February 12 - 17 CROSSING THE GULF STREAM, THE “BANKS”, AND ANDROS ISLAND, BAHAMAS

First land passed after crossing Gulf Stream, lighthouse on Gun Cay



Relaxing on gulfside beach in Marathon before setting off for the Bahamas

February 13 After yesterday’s uneventful day sailing and then motoring to Rodriguez Key (I have to mention the beautiful turquoise color of the water all day in Hawk Channel) we are up at 4:30 am today and find that the wind is now changed and is coming from the north. We have been warned innumerable times not to sail to the Bahamas if the wind is NW, N, or NE! Seven or eight other boats are calling on the VHF radio in the dark, talking about what to do. The north wind could make the Gulf Stream almost impassable with huge waves and buffeting winds. The Gulf Stream always flows north and can be between 2-7 knots of current. In the end six of us decide to try it. “You can always turn back” is our thought. However, the one boat that we have designated as our buddy-boat, SERENADE, feels strongly about not going and so we are parting ways, and we feel badly about that.

The start of our day at 5 am is difficult because of the dark, but we are for a while able to follow the first 5 boats through the opening in the reef outside of Rodriguez Key. After that it is a great trip, as the sun came up around 6:30 am, the north winds were light and the waves in the Gulf Stream were small. We altered our course from heading for the southernmost entry into the Bahamas Bank so that we’d follow a boat from the group what was going to the middle entry (Gun Cay and Cat Cay) and the rest headed for Bimini, the northernmost entry in this area.

By 4:00 pm we reached the cut between the cays and entered the Bahamas Bank. We had decided to find the Customs station at Andros Island, on the other side of this part of the Bank. So all we need to do at this point is anchor for the night and then sail for Andros tomorrow. One little challenge lay before us, however, as the Bank in this area is very shallow (no where on the Bank is it deep, averaging between 4 - 14 ft. at low time). We inched our way through the beginning of the channel that our chart suggested, but went aground at about 5:00 pm. After a half hour of gently running the engine we did get off and gingerly moved the boat to 8 ft of water and anchored just before sunset. We now know that if our depth-sounder starts reading 6.1 ft. that we are about to hit bottom -- which luckily is all sand here.

Just as it gets dark we hear voices and see a light maybe a mile away -- another boat anchored on the Bank. Otherwise there is nothing around for miles. We are about 5 miles east of Gun Cay and Cat Cay at this point.

Feb. 14 Valentine’s Day After checking the charts we can see that we will be on the Bahama Banks all day and won’t reach Andros until tomorrow. The weather is warm and sunny and the water is crystal clear and about 10-13 feet deep all day. We motored in the morning, sailed slowly in the middle of the day and then motored again in the late afternoon as there was not much wind. We have seen a few sailboats in the far distance and one or two motorboats pass on our course but that is all we see above the water. Below is sand, some grass, starfish, and some small shiny fish that jump out of the water and skim the surface for about 2 ft before diving back in. It is like dropping RISING TIDE into a stretched out version of Snow’s Pond back home. We anchored at the end of the day for our second night on the Bank.

Feb. 15 For another sunny, warm, light-air day we travel to Morgan’s Bluff on the northern end of Andros Island. To get there we are in the Tongue of the Ocean, which is in the middle of the Bahamas and is 600-1800 meters deep. This was a shorter trip, about 6 hours, and Ken saw Customs when we got there and anchored. After that we exchanged our quarantine flag for a Bahamian flag, flown above our U.S.flag. Morgan’s Bluff is a small town, seems to have about 4 small buildings and a park that they use for their annual regatta. Further out on the back side of the bluff is a dock for water tankers that come from Nassau to fill up with Andros water and take it back to Nassau. Our second day on Andros we watched a gang of local boys prepare to go out for some diving, then sailed to Fresh Creek which is 2 towns, Andros Town and Coakley Town. The wind kicked up and we had a lively sail down there, another 6-7 hour sail.

Fresh Creek is also small and there is only room for shallow-draft boats to anchor. We are therefore docked at a small marina along with about 7 sailboats and 7 power boats. It is windy and clear. We will probably stay here one more day until the wind dies down to medium strength. Our first night here we were given fresh fish from the local guy cleaning it for the power boat owner who caught it. We watched 3 bull sharks circle near the fish-cleaning station. Other activities in town are a factory that makes batik fabric and clothing, and several bonefishing lodges that cater to fishermen who fly in to fish for the week. Between the 2 towns there are about 5 restaurants, and 3 small grocery stores, plus 3-4 other small stores. We are happy that the marina has wifi so this information can go out and we can check our email! We are planning to switch from phoning to email and texting as phone charges are very high here.

Our introduction to the Bahamas and Andros Island has been great and we look forward to more interesting days in the Exumas where we will be heading next.

February 4 - February 11 REUNIONS AND GOOD-BYES

Pelicans waiting for fish scraps as a charterboat captain cleans the day's catch in Key West.



"Diver Dave" (that's what he's called!) preparing to put a new zinc on our boat prop before we go off to the Bahamas--another important but difficult detail to attend to.

Feb. 4 We spent the time since out last blog (we’re still in Marathon) fixing and tweaking things on the boat: adding a salt water pump so we can conserve fresh water, correcting problems with our alternator that were not addressed earlier, adjusting the wind vane. We played some tennis on the city courts. And we attended another Bahamas information meeting. Because of the cold and windy north winds there are many boats who are here waiting to leave, for either the Bahamas, the west coast of Florida, or south into the Caribbean and Central America.

We found some people from Lubec, Maine who we had “met” earlier in the trip. They had helped us when our boat was dragging it’s anchor and had secured it to another boat in St.Augustine. We only saw them in the dark then, but now we got to see them in the daylight and they are an interesting couple, sailing right now with a 20-something son who is a soccer player and former steeplechaser in college. We also found an earlier-in-the-trip Canadian couple who took 3 weeks off to return home for the holidays. They are now back on their boat and sailed into Marathon this week; Ian and Marlene on GUST ‘O WIND are both retired school principals.

The highlight this week was a gathering on our boat with several other cruisers. It was cold so we had soup and French bread and we all sat down below rather than in the cockpit. Two of the attendees were Chris and Kevin from upstate New York, who we met very early in our trip, in Chesapeake City in the C& D Canal.

There was also another bus trip to Key West, this time for me and Susan, from SWAN. Susan used to live in this part of the world so she was a great tour guide. We went to a realtor’s Open House, a fully renovated shot-gun-style cottage in the middle of town. And we talked through many of the residential neighborhoods checking out the details on the house facades and the gardens .

Feb. 8 Today Chris and Kevin on ANDROS sailed out, bound for Key West. The next day Barry and Susan on SWAN, our pals for the past six weeks, left Marathon for the west coast of Florida. The day after that we met the owners of about 7 other boats who are leaving for the Bahamas later this week, at a gathering planned so we could meet and exchanged information. Although it is still windy, the cold weather has moderated and it looks good for a weather break. We need winds from the south so that we can count on the Gulf Stream behaving (translation: no big huge waves) since getting to the Bahamas means crossing the 30 mile wide (or so) current.

Feb. 11 Today is the busy day doing last minute shopping and preparing to sail to a small island (Rodriguez Key) off the coast of the upper Keys, where we should have a good shot at crossing the Gulf Stream on Friday. We hope that in the Bahamas we have access to the internet -- and have time to access it in between all the fun we hope to have!! -- so keep tuned but I expect that blogs will be fewer for the next 2 months. Our long-range plans are to head back to the U.S. in mid-April but as you may have seen from our past exploits on this trip, all this is subject to change.

January 26 - February 3 PART OF THE CRUISING CROWD

The "cruising crowd's" dinghies, this time in to watch the inauguration at the marina



Sponge fisherman near Big Pine Key

January 26 The cruisers here in Marathon are a pretty homogeneous group; they are for the most part retired-age couples, a good number of them have one small dog, they are often staying here for weeks or months, they mostly are on sailboats, they like to share tips on saving time and money, they are from Eastern Canada or Eastern U.S. This is our “crowd” for the time being.

A few exceptions to this make things interesting, so when a boat from Luxembourg or Australia enters the harbor, everyone pays attention. There are a few boats with children (one is even a boat from Australia with children!). Some boats have, in addition to their country flag, flags that tell more about them. We have Justin’s Tenth Mountain Div. 2-4 flag he sent us. One boat has a 6 ft. Pittsburgh Steelers banner and a Steelers flag, another flew his U.S. flag upside down during the week of the inauguration--that caused a bit of an uproar!

We also compare notes on dinghies, our transportation to shore. One might be only 5 ft. long (ours is small but is 10 ft.), another might have 3 golden retrievers in it with the owners, another couple might be kayaking to shore in 2 kayaks, one each with a dog standing on the kayak deck. Other things to notice are how the dinghies are lighted, what registration numbers are on them, the size of their outboard engine or if they are rowing.

Our latest quest is to find two specific boats: we heard there is a boat from Marblehead here in the harbor, just arrived, and also were told by the marina staff that there is another Maitland owner here somewhere. This is how we fill our days for now, waiting for both the weather to turn in our favor and for all the boat projects to be finished so we’re not trying to fix too many things in the Bahamas.

January 29 We took a side trip out of Marathon, west to Big Pine Key. There are less cruisers there -- we only saw 6 or 7 boats anchored in the channel. It is shallow at the entrance and again about mid-channel, and we got stuck on the bottom a few times but we did get ourselves off the sandy bottom and proceeded to anchor near a wildlife refuge called Coupon Bight. There was a beautiful sunset there our first night, and the stars were spectacular as it’s wide open with very few shore lights, and during this time only a crescent moon detracted from the stars’ lights.

We didn’t go ashore, but dinghied into the Bight and watched a sponge fisherman pull up black sponges from the bottom there in shallow water. He said he would sell them and they would be used for cosmetics, fuel filters in planes, and that Australians liked them for grooming horses. We also saw a large frigatebird that was gliding/fishing near our boat (the bird book helped us to identify it as a male Magnificent Fridgatebird). The rest of our time in the Big Pine Key area was spent staying on our boat as a very windy storm blew through the area and stayed for 2 days. It was a good time to catch up on crossword puzzles and naps. We also watched a beautiful 35 ft. varnished powerboat go back and forth past us. It is THE TRUMAN, and is used to take passengers and employees out to an exclusive island resort (no bridge or other shore access).

February 1 Traveling out the Newfound Harbor Channel to leave the Big Pine area we were escorted by a half dozen dolphins. I think I got them on video since they hung around for quite a while. The weather was still windy, but even worse wind is predicted in a few days, so we decided to go back to Marathon and the nice protected harbor there. That night we watched the first half of the Superbowl at a waterside restaurant and the second half in the city marina with our “cruising crowd”. The next night a bad gale did blow through along with thunder and lightening.

Projects for each of the next few days are to fill up on propane (our fuel for cooking), diesel (fuel for the sailboat engine), gasoline (for the outboard), water for our boat‘s watertanks, fix a few more small things on RISING TIDE, and stock up on some more groceries and supplies. It looks more sure that we will be heading for the Bahamas now, we’re just not sure when the weather will cooperate. We also have to head back to the northeast before we head due east for the first of the Bahamas islands. Right now we are about 110 miles from the closest Bahamas island; we also have worked our way so far southwest that we are about the same distance from Cuba, maybe even a little closer.

PS Forgot to mention last week that our son Pete turned 25 on January 19th!