Gale force 9

Subtitle: Is this a storm? No it's an Atlantic gale

Friday, 26 May 2017

So much has happened in the last 7 days, I hardly know where to begin. Since departing from Spanish Cay in the northern Bahamas last Saturday 20 May, we have experienced a great variety of weather, ranging from flat calm and no wind to prolonged thunder and lightning storm, raging sea with waves up to 4-5 metres, raindrops like bullets and wind gusts up to 43.5 knots (gale force 9)! We barely slept (in shifts of course) and hardly ate anything over the final 24 hours of this passage. It all began in the early hours of Tuesday 23rd May morning. Both Skipper and First Mate sustained injuries when thrown off balance when down below by two different rogue waves - Skipper thrown against a door post impacting his left back; First Mate against a shelf impacting her left cheek. Skipper’s injury was painful, affecting his ability to function normally on deck. Despite still being 200 nm from our intended destination of Beaufort, North Carolina, but fearing a possible cracked or broken rib(s), we diverted to the nearest accessible port that we felt we could sail to under gale conditions - but it was still 100 nm away. This happened to be Georgetown, South Carolina, where we arrived at 05:45 on Wednesday 24 May. It is 10 nm up a river, so happily no waves and much less wind. So we made it, surviving the gale, which by the way was not forecast when we left the Bahamas 7 days ago!

Below is the text I composed whilst en route with absolutely no thought of gales in mind… it was to have been entitled “No, we have no bananas…!”

----------------

Sunday 21 May 2017

This post is being composed whilst out on the ocean wave, so to speak. It is 10:30. We set sail yesterday from Spanish Cay, off Little Abaco island in northern Bahamas, to travel north to Beaufort, North Carolina on the NE coast of the USA. The ‘rhumb line’ (or as the crow flies in non-nautical lingo) shows the distance to be 467nm but being keen to maximise our speed we have plotted a course 60nm longer to take us still north but further west of the rhumb line in order to find the Gulf Stream that runs north up the coast of Florida. The best laid plans ... do oft times gang aglay. The forecast yesterday for east wind of 15-20kn turned out to be a SE wind of 5-10kn. We had to motor-sail for about 7hr yesterday and sail a course further west and not so far north as planned. BUT now we can see the dark blue strip of the stream off the port side and look forward to at least a couple of knots to help us on our way.

In fact the winds have been lighter than we like since leaving Rock Sound on Monday 15 May after re-provisioning. We had to motor the full 30nm from there round to Alabaster Bay on the west side of long thin Eleuthera - a beautiful sheltered sandy bay with clear clear water and Follyfin the only boat there. Also the site of our 4th green flash and another large sting ray swimming round the boat! Shame we had to leave early the next day to carry on our northwards progress up to the Abaco Islands. More motoring across the bight of Eleuthera until we exited its surrounding reef but then an exhilarating night sail, arriving to shelter from strong winds in the lee of Powell Cay, just a couple of miles south of Spanish Cay.

Which brings me to the title of this post… the marina on Spanish Cay is neither Spanish nor key! According to the pilot guide we have, it is a great place to prepare for a long passage north or south. Well, they do have fuel yes, served by a very nice local man but it is twice the price of most other places and the dock where one ties up for it is really high and unsuited to cruising yachts, a real nightmare. Water was unavailable since the pipe had been broken the precious day. And the rather unfriendly provisioning ‘store’ had so little to offer that I anticipate having to fall back on Smash and corned beef again! Never mind, we are on our way and now have a lift from the Gulf Stream, so despite very light winds we feel we are making progress.

----------------

Back to the present….

It's hard to describe what it's like being on a small boat in those gale conditions, completely at the mercy of the elements. Fortunately for us, Follyfin is made of stern stuff and looked after us well. We went to the hospital yesterday and the good news is that there is nothing cracked or broken, just a very bad bruise. And I only ended up with a black eye and swollen cheek.

Skipper, alive and kicking...no external bruising visible but the X-ray picture proves it!

First Mate, black eye developing nicely

Well dear reader, after reading the above account, you may say ‘they must be mad’, or ‘why do they do it?’ I confess I made the same comments to myself whilst going through this last awful experience. And the answer lies in the wonderful places you find yourself in. Like here in Georgetown - it is really lovely and the people are so kind and friendly. There is so much history - in the mid-19th century the area round here provided half of all the rice, Carolina Gold, consumed in USA - and we are really enjoying the fantastic food offerings available. Shrimp features heavily on every menu as well as tuna and other seafood and of course grits (not my favourite!). The least we can do is spoil ourselves after the Gale Experience!

Below is a selection of photos from the voyage and from Georgetown, which we are taking our time to explore whilst waiting for injuries to heal.

Nice Bahamian house on Eleuthera

Tuny fish caught but a large Mahi-Mahi got away with lure and all

Sunrise on Monday 22 May

Squall approaching soon after sunrise

Typical houses in Georgetown

Tree-lined avenues, Georgetown

Board walk. Follyfin just visible to left of flag, anchored midstream

View downstream from Follyfin

View from the stern

So that's about it for now. We hope to depart from here early next week, as long as Skipper has recovered his strength. We will head out to sea for the 150nm up to Beaufort NC. Before that, more chillin' in Georgetown. Could be worse - a lot worse!

James Bond, sharks and lionfish

Much has happened in the last five days:

1. Got the mobile comms sorted and replenished fresh food stocks in Georgetown - no more Smash or corned beef for a while.

2. Experienced perfect sailing day en route from Georgetown to Black Point, about half-way up the Exuma chain of cays (small islands or islets, pronounced ‘keys’). ‘Perfect’ constitutes smooth water, force 3-4 winds, sunshine and blue skies.

View from the forward cabin

Another view from the forward cabin, towards the stern

View from the cockpit

3. Saw a lionfish whilst snorkelling in Black Point Bay. Lionfish are edible, venomous invaders, which are voracious eaters of game fish, crustaceans and perhaps even coral. Apparently in only five weeks, lionfish can reduce the number of young native fish on a reef by as much as 80%. It was quite a sight - beautiful but somewhat threatening. You can google to see what they look like but I have no underwater camera so can't supply photo I'm afraid! The Bahamian marine authority asks for any sightings to be reported, which I will duly do.

4. Swam inside Thunderball Grotto of 007 fame but the movie cameras and their attendants have moved on. Regrettably no nice youthful Sean Connery either. It's an amazing, magical place, full of colourful fish of all shapes and sizes. The sunlight shines in through four holes in the roof of the cavern. It is located under a small rocky cay, close to the well known Staniel Cay; you have to swim under a low lip of limestone to get in but once in, it opens out into a cavern which is smaller than we expected from the film… must now watch the movie again just to catch sight of the grotto!

The notice proves we were there!

5. Witnessed swimming pigs - living on the beach at the aptly named Big Majors Spot, off which we anchored. Yes they really do swim! And people come in their boats from far and wide to see them and feed them.

Just wading this one

6. Nurse sharks visited Follyfin on Friday evening

And to think that I had been swimming in these self-same waters a short while earlier… but expect the zoologists amongst my readers will advise that nurse sharks are harmless. Nevertheless it was very exciting for us! They must have been attracted by the fishy water and the last of the mahi-mahi remains that were flushed out from the boat a little while earlier. And shortly afterwards two or three black sting rays came swimming round the boat too, but the light was not good enough to photograph them.

So you see, a memorable few days for us. Yesterday, Saturday 13 May, I would prefer to forget, however, in contrast to the perfect sailing day referred to above. Alarm went off at 04:35, weighed anchor at 05:40 and basically neither of us had any ‘off watch’ time until after we dropped anchor at 19:40 at our destination on Eleuthera. The wind just couldn't make up its mind: was it going to blow strong or weak or a bit of both? Was it going to blow from the east or south-east, both forecast in different places, or was it going to veer south and even south-west for a bit? All this meant we could never settle down and enjoy the sailing because we were constantly having to change the sail plan. All made worse by the knowledge that we had to keep the speed up as we needed to cover the 65 nm passage by sunset! Well we just made it but Skipper and I agreed that this sort of hurried passage-making is more of an endurance test than we would like.

But now we are here in Rock Sound on the island of Eleuthera.

It has the Ocean Hole,

And nine churches (see the Anglican one above), of which we spotted three in our short walk round the town. Not sure where the congregations come from though, as the town here barely looks large enough to support one church, let alone nine.

From here we will aim to get up to the Abacos by the end of the coming week, wind and weather permitting. It's a long way and will involve at least one night on passage. But at least we will then be in position for the long 500 nm ‘hop’ up to the north-east US coast.

No loaves but two fishes!

Conception, not in the usual sense but here the name of a beautiful, remote, completely deserted and unspoiled Bahamian island, inhabited only by Tropic birds (the elegant white ones with extremely long tail feathers), iguanas and other wild life. Got to be one of our top three places in which to drop the hook. Also the location for sighting our third green flash (see earlier post), which we have been unsuccessfully looking out for these past weeks. Spent yesterday there - beach walk, swimming in vodka-clear water, snorkelling and generally relaxing in a wonderful place. Follyfin was in her element.

From the beach

From seaward

Talking of tropics, we have now officially exited them, having crossed the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees North) at approximately 22:30 on Sunday night. But that’s an aside… as I compose this post on Tuesday 9 May, we are on the move again on our way to Georgetown on Great Exuma island, sad to leave Conception but mindful that the hurricane season is fast approaching, the official start of which is 1st June. For insurance purposes, we need to be at 35 degrees North by that date and we are currently at 23.6 degrees North, so still several hundred miles to sail. And my oh my, are these Bahamas BIG or what? Never realised quite how big until we got here!

Well we made it to Mayaguana all right, the nearest Bahamian Islands to Providenciales from where we set sail last Monday, 1 May... and it is one of the most isolated islands too, in the group variously named ‘The Far Bahamas’, ‘Far Horizons’ or ‘The Out Islands’. When we dropped anchor well inside the reef-protected Abraham’s Bay, Follyfin was quite alone

...except for a sad-looking monohull wreck stranded on the reef, that obviously miscalculated its exit passage. No photo of that I’m afraid as too busy concentrating on not meeting the same fate! There is very little on this part of the island, only a few inhabitants, a church, very basic shop housed in a half-finished house, as well as, importantly for us, a Customs and Immigration office and bizarrely, a mobile telephone shop just opposite. Regarding mobile communications, it took two dinghy trips ashore to get mobile internet sorted but this has since gone AWOL - the story of my life.

This island is a favourite amongst sport fishermen, according to a Dutchman we met on the beach. He comes every year with a group of friends, choosing it because of its remoteness, lack of commercialisation and the very friendly local population. They spend their days wading in the shallows trying to hook the elusive bonefish, apparently very shy, large and difficult to catch. Once caught and data recorded, the fish are put back as they do not make good eating. “What's the point?” I thought but didn't voice. Our main excitement came with a knock on the hull after dark at about 21:00, just as we were preparing for bed (early nights on board Follyfin). “Can we come aboard Sir?”. It was a contingent from the Royal Bahamian Defence Force, out from Nassau and checking on all anchored vessels in the islands. Two very polite and proper individuals came into the saloon and filled in yet more forms detailing that we were not carrying firearms or pets plus other information. As they departed half and hour later I noticed that both were armed. Not called a defence force for nothing…

Leaving Mayaguana early the next morning we had another overnight passage to Long Island where we anchored in Clarence Town on the east coast. Now with the word ‘town’ in the name would you expect some shops, or at least one shop, where you could buy at least a loaf of bread? I would, but sadly nothing...except two very well built churches (see below) and the new and very posh Flying Fish marina containing the Lighthouse Point restaurant. Apparently, the nearest provisioning shops are an 8-mile drive away for which we could call a taxi or hire a car. Needless to say, we didn't do either but clearly the several visiting American large motor launches, all kitted out for deep sea fishing, didn't need provisions. Despite heavy rain, we walked to inspect said churches instead, both of which were locked tight.

Outlook from Flying Fish marina...wet wet wet!

Anglican, with RC church in background

Roman Catholic

Interesting story behind them though. Both were designed and built with manual labour early in the 20th century by an extraordinary Englishman named Father Jerome (previously named John Hawes). He started out studying architecture but switched to theology and was ordained in the Church of England. In 1908 he arrived in the Bahamas where he devoted himself to travelling the islands and repairing storm-torn wooden churches, reconstructing them in stone. He converted to Catholicism and spent 25 years in Australia, then returned to the Bahamas in 1939 to retire. He built not only a hermitage for himself but also nine churches including the two on Long Island pictured above. All these have withstood more than one hurricane and are still in use today. Remarkable.

Consolation for the rain was a magnificent sunset.

We were wet and needed wifi so consoled ourselves with fresh seared tuna (oh such a hardship) at Lighthouse Point and a couple of hours ‘interneting’ as we call it. Not having had any success with provisioning during the past 7 days, which we had been forewarned about, the cook was forced to fall back on K rations. Pitta breads, Jacobs cream crackers, corned beef, baked beans and Smash have all featured… Moral: never travel without your corned beef and Smash. Vital for keeping the Skipper and crew happy.

However, the good news today is that we caught not one but two huge mahi mahi fish whilst en route. The first was put back since we knew we could not manage to do it justice without wasting a great deal of the magnificent beast. The second was even bigger

and although we wanted to put him back, he had the hook so deeply caught it could not be freed. So Skipper did the business, filleting and cleaning on deck as best he could. The meat went straight in the fridge and am happy to say, now we are securely anchored off Georgetown, that a call out on the VHF brought two ‘customers’ from neighbouring boats to help devour the wonderful fruit of the deep. Our supper was mahi mahi fillets fried in butter, with Jacobs cream crackers and Follyfin coleslaw (cabbage keeps so so well!). One grapefruit, four onions and a third of a cabbage represent the sum total of remaining fresh food on board. Thank goodness we are going shopping tomorrow!

Unusual Neighbours

After our unintended night time anchoring adventure at the south-west end of Grand Turk, we awoke to find ourselves in a somewhat industrialised area, mainly reserved for freighters.

To starboard - the government dock

To port - wrecked RoRo ferry

Astern, a rust bucket

Fortunately Follyfin was far enough in towards the beach that she wasn't in anyone’s way. 

Stats from the voyage:

Distance (rhumb line) - 426.5nm

Distance sailed (actual) - 511.7nm,

Top boat speed - 10.7kn

Average boat speed - 6.6kn (until the wind died and we had to motor!)

Maximum wind speed - 35.5 (F8)

Engine hours - 9hr (of which about 8hr were on passage when wind died)

The Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) are notable for a few things:

- the Atlantic Humpback Whale breeds on shallow banks near here and migrates up the 22-mile wide Turks Passage to New England for the summer. Unfortunately we are just too late to see them.

- Tourism and offshore finance...lots of duty-free shopping.

- Wonderful snorkelling and diving in gin-clear turquoise waters

- Once used by USAF to support the initial orbital flights of the US space programme. Their mission was to recover space capsules after splashdown in the adjacent ocean waters. From space monkeys to astronauts, including John Glenn, they all returned to these paradise islands.

After clearing in with Customs and Immigration, we refreshed ourselves with beer and burgers at Jack’s Shack beach bar… along with what seemed like several hundred very loud cruise ship passengers. Then weighed anchor to move up the coast a couple of miles to anchor off Cockburn Town. Found a good spot on sand in 3.5m but a long way out! See Follyfin in the distance, to the right of the only other neighbour.

A dinghy trip into town the following morning revealed a now-faded but once prosperous community with major British institutions represented...

A nice little bijou residence with sea view for someone?

... but now defunct since the salt industry died and tourism with daily cruise ships calling, sometimes two, took over. However the remnants of the salt pans support a small population of flamingoes.

The other important source of income for the TCI is Banking….it is a centre of international finance and a tax haven.

We paid for a 7-day permit to stay in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI); staying longer requires an extra $200 so we are anxious not to overstay. As the weather forecast was for strong winds, we moved on across the shallow Caicos Bank with its numerous coral heads to the south side of Providenciales, the largest of the TCI. The Caicos Bank is a 60nm wide circular reef-fringed atoll with depths varying between 0 and 6m so we had to keep a sharp look out for coral heads for the 8hr it took to get across. Found a safe anchorage on the other side but Follyfin was rocking and rolling more than was comfortable. And as the winds became stronger and stronger, the prospect of a couple of nights in the shelter of a marina became very attractive. So this is where we have been since Saturday 29 April, - the South Side Marina - and much enjoying the relative luxury of unlimited showers and above all, stability!

The winds are gradually dying down so we plan to leave on the high tide this afternoon so we can negotiate the shallows and coral heads in daylight, anchor near the exit from the main coral reef, and then sail overnight to Mayaguana, the nearest Bahamanian island, about 60 nm from here. This strategy will enable arrival in daylight as there is yet more coral to see our way through when we get there.