I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth, a nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.
–Bernard Moitessie
Holed Up in Rock Sound
Sometime after our last update we saw a relatively significant wind event that was going to have easterly winds in the 20 – 30 knot range for about a week. We found a place called Rock Sound in Eleuthera that offered great holding and protection from just about every wind direction. So we decided to high tail it down there for the blow. We are ruled by the weather and have to work with Mother Nature and Poseidon, because if you try to work against them it probably isn’t going to work out too well.
Luckily they had a store and a gas station so we took on some diesel and provisioned some food and beer. It was a nice place to be for a week, and the water temperature is getting much more conducive to water activities with a temperature of 80 degrees.
Unfortunately there was a bull shark spotted several times in the anchorage so we didn’t get in the water. Sharks don’t really bother me, I’ve been around a lot of them, but I don’t mess with bull sharks. They’re a little too unpredictable and likely he was hanging around because locals were cleaning fish in the harbor.
Overall Rock Sound offered great protection and good holding, I would definitely go back to weather a storm.
More Fish
We’ve been pretty successful putting fish in the freezer the past several weeks. The tally is up to three mahi mahi, one wahoo and one snapper. I also caught a half dozen or so bonito, but we generally throw those back unless we’re desperate for fish and I need bonito strips for bait. This yielded a total of about 25 lbs of fish after processing. We also got some roe from a couple of the mahi. So, nearly a month’s worth of dinners. That’s great, because groceries here are about three times the cost of what they are in the US. We’re pretty glad we stocked up when we had the chance before we left Virginia. I saw an avocado the other day for $8. Yikes.
Not for the Faint of Heart
As I sit here writing this I’m actually on anchor watch at 4am, glancing over at my anchor alarm app as well as Navionics following my track to see how the anchor is holding. It is holding. We were facing south before the front moved in and turned us nearly 180 degrees in the opposite direction. When this happens your anchor will free itself from the seabed and (hopefully) re-set itself. Thankfully ours did, we should be in this orientation for the next 30 hours.
We are sitting in a tiny anchorage surrounded by coral reef, sand bars and ironshore from Allen’s Cay which we are using to protect us from the prevailing wind and waves. Allen’s Cay, barely sits 10 feet above the surface of the water so it offers little in the way of wind protection. I am thankful it is breaking the rollers from the Great Bahama Bank. I can hear the wind howling through the rigging and feel the vibrations it causes on the rigging which transfers to the hull. It’s a light vibration, even without instruments I know it’s gusting past 35 knots of breeze.
We are in 12 feet of water, but a sand bar that comes to within a foot of the surface at low tide sits about 60 feet off of our stern. Low tide happens to be right now, so there’s not much room for error.
These are things most people don’t have to worry about, and this is even relatively unusual for us. Last week we had a strong blow from the east, but we were in a huge bay with tons of room so there was no need for an anchor watch.
Most people give little concern to storms, you shut your doors and windows and go to sleep. Not so much on a sailboat in a remote anchorage in the Bahamas where there is no ambient light from civilization and aside from the few boats and fearless sailors who occupy this small anchorage we’re on our own.
Our current location has no inhabitants or settlements for at least 40 miles in any direction but south. There is a very small marina about five miles south of us. There is absolutely no light pollution and if the moon wasn’t so full I’m sure I would be able to see the milky way. I’m happy to have the moonlight though given the conditions.
Cruisers Brain
You might ask yourself why in the hell would we give up our great jobs, nice house and all of our possessions and comforts to live on a sailboat. We had a pretty nice life back on land. Especially when we have to occasionally keep an anchor watch, weather storms at sea, cross major currents like the Gulf Stream, spend hours looking for a wrench you dropped into an inaccessible part of the boat, and general crazy things that only boat people have to endure on a near daily basis? I think that’s a pretty valid question.
There are a lot of reasons, like all of the neat things we get to see and experience, but one of the main reasons is Cruisers Brain. This is a phenomenon where time slows to a crawl, or seems to, because you are using the active part of your brain on a nearly constant basis. Let me try to explain.
Do you ever go to work and after you get there you don’t really remember the drive into the office? You don’t remember getting on the freeway, stopping for red lights, turning right or left, you just magically just showed up to work. This is because you are using the passive part of your brain to negotiate a course that you’ve probably driven thousands of times. The brain is a very efficient organ and can kind of put itself on autopilot so to speak. The brain actually uses a lot of calories to think through problems and new scenarios. So anything the brain can kind of put on autopilot it does, to save calories and be efficient.
Conversely, when you go on a vacation that is completely different to your normal daily routine, and you have to think a lot, maybe you’re going on excursions or doing a lot of things you don’t normally do in life and you’re putting yourself in situations that are not normal to you. At the end of the vacation it seems like you’ve been gone for a long time, but it’s only been a week. This is because you’ve been engaging the active part of your brain doing things that are not part of your daily or weekly life.
Out here navigation through unfamiliar reefs and channels, trying to figure out where to go next, planning passages, looking at weather routing, finding a safe anchorage, hiking, diving, boat maintenance, finding groceries and fuel and everything else we need to keep Wild Rose afloat takes an incredible amount of active thinking. Nearly every day brings a new set of problems to solve. So even though we only left the dock less than two months ago, it seems like we’ve been gone for a year. I have to remind myself we’ve only been in the Bahamas for a month, it seems like we’ve been here for ages.
I absolutely love the challenges of cruising, every day is completely different. Sometimes it is overwhelming and there are hair raising moments. We could probably do with fewer of those, but the reward is immense.
Cruising Community
We try to be as self sufficient out here as possible. We carry spares for most major systems as well as service kits, tools, stuff to fix electronics, reference manuals, etc. That said, most sailors have been in a predicament, or several, where they have needed help from other sailors. This happened to us last week when we were at the dinghy dock trying to come back from a grocery run into town at Rock Sound, Eleuthera. I pulled the cord for the dinghy motor and it never went back to it’s original position. Needless to say, we weren’t going to be able to start it. We were about a mile down wind from Wild Rose and it was blowing 20+ knots. Nancy managed to flag down the closest boat in the anchorage and a very nice Army Vet came to our rescue and towed us back to Wild Rose. The engine problem was a very small issue that took only a few minutes and a 10 mm wrench to fix, but I didn’t have a 10mm wrench with me at the time.
The same day we ran into a couple of sailors form s/v Sacagawea near the grocery store who were asking about o-rings. They ran into the right people, because we carry a couple hundred o-rings of various sizes on board for general maintenance as well as o-rings for scuba gear maintenance. They came over later in the afternoon after they had no luck at the local hardware store. We were happy to help out.
There is a constant ebb and flow of helping other sailors in need and getting help yourself. I’ve towed other people to shore or back to their boats in the past, and I’m sure we’ll be in that situation again. Just the other day I had to jump on to another boat who was having a heck of a time anchoring, they are new to using a windlass, so I offered to help them get a good anchor set prior to a coming storm. It is a great community to be a part of.
Solar and Lithium
Aboard Wild Rose we have most of the conveniences you would have in your home. We run our computers, charge cell phones and tablets, have a microwave, and clothes washing machine, etc. All of this takes electricity. There are several ways to make electricity aboard a boat. We outfitted Wild Rose with a diesel generator from the factory and the boat came with 550 amp hours of AGM batteries.
This setup was fine when we weren’t living aboard, but once we moved aboard we knew this was not going to be the system we wanted. We were running the generator for about 4 hours a day to charge up the batteries. At about a gallon of diesel per hour, that can add up quickly, especially when diesel is $6 a gallon in the Bahamas. So we added about 1500 watts of solar on an arch on the back about a year ago.
This summer a stray current from a close lightning strike took out our battery bank. So we upgraded to lithium batteries and went from 550 amp hours to 850 amp hours. These two upgrades allowed us to decrease our generator usage by about 80 percent so far. As a matter of fact, we’ve only run the generator for an hour for battery charging purposes over the past two weeks.
We aren’t in the tropics yet, and it’s winter in the North Atlantic, so I expect when we get further south we’ll be taking in even more solar power. We will always run the generator when we are doing laundry and filling scuba tanks, hopefully the additions of solar and lithium will allow us to minimize generator usage and be less reliant on diesel fuel.
Where are We Going?
Currently we are sitting at anchor in Black Point, Great Guana Cay, Exumas. We are working our way south to Georgetown on Great Exuma Island, hopefully in the next week or so. Then from there we have no plans. We will likely be in the Bahamas until mid to late March, then hopefully head to the Virgin Islands via the I-65 Route. More on that in a future Ship Log.
We need to be in Grenadian waters by July for insurance purposes as well as hauling Wild Rose out for bottom paint, servicing of the saildrives and other maintenance.
Ship Log
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