s/v Rainy Days

Highbourne Cay to Staniel Cay

—Blogpost written by Bob

Saturday, January 18

We endured quite a blow last night! Still out of the east, the wind velocity was 30+ mph at midnight. It tapered off to about 25+ mph at 2 AM. We still had the outboard motor attached to the dinghy because I planned to leave it on the dinghy for our planned short trip to Shroud Cay in the morning—this was a mistake. Also, I should have taken the opportunity to move the boat closer to the island—it would have been a more restful night. This was an important reminder not to let my guard down when it comes to high winds in the Exumas. Fortunately, I had our anchor bridle in place which acts as a shock absorber of sorts.

The wind velocity decreased to 23 knots when we woke up at 7:30 AM. The dinghy engine was (miraculously) still on the dinghy! We decided to forego our planned trip to Shroud Cay (which was an intermediate stop on the way to Warderick Wells) today and sit out the remaining high easterly wind here in Highbourne Cay.

This image was taken when the wind had
already dropped to about 23 knots,
with the lee of Highbourne Cay
affording us full protection.

We are currently planning to travel to Warderick Wells Cay tomorrow with wind predicted to be out of the southwest at 9 to 14 knots during daylight hours. It is a 30-nautical mile trip and if the wind prediction is correct, it will be against us--so, no sailing again.

Incidentally, in Warderick Wells there is no cellular coverage (except at a high cost)--so, I will not be able to publish this blogpost from there. This blogpost will be published when we arrive at Staniel Cay (our next stop down the Exuma chain of islands).

One of the first things we did today was to
remove the outboard motor from the
dinghy and mount it on its
stern mount.

Since we were kind of restricted to the boat today, I decided to make hamburger-cabbage soup from scratch and without the use of a recipe. I cooked about a half a cabbage head (sliced and diced) in butter until it was soft. Then, I added the hamburger to brown it and, then, a can of diced tomatoes. After pouring in a guess on how much water to use, I added some beef bullion (another guess). I added a handful of diced carrots and two dried red Thai chili peppers for some heat. Some parsley flakes and ground black pepper rounded out the ingredients. After all the ingredients were in the pan and cooked, I cooked it for another 30 minutes or so to make sure that the carrots were cooked throughout.

Hamburger-cabbage soup
for lunch!

At noon we were producing 12 amps of solar power while the water maker was running. I ran the water maker between 9 AM and 2 PM to create about 7.5 gallons of fresh water. (One of the ways we’ve been conserving fresh water is doing the dishes about every three days. Doing dishes was always the activity representing our largest consumption of fresh water. Using our sun shower for showering only consumes about 1 gallon each.)

By 2:30 PM the wind velocity dropped to 18 knots
and it seemed like a huge improvement!

Sunday, January 19

We left Highbourne Cay at 8:30 AM, but not without a little drama. The anchor flipped over backward on its way up onto the bow roller, rolled back over the toe rail, and put a 3/4-inch diameter puncture into the hull. We applied silicone and duct tape to keep water out of the core until we get home for repairs.

When we got moving we were motoring against a 10 to 12 knot breeze out of the south southeast. It was a pleasant trip motoring at about 5.8 knots and 2100 RPM— not pushing it at all.

We tried to reach the Exuma Land & Sea Park headquarters by VHF radio at 11:30 AM. (They close at noon on Sundays.) We got a response but it was garbled (like their VHF was on low power). We concluded that we were not likely to get a mooring at the park today.

All this was happening as we were passing Hawksbill Cay. Hawksbill Cay is part of the Exuma Land & Sea Park, even though it’s about 15 miles north of the park’s headquarters on Warderick Wells Cay. We dropped our anchor in 10 feet of water 1/2 nautical mile west of Hawksbill Cay at noon. (We tried to get closer to the beach but couldn’t find a deep water path. We quickly found ourselves in only five feet of water and the depth alarm wailing loudly while trying.)

After having lunch on board, we took the dinghy into this absolutely beautiful beach and, then, walked in the powdery white sand. We swam a bit in the (very salty) water before returning to the boat. When we got back to the boat we took hot showers using the outside shower in the cockpit—it felt fantastic! The following images were taken from our boat anchored off Hawksbill Cay:

The beach at Hawksbill Cay.

Lola on the cabintop beneath the dodger.

Some of our clothes drying on the lifelines
while anchored near Hawksbill Cay.

For Happy Hour we had frozen Pina Coladas. They were made using a mix (no carbs), coconut rum, and ice, all blended together. During Happy Hour (never a good time to make decisions) we decided to go to Big Majors (and Staniel Cay) from here—about 25 nautical miles away. (Our decision was influenced by the prediction for strong northerly and easterly winds on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and Big Majors offers good protection from both directions.) We decided to skip Warderick Wells for now and catch it on the return trip northward.

This island (Hawksbill Cay) is worth stopping at again, though it would not offer any protection from northerly winds and we would have to anchor too far out for good protection from easterlies.

Monday, January 20

We were one of only five sailboats anchored near Hawksbill Cay last night—three of them were catamarans. Significantly further out, there were two very large power boats anchored, the smaller of the two seemed like a private yacht while the larger one seemed to be some type of chartered excursion out of Nassau.

These two large motor yachts were
anchored off Hawksbill Cay near us.

The water’s surface was nearly flat and the 6-knot early morning breeze was out out the south southwest—the first time we’ve seen a breeze from the south-to-west quadrant since we have been in the Bahamas (this season anyway). This morning, as the sun rose, it was a very quiet time on the water. Like our entire time in the Bahamas this season, the outside temperature remained within the seventies—nice weather for January in my opinion!

Since we’ve left Nassau and have been anchoring out (and even though we’ve been using electrical power to make fresh water regularly) our voltage readings in the morning before we start producing any solar power has consistently been above 12.75 volts. (This was great!)

I watched with amazement as the anchor broke loose from the sandy bottom as we weighed anchor—the time was 8:25 AM.

Today’s journey involved nine waypoints between Hawksbill Cay and our intended anchorage on the west side of Big Majors.

My handwritten list of waypoints
for today's journey.

The breeze reduced to about 2 or 3 knots (still out of the south southwest) for most of the day (and died even further by the end of the day). It was a poor day for sailing and a great day for motoring. We were able to move at a rate of 6.3 knots (boat speed) at 2200 RPM (engine speed), without pushing hard.

This image shows how calm the water
was throughout the day.

We did our usual 1-hour shifts at the helm. Our auto pilot (with assistance from our chart plotter) did all the work today. Motoring on the Exuma Bank was like motoring through turquoise-colored jello—it didn’t seem real. Two dolphins played in our bow wave about two-thirds of the way through our day’s journey— by the time I got my camera out, they were long gone.

We anchored off Big Majors, near Pig Beach, at 12:45 PM--the journey took us 4 hours and twenty minutes.