Squally Staniel Cay

Yesterday nephew Zachary left us and flew off to the second part of his winter break. Instead of being crammed aboard Cupcake with the four of us, he will now spend a week with 6,000 of his closest friends aboard a massive cruise ship departing from Florida, headed to the Caribbean.

We envy him the time he spends with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Also the hot showers and fresh fruit. But we are not so sure about the rest of the cruise experience. His boat will have almost as many people aboard as our home town, Freeport, Maine.

In any event, Simon and I took Zachary in Mr. Flowerpot to get him to the airport on time. Along the way we braved 20+ knot winds and white capped seas. With luggage, bags of trash, and the three of us in the dinghy, we decided it made sense to leave the girls back on the mother ship.

The Staniel Cay airport is a trip. The “terminal” is pretty much a worn out covered picnic pavilion. There is no security. Simon asked me if it was like air travel pre-9/11 and he is correct. Airport vehicles were all golf carts. The planes looked like they were built by a 7-year old using LEGOs. 

We pulled the dinghy up to a dock conveniently located about 100 yards from the airstrip. As the boys were tying us up, some people we met in Highbourne Cay came hustling down the dock looking hassled. They told us all flights were cancelled for the day because of high winds and they had to go to the next island to catch a flight back to the US. I asked how they were getting to Black Point and they said by dinghy. Yikes. In Mr. Flowerpot it was a bouncy, windy, wet ride from the anchorage a mile away. Zachary was reluctant to get back in the dinghy for the 10 minute ride from where we had lunch to the airport. Didn’t want to get soaked again. (Also, in the US it would definitely have been a Small Craft Advisory kind of day. (Landlubbers: since Cupcake qualifies as a small craft, little Mr. Flowerpot definitely does.))

The boys hustled to the airport office to get the full scoop (the office is less organized than the main lodge at summer camp on registration day) and found out only one of the two carriers cancelled flights. Zachary was good to go. He had mixed feeling about that turn of events. 

We watched a few planes land and a couple more take off. When landing, the planes would hit the tarmac with a chirp of tires, jounce into the air again, and then land with another chirp and wiggle. The ones taking off would jolt into the air, then get hit by a gust and bounce down with a surprising lurch and chirp of tires, then lunge aloft for good. Simon showed no compassion for his already-nervous cousin and made all manner of dark predictions. Unfortunately we didn’t bring the camera. If we had, we would definitely have taken a photo of the kickstand the pilot put in place as soon as the little craft landed. It was a pole that held up the back of the plane and kept the aircraft from tipping up onto its tail as the passengers got off and the weight shifted. Sketchy. And really funny to those of us traveling by boat.

Zachary’s plane took of on time with no issues, stopped at Congo Town on the island of Andros, then landed in Fort Lauderdale a full hour ahead of schedule thanks to pretty brisk tail winds the whole way.

Here’s a confession (not a dirty little secret): two equipment-selection errors I made on this trip were not getting a bigger outboard for the dinghy and not getting a higher-capacity water maker. I chose a 5hp outboard because it is light and doesn’t have an external gas tank. Turns out the weight is not an issue because we use a block and tackle/hoist to get the engine on and off Cupcake. And my external tank hangup is silly since we always travel with a spare gallon of fuel in the dinghy. Should have gotten an engine of at least 9hp. 15hp would have been even better. (Guests are welcome to bring us either size engine when visiting.)

Our loyal Mr. Flowerpot.

And the water maker works great when we run it all day while motoring or in full sunlight, but this week in particular, we could use higher output since our consumption has been significantly greater than usual. Unfortunately, with the cloudy skies above and extra people aboard, we’ve had to run the engine daily to generate electricity while we run the water maker. We make water out of electricity. And without the sun, we need to make electricity out of diesel. That fourth solar panel we had no room for last summer seems like something we could work into our repertoire these days. Ah well.

Yesterday evening we visited and had drinks with Ungava a 45’ Beneteau we’ve been seeing off and on since northern Florida. The boat is nearly brand new and comes with a manufacturer’s warranty. The warranty on Cupcake, a 32 year old boat, works like this: Ellen says, “Don, the ____ broke. When are you going to fix it?” (Don is the name Ellen uses for me when I am in maintenance mode. We started the tradition when we were visiting our friends Tom and Delwyn aboard their lovely boat Mahalo in Guadeloupe a few years ago. Tom was complaining about the maintenance a boat requires and said his wife Delwyn didn’t even bother to learn his name, that she just said things like “Oh Tim, the head is clogged, would you take care of it while I go ashore for baguettes?” And “Oh Tim, the outboard is acting funny. When you’ve fixed the head, have a look at it will you?” (Tom and Delwyn will be visiting in a few weeks and we can’t wait to host them.)

Today we relaxed, read, and waited for the winds to drop out of the mid-20s so we could go for a nice snorkel. When I was fussing with laundry drying on the lines this morning I saw a shark cruise under the boat. Not sure if it was a friendly nurse shark or a hungry bull shark. Going to pretend it was definitely a nurse shark.

We checked out a nearby cave in the limestone along the shore, saw some fishies, then swam to a nearby beach where a bunch of cruisers were hanging around. Sent Simon back to Cupcake to fetch us some Coronas. Kids, dogs, beer, sand, sun…pretty good stuff.

Met a 25 year old ex-police officer from New Hampshire who quit his job, sold his house, bought a 43’ catamaran, and sailed away with his wife, two kids, dog, and a buddy. (The boat is big enough that the buddy gets his own hull, not just his own room.) I explained to Simon that I liked every part of that story except the “wife and two kids by 25” part.

Yesterday Ellen baked two loaves of bread and put together an antipasto plate for dinner. Tonight it’s lamb stew with potatoes. Moss is maintaining her mood with a stop-gap snack of miso soup. Tomorrow I am going to try very hard to catch a fish or lobster for dinner.

A pair of southern stingrays (dasyatis americana) lurking in the sand. Check out what are probably sharksuckers (echenesis naucrates) attached to each one. The rays are probably at least 3’ across.

Queen angelfish (holacanthus ciliaris) and maybe some kind of gobie (gobiidae). We don’t love our little digital camera above the water because it takes very dark pictures. But underwater it does great.

Cute Ellen taking time for a selfie while patching Simon’s favorite pair of jeans.

Staniel Cay

It’s all about the weather. As you know, every day (except Sunday) Ellen and I wake up at 6:30am to listen to the shortwave weather broadcast for the Bahamas. We even take notes. Moss generally joins us and does a remarkable job keeping quiet during the broadcast. Keeping quiet is not one of her strengths.

And the weather has been crazy lately. First we had a string of nasty cold fronts, pretty much from just after Thanksgiving until late last week. Now we are getting really brisk winds out of the east. East winds are our favorites in the Bahamas these days because the better weather protection in the Exumas is found on the west side (leeward side) of the islands. 

Today we are in an extremely protected anchorage just north of Staniel Cay. The anchorage is called Big Majors Spot (we don’t know why). Although the wind is really howling now (20s gusting to 30) we don’t feel much of it because we are snuggled right up against the island and it blocks the wind. No waves to speak of here either (except during the day when the jet skis and wakeboarders come by). So it is a very safe, restful spot. Best place at anchor since we left the US. (Great and Little Harbour were calm, but neither was ideal for a host of reasons.)

Voodoo catamaran in a sand castle anchorage.

After leaving the marina a few days ago, we headed to Shroud Cay – a favorite of Simon’s from our last trip. Although the anchorage was flat out awful (once again we took a recommendation from a catamaran) the island was magical. We took faithful Mr. Flowerpot across the island on a river through the mangroves. We emerged at the most beautiful beach we have seen since the last most beautiful beach. The current the falling tide made as it churned through the river and emptied into the ocean was formidable. The boys and I jumped in and rode the current around a rocky outcropping and then swam ashore to the sand. Over and over again. Climbed to the top of the little island to see the magnificent view. Built voodoo-catamarans and cast them into the sea. Had a wonderful time. Then we hightailed it to Hawksbill Cay where we met a kid boat (Magnolia) and had a much less rocky night anchored in the lee of the island. (Landlubbers: I use “island” and “cay” interchangeably when I talk about the landmasses, but I use “Cay” when it is the proper name of the spot. I don’t know if there is a real difference and I don’t know why some of the islands of the Bahamas are called cays and some are called islands.)

Sacrificing the voodoo catamaran to the malestrom.

View of the mangroves at Shroud Cay.

Yesterday we sailed from Hawksbill Cay, intending to get to Cambridge Cay for the night. But once we got moving we realized that with a forecast that the weather would only get more fierce over the coming days, it made sense to get to the Staniel Cay area as swiftly as we could. So we altered course and got down here by early afternoon. 

It was quite a sail. We saw winds building into the low 20 knot range. Cupcake likes a good breeze, but when the gusts started climbing into the 30s and then the squally rain and cloudy fog came along, it became a little less fun. For over an hour we even had the radar running so I could keep an eye on other boats around us because we weren’t the only idiots out on the water. 

Fortunately, with the islands to our east blocking the bulk of the seas, although we were in whitecaps all day, the waves weren’t any bigger than 2’ or so. We still took plenty of water over the bow, into the cockpit, all over.

But this time the anchor was not dragging in the water so we were able to make good speed. It was a vigorous ride down. At about the two-hour mark I stopped enjoying myself. The funny thing is that as soon as we got to our destination, set the anchor, and realized we were safe and sound, the unpleasantness of the first part of the day melted away. Took a nice hot shower and that really did the trick. (Speaking of showers, my goodness but five people on the boat really blow through our water.)

This morning we had a delicious breakfast of Eggs in Purgatory (poached egg on a bed of grits, covered with marinara sauce). Then we all jumped in Mr. Flowerpot and headed the mile or so over bouncy seas to Thunderball Grotto. Got soaked, but we were going snorkeling anyway. (We watched the James Bond movie Thunderball the night before. What an awful movie that is. But part of it was filmed in the Exumas at the grotto, so it was actually historical research.)

The current was pretty fierce so Ellen and Moss passed on the swim in to the grotto. We will return at slack tide tomorrow or the next day or the next day. Our itinerary keeps us coming back to Staniel Cay over the next two months to pick up and drop off guests.

Thunderball Grotto is a remarkable place. At high tide this morning we needed to enter through an underwater passage. Coming up into the cave is a spectacular experience: the light is magical blue, colorful fish are schooling everywhere, and the sky peeks through a couple of holes in the top of the chamber. Really fabulous.

Inside Thunderball Grotto.

After the swimming we all went to Staniel Cay where Ellen was thrilled to learn trash disposal is free. Trash disposal is a critical concern aboard the boat. Trash storage and fresh food are the two limiting factors we face on a regular basis. Staniel Cay promises to solve both issues. Also, there’s a laundromat.

Trash is a particular issue today because there was some confusion among the guests as to how to use the composting head. When someone inadvertently pees in the poop bucket, the ensuing stench is truly epic. Ellen, the hero of this epic, just changed the compost bin so things are returning to normal, at least as far as odor is concerned, on Cupcake.

Ellen sees this as a picture of colorful bathing suits. I see it as a picture of our children showing their best side.

Riding the current at Shroud Cay.

Mountain goat.

Moss and Simon at Staniel Cay, 2012.

Moss and Simon at Staniel Cay, 2018.

Staniel Cay.

Lovely Ellen.

Guest bloggers

Hello everyone,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am cousin and nephew Zachary. Son of Jeffrey and Eileen Handelman. I hail from Niskayuna, NY, but study the University of Vermont. I use he/him pronouns, and my favorite flavor of ice-cream is mint cookie crumble from Stewarts. 

Simon and I met the Cupcake crew in Nassau on Tuesday. Since then, we’ve had some gorgeous days at Highbourne key. Uncle J. likes to remind us that Cupcake is the smallest large boat in the marina. 

Yesterday we toured a 45’ Morgan, but we were most interested in their Siamese cat named Bijou. The marina offers free bike rentals, so after our fill of cat time we went for a long bike ride around the island. After a day of hard work, we were treated to a delicious stir fry dinner. Simon and I aren’t allowed in the kitchen. No complaints here. Speaking of food, we watched Master and Commander a couple nights ago. As I write this post Simon is downloading the movie soundtrack so that Ellen can sing along. We’ve been listening to a lot of Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Simon on the Ukulele. Still no complaints here. 

OH I have big news for all of you! For those who are aware, the crew has an unhealthy fanaticism with the movie Water World. They are still fan boys at heart, but after some investigative work, I can confidently report that their interest in the movie is dwindling.

Today we set sail for Norman’s Key. Our goal is to catch a fish or some conch for Ellen to cook up. I hear its for sushi. Now I’ll let my little cousin Simon share his thoughts. 

I also flew into Nassau with my cousin Zachary the other day. He is right to say the subsequent days have been a joy. The crystal blue water, smooth sand beaches, and excellent cuisine are really making me reconsider my past impressions of the Bahamas. A thirteen year old boy is probably less well equipped to cope with copious amounts of family time than a college sophomore.

On an unrelated note, two days ago I bought my father a beer for the first time. Worry not dear reader, it was totally legal, if mind-bogglingly expensive ($8 per beer). We talked to the bartender who said the whole island is owned by one restaurant tycoon from Nassau. The staff work for six weeks, living on the island, then they get a week off to visit their families who are also often from Nassau. It seems on these islands everything eventually drifts back to Nassau.

It looks like Zachary filled you all in pretty well in terms of our itinerary. I’m sure you’ll hear a lot about us from my father and probably less from us directly. Until next time, enjoy the wifi good people of the Internet. 

-Simon 

*The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of Cupcake or her crew.*

Millennial Invasion

The Millennials have arrived. Hosting two big 20 year old galoots on board is not too different from having a pair of Labrador retrievers around: fun, cuddly, hungry, messy. Simon and cousin Zachary arrived yesterday.

We had time for a swim in the pool and then left the marina for a night at anchor just off cute little Fort Montague. The night started out smooth as glass, but by morning the wind was ruffling up a little chop from the east. Planning a breakfast underway, we raised anchor and made our way across the Yellow Banks, the shallow 30+ mile stretch of Bahamian plateau separating Nassau from the Exuma chain of islands.

We were able to sail about a third of the way before the wind both shifted and dropped, forcing us to motor the remainder of the trip. Now we are docked at Highbourne Cay because we are sheltering from what is predicted to be the fiercest norther of the season to date. 

The wind is supposed to clock from the east all the way around to the north over the next few days, blowing well into the 20 knot range with gusts that may hit the 40s. No thank you.

But today the weather was spectacular. As soon as we arrived and were securely tied to the dock we launched Mr. Flowerpot and took a ride to a beach for swimming and playing in the sand. There was a little reef and I suddenly remembered how exciting the hunt for lobsters can be. From now on, we take the pole spear with us, just in case.

Balcony House.

In the days before the boys arrived, the skeleton crew (Jonathan, Ellen, Moss) walked to the heart of touristy Nassau. Checked out the Straw Market where trinkets of every type are sold. We needed nothing and were informed by Ellen not to even think of bringing anything actually made of straw aboard. Dock Monsters, you understand, live in straw hats.

Ate some delicious gelato (there’s really no other kind) and got a tour of The Balcony House, the oldest house in town. It was built in the 1700s. Our tour guide was well-informed and gave us a good glimpse into how the well-off lived in Nassau hundreds of years ago. 

Megayacht.

Ellen and I just walked the docks here at the Highbourne Cay Marina to check out the nondescript 100’+ powerboat and the lovely 160’ sailboat docked at the big-boy dock. We also eyeballed the nine nurse sharks lounging in the water at the end of the dock where the sport fishers clean their catch and throw the guts into the water. 

Earlier today Ellen met our dock neighbors and was astonished when the woman chided the sharks for being “welfare queens” who don’t even go out and work for their living. “I earned everything I got.” Wow. That’s a world view for you.

Off on a snorkeling trip.

We have a lot of questions about this place.

“My address? Oh boy…”

Saw this interesting lineup at a funeral home. What’s that car on the left?

Nassau bridges. This place is no better at removing derelict boats than Florida.

These guys hang out at the end of the dock. Not one was less than 5’ long. Shark infested.

The Labradors are doing their push-ups on deck.

Me with my boy on the boom.

Zachary at the helm.

And nutty Ellen. See the food on her shirt. They are nuts. Nutty Ellen. Get it?

Grocery update

Who likes duck liver that much?

Yesterday we did some grocery shopping (“Krogering,” they call it in the Midwest) at the Fresh Market. This place is as big and nice as a typical high-end market in the US. We were astonished because there is nothing like it in Bimini or the Berries. There was nothing remotely like it when we were in Nassau in 2012. The march of progress!

Ready for Passover in Nassau. Maybe a little early, but all that Kosher for Passover food tastes stale even when it is fresh.

This installment will be lighter on words because, really, it’s just grocery shopping I’m describing. But I wanted to share some pictures of the unbelievable prices here. And pictures of the fantastic kosher section. It’s probably three times larger than anything in Maine (which, admittedly, is not saying much). But a kosher food section in Nassau? Who knew?

The other thing of note this morning is that we finally got shore power working. We do not carry a shore power cord to connect to the dock when we are at a marina.

The primary reason we don’t carry a cord is we were unwilling to sacrifice the storage space, reasoning we would seldom be at a dock anyway.

The other reason we don’t carry a cord is that we figured our solar panels would easily meet all our electrical needs. (And they certainly did this fall when we were stuck at the marina without shore power after Hurricane Florence. )

But now, less than a week before the winter solstice, it is dark and bitterly cold most of the day. The sun only peeks above the horizon for a few scant minutes before falling below the glacier again for another long night of us shivering with cold and terror as we listen to the Dire Wolves howling in the hills.

When we arrived, at first I was all bravado and told the dockmaster we needed no cord. Then I got realistic (after looking at the cloudy weather forecast) and asked to borrow a cord.

He provided us with one but it wouldn’t work. Dockmaster said the problem was likely on our end of things (as if anything mechanical or electrical fails to work on Cupcake). As a compromise, I agreed to use my multimeter to test if we were getting current through the marina’s sketchy, somewhat charred, a bit corroded power cord. 

When I put the meter probe into the hot wire slot on the power cord, I got a shock. (Not emotional, electrical.) The dockmaster laughed and said “see, the cord works, you are getting current.” Funny. But I shouldn’t have gotten a shock and shouldn’t have seen any current on my meter until I had the negative probe inserted too. I felt the thing had a grounding problem. Felt it in my hands, primarily.

They had a second 30amp power cord for us to try, but its ends were so burnt I wouldn’t even plug it into the boat.

Thirsty batteries. We typically see a tenth of that power on a sunny morning when we are charging on panels alone.

Anyway, we’ve been powerless since our arrival, but today I borrowed a clean, massive 50amp cord and a pigtail to adapt it to our system. Plugged it in and hooray, power! Electric toothbrushing for everyone! A victory for dental hygiene.

This is the non-shocking 50amp cable feeding us sweet nectar.

Cruising tip of the day: we use a Sharpie to write the contents of our canned goods on the lids. That way, when the cans are stored in the bilge, we can easily read what is inside each one. Also if (when) the labels fall off we will still know what we are getting. (Side note: the Fresh Market was so thoroughly air-conditioned that when we got the cans back to the boat, they were chilled and started to get wet with condensation. Moss and I needed to dry each can before we could write on it. Again, the things we suffer on board…)

This picture shows one reason why we will keep trying to catch our own fish.

Yikes. And our own turkeys, I suppose.

Here she is.

Nassau Harbour Club Marina

As soon as we awoke on Saturday, we upped anchor and headed the 18 miles to Nassau. That West Bay anchorage was intolerable, without a doubt the least comfortable spot we’ve stayed since the trip began in July. And we were held there two days by the weather!

That’s a big cruise ship.

The sail up to Nassau was uneventful. We tried fishing but again were unsuccessful in catching anything. When we approached Nassau we called Nassau Harbour Control on the VHF. They require all arriving boats to contact them so they can manage the cruise ship arrivals and departures. We were asked to stay outside the harbor entrance until a gigantic Celebrity cruise ship departed. This one had a massive water slide/water park on its back deck. 

The other non event (that is, aside from the fish we didn’t catch) on the trip up to Nassau was that the autopilot did not work. It seems to be well and truly dead. We have a few months before any long passages are planned so we have what feels like plenty of time to figure out our options. The best option may be to have one of our guests deliver a new linear drive to us when they head down for a visit this winter. In any event, the autopilot is not a concern for the here and now.

Mail boat returning to Nassau to pick up supplies for the out islands.

Freight docks at Nassau.

That’s a lot of cruise ships.

After assessing our options for anchorages around Nassau, we decided to stay at a marina. In part this decision was driven by our desire to have a decent night’s sleep (which we got). It was also driven by our desire to simplify our provisioning (there is a phenomenal grocery store across the street from the marina, and groceries are always easiest to load when we are at a decent dock). It was further driven by our desire to wash our clothing and sheets in an actual machine.

Fish market. Be glad this photo does not come with the smell.

This morning we walked to a coffee shop (which sounds so much more charming than the truth: it was a Starbucks) for what you would imagine. Then we wandered down to Fort Montague and the fish market. Fort Montague is teeny-tiny. Check out Moss jumping next to it. With some practice, she could easily scale the walls.

Moss storms Fort Montague.

Not a good spot for lunch, conchy conch notwithstanding.

Yum?

Spotted a stand called Conchy Conch Fritters. The stand was closed, we weren’t thinking about fritters early on a Sunday morning anyway. But when we walked behind the stand and saw the biohazard sign we decided to give the whole place a wide berth. Kind of the opposite situation from our lunch at Sammy’s on Bimini.

We also stopped in a pharmacy because Ellen’s current medical-paranoia is about swimmer’s ear. So she checked out the various palliatives available. While Chief Medical Officer was indulging her hypochondriac-tendencies and Moss was roaming the toy aisle, I looked for roach traps. Found none, which either means the place was sold out because of a roach-infestation or the dock monsters are not a problem down here. Rats, it seems, are an issue. We saw two dead, flat ones in the street. No rat traps needed, just a car.

Speaking of cars, we peered through the gate at the foot of the driveway of a house that was listed for sale and saw an unexpected sight: a Morgan and what looks like a Lotus. It appeared there was another Morgan hidden from view behind some trees. (Side note, if you want your daughter to grow up to be a dancer, those are two good names for you to choose. (Side note note: not a ballet dancer.))

A Morgan and a Lotus.

(Side note with disclaimer: this next bit is about cars. So all of you who, for some unfathomable reason, do not care so much about cars (how is that even possible?) here’s the TLDR: saw some neat cars, got excited about them. Spent lots of bandwidth figuring out what kind the red one is. For those of you who appreciate machinery, artistry, and tiny inconsequential mysteries, read on.

I initially thought the red car (which I am 87% sure is a Lotus Esprit S1 (designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro)) was a DeTomaso Pantera (designed by Marcello Gandini). But then I did a little web searching and quickly realized it was not a Pantera.

So what is it? Looks 1970s or early 1980s. Definitely a wedge supercar of some sort. But definitely not a Ferrari with those rectangular lights. Maserati? Lamborghini? What?

Then I thought a bit. It only has exhaust pipes on the starboard side. Most of the supercars would be V-8 or V-12 from that era. So who made a supercar with a smaller engine? Possibly Colin Chapman of “Simplify, then add lightness” fame. The Esprit came with, initially, a 2.0 l. four cylinder. (Later enlarged to 2.2 l. and later turbocharged. Later still there was a V-8 Esprit, but that’s beyond the scope of today’s discussion.)

Also, if a person already owns two Morgans, they are definitely a bit of a nut, specifically a British car nut. (What British car nut would complicate his or her life by adding an Italian headache to the fleet?) Thus the Lotus conjecture. Whew. That was exhausting. Before the Internet, I would have had to call the real estate agent to satisfy my curiosity. I still may, because if the house comes with the cars, it might be just the property for my brother to buy.)

Nassau beauty salon.

It’s no cupola, but it does seem close enough to a pergola.

Sad, lonely little sailor girl. Where are all the kid boats?

Selfie with the Nassau lighthouse in the background. She is not just beautiful and brave, she is also skilled at photo composition.

Dirty little secret

Here’s another dirty little secret for you. (And I feel comfortable confiding my dirty little secrets here on the Internets because I know I am among friends and Russian trolls. (Side note, years ago when the Internet was new, Ellen and I stumbled across the website for her private school alma mater. Her mother, my mother-in-law, Pinky, also graduated from The Winchester Thurston School for Wayward Girls. Anyway, dear old W-T was compiling a database of alums, so we filled out the form on Pinky’s behalf. In the section where it asked about hobbies, we entered “turtle collecting.” As far as we know, Pinky doesn’t collect turtles, but it was and remains a fun tidbit about her.)

(Have you noticed that occasionally I lose track of my parenthesis in my entertaining (and informative) side notes? (The trick, which I often forget to follow, is to count how many “(“ you use and make sure you have the same number of “)” by the time the thought is complete.))

Anyway, the dirty little secret for today is not about turtles or turtle collecting. Those are not dirty. And thanks to the Winchester Thurston website, they are not secrets either. No, the dirty little secret I am sharing today is that we seldom steer our boat. We leave that task to the autopilot (named Gloria for reasons I won’t go into here today because I loathe digressions).

About 80% of the time when we are underway, the autopilot holds the course. The only time we really hand-steer is at the start and end of a trip.

What this picture doesn’t show is how much the boat is rocking. All the positive reviews of this anchorage came from catamarans. They don’t rock and roll like monohulls.

Often I will engage the autopilot so I can do a little task like furl the sails or drink an iced tea, then I will take over driving again when I am properly hyrdated. Certainly yesterday when we sailed from the rolly, uncomfortable anchorage at Alder Cay, across the 10,000’ deep blue water of the Tongue of the Ocean to this rolly, gorgeous anchorage in West Bay on New Providence Island, the autopilot drove the whole way.

Well, not the whole way. I drove the last 12 miles or so. Why? Because the autopilot broke. Everyone’s autopilot breaks eventually and we knew this day was coming. For months now, the autopilot would occasionally bind a little bit after we turned it off. Didn’t know (and still don’t) if it’s a motor problem or a ball bearing problem (Fletch knows it’s all ball-bearings nowadays, but I’m not convinced). 

In the belly of the beast.

In any event, yesterday when I disengaged the autopilot at sea to hand steer for a few minutes so I could feel hard-core (the wind was up, the waves were up, it was a sporting day), the binding was pretty severe. When I tried to reengage the machine, it did nothing. No problem. It turns out a new unit is only something like $1,900 and would need to be shipped out here at great additional cost. Yikes.

So today Moss, Ellen, and I pulled the drive unit (a Raymarine Type 2S linear drive if anyone feels like sending us a gift) out of its spot in the bowels of the boat so we could take a look. After some exciting disassembly (exciting because it is always tons of fun to learn how things work) we determined that a) the bearings in the arm are probably binding a bit but there’s nothing we can do about that now and b) the electronic clutch mechanism had both come loose from its mooring and had developed a short circuit across its wires. 

Disassembly. And look at that 6-pack!

Autopilot back in its natural habitat. Yes, the black spots on the hoses are probably mold.

We insulated the wires and re-secured the clutch. So far the drive unit works. I am both pleased with the repair and concerned that the unit will fail some other way. Or the same way. But I’m not afraid of it any more. I know its secrets. 

Just like you know mine.

Now we are all going for a swim. 

Cruising tip of the day: don’t trust anchorage recommendations from catamaran sailors. This anchorage is rolly. How rolly? So rolly our electric toothbrush keeps falling out of the charger! The privations and discomforts we put up with are truly without number.

This cool customer is keeping her eye on the fishing lines we trolled behind us when we sailed deep water. She was full of bloodlust for a tuna. Didn’t catch one but we will try again tomorrow on our way to Nassau.

School of little fishies under the boat are periodically spooked by what may be a trumpet fish lurking nearby. When they get scared, lots of the little fish jump out of the water.

Sunset in West Bay, New Providence.

Selfie while identifying fish.

Delectable

Plenty of birthday surprises today, none of them were unpleasant. Woke up to find the wind had shifted out of the east and we were hanging just off of Pablo. No more Bahamian moor necessary. Our concerns that we would swing into shallow water were unfounded because the tide was up enough that we were in plenty deep water. Well, deep enough…a foot under the keel.

The first birthday surprise was the project. Ellen and Moss have been working hard to stencil a t-shirt for me. See the pictures and you will realize the second surprise: I was demoted to crew. Check out the selfie at the end of the post and you will see that Ellen promoted herself to Captain. The pressure is off me and I can now relax, responsibility-free in my golden years. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

While the Captain pulled in a little of the scope to keep us in the sweet spot until the tide was up enough for us to depart over the shallow flats, Moss and I took Mr. Flowerpot to retrieve Fortunata from her spot to the west. We could see the anchor mostly buried in the sand in about 4’ of water and pulled the anchor, chain, and line into the dinghy. 

(Landlubbers: rode is the chain/rope part of the anchor setup. Pablo is on a 200’ all-chain rode. G4 5/16” chain for the anchor-obsessed. Fortunata is on 35’ of chain and what looks like maybe 150’ of line. If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have doubled the length of the chain for that anchor before we left. I even have the chain, sitting in a bucket in the garage in Maine. Oh well.)

We left the anchorage on the rising tide and never saw less than 5.3’ on our way out. That’s less water than we like, but still more than we need. Bade farewell to Little Harbour Cay and sailed the short 2 1/2 mile course to Alder Cay where we are at anchor in a luxurious 9’ with literally miles of swinging room. The wind is out of the east so we are sheltering, mostly protected, in the lee of the cay. (Say that last bit out loud, it’s a rhyming couplet.) 

The spot is a little rolly, but we didn’t mind too much until I tried out my third surprise, a hammock. Relaxing in it as it hangs between headsail and mast will be a very comfortable activity in an anchorage with less motion. As it was today, the hammock was a little too active for my taste. The instructions say to hang the hammock, climb in, and relax. As you can see from the picture, Moss didn’t read the instructions and instead thought the hammock was a clubhouse. 

The vocabulary word of the day was “delectable” and last night’s dessert was the epitome. Ellen baked the most delectable apple pie she has ever created. The recipe called for taking the drippy sugary juice from the fresh apple filling and then caramelizing it on the stove before adding it back to the filling. The result was heavenly. So don’t panic, that’s not a fly on the crust (see my initials in the pie?) it is caramelized apple-deliciousness.

Tonight we are having shredded BBQ chicken on fresh-baked buns. And Gretchen’s chocolate lava cake for dessert (thanks again for the recipe, Gretchen). The last time Ellen made this cake on board, it was in 2012 for my mother’s birthday and the dessert tasted so good it made my mother hum.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time I’ve ever gone swimming in the ocean on my birthday. Although, to be honest, it was really not that hot of a day, the swimming was still delightful.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

I’ve been banished. Exiled to the forepeak. Two years before the mast. 

And it’s my own fault.

Back in Vero Beach I had a brilliant idea for a birthday present for Ellen. The problem with planning surprises on a 36’ boat is that there is not a lot of space for secrecy. So when we arrived in Vero and Ellen went to the Dockmaster’s Office to pay for the mooring and fuel, I quickly made a phone call to order the gift. Ellen came back too soon, saw me on the phone and heard me repeating the credit card number. She’s no dummy: the jig was up.

The issue here is we agreed, months before starting this trip, that we don’t have the organizational skills to choose, collect, and hide birthday, Groundhog Day, anniversary, Columbus Day, Flag Day, Black Friday, etc. gifts for the year. Far easier to say the adventure is the gift and leave it at that. (Side note: Moss is happy with a couple of cans of olives for her birthday. If we can also find some sea-glass for her collection, she ought to be more than satisfied.)

But years ago Ellen mentioned that the builder’s plate on Cupcake looked shabby. The plate is a cracked and warped piece of crummy 1980s plastic. (Landlubbers: a builder’s plate is pretty much what it sounds like – a plate with the boat manufacturer’s name embossed on it and the boat’s hull number stamped into it.) Our builder’s plate is mounted right at the companionway…the front door. Makes a bad impression. A shiny new one would help distract attention from Cupcake’s many other dings and scrapes.

For some reason, back in early November I remembered out of the blue that a company in Rhode Island makes reproduction builder’s plates in bronze. So what I was up to in Vero Beach was placing an order. The owner of Bristol Bronze is a big Pearson fan and a great old-boat guy. We had a nice conversation and I was assured the plate would be shipped to the in-law’s place in Florida well before our arrival there for Thanksgiving so I would have it in plenty of time before Ellen’s birthday in February. He was even going to stamp our number, 90, on the plate and include two shiny bronze screws for attaching the plate.

But the girls figured out I had a surprise up my sleeve and panicked about my birthday (which is tomorrow, incidentally). So they are putting together some surprise for me. They have been diligently working on it since we got to Hollywood, but need this morning and the space in the cabin to complete things. That’s why I am banished to the v-berth.

Adding insult to injury, the plate never arrived in Florida. When I called Bristol Bronze last week to ask what happened, the owner told me he would be mailing the plate out soon. I told him he missed the window of opportunity for Florida, that it needed to go to D.C. so Simon can bring it to us when he comes next week. “No problem” I was told. But he asked me to send an email order to him, just to be safe.

“No problem,” I said back. But to be sure there was no misunderstanding, in the email order I asked him to reply when he got the order and to make sure the plate was shipped to D.C. in time for arrival no later than the 17th of December. A day later he replied, “Your e-mail/order came through fine. I will get your Builder’s Plate out to your son in time for Christmas.” Argh! Emailed back that the 17th was the cut off, haven’t heard back.

The best laid plans…

Speaking of mice, we had a terrifying experience yesterday afternoon.

Sea biscuit.

Took Mr. Flowerpot out for a little exploration. Wanted to sound the depth of the channel we would be taking as we exit the super shallow Little Harbour anchorage when we depart (more on that topic in a minute). Also wanted to check out Lizard Cay and the ruins of a burned mansion reported to be on the cay. As we were getting out of the dinghy on the Lizard Cay beach, Ellen spotted an enormous cockroach IN THE DINGHY among our jumbled gear. I got the better of my fear and mashed the bug with a Croc. (Side note: Zoë, Crocs are truly the best, most versatile footwear under the sun.)

One of our two biggest fears has been realized. The first is lice, but that’s mostly an Ellen phobia. (It’s not mine. If you look at the picture I posted yesterday of me in the water with Moss it’s clear there’s a burgeoning bald spot and I may just shave my head soon anyway.)

The second phobia is dock monsters: cockroaches. We take extreme measures to keep bugs off the boat, so the big guy in the dinghy freaked us out. It’s unlikely any DMs are hiding aboard the mother ship though. Ellen cleaned the head yesterday morning and saw none. At the same time, I vacuumed the bilges and floors and washed the floors yesterday and saw none. But still. High alert.

On a more pleasant note, we did some of our finest work as cruisers this morning. The wind has shifted out of the WNW as predicted. It’s blowing hard and is actually kind of chilly. The plan was to depart the anchorage on this morning’s high tide, anchor down near Cabbage Cay for the day and night, then ride the NE wind down to Nassau tomorrow. Birthday sail on the deep blue sea!

Pathway to nowhere on Lizard Cay.

But the wind was so strong this morning, we weren’t sure we could raise the two anchors, turn the boat, and safely make our way out the very shallow water without some catastrophic mishap.

Cupcake anchored in some very thin water.

The excellent cruiser work? We scuttled the plan to move and decided to stick here in the Berries until later in the week. Our schedule has the unfortunate feature of an actual time commitment: we need to pick the boys up at Nassau on the afternoon of December 18th. But we’ve baked in so much extra time there is room to change plans to keep us safe and sound.

So today we will pass the time reading, napping, making water and electricity, and perhaps fixing the odd thing or two.

Our revised schedule gives us space for at least another day or two in the Berries. Tomorrow morning the wind is predicted to be much more mild. We will take the opportunity to up anchor in the calm winds and then sail maybe five miles south and check out Alder Cay. The guidebook says the snorkeling at that anchorage is sublime. That sounds like a fine way to spend my 51st birthday.

Look at the long legs on that little mermaid!

Saw this strange mound in the foundation of the burned house. Any idea what it is? Termites? Aliens?

A little blurry, a little nutty, a little unwashed, here’s Ellie about to bake an apple pie. She made a delicious pepperoni pizza for dinner last night. The pie is just a warm-up for birthday cake tomorrow. We are fortunate to have an Ellen aboard.

Little Harbour Cay

Well, it has been a pretty eventful few days. We decided to head south from Great Harbor Cay to experience more of the Berries and to get out of that busy metropolitan environment. After all, we are country mice at heart.

The problem we made for ourselves was that a series of cold fronts are moving through the Bahamas and we needed to find an anchorage with protection from all directions and enough depth for Cupcake with her modest 4’ 6” draft. Not such an easy task in the Berries. (Don’t forget that we were in an anchorage with 360 degree protection and enough depth. The holding wasn’t ideal, however, and we got a little antsy.)

(Landlubbers: holding is what we say when we are talking about how good the bottom of an anchorage is for an anchor to grab. Some kinds of sand are great, some are less great. Grass is generally lousy. Rock is pretty awful. Mud is usually wonderful but almost always messy and sometimes awful. A great bottom can be ruined if there’s too much junk down there. (Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about old chains and cinderblocks and stuff like that). Also, a cold front down here is not really cold…maybe the temperature will drop from the low 80s to the low to mid 70s. The real issue is the wind. It blows much harder than usual from all the points of the compass (but not all at once, of course).) 

For this series of fronts, we left Great Harbour Cay when the winds were predicted to be in the high teens from the east. Instead we found winds in the low 20s from the ESE. The reason that difference matters is that we were sailing south, so wind which was more east and less south would have made for better sailing. We had to go about 12 miles north then east before we could head south. Once we got to the outside of the protection of Stirrup Cay and Great Harbour Cay the waves were big and the wind was bigger. The sail down was lively and wet. Some crew members were more nervous than they would have preferred. We think we all need to toughen up and remember that this is what sailing on the open ocean is like. I don’t mean to sound like a martinet, I mean that we all have gotten a little complacent and comfortable, but this adventure of ours is not always rainbows and unicorns. To get the rainbows, sometimes we need to enjoy the challenges.

Check out how the dried salt on deck reflects the light of the camera flash. Our last two sails were pretty wet ones and when the seawater dried, the boat was left coated with salt. It rained early this morning so things are a little cleaner today.

We dropped anchor off tiny Fowl Cay between Hoffmans Cay and Devils Cay. There were about six other boats in the anchorage, all had made the same travel decision we did because the weather is predicted to deteriorate as the week progresses. We all needed to get somewhere safe from the strong west winds that were coming.

When Ellen and I dove on the anchor, it was clearly it not well set. (Landlubbers, a well set anchor is one that is buried in the bottom. Most of the time we don’t have the luxury of diving to take a look at the anchor, so we spend the night hoping for the best. In the Bahamas where the water is clear and warm and the depths at which we anchor are shallow, we dive pretty much every time.) Our pal Pablo was just caught on a piece of limestone at 15’, not dug into anything because the holding was lousy…it’s called a scoured bottom when the currents wash out all the sand and leave just the limestone bedrock behind.

So we (Ellen) hauled the anchor up and we moved to a sandy patch (we could tell it was a sandy patch because we could see the bottom was a more blue-white than grey-white…we are still refining our bottom-reading-skills). I dove on the anchor and it was set really well, but we were too close to a shallow spot. So up the anchor came again. The third time we backed on the anchor (landlubbers: backing on the anchor is when we put the boat into reverse after the anchor is down on the bottom and the chain is paid out. Reversing the boat pulls, gently, on the anchor and encourages it to set) we could feel it skittering over the rock, catching and then releasing. Suddenly it grabbed with such tenacity that it nearly knocked me off my feet. Well. Set.

I was too cold (and, frankly, demoralized) to dive on it again so Ellen did. She said that enough of Pablo’s point had dug into the bottom that we were hooked well enough for the night. But we were a little uncertain about long-term holding.

One of the reasons I was demoralized is that on the sail down, we couldn’t figure out why our speed wasn’t higher, given the strong wind we had. We also though we had a problem with the autopilot because it couldn’t steer straight, rather it kept veering to starboard. (Landlubbers, port is left…each word has four letters.) Turns out the shiny new chain stopper failed for some reason and so did the safety line Ellen ties to the anchor to keep it from jumping out of its place. So we sailed the whole way with Pablo dragging in the sea from 25’ of chain. We are extremely fortunate we didn’t lose all the chain and anchor, we are extremely fortunate Pablo didn’t hook on anything along the way, we are extremely fortunate Pablo didn’t hit the propeller or rudder. Yikes. Anyway, we are reassessing how we secure the anchor.

After speaking with a sailor at Fowl Cay, we learned we would be able to sneak Cupcake into the shallow, narrow, but very protected harbor at Little Harbour Cay. Bill (the sailor) offered to guide us in at high tide the next morning. So Ellen, Moss, and I woke up with the sun to catch the rising tide at Little Harbour Cay. Bill was there to meet us in his dinghy and he guided us in to what we though was a deep enough spot. At high tide, the route in to the anchorage brought us over some very skinny water. We saw some 5’6” spots. No big deal for our draft until you remember the tide would fall 3’ in another few hours. (Turns out, that 3’ tide was the biggest for a month. Getting out later in the week may be a little tricky.)

We hooked Pablo well, dove on the anchor, checked the depths around the boat and felt mostly good about it. Then we joined Bill for a tour of his boat and a walk on the island.

We have been asking people, “if you had a parrot, what phrase would it repeat because it hears it so much on your boat?” On Cupcake the parrot would say “I farted.”

Bill said his parrot says “Daddy.” Because he has a parrot. So we got to meet our first parrot of the trip. (Landlubbers and everyone else: if you have a bird on your boat, don’t let it fly around wherever it wants. Birds poop EVERYWHERE!”) Bill is a solo-sailor, if you hadn’t guessed.

We got back from our afternoon to find Cupcake hard aground. Hard. Aground. She was about 6” short on water. We dug out a trough so her rudder was free and then just waited for the tide to come in. And we kind of panicked about where we would move her because two groundings a day for several days was out of the question.

Taking Mr. Flowerpot we scoped out a deep spot a quarter mile away. After another fairly sleepless night, we woke up Sunday morning and moved with the rising tide to a spot that gives us about a 12” margin at low tide. But because the deep spot is so tiny, we needed to do some pretty tricky anchoring to ensure Cupcake stays in the safe spot.

We are hanging on what’s called a Bahamian moor. Pablo is set to the south to hold us in place as the wind blows from that direction. The second anchor (which Moss named Fortunata) is set to the west to hold us when the wind begins blowing from there. We have a third line running to some old mooring junk on the bottom, holding us against the south-flowing outgoing tide.

When we leave this anchorage, we will need to do so on a rising, nearly full tide. That’s stressful stuff. But as we just discussed with Moss, it is making us better, braver, tougher sailors. It will also make the wifi and hot showers we anticipate in Nassau when we pick up Simon and Zachary that much more of a treat.

Saturday night we joined Eyra and Charisma and Delta Phase at Flo’s Conch Shack for dinner. The company was excellent, the food was good enough. Traditional Bahamian fare seems to be mediocre, fried, and expensive. The beer was $6/bottle! I will stick with the culinary treats on Cupcake, thank you.

We’ve been doing a ton of swimming, saw a bunch of stingrays and sea turtles all day. Those turtles are speedy quick.

Now that we have our anchor setup squared away, we enjoyed our first good night’s sleep in a few days. Tuesday we think we will move out of Little Harbour on the high tide then anchor in the reasonably protected area near the harbor entrance until Wednesday when we will attempt the sail to Nassau. In the meantime we get to relax today and enjoy all our hard work. There are a few little beaches that need investigating.

There’s no wifi here and the cell connection is tenuous, so pictures in quantity will have to wait until Nassau. In the entire Berries island chain there are only two cell phone towers. One is on Great Harbour Cay and the other is on Chubb Cay. Right now we are centered between the two in a nearly dead zone. We are, however, close enough to Chubb Cay to pick up VHF radio traffic. It’s just garbled enough that we think “Chubb Cay, Chubb Cay, the is the vessel Knotty Boy” is actually someone hailing Cupcake.

Sunset Sunday evening.

Cruising tip of the day: learn the difference between windward and leeward, particularly when you are tossing a bowl of dried oatmeal overboard. Moss might have more to say about this issue in her next blog post.

Ellie’s selfie.