We awoke at 7:15 am, we have to walk to the grocery store early. Strangely, I did not get a very good nights sleep, the marina was too calm and too quiet. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? It seems that my body and my mind has become accustom to the ‘movement of the sea’, that’s my new normal. We headed to the store at 7:30 am, the walk took us through some interesting neighborhoods along our 10-minute trip. The Bahamas are ripe with contrasts… huge, shinny mountainous cruise ships sharing the same harbor with a 6-foot skiff made out of ¼” unpainted non-marine used plywood stitched together with clothesline, the inside being barely big enough for the old Bahamian occupant, the vessel’s captain. When you arrive in Nassau harbor the homes on Paradise Island look like any multi-million-dollar waterfront home you would see in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale, compare that to the shanty style housing we saw while walking to the grocery store in Hill Top. This all seems ‘Bahama Normal’ until you remind yourself, that this is the capital of the country. One has to pause…
The grocery store is called Super Value, it is associated with Maxwell’s in Marsh Harbor and if you remember my trip to the Abacos, I talked about Maxwell’s, it is as close as you get to an American style grocery store, Super Value is the same; selection is somewhat limited and pricing is normally about 10% – 15% higher then in the US for most things (which isn’t bad at all). Then you get to the crazy pricing, a 6 oz single strip steak $27.95 or a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke $4.99. I’m drinking ice tea. There wasn’t a single chicken breast in the meat department, there was every other cut of chicken… I’m guessing the breasts go to the cruise ship galleys. Shopping done; we called a taxi cab to take us back to the marina. It was going to be 20 minutes and while Sarah waited outside for the taxi, I went to the auto parts store, I wanted 2 or 3 gallons of SAE 30 oil and a few oil filters, but all they had was 4 single quart bottles of oil and 1 filter. The taxi took us to the boat, we stowed everything and now comes one of the thrilling moments of any sailor’s day, leaving the slip with every weather element working against you…
First thing to understand is that backing up a monohull sailboat is kind of like trying to back up a rectangular brick, going straight back is damn near impossible, the bow wants to swing one way or the other, and wants to do it with great speed at the absolute worst time. Also the new trend at marinas is to have huge slips so that Big Ass Catamarans can use up both sides of the slip, but when you put 2 skinny ass (by comparison) monohulls like mine in one slip, one is fastened to one side and the other is fastened to the opposite side with absolutely nothing in between the two boats to stop one for floating into the other. What could possibly go wrong?
My slip at the marina ran east to west, the wind was coming from the north and the current was running in (to the west), what all this means is that once the boat is untied, the wind will want to push my boat into the other boat in the slip, the current will want to push the boat into the dock or if the boat is out of the slip it will want to push it into the other boats in the other slips. The boat will have to back up (remember how easy a sailboat is to back up) into the current to take it out of the slip. Of all the things I have to do on the boat this is the thing I dreg the most, in my life there have been a dozen or more near-misses. Oh well, I stopped at the marina office and asked the dock hand to help me get ‘off’ the dock. I mentioned in passing ‘sailboat don’t backup very easy’, he says in the clearest Bahamian accent I’ve heard since being here… ‘Ya, we found dat out yesterday mon’, oh great, a disaster yesterday, can’t wait to see what is said about our departure. We get to the boat, I tell him my plan of getting out of the slip, I told him I needed him to keep the bow straight and I’d let the current take the boat downstream. Engine running, the rudder set amidships, all lines thrown off except the bow line, I start backing out into the mid-channel, the boat is not turning it is coming out straight as an arrow, the dock hand says its not going downstream, I say let’s keep going straight which we did, as the bow passed the far piling the dock hand tosses my line onto the bow, I reverse the engine and turn to starboard and we are clear of the dock, slick as can be. Either I’m getting better at this or this was just lucky, ya luck is what I’m figuring too. If you thought that we were good to go, well no… We have to stop at the next marina to get fuel, all the elements that acted on the boat at the first marina will be working against us at the second one as well. But we pull in, tie up, fill the fuel tanks and jerry cans and cast off like we know what the hell we are doing.
Now we are free and clear and heading to our final stop before we get to start exploring for real. The winds were 12-18 knots gusting to 22 from the east, the seas are 2 – 4-foot, occasionally larger. With engine alone we are making about 3.5 to 4 knots, after setting both sails, we are averaging 6 – 6.5 knots, 5 ½ hours later we pull into the anchorage at Highbourne Cay. Highbourne is a private island with a marina on it that caters to the high-end power boater. While we were there at least three over 100-foot super yachts showed up and docked in the harbor. We anchored just outside the marina entrance, good protection from the easterly winds, and we had lots of company, about 25 – 30 sailboats were anchored with us.
Maybe the single most important thing to see when you arrive at a new inhabited Cay is the Cell Tower. Momma doesn’t like it when there is no communications.
For those who are considering the joys of sailing and exploring the Bahamas, I’d encourage you to do so, but do it with your eyes open. We left Key Biscayne on Monday January 24 at 8:00 am, and it has taken 7 days total to just get to where we can start our exploration trip. The sailing for the most part has been fantastic, but the trip hasn’t been the kind you see in travelogues, light winds, sunshine, and dressed in bathing suits. The winds for the most part have stayed in the teens to twenties with occasional thirties. The highest seas were 8 – 9-foot, they were typically 2 – 4-foot, and the temperature in the morning was in the fifties and the highs were in the mid-70s on a good day.
Breakfast – [MJS & Sarah] None, Lunch – [MJS & Sarah] None, Dinner – [MJS & Sarah] Penne with freshly browned ground meat, spaghetti sauce, green beans, brownie bites, 2 fingers of Southern Comfort.