Crew Log for February 14th – 15th, 2023
Trip Summary:
• Bell Island to Staniel Cay
• Trip Distance of 16.4 NM, Total Distance To-Date of 2,920.2 NM
• Departed at 09h00, arrived at 15h00
(Editor's Note: Our Spot Tracker went to sleep while we played in the Bubble Bath, so the recorded route was a bit "off". I can assure you, we did not go over land between Compass Cay and Staniel Cay, although we have been known to go aground!)
You would think that the anchorage would be calm as the wind dies down, but it actually seems to be more rolly. The water on the Exuma Bank is not much deeper than 20 feet, while water depths on the Exuma Sound side reach over 6,000 feet in places. As the tide falls, there is a "rage" of water flowing out through the cuts. Conversely, as it rises, the changing tide has to make it’s way between the islands and cays, creating surge like conditions.
In the absence of wind, you often time find the boat drifting sideways to the surge, which creates a side by side roll. Anyone who has been on a boat on anchor would tell you, a “hobby horse” roll, front to back, is more comfortable than a side to side roll. Although neither is great.
The bad news was, we had a side to side roll in our anchorage. The good news was, after more than a week, the wind has finally dropped off. Time to go exploring again.
It was the annual day of romance and love and so what better way to celebrate it than to take a bubble bath with your life partner of 40+ years, with 4 complete strangers. We hauled anchor and headed off to Rocky Dundas and then to Rachael’s Bubble Bath. There was still some swell rolling in towards Rocky Dundas, and well, we were feeling lazy, so we decided to head straight to Rachael’s Bubble Bath.
Rachel's Bubble Bath, a natural thermal spa, is situated on the northern end of Compass Cay. The Bubble Bath is essentially a calm lagoon that’s separated from the sea by a thin bar of rock. When the tides are high or the seas are rough, the waves come crashing over the rocks into the lagoon, stirring up the water in the pool and creating a bubble-bath effect in the warm water.
The sailboats, Steadfast and Sideout, who were with us at Bell Island, were on anchor when we arrived. They had already been snorkeling at Rocky Dundas and were working on setting up the cruising spinnaker on Sideout for their trip down to Big Major later today.
Our timing to Rachael’s wasn’t ideal, but it was beautiful hike along the salt marsh creek towards the lagoon. It was just past low tide and while there was some sea swell, the surge over the rock bar was minimal. We bumped into a couple of other fellow romantics who had hiked up from the Compass Cay marina and soon after were joined by the crews from Steadfast and Sideout. It was nice to soak in the lagoon and enjoy a relaxing bubble bath, before heading back to Elizabeth M. As we were making our way out on to the bank, we heard someone yell at us, and were surprised to see Josh and Tamara in their dinghy, speed by to say goodbye.
We enjoyed a nice Valentine’s Day supper at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club with Allan and Bev and their daughter Leslie, who was headed back to Canada in the morning. She was unfortunately in the Bahamas for the windiest week of the season, but she seemed to have enjoyed her time here. Leslie is a flight attendant with Air Canada.
I did try my hand at making my Valentine Shrimp and Grits the next evening following the instructions my Charleston advisor had given me, which turned out beautifully, according to my date.
While we were in Staniel Cay, we had a number of maintenance chores to get done, including the usual things like water, fuel and laundry. Elizabeth M was also due for an oil change which I wanted to do before we went to Eleuthera and we needed propane. I brought our oil extractor with us, and had a number of spare filters, so changing the oil was a relatively straight forward process. I asked around to find out where I could take the used oil, but was told to take it to the dump, which didn’t feel right.
Provisioning and doing basic maintenance on these remote cays is a challenge since the availability of things is solely dependent on the mail boat. I had phoned around for propane and was told none was available until the following day, after the mail boat arrived. You dropped off your tank and they filled it overnight. The other challenge here is the power occasionally goes out.
We had taken our laundry up to the Staniel Cay Laundromat / Bar / Liquor Store, apparently doing laundry drives you to drink in Staniel Cay. The power went was out when we got there, which was creating some stress on the owner. When the power came back on, she insisted we cram all our clothes into one machine so she could catch up. I questioned whether there would be any room left for water, however, she wasn’t backing down.
We had purchased new propane tanks in St. Augustine and I have been carrying the old one around with us since then. Propane has to be stored in a vented locker since you don’t want any escaping gas to settle in the bilge. We had been storing the old tank in the dinghy and were anxious to get rid of it. The tank was expired and we had issues getting it filled in the States, but it didn’t seem to matter in the Exumas.
I was walking up to the dump with my waste oil and the old propane tank. The owner from the laundromat suggested I leave the tank there since, “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”. She also said that if I left the oil in an obvious place at the dump, someone would pick it up and make use of it. Good to know.
Isle’s General Store, where we got our propane tank filled, is at the end of a long inlet and directly across from the Staniel Cay airport. The airport is relatively small, but I was amused to see it had “long term parking” for golf carts. It must be a unique experience to leave a modern airport on one end, and land in Staniel Cay, where transportation to and from the airport is either by golf cart or dinghy.
Our last task before heading to Black Point for the night was to get fuel for the dinghy. I was third in line and had a 2.5 gallon jug, which does us about 3 weeks. One boat took on 400 gallons of fuel and the other, 100 gallons, which they both said would do them for a “few days”.
Crew Log for February 16th, 2023
Trip Summary:
• Staniel Cay Black Point
• Trip Distance of 12 NM, Total Distance To-Date of 2,932.2 NM
• Departed at 12h00, arrived at 14h46
I am not sure why we decided to go back to Black Point, which was to the south, given our plan was to go to Shroud Cay, which is to the north, to stage for our crossing to Eleuthera. We liked, Black Point, but we have spent a lot of time there. Dagny, Adanaco and Sensai were all there, but they all had plans to head further south towards Georgetown. It was however a chance to see Adanaco one last time, since from here forward, their plans were significantly different than ours.
The trip was an upwind beat into a stiff south wind on the jib only. The inside of the boat looked like to tornado ripped through there, with stuff tossed everywhere. When we got there the conditions were less than ideal for getting ashore or visiting, so as it turned out, we never did get to say goodbye to Adanaco.
Our plan was to take advantage of calm winds forecasted in a couple of days to cross from Shroud Cay, Exuma to Rock Sound in Eleuthera, a 50 nautical mile sail. We had to negotiate the cut between Norman’s Cay and Shroud Cay, timing our departure as close to slack tide as we could.
Shroud Cay was one of the more unique places we had visited in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park and we were looking forward to getting back there for one last time.
But more about that, next time.
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