Rum Cay to Mayaguana

We left Rum Cay at 8 a.m. on Feb. 10 to sail the 140 nautical miles to Mayaguana. It was an overnight sail and turned out to become almost 180 miles because we had to tack during the night and following day despite the engines running. But we made it in one piece, arrived at 2 p.m. on Feb. 11 and are now anchored in a large bay inside the reef on the south side of Mayaguana. Jacques had not slept at all (except for perhaps an hour) and when we were done with all the anchoring chores and he sat down to drink his arrival drink, he nearly got sick from tiredness. I sent him to bed for two hours, I would wake him up, but I also fell asleep on the couch, but at six we had dinner and a nice evening listening loud to our favorite music.

Somewhere during the night we passed the tropic of cancer, that’s where the sun is at his highest point during mid summer, so we are getting south.
After a good night sleep, we feel back to normal and are already planning where we will stay in the Turks and Caicos.

It is blowing 20+ knots and therefore we stay on the boat because of the chop. We plan to clean the fridge box and to read. Tonight the wind will shift to the NE and the water will be calmer to dinghy the half mile to the Abraham’s Bay settlement to clear out of the Bahamas. On Thursday we went to the customs office to hear that we had to come back on Friday. We used the wi-fi facility of the Batelco phone company which was a wall outside of the building being the only spot to receive the internet for E-mails and weather forecast. We also went to the local restaurant and had a pretty untasteful meal. 

Friday night had 50+ knots (80 mph, 95 km/h) winds in the NE Bahamas, a record low pressure for February. Fortunately for us it was only about half at Mayaguana. For peace of mind we put out a second anchor and did anchor watch. Saturday it was still blowing 20 knots but it will likely subside on Sunday when we stage to the SE corner of the island in order to cut about 20 miles off the trip to Providenciales (Provo) in the Caicos Islands and leave after midnight to Sapodilla Bay.

Ria

Conception Island to Rum Cay

We had to leave at one time, so when the wind called we left Emerald Bay on Sunday Jan 31 to go to the north point of Long Island. The wind was fantastic, coming nicely abeam and we went 5.5 to 6.5 knots. Because it went so good we decided to go on to Conception Island. After 4 hours of fantastic sailing the wind said it is enough for me today and we had to motor sail the rest of the way. We were a little short on time, arrived at about 5 o’clock, which is a little late to have good light to see the coral heads in the water. When we were already on our obligatory arrival drink, two young men who were snorkeling around, told us that our anchor was not in the sand, so we took the anchor up and again down about twenty meters further.

The next day we went for a walk on the ocean side of the island, was a real adventure, on some places we had to use a rope to climb the rocks! After a peaceful day doing nothing we left on Wednesday to go to Rum Cay, where we are now.

We are in the harbor but when the wind is calm there some nasty no-see-ums, so we go outside to anchor for a few days. We have luckily internet here so we have updated all our mail and can always go with the dinghy inside to connect again. The showers here are $10 per person!! The water is taken from a sweet water pond in the middle of the island and trucked to the marina.

It is now Saturday and we are back in the marina, it really was a little wild outside, so yesterday we waited till high tide and went back inside.We had a wonderful dinner at Kay’s restaurant. The picture shows Delores, the mother of the owner and Dick and Nancy our neighbors in the marina. They have rented a golf cart, running on gas, and we went today with them to the other side of the island, again wonderful and deserted beaches, we have done some intensive shelling, but I still have not found my conch shell, I don’t give up hope.

On this island live about 60 people of which 20 are children. They can go to school here till they have to go to high school, for that they have to go to Nassau. The government is more then willing to give the kids the opportunity to get high school here, but the parent have to apply for that and until now they have not done that. I know all that because we had yesterday dinner at Delores (the matriarch of the whole island, see photo) and there was the school supervisor for three islands who just had a school meeting on Rum Cay.
It was really interesting.

The harbor master here is a very nice guy, called Rasta and is just filling in because the harbor is sold and the new owner first went on vacation before he would do something. Rasta is also an artist and carves wonderful pieces from death coral.

Tonight we have rain, after a long, long time and we hope that the boat will be cleaned from the salt water and I caught my first cup of rainwater to drink. Tomorrow we will go to the marine office and will check email and face book and will post this part of the blog.

Ria

Emerald Bay, Great Exuma Island

The cut to the outside of the islands went very good, it was about an hour before low tide and the wind was calm, so a new experience added to our list. There was not much sailing so we motored and when we arrived in the near where the harbor should be, we just could not see the entrance, the binoculars were glued to my eyes, but you had to get really close to see the buoys, after locating them everything went well.

Did I not talk about the simple life of sailing? We have now arrived in a first class marina; after they helped you put the boat on the dock they roll out a welcome mat on the dock; that is very cool. The harbor master’s office looks like a five star hotel lobby, upstairs is a game room with pool table etc, then an office and bar area, all furnished with really nice furniture and the lounge area with sofa’s and big screen TV. The showers are every boater’s dream with several soaps and lotions and after looking around and we were back on the boat we said to each other that we could get used to this. Most of the women and some men told me their stay here will take a little longer then was planned. We are really enjoying this, the people are very, very friendly, and they really make you feel home. The most intriguing part was the charge of 50 cents per ft. per day.

We took a taxi to Georgetown, because we had to see that and had some shopping to do. The taxi driver was a very nice guy and very knowledgeable about politics and history of the Bahamas, the drive was too short (an hour!) to take on all the topics he and we wanted to talk about.

In the restaurant we met Katera, who was from the big city, which means here Nassau, but was really enjoying the easy going life of the Exumas. She is opening her own restaurant in about two months and after talking a lot that evening we are now friends on face book.