December 2008

The first few days of December were spent running around Fort Lauderdale in a rented car getting groceries, parts from West Marine, and my SCUBA tanks tested, as well as spending $50 to UPS $15 to the Bahamas for Spot’s import permit. Windsong was stuffed with as much food as I could possibly store on board. Reports were that food is very expensive and limited in variety in the Bahamas. With Windsong sitting very low in the water, I left the mooring at Las Olas Marina and dropped an anchor in Lake Sylvia to save a few bucks while I waited for my weather window to cross the Gulf Stream.

Lets put this crossing in perspective. It is 70 nautical miles from Fort Lauderdale to West End, Grand Bahama. My standard day sailing up or down Lake Huron is 50 miles. My longest crossing to date was the Gulf of Maine at 287 miles. It should take about 11 hours, which, so close to the winter solstice, was sunup to sundown. By no stretch of the imagination was this a big deal. But, this crossing comes with a heck of a reputation. The complication comes from the Gulf Stream itself. It is not just a name for the straight separating Florida from the Bahamas. It is basically the largest river in the world with no banks. Flowing from the Caribbean across the Atlantic to Northern Europe, it carries with it warm tropical waters allowing palm trees to grow in Europe at the same latitude as Windsor, and deciduous trees to survive north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia. As it pinches between Florida and the Bahamas it speeds up to an average of 2.5 knots.

Again, so what? I’ve crossed the Detroit River from Sandpoint Beach to Pêche Isle with that much current in a canoe. The problem, is that the prevailing weather pattern in the winter months is a strong northerly wind driven by a cold front. This creates vertical waves eight to ten feet high as the wind fights with the current. Then wind then shifts east (the direction you are trying to go) and stays there for days. Then it briefly clocks to south or, if you are really lucky, southwest, creating your ideal weather window for crossing.

One of those perfect southwesterly weather windows had passed during Paul’s visit. There was scarcely a cruising boat to be found in the Fort Lauderdale area. Everyone had been whisked across to start enjoying the island life. This created another snarl. Not only did I have to pick my own window, and make the crossing alone, I had no one to use as a sounding board. There was no one to tell me whether my decision on when to cross made any sense.

Thankfully, Just Ducky arrived in Lake Sylvia. Joe and Carol had crossed the Gulf Stream a dozen times. Even better, weather was Joe’s favourite hobby. After two sessions of examining GRIB files, NOAA weather maps, NOAA forecasts, and Chris Parker’s report on the SSB radio, we decided that Friday, December 5^th was the day to go. Ancient sailor’s superstition states that you should never start a voyage on a Friday. To heck with it! This voyage started five months ago! The winds were to be 10-15 knots from the east. It would be a motor sail, but the seas should be fairly moderate. If we waited for southerlies or southwesterlies, we might be having Christmas in Lauderdale.

The last bit of preparation was taking on fuel and water. I steered Windsong in between two Mega Yachts at the gas dock. Her mast barely reached over the bow of the yacht behind her. The fuel attendant was very polite to the ragged sailor man who’d had the audacity to land his silly little gold sailing dinghy to take on $50 worth of fuel and 20 gallons of water. He even took my picture with the multimillion dollar yacht behind me.

Friday dawned with 10 knot winds from the northeast. I motored sailed out toward West End while Just Ducky headed toward the Exumas. We kept in touch over the VHF before our antennas sank below the horizon. I was alone with the sea, but not for long. A whale surfaced a couple hundred feet behind me then a school of flying fish darted out of a wave. They flew across the troughs, swam through the crests, and flew back out into the next trough for three waves before vanishing. Most of the school dove, while one lone individualist flew off out of sight. I liked that fish!

The wind shifted east and stayed at 10-15 knots. It was a lumpy ride but not uncomfortable. The only incident occurred when I hit a wave while "checking the wake". I was tossed up against the mast for the wind generator, then it suddenly started pulsing heavily. Somehow the blades had gone way out of balance. I climbed up on the stern rail and stopped it from spinning. One of the blades had snapped off at the base. It would have to stay tied off until I could remove another blade to balance it. I felt really lucky that the departing blade hadn’t decided to shatter one of my solar panels, or my skull!

As the sun set, I pulled in to Old Bimini Bay Marina, West End, Grand Bahama. I was greeted over the VHF by a woman with lovely lilting Bahamian accent. "Welcome to the Bahamas! All be tha in a minute to take ya dock lines. Hot showas are at the end of the dock. Customs will be happy to see ya in the mannin’ at the pink buildin’ next to the gas dock."

Customs was a breeze. No sense of humour tests. Just show your passport, pay your cruising fee, and have your permit issued. Spot’s paperwork wasn’t even looked at.

I "repaired" my wind generator by removing a blade and set out for the Little Bahama Bank. Entering the banks through Indian Cay (pronounced "key") Channel was heart pounding. The water suddenly went from the deep azure blue of the gulf stream to the light aquamarine of the banks as the bottom soared from 40 to 8 feet. In the crystal clear water, 8 feet looked like 8 inches. Dark patches stood out starkly against the white sand. Coral or weed? How could I know? I followed the course line on the chart plotter went slowly and hoped. The depth stayed constant whether the water was black or white. It had to be weed. That didn’t stop me from gulping every time I sailed over a dark patch.

The low island quickly dropped below the horizon and Windsong skimmed over turquoise water lead by the shadow of her genny, a stark black triangle on the sand. With nothing in sight I cranked up Jimmy Buffet, as this Son of a Son of a Sailor, glided through water world wearing shorts for the first time since July. In the middle of the bank I came across three Bahamian men handline fishing from a tiny open boat. I would have been less surprised to come across Kevin Costner sailing a trimaran towed by a huge kite.

For the night I tucked behind Mangrove Cay with two cabin cruisers. It wasn’t much shelter and the holding was lousy, but with customs and wind generator repair in the morning it was the only place I could reach. At 4am the wind went northwest putting me right out in the open and piped up to 20 knots. The anchor was holding, so I bounced up in down in my bunk until sunrise when I sailed right off of my anchor and headed toward Allan’s-Pensacola. It was another day of champagne cruising over aqua water.

Allan’s-Pensacola had better shelter but even worse holding. After dragging my Bruce anchor all over the harbour, I threw out a Danforth. It held a little. It was a good thing no strong winds were expected and I was planning to leave first thing in the morning.

I made Green Turtle Cay with its all around protection and solid holding just in time for my first Bahamian cold front. It was back to long pants and a fleece vest as the wind howled at 20-25 knots from the northeast for two days. I took the time to check out the Albert Lowe Museum and the Memorial Sculpture Garden. The town of New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay was founded two centuries ago by Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution. The sculpture garden features bronze busts of some of the original founding loyalists and their most noteworthy descendants. I was given a tour of the 150 year old Albert Lowe Museum by a dear elderly lady nearly as old as the museum itself. She told me how the major industry in 1800's was wrecking (salvaging shipwrecks). Despite heavy local lobbying, the Elbow Reef lighthouse was built, and the local economy collapsed. Many locals dismantled their houses and shipped them to Key West to start over. I saw many of those houses two weeks ago!

From Green Turtle I was able to pick up the Abaco Cruisers’ Net for the first time on channel 68. Troy from Dive Guana came on with his sea state report for the Sea of Abaco, "If ya in a small boat is a gonna be a bit lumpy. If ya in a laja boat there’s a gonna be some spray, but that’s why ya got da foul wedda gear!"

I didn’t bother with the foul weather gear. That’s why I got da doja! Troy was right, there was plenty of spray. I motor sailed almost straight into it with a main up. The Whale Island Channel was the exciting part. The banks route was too shallow even for my 4 ½ foot draft so I had to go outside onto the ocean. As the big swell rose up to the twenty foot ledge in the channel, the waves steepened and built to about five feet. They felt more like ten. The good news was that I was able to climb those mountains on a 45 degree angle. Once outside I had to run across the swell beam to. Thank goodness for the main as a staysail. Without it, I would have been rolling gunnel to gunnel.

I arrived in Marsh Harbour to find Sea Star along with two dozen other cruising boats anchored in the harbour. I spent three days there enjoying the good hardware stores, grocery stores, and cruisers happy hours at the various marinas. The Abaco Cruisers’ Net kept us informed every morning. My favourite quote was from Patty the weather lady: "Welcome to the Twilight Zone. The internet is in and out. The power is in and out. I love living in the Bermuda Triangle!"

The highlight of my time in Marsh Harbour was the opening of the Abaco Christmas Festival. The festivities opened with a show by the Bahamas Defence Force Marching Band. That was followed by the fashion show. The commentary was priceless. A large elderly Bahama Mama described the girls and what they were wearing much the way you would expect to hear them described by a group of drunken men in bar. The evening was concluded with an address by the Prime Minister of the Bahamas.

Sea Star and Windsong screamed out Marsh Harbour on a beam reach doing 6.5 to 7 knots. All too soon we were in Great Guana Cay. We spent three days there touring the island and watching a kite boarder play in the surf on the ocean side. He could jump that thing 30 feet in the air!

Next stop was Man-O-War Cay. We had been told that Man-O-War was one of the most beautiful Cays in the Abacos. At first we couldn’t see why. It was just a low island like any other. Then we started walking around the town. Ornamental gardening is an important tradition on the island. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous! The other impressive feature was the Albury Brother’s boat building shop. We were able to walk through as the were laying up fibreglass and plywood centre console fishing boats right in front of our eyes.

On December 18, the Elbow Reef Lighthouse guided us in to Hope Town. This was the light that put to wreckers on Green Turtle out of business. Built in 1864, it is one of three left in the world that still burns kerosene and is turned by a hand wound clockwork. The keepers still climb the 101 steps every two hours during the night to wind the clockwork. We were able to climb the 89 foot tower and view all of the workings of the light.

I found a great historical surprise while walking through the town: one of Captain Bligh’s breadfruit trees. You may recall that in 1787, William Bligh was sent to Tahiti in command of the HMS Bounty for a load of breadfruit. The voyage didn’t go so well. His best friend Fletcher Christian lead a mutiny against him and set him adrift in a lifeboat. Bligh managed to navigate his way 3600 miles to Timor with nothing but a sextant and a pocket watch. Christian and the mutineers took the ship to Pitcairn Island. There they burned the ship and ate all of the breadfruit. What I discovered in Hope Town was that the British Navy decided to give Bligh another shot at it in 1791 aboard the HMS Providence. This time he managed to bring home the breadfruit. He delivered the breadfruit to Jamaica and from there they were distributed throughout the Carribean and the Americas where it was hoped that they could be planted to provide a staple food much like potatoes for the settlers.

Great news came that evening when I learned that my sister Dana had just given birth to Ireland, her new baby girl. A happy new Uncle sat back in his cockpit that night and watched the 325,000 candle power beacon of the Elbow Reef Light cut 17 miles into the darkness. Incredible to think that all of that light was coming from a kerosene lamp and that huge lense was being rotated by nothing but a hand wound clockwork. What an amazing technology that must have been 144 years ago!

We went back to Marsh Harbour to resupply and to watch the Christmas parade of boats around the harbour. A train of small boats made several circles around the harbour all decked out with Christmas lights. A couple of vessels were singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs. With each lap their voices became hoarser and hoarser as they became more and more inebriated. Pretty soon it degraded to screeched Christmas carol lyrics with no tune whatsoever.

A motor through calm water brought us to Little Harbour. In 1951, professor Randolph Johnson of Smith College, Massachusetts decided that he’d had enough of the "Megamachine", packed up his family and moved to Man-O-War Cay. There he purchased and refitted a 47 foot schooner, Langosta, to sail off into the Caribbean and then perhaps the South Pacific. They found their paradise only 16 miles away when they sailed into Little Harbour. Their first land base was a large cave at the southwest end of the harbour. Eventually, they built a home and a foundry for Randolph’s lost wax bronze sculpture. His son Pete made the deckhouse of the schooner into a pub and followed his father’s footsteps into sculpting. Today Pete’s Pub still stands next to the gallery displaying Randolph and Pete’s sculpture.

We toured the gallery and had dinner at Pete’s pub. One of the regulars at the pub lives on the other side of the harbour. He crosses the harbour aboard his mastless sunfish using a 2X4 as a kayak style paddle. If he doesn’t feel up to paddling he uses his one dogpower engine. I’m not kidding! Check out the picture!

I left Little Harbour on Dec. 22, the winter solstice, for the 80 mile run across the Northeast Providence Channel to Nassau. It was long run for the shortest day of the year. I left at first light and despite surfing along at 6.5 to 7 knots, I knew there was no way I would make it until long after dark. Along the way I passed over the deepest sounding that Windsong has ever seen: 11,414 feet! The sounding was only on the chart. The depth sounder gave up long before we reached that depth.

The entrance into Nassau really got my heart pumping. The city was lit up like a Christmas tree making it impossible to distinguish the lights of an outbound ship. Fortunately, the RADAR picked it up in plenty of time. Next was the harbour entrance itself. The break walls are made of dolosse, concrete structures resembling a three dimensional letter H with one leg turned 90 degrees to the other. On a dark windy night, they resemble huge teeth, and the foam of the eight foot seas exploding on them, made the harbour entrance look like the jaws of a colossal rabid dog preparing to swallow Spot, Windsong, and me in one roaring gulp.

I used the chart plotter to overlay the radar image on the chart, thanked providence for modern electronics, and steered white knuckled into the entrance surfing at over 7 knots. As I rounded the outer break wall she took one last good roll and the coffee maker slid across the counter and hit the instruments switch. Poof! No chartplotter, no RADAR, no depth, no speed. Blind, deaf, and dumb! And no autopilot to let me run down and flip the switch back on. I was left with visual navigation in a strange harbour in the pitch black. That was when I spotted the cruise ship MV Mickey Mouse on its way out of the harbour. She forced me out of the channel, with no depth sounder, chartpotter, or any other way of guessing the depth of the water. When finally clear of MV Mickey Mouse I locked the wheel and ran below to throw the instrument switch back on. What joy to have all of your senses back! With the chart plotter and RADAR it was now entirely obvious that MV Mickey Mouse was in fact tied to the cruise ship dock.

I anchored in nice holding at the north end of the harbour off of Paradise Island. As soon as I went below to make dinner I was greeted by flashing lights. The Harbour Patrol had come to tell me that I was in the channel and had to move closer in. I dragged my exhausted carcass back on deck and re-anchored. In the morning another Harbour Patrol boat made me move again. I asked them where the limits of the channel were. They told me it was obvious. I didn’t see anything obvious, but obediently moved to the south side behind Potter’s Cay. I tried three times to set the Bruce. A French Canadian guy saw me struggling and came over to help. We tried twice more to set the Bruce before we pulled out the 25 lb. Danforth Storm Anchor. After three more attempts to set that anchor, I finally realized what was so obvious to the Harbour Patrol: if you can get an anchor to hold, you must be in the channel! I gave up and went to the Nassau Harbour Club where they set me up with a lovely well on the weather side of the windward most pier. I had to put up the cockpit enclosure to keep the spray out of the cockpit. It was the begging of a love affair with Nassau.

My friend Kathy arrived at the airport on Christmas eve. We tried to sleep as much as possible on Christmas Day to be ready for Junkanoo. Junkanoo has its origins in the days of slavery on the islands. The slaves were given the day off on Boxing Day. Not wanting to waste a moment of their holiday, they got the party started well before dawn. The tradition is carried on today by starting the parade at 2am.

When I flew to Nassau ten years ago to visit my parents, my father armed himself with loaded flare gun because we had to walk through an "interesting neighbourhood" to get from the marina to their friends’ boat in the anchorage. I thought dear old Dad was being a bit melodramatic. This was the same neighbourhood we had to walk through at 2am to get to Junkanoo. Things got really "interesting" really fast. First we were greeted by drunks reeking of stale urine. Later, we were offered some pot for sale, then the "interest" level stepped up as we began to be followed. The "interest" reached its crescendo when the gentleman behind us smashed a beer bottle onto the concrete. Was I ever glad that Kathy was a New Yorker and was therefore well versed in the art of not getting mugged!

Two shaken Conchy Joe’s were much relieved to reach the floodlights at Bay Street to see the heavy police presence and all of the beaming faces of Junkanoo. We started out through the performers prep area and found the groups staging themselves to begin their two laps of the four mile parade route. Each group chooses a theme for their brightly coloured costumes. Competition is so fierce for the large cash prizes, that themes and costume designs are highly guarded secrets. Each group started with two lead floats made of paper mâché over aluminum frameworks and rolled along by hand. These were followed by the dancing girls and a whole variety of costumes some weighing up to 200 lbs. The costumes are enormous aluminum and paper mâché contraptions covered with glitter and feathers, and designed to flex to emphasise the motion of the dancing. Next was the brass band and the cowbell men blowing whistles, and wearing huge feathered costumes on their shoulders. After them were the lead drums then the goombay base drums made of 50 gallon steel barrels. Goats are sacrificed every year to replace the skins on the drums. I saw one 13 year old boy marching along playing a drum made from a barrel that I could barely lift! The final members of the group were the horn players each playing three horns plumbed together with PVC plumbing parts. The music was something that had to be lived to be believed. It started with the sound of a classic Caribbean brass band which vibrated your toes and fingertips. Then the whistles cried into the air and carried the vibrations into the hairs on your arms before being consumed by the din of the cowbells that shook your entire skull. The lead drums started into your chest before the goombays took over and your ribs throbbed in and out in resonance. The horns brought the earthquake back out to your toes and fingertips and faded away, leaving you yearning for it to start all over again.

We spent three more days in Nassau waiting for a cold front to blow through so we would not have to pound into 25 knot winds to get to the Exumas. Boxing Day, we had lunch with the locals on Potters Cay where Kathy tried conch salad fresh out of the sea. Then we visited the aquarium on Paradise Island. The following day, we had lunch at the cruise ship dock overlooking the Regal Empress, the 600 foot cruise ship that the MythBusters water skied behind. We visited the straw market where a young girl gave us a lesson on making conch (pronounced "konk") shell horns. Then we toured the Pirate Museum and found the Governor General’s manor. Our final day was spent snorkelling with a dive boat off the harbour break wall. It looked a whole lot friendlier in the daylight and the dolosse provided an excellent habitat for fish. At the base of the pier was a wreck to remind me that other sailors had entrances even more heart pounding than mine.

Finally, on December 29, the winds died down and we were able to steam for Allan Cay. After six days of way too much wind, now there was none at all. We watched a beautiful out island sunset and slept in a quite wilderness anchorage bathing in the most peace we had seen in a week. In the morning we were off to see the iguanas. Kathy was armed with lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and soda crackers. To heck with all that health food! They were most interested in the crackers. We thought we were doing well seeing up to a dozen at a time. They would have little battles, then the biggest one would win the spot closest to us where he could get the most food. Then the tour boats arrived from Nassau. The iguanas knew the schedule and right on cue, the march of the iguanas began. Soon, there were over 50 on the beach being fed grapes on the ends of sticks. There were so many tourists feeding them that there was no longer any competition and everybody got fed without a fight. Twenty two minutes later, the tour boats left and we headed for Staniel Cay.

We watched the first race of the Staniel Cay New Year’s regatta then raced off in the dinghy like a couple of Cousteau divers looking for the best place to snorkel. After searching all around the island we discovered it at the Thunderball Grotto. This was where Spectre hid the stolen nuclear warheads in the movie of the same name. The cave was also used in the movie Splash, and the Bond Film Never Say Never. There were no warheads or mermaids but instead it was swarming with Sergeant Majors, Grunts, Blue Tangs, various Angels, and even Grouper.

New Year’s dinner and dancing was done at Club Thunderball looking at all of the old movie posters and cast and crew photographs. Then we headed back to the boat to ring in the New Year. At midnight the yachts in the Yacht Club sounded their horns and the beach exploded with fireworks. Welcome to 2009!