and doing so would slow our crossing. Instead, as shown in the second navigation screen below, we plan to hold a more southerly course starting out and then hold that course through the Gulf Stream. It should result in an ‘S’ shaped course but it should also get us across the Gulf Stream a little quicker. If our boat could go 20 knots we would go on the straight line course, but our slower boat should do better with this plan.
We have made our final provisioning runs to the grocery, liquor and marine hardware stores, so we plan to fill the water tanks in the morning and move to an anchorage near the Lake Worth inlet for tomorrow night. If all goes well we should be in West End on Tuesday afternoon. Then I can start writing the blog in more detail. While we are in the Bahamas our email should function normally, but our phones won’t be available. Please contact us if you need our Bahamas phone number.
By the way, our friends Steve and Diane crossed to Bimini yesterday. They caught two dolphin on the crossing, so we are crossing our fingers we will have similar luck.
One of our goals this year is to cruise to the Bahamas. The country is made up of about 700 islands and 2400 cays (pronounced keys) spread over about 500 miles of ocean. The map below shows some of the larger island groups including Andros Island, the Abacos, New Providence (home to the largest city, Nassau), the Exumas, Eleuthera and some of the southern islands. We plan to start at the western tip of Grand Bahama Island at the town of West End and then move to the Abacos. Further travels will be dictated by weather and our whim at that moment.
Many of my old Navy friends know of, or have trained, at the AUTEC range in the Bahamas. That is located on the northeast coast of Andros Island, and their exercise area is in a deep ocean trench called Tongue of the Ocean that is located northeast of Andros. There are few reasonable anchorages there, so we likely won’t visit that area.
There are some things needed to cruise in the Bahamas. We don’t plan to stay at marinas very often, so we will need to use our generators to keep our batteries charged. We also understand there are few pumpout locations where sewage can be pumped off the boat by shoreside equipment, so we will plan to open certain valves on the boat to send it directly overboard. In the US we have to keep the effluent in a holding tank, and pump it out every 12-14 days.
There are few sources of groundwater in the Bahamas, and most places charge between $0.25 and $1.00 per gallon for reverse osmosis water. That gets expensive quickly. We have a watermaker that generates about 35 gallons an hour of freshwater from seawater and we will run that when the generator is running. Since all our galley equipment is electric we also need the generator to cook on the boat and I think we won’t have a problem keeping up with water production and battery charging. We don’t have solar panels, but I will be thinking about adding them for future visits.
Another important need is accurate weather predictions and communications with the outside world. We have a Bahamas Telephone Company sim card to turn an old phone into our Bahamas phone, and to get us internet connection through the cellular network. I also bought a three month subscription to a reputable marine weather prediction service that announces their forecast on SSB radio and sends an email twice a day. We also have all the standard emergency radios and personal locator beacons in case we have to depart the big boat due to unforeseen conditions. They radio satellites that alert rescuers.
Lastly, many people are concerned with the COVID situation. The Bahamas require a health visa prior to arrival, and that requires a negative COVID test within five days. That restriction is being lifted for people who have had the vaccinations, so we think that will be simplified very soon. Sinbad also needs a pet permit, and he has that. He is excited to go (I think).
I’ll write more detail tomorrow on the cruising plans.
We continued south again on the first day, anchoring near Melbourne. The Indian River is very wide through here, and has some deep spots that extend away from the main ICW. We chose one of these for the first night. Getting away from the ICW is important as we can avoid wakes from passing boats that could be uncomfortable.
As we prepared to depart the next morning I discovered fluid underneath the port engine’s transmission. I cleaned this up, but we needed to monitor it to determine if there is a bigger problem, and where the fluid is coming from. After starting out for the day I went into the engine room and determined one of the hoses to the gear cooler was leaking. These hoses are 20 years old, and under fairly high pressure. I don’t have tools aboard to fix this, so we made a plan to stop at Ft Pierce for the next two nights so we can get a part made.
The next morning I removed the failing hose and biked three miles to a local hydraulic shop. Some of the neighborhoods were pretty sketchy, but I didn’t have any problem. Luckily the shop had the right fittings in stock, and in 20 minutes I was on my way back to the boat. Reinstalled the hoses, and the problem was solved. I got a set of hoses for the other transmission also, but won’t put them on just yet.
As we prepared to depart Ft Pierce the next day I got the boat sideways in the current there and scratched the side of the boat. That’s a phenomenon called dock rash, and lots of boats have it. One of the worst piloting errors I’ve made in a while.
As we continued south this day we had a pod of dolphins with us for an extended period. They like to swim next to the boat and will sometimes swim on their side to look at us with one eye. They also surface every 30 seconds or so to breathe. All of this is shown in the photos below.
As we approached the Hobe Sound bridge we passed a sailboat that had been demasted. We had heard about this boat on the cruising forums. He was going through a railroad bridge on the St Lucie canal, and the bridge came down on him without warning. Railroad bridges are usually unmanned, and are remotely controlled, but this one had a failure and dropped without being commanded to do so. When the bridge came down it broke the sailboat’s mast, and that crashed down onto their solar panels causing more damage. We understand the railroad took responsibility and will pay for the repairs.
In shopping for a new outboard motor we discovered they are all backordered, with deliveries promised almost six months in some cases. I finally found a motor that will work for us at a distributor in Connecticut, but we have to sit and wait for it to be delivered. So we got a marina in Palm Beach Gardens, and will stay here for about a week waiting for the motor to arrive.
This morning we departed Daytona and started south again. After a short stretch we entered Mosquito Lagoon, a large and shallow body of water that is just north of Cape Canaveral. It was really boring cruising to be honest as the scenery doesn’t change much. A view of the lagoon is shown below.
At the south end of the lagoon the ICW goes through a stretch called Haulover Canal. A view of this is below. This is long land narrow, and there are lots of people fishing from the banks. Since it was Saturday, and a nice day to boot, there were plenty of people out on their boats. People who don’t operate their boats often are especially unknowledgeable of the navigation rules, so we really need to be careful around them.
This area is close to the NASA launch facilities at Cape Canaveral. We have been in this region on our boat when a launch was planned, but we have not been lucky enough to see one. We did see a Space Shuttle launch back in 1985, but that seems like ages ago now.
As we emerged from the canal we saw a large motorsail boat hard aground. A towboat was there straining to pull him off without much luck. As we approached the towboat called on the radio asking for us to wake him. There is a chance our wake would lift the stuck boat enough to get him loose, but it was not to be. We did see the motorsailor pull into Titusville later that evening, so he did finally get loose.
We stopped a little early today at the mooring field at Titusville. We have stayed here before, and it is a handy spot to stop. While we have a new dinghy we never had a chance to put it in the water, so we took this opportunity to do so. The dinghy did great, but our old outboard motor didn’t do so well. It is a 20 year old 2 stroke motor, and I had rebuilt the carburetor over the winter. Apparently I’m not a good carburetor mechanic, but in general it’s time for a new outboard. So we will be shopping for that as we continue south.
We departed our marina, Ortega Landing, in Jacksonville the morning of April 15, headed downstream about 20 miles on the St Johns River, and turned south on the Intracoastal Waterway near the town of Mayport. It is our intention to head south to the vicinity of Palm Beach and then cross to the Bahamas for an extended cruise. More on that later.
Mayport is a Navy town just inside the river entrance from the Atlantic ocean. It also has a large fishing fleet bringing in fresh fish and shrimp. We turned off the river just before arriving there, but we could see some of the ships from a distance. There were also several military helicopters flying around this day, and we caught one in the photo below.
We proceeded south to St Augustine where we got a mooring ball for the night. Our view of the Bridge of Lions in downtown St Augustine is shown below, as are photos of other boats in the mooring field. This is very much like anchoring except the boats are more closely spaced as the mooring anchors are very strong and use heavy chain to attach to the boats. We do need to be mindful of our power usage as the batteries have to have enough charge to last through the night.
The next morning we continued south and stayed at a marina in Daytona. The big NASCAR race here is in mid-February, but the rest of the year it is a pretty sleepy town. There are lots of bridges across the ICW as you can see below. A couple days before we arrived a car didn’t stop for a drawbridge that was opening, and jumped from one side to the other. They made it, but got the award for a stupid move that day.
We spent the winter at our home marina in Jacksonville, FL where we are legal residents. We usually spend the winters fixing and upgrading the boat, and this year was no exception. We had more maintenance than usual this year, replacing a muffler, stabilizer hydraulic pump and repairing wood rot in the flybridge console, but we also bought a new dinghy and freezer this year. The new dinghy is still an ongoing project.
The first big project was the stabilizer pump. This pump provides power to the stabilizer fins that keep the boat level while cruising, and the pump is attached to a Power Take Off on the port engine’s transmission. The pump oil seal had failed, and stabilizer oil was leaking into the transmission. The pump is shown below.
Getting the old pump off was pretty easy, but the real hard part was draining the oil from the stabilizer system. The reservoir was located where getting a drip pan under it was nearly impossible, so I lost about 2 gallons of oil into the bilge. It is illegal to put oil in the water (usually resulting in huge fines), so I was able to disable the bilge pumps quickly before it was pumped overboard. An awful mess that had to be cleaned up.
The replacement pump had to be special ordered to fit, and then it would not match up to the mounting holes. I finally took the pump to a small local machine shop and had them modify the mounting flange. Now it fits, and is back in service.
We also had a muffler that was starting to fail. The mufflers on boats like this are really important items as the seawater that cools the engine (through a heat exchanger) gets sprayed into the exhaust to cool it. The engine exhaust pressure then forces the water out the tailpipe along with the engine exhaust gasses. While the muffler does quiet the engine some its real purpose is to manage that exhausting seawater.
The new muffler is shown below. The old tailpipe was still intact, but it was too stiff to fit onto the new muffler. So I cut the old pipe off, bought a stainless steel pipe as a mating connector to the old pipe (which also had to be machined to size), and then connected everything with the new blue hose shown in the photo. This took several weeks of work to figure out a way to connect things. Thankfully it is done now, and I’m a lot smarter on marine exhaust systems.
As we were preparing to leave the marina I decided to relocate a component under the flybridge console. In doing so I discovered rainwater had been entering the console structure and an embedded sheet of marine plywood had rotted away to almost nothing. This is something that had to be fixed. I removed all the steering and engine control components, and all of the navigation electronics on the flybridge, and then was lucky enough to find a local small business that repaired the console structure. A small business that is just getting started, and the owner did a great job repairing the console. After I put everything back in place, and got it all working again, we were able to start the season’s cruising.
We had two upgrades this year, a new dinghy and a freezer. Our old inflatable dinghy would not hold air any longer, and it was just time for a new one. We store the dinghy on the upper deck and launch and recover it with a crane that is shown in the photo below. There are many places where we can’t get our big boat close to shore, so the dinghy is important as a short-range taxi for us. We also added a 3 cubic foot freezer on our aft deck that connects to the battery system on the boat.
Finally we finished everything, a month later than we expected. But we’re back underway again.
Adventures on Inshallah 