I’m back at the Chub Cay Laundry washing the last of our salty stuff.

We enjoyed our first night at the Chub Cay Marina so much, we decided to stay another night ($2.75/ft – ouch! – but it was worth it).

We’re feeling well rested again, so I’ll tell you about our Bahamas experience so far.

Miami, Florida to Chub Cay, Bahamas (08-Dec-2012 to 12-Dec-2012)

We left Miami at 3:30am, an hour and a half later than we had hoped. It always takes us longer to finish boat jobs than we expect because nothin’s easy. It was quite rough leaving; the wind was right on the nose, and the seas were confused. It was tiring, but after the sun came up, we felt a bit better. It’s easier to take the waves when you can see them coming.

We kept on track fairly well, but it took longer than we expected to cross. We arrived in Bimini around 3 pm. The water was clear and beautiful! We were very happy to be there. Tired, kinda queasy, but very happy. We anchored just north of the Bimini Big Game Club in about 8 feet of water. We put the boat back together, rinsed the salt off ourselves and the cockpit, and generally tidied up. Phill went to shore to try to clear into customs, but the office was closed (it was supposed to be open until 7:30 pm, but they were closed). Not a big problem, except that we were hoping to leave early the next morning.

We slept like babies and didn’t wake up until 8. We had plans to get a move on, so Phill went back to customs and cleared us in. The cost associated with clearing into the Bahamas is $150, which also gets you a fishing license. By the time this was all done, and the dinghy was back on board and secured it was about 10:30am.

We start to get ready to weigh anchor, turn on the instruments and the depth sounder says 3.9 feet!!! We were aground and there was no motoring off. We must have swung over shallow water then the tide went out. It was apparent that our neighbour was also in the same situation (his boat was even tilted over). We raised the main sail to try to heel over and motor off, but no luck. Then we set a kedge where the deep water was, tried again, and success! We were able to get unstuck and get going.

We re-anchored in deeper water and Phill dinghied over to the other stuck boat to see if he could give them a hand. They were appreciative, but thought they could do it themselves. We get the dinghy back on board and are finally ready to get going – unfortunately by now it was after noon.

We were aiming to anchor near Mackay Shoal (in the middle of the Great Bahama Bank, no land in sight), and we managed to get there around 7:30 pm (later then we hoped and it was good ‘n dark). It was a great sail, though. Lots of fun and after the sun went down, the stars were spectacular! It is a bit scary sailing at night in 20 feet of water, but it all went well and we anchored almost exactly where we’d planned.

It was a little rough (which meant the boat moved at anchor) so neither of us slept very well, but we were up early the next morning anyway so we could make it to Chub Cay in the daylight.

We fished along the way, using the gear that Craig from Over and Under Adventures in Southport, NC set us up with (he and his wife Elaine were great by the way; I’ve been meaning to do a post about them for a long time). A big fish snapped off our one and only blue water lure – we’re not sure what it was, but it looked to be a couple of feet long and silver in colour.  We used some lures the Hamiltons gave us and caught two fish, but managed to land only one of them. I guess we need a fish net – we lost the other fish (which was bigger) just as we were trying to get him on the boat. Phill cleaned & filleted the fish we managed to keep while we were underway, which was tricky because the boat was moving a lot.

We sailed our little tails off all day, but didn’t manage to get to Chub Cay before the sun went down.

It is not advisable to make your way into an unfamiliar anchorage in the Bahamas at night. You generally need good light to see hazards (sand bars, coral, etc) – “visual piloting required!”. We proceeded into Chub Cay despite the dark because we had a good waypoint at the mouth of the channel, and the channel itself was lit by a green and a red (sort of).

So we lower the sails, and start to motor towards the entrance channel…then the engine dies! Ugh! It was dark, and it was rough, and we’d just taken our sails down, and we had no engine. Adrift at night trying to enter an unfamiliar Bahamian anchorage. Bad scenario. Very bad. This is the dash of terror I mentioned in the last post.

We were in 20 feet of water so we get the anchor out quickly; thankfully it set well. Phill starts looking into what’s going on with the engine, which is no small task in a bucking boat. The fuel gauge says half a tank. We knew to be suspicious of it at a quarter tank, but surely not when it reads half? It must be something else!? Phill checks the fuel filter/water separator anyways, and sure enough, we’re out of fuel. It was a relief, actually, because we could fix that lickety-split. Phill gets one of our extra diesel jerrycans and deposits the 5 gallons into the tank, and re-starts the engine. It fired up again with no problems. What a relief!

We record our engine hours quite religiously, so now we’ll start doing the fuel consumption math and ignore the stupid gauge.

Back on track, we motor into the Chub Cay anchorage, “drop the hook”, and try to decompress. With the wind and swell that night, it was very, very uncomfortable. I had one of those nights where I wasn’t sure if I’d actually slept at all. To be honest, it was miserable.

I felt seasick the next morning and wasn’t movin’ too fast. We called the Chub Cay marina to see about some fuel, water, and maybe a mooring. One of our guide books said they had moorings…we were really hoping so, because our weather forecast suggested we stay put until Thursday. Another night, let alone two, in the rolly-polly anchorage did not sound good at all, so I was really, really looking forward to arranging something better.

And arrange something better we did!

We enter the very well protected harbour (the water was flat despite the high winds) and got fuel and water (incidentally, diesel costs $6.35/gallon here). I ask the very friendly dock master about the moorings, and there aren’t any. I was heart-broken. It’s a pretty swanky marina (lots of big, expensive sport fishers and a few maga-yachts are all I see docked), but I ask what their rates are anyways. $2.75/foot. SOLD! Not cheap, but we’re stayin’ anyways. We were going to stay one night, then anchor out Wednesday, and get moving again Thursday.

We get to our slip and are so happy. The boat isn’t moving! We’re not getting thrown around! Oh joy! We were in great moods. We cleaned up the boat, I went to do some laundry where I did the Florida post and Phill changed the engine oil (which is a big, messy job by the way – not holding tank messy, but not fun, and it’s something that has to be done every 100 engine hours).

So we’re at the Chub Cay marina, part of the Chub Cay Club, which is apparently in receivership. The marina itself is complete, but the rest of the resort is in various stages of construction.

The tiki bar was unstaffed, but as guests at the marina, we were welcome to use the facilities. There was no one there but us.

It wasn’t long after this picture that we were back on the boat, asleep. Not enough shut-eye the night before. We got up this morning and took our coffees to the beach. There were about four boats in the rolly-polly anchorage we were supposed to go back to after checking out today. It still looked very uncomfortable, so we decided to splurge on another night in the marina. We have a couple of big days of moving coming up so we need a good sleep tonight.

So that’s our Bahamas experience in a nutshell. Before I sign off, I’ll show you a bit more of Chub Cay…

We’re headed to New Providence tomorrow (where the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau is located). Ideally, we’d like to get to Rose Island, which is to the east of Nassau, but we’ll see how we do. No more entering harbours at night!

Hope all is well at home…’til the next WiFi…