Random Information
When you arrive in the Bahamas you are to fly a yellow flag (Q flag) to indicate that you have not cleared customs. To clear customs only the boat captain goes to the customs office with all the passports from his boat. He will return with the paper work to be filled out by the crew and passengers. He then returns to the customs office with the paper work and pays all fees. Once he returns the Q flag is lowered and the country flag is flow, this is called a courtesy flag.
Around the islands VHF radios are used a lot to save money on phones.
Kalik is the local beer and there is a lot of it.
A can of coke costs $3 at Atlantis.
Drive on the left.
Food is very expensive.
Marinas are expensive.
You can flag a bus anywhere in Nassau by putting your hand out and moving your thumb and fingers together quickly.
You can get off the bus anywhere by yelling, 'bus stop'.
The drinking water is a little salty because it is brought in on tankers from Andros, and if they suck the aquifers too much it draws out the salt.
You always want to say, 'hello, how are you?' before asking a question, or you will be considered rude.
The bank in Hope Town is open from 10am to 2pm on Tuesdays
You can drop your trash off on Mon. Wed and Fri from 6am to 9:30am on Mon. Wed. and Fridays.
A shower costs $4 in Hope Town.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Big Seas!!
Mates Log:
Monday Dec. 29th, 2008. We left Nassau yesterday at 9am, without any problems while leaving the dock, and even looking like we knew what we were doing. Actually, it was beautiful, the spot we were in did not allow us to just back out and leave, it was more complicated than that. Carey had to back out towards another dock, move forward towards the boat next to us, and then back out into the harbor. It was flawless, no close calls, no pushing off, no heroics and no obscene hand gestures. People were watching and giving us the hi-five and the atta boy. I couldn’t help but wonder if these were some of the same people who were present at our fist Nassau arrival.
I spend the next ten minutes stowing lines and fenders before I sit down and say goodbye to Nassau. It’s a lovely day and the winds and seas are supposed to be in our favor… or so we think. How wrong we were, and I do mean wrong. I’m still not sure what we missed because the winds were as predicted but the seas were way bigger than predicted. If we had waited another day there would not have been enough wind but the seas would have been flatter.
Once we are out of the channel the seas pick up, white caps are becoming more frequent and the troughs are increasingly getting deeper. We raise the mainsail and the jenny; the winds are just starboard of the bow. SongBird does not seem to want to sail close enough to the wind, or we have not yet discovered the trick. We comment on how well SongBird rides in this type of sea and are again thankful for the catamaran. I head down for another seasick pill, just in case. From here I cannot recall the exact order of events, and the order doesn’t much really matter. What does matter to us is that they happened and we are still here to tell about it. OK, so, that may be a little dramatic!
The seas are mounting and I am feeling worse by the minute (I have not had any problems with this seasick stuff since we first went to Bimini). SongBird is getting slammed by the waves and shutters when hit hard. We don’t have excessive bridge deck clearance which is the distance the salon sits above the water. The waves are starting to come over the port bow and are getting us wet. It looks lovely and is exciting to see... this is about the end of the fun. Next, the waves start rolling over the top deck on the port bow and we are starting to feel like a rising submarine when all the water rushes off the decks. I come inside the salon area and discover that the front ports that we usually leave open while under sail are taking in some water, the side ports are also taking in a little water, I close them or so I think (see lessons learned).
I go back outside; the troughs are, or at least seem huge, 10-12 feet, and what we believe to be a conservative estimate. Water is everywhere, on the decks, the seats, the cockpit area and us! I go inside to lie down; I am feeling awful and I can tell it’s going to be a long day… I had no idea how long. The front ports start to leak again, they were not completely latched, and I get wetter and colder. I get up to see what’s happening outside… lots of big seas, lots of water and lots of nausea. I go back in and lay down again on the seats in the salon. I hear, but don’t want to open my eyes to look, that the water is cascading down the salon windows on a fairly regular basis, and I begin to wonder just how waterproof and sealed up we are.
Once everything is properly latched no more water enters the boat. All of a sudden, water starts rolling over the roof of the salon and cascades down through the top hatch which is located right over my head and chest… sigh… I get a face and mouth full of water, I am now completely drenched. It is not a good day, and life on a boat is not good either. Carey gets me towels and discovers the hatch has two locking positions (see lessons learned) I get up and lay down on the other side of the seating area. I can’t really deal with this as I’m afraid I will vomit all over the place, and the last thing I want to do is clean up puke and sea water. I am freezing, sick, and feeling guilty I am not out there giving Carey moral support. When he needs my help he asks me for it and I give it to him, but as soon as he’s done with me, I’m back in the salon lying down on the seat, soaking wet, and miserable. I continue to lay and listen to all the water coming over the boat, and the shuddering when we run into a mountain of a wave. I know we won’t sink or die, although dying sounds like a pleasant relief about now.
At 12:30 in the morning Carey gets me off the water soaked seat and informs me we are getting ready to head through “the cut”. “The cut” is narrow and shallow, there are breakers and coral heads to avoid… and we are planning to maneuver it in the middle of the night! Under normal circumstances, or at least circumstances where we have our sanity, we would never attempt to do such a thing, but we don’t have much choice at the moment, and our sanity is in question since we are desperate for calm waters.
We have a handheld GPS and chartplotter, and a remote for the autopilot. Carey will be inside the salon area with the chart, the plotter, and the remote, while I sit outside keeping watch. He shows me on the chart the shallows, the coral heads and the breakers that we will be trying to miss. I know he can do this because he knows he can do this, and I trust his judgment, but I’m still not sure about our sanity. I keep watch… it is a moonless night, full of stars, but no light whatsoever except the lit beacon flashing every 4 seconds to indicate the cut!
I start to hear the breakers and get the flashlight out… yeah, right. All of a sudden we take a sharp turn to starboard and I hear and feel the wave… we have found a breaker. Wide eyed, I tell Carey that we are now surfing in a wave heading to starboard. He can see what we have done on the handheld and corrects our course with the remote control. He says this reminds him of playing video games, I’m really hoping he is a good player. The engines are full throttle and the sails are still up. He wants to shoot through the cut as fast as possible so we don’t get taken in by the breakers. It's working and we are back on course. We continue through the cut, surfing waves to some degree with erratic motion, when all of a sudden everything is calm and peaceful… just like that. We lower the sails, and again thank God for His hand on us.
We head north to where we want to anchor for the next two nights. It’s so dark we can only see a few dim anchor lights and lots of stars; it’s not easy to tell the difference. We anchor and sit back to try and let the adrenaline settle before we head off to bed. It’s 1:30 in the morning, and again we know why sailors drink so much.
The next morning we get up and start to assess the damage and clean up the mess from the events of the day before. Stuff is everywhere and everything is wet. I check on the port side in the forward berth to discover that a small line from the hatch cover was caught in the hatch which caused the hatch to leak. The berth is full of water which had also washed over the side of the berth and into the head. We lost 2 hatch covers, and the port side tramp lines are frayed and started to unravel, thus leaving a flapping trampoline. Fortunately the tramps were not damaged. The lines for the tramps on the starboard side were only frayed and will also need to be replaced. No major damage was done, for which we are very thankful.
Today all I want to do is sit on unmovable land. I know we will still have the sensation of rocking even though we will not be on the boat, but I don’t care… I just want to know we aren’t moving. We find a lovely beach and we have it all to ourselves. We read, go hunting for seashells and have a picnic… all on hard, solid ground that does not rock. Today is a good solid day.
After two calm and peaceful nights we head off to Hope Town which was established by British loyalists in 1795. Hope Town is on Elbow Cay and is such a quaint and charming place. There are a lot of tourists here this time of year as Junkanoo is planned for New Years. The lighthouse here is the last manned lighthouse in the Bahamas and uses vaporized Kerosene to make the light. The inlet is protected and full of boats from all over the world.
I wish I could stop here and tell you we came in, found a mooring and all went perfect. Well, of course I can’t because most everything we do is new, so it seems everything has to become an event… and an event it was!
We came into this lovely harbor full of boats on moorings. It’s crowded and there are only a few mooring left. We find one we want to use, pull up perfectly to it but it’s painted with 'NOT FOR RENT', so we have to abandon that idea. Carey moves around the other boats, gets to an outside edge and sees the mooring he wants… I say honey this water is churned up, don’t you think we should raise the dagger boards a little? He says no sweetheart, we need the maneuverability. Not 10 seconds later I say honey I think the dagger board is hitting… no it is hitting… no it is stuck… so much for maneuverability! So, now here we are stuck, run aground for our first time, in a small harbor full of boats! Some things seem so unjust! It takes us about 10 minutes to pull the dagger board loose. We wonder about putting handles on top of the boards and how a comealong may have helped. In the meantime another boat has entered the harbor and taken our mooring. We weave in and out of boats until we find one last mooring on an end spot… this is good. We have one miss but the second time around we hook it, tie up and again settle down talking about cruising and drinking and the whys.
A man on a boat comes up and collects our money for the next two nights. We lower the dinghy and head off to Capt’n Jacks for dinner where we sit outside and watch the sunset over the harbor. It’s a lovely scene. It is all so quaint, with water and boats everywhere, people coming to dinner in their dinghies, tying up to the dock, locals and tourists alike, dressed up for a nice date or in boat clothes, wrinkles and all. It’s fun to watch. We really like this place and would find it a nice place to live, but it’s been discovered and real estate is outrageous.
Today we take a tour of the area in the dinghy, climb 120 steps to the top of the lighthouse and walk over to the other side of the island and eat our lunch. The views are spectacular and the water is unbelievable. Tomorrow we will spend at the beach, snorkeling, as we plan on leaving here Friday to head to Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco. This is where we will haul out SongBird and give her a fresh coat of paint. We are hoping this will only take about 2 weeks but we don’t really know. We do plan on staying on the boat while on the hard.
Lessons Learned
The hatches have two options for being in a closed position. One is only slightly opened for ventilation, while being able to be locked. The other is in the fully closed and locked position which is preferable in large seas.
Make sure nothing is caught in any hatch.
When the water is churned up it’s because it’s shallow.
Raise dagger boards in shallow water.
Dagger boards can be used as an extra anchor in shallow waters… not!
We draw 3ft with the boards UP
Carey’s trying to tell himself to stop stressing so much over everything.
Monday Dec. 29th, 2008. We left Nassau yesterday at 9am, without any problems while leaving the dock, and even looking like we knew what we were doing. Actually, it was beautiful, the spot we were in did not allow us to just back out and leave, it was more complicated than that. Carey had to back out towards another dock, move forward towards the boat next to us, and then back out into the harbor. It was flawless, no close calls, no pushing off, no heroics and no obscene hand gestures. People were watching and giving us the hi-five and the atta boy. I couldn’t help but wonder if these were some of the same people who were present at our fist Nassau arrival.
I spend the next ten minutes stowing lines and fenders before I sit down and say goodbye to Nassau. It’s a lovely day and the winds and seas are supposed to be in our favor… or so we think. How wrong we were, and I do mean wrong. I’m still not sure what we missed because the winds were as predicted but the seas were way bigger than predicted. If we had waited another day there would not have been enough wind but the seas would have been flatter.
Once we are out of the channel the seas pick up, white caps are becoming more frequent and the troughs are increasingly getting deeper. We raise the mainsail and the jenny; the winds are just starboard of the bow. SongBird does not seem to want to sail close enough to the wind, or we have not yet discovered the trick. We comment on how well SongBird rides in this type of sea and are again thankful for the catamaran. I head down for another seasick pill, just in case. From here I cannot recall the exact order of events, and the order doesn’t much really matter. What does matter to us is that they happened and we are still here to tell about it. OK, so, that may be a little dramatic!
The seas are mounting and I am feeling worse by the minute (I have not had any problems with this seasick stuff since we first went to Bimini). SongBird is getting slammed by the waves and shutters when hit hard. We don’t have excessive bridge deck clearance which is the distance the salon sits above the water. The waves are starting to come over the port bow and are getting us wet. It looks lovely and is exciting to see... this is about the end of the fun. Next, the waves start rolling over the top deck on the port bow and we are starting to feel like a rising submarine when all the water rushes off the decks. I come inside the salon area and discover that the front ports that we usually leave open while under sail are taking in some water, the side ports are also taking in a little water, I close them or so I think (see lessons learned).
I go back outside; the troughs are, or at least seem huge, 10-12 feet, and what we believe to be a conservative estimate. Water is everywhere, on the decks, the seats, the cockpit area and us! I go inside to lie down; I am feeling awful and I can tell it’s going to be a long day… I had no idea how long. The front ports start to leak again, they were not completely latched, and I get wetter and colder. I get up to see what’s happening outside… lots of big seas, lots of water and lots of nausea. I go back in and lay down again on the seats in the salon. I hear, but don’t want to open my eyes to look, that the water is cascading down the salon windows on a fairly regular basis, and I begin to wonder just how waterproof and sealed up we are.
Once everything is properly latched no more water enters the boat. All of a sudden, water starts rolling over the roof of the salon and cascades down through the top hatch which is located right over my head and chest… sigh… I get a face and mouth full of water, I am now completely drenched. It is not a good day, and life on a boat is not good either. Carey gets me towels and discovers the hatch has two locking positions (see lessons learned) I get up and lay down on the other side of the seating area. I can’t really deal with this as I’m afraid I will vomit all over the place, and the last thing I want to do is clean up puke and sea water. I am freezing, sick, and feeling guilty I am not out there giving Carey moral support. When he needs my help he asks me for it and I give it to him, but as soon as he’s done with me, I’m back in the salon lying down on the seat, soaking wet, and miserable. I continue to lay and listen to all the water coming over the boat, and the shuddering when we run into a mountain of a wave. I know we won’t sink or die, although dying sounds like a pleasant relief about now.
At 12:30 in the morning Carey gets me off the water soaked seat and informs me we are getting ready to head through “the cut”. “The cut” is narrow and shallow, there are breakers and coral heads to avoid… and we are planning to maneuver it in the middle of the night! Under normal circumstances, or at least circumstances where we have our sanity, we would never attempt to do such a thing, but we don’t have much choice at the moment, and our sanity is in question since we are desperate for calm waters.
We have a handheld GPS and chartplotter, and a remote for the autopilot. Carey will be inside the salon area with the chart, the plotter, and the remote, while I sit outside keeping watch. He shows me on the chart the shallows, the coral heads and the breakers that we will be trying to miss. I know he can do this because he knows he can do this, and I trust his judgment, but I’m still not sure about our sanity. I keep watch… it is a moonless night, full of stars, but no light whatsoever except the lit beacon flashing every 4 seconds to indicate the cut!
I start to hear the breakers and get the flashlight out… yeah, right. All of a sudden we take a sharp turn to starboard and I hear and feel the wave… we have found a breaker. Wide eyed, I tell Carey that we are now surfing in a wave heading to starboard. He can see what we have done on the handheld and corrects our course with the remote control. He says this reminds him of playing video games, I’m really hoping he is a good player. The engines are full throttle and the sails are still up. He wants to shoot through the cut as fast as possible so we don’t get taken in by the breakers. It's working and we are back on course. We continue through the cut, surfing waves to some degree with erratic motion, when all of a sudden everything is calm and peaceful… just like that. We lower the sails, and again thank God for His hand on us.
We head north to where we want to anchor for the next two nights. It’s so dark we can only see a few dim anchor lights and lots of stars; it’s not easy to tell the difference. We anchor and sit back to try and let the adrenaline settle before we head off to bed. It’s 1:30 in the morning, and again we know why sailors drink so much.
The next morning we get up and start to assess the damage and clean up the mess from the events of the day before. Stuff is everywhere and everything is wet. I check on the port side in the forward berth to discover that a small line from the hatch cover was caught in the hatch which caused the hatch to leak. The berth is full of water which had also washed over the side of the berth and into the head. We lost 2 hatch covers, and the port side tramp lines are frayed and started to unravel, thus leaving a flapping trampoline. Fortunately the tramps were not damaged. The lines for the tramps on the starboard side were only frayed and will also need to be replaced. No major damage was done, for which we are very thankful.
Today all I want to do is sit on unmovable land. I know we will still have the sensation of rocking even though we will not be on the boat, but I don’t care… I just want to know we aren’t moving. We find a lovely beach and we have it all to ourselves. We read, go hunting for seashells and have a picnic… all on hard, solid ground that does not rock. Today is a good solid day.
After two calm and peaceful nights we head off to Hope Town which was established by British loyalists in 1795. Hope Town is on Elbow Cay and is such a quaint and charming place. There are a lot of tourists here this time of year as Junkanoo is planned for New Years. The lighthouse here is the last manned lighthouse in the Bahamas and uses vaporized Kerosene to make the light. The inlet is protected and full of boats from all over the world.
I wish I could stop here and tell you we came in, found a mooring and all went perfect. Well, of course I can’t because most everything we do is new, so it seems everything has to become an event… and an event it was!
We came into this lovely harbor full of boats on moorings. It’s crowded and there are only a few mooring left. We find one we want to use, pull up perfectly to it but it’s painted with 'NOT FOR RENT', so we have to abandon that idea. Carey moves around the other boats, gets to an outside edge and sees the mooring he wants… I say honey this water is churned up, don’t you think we should raise the dagger boards a little? He says no sweetheart, we need the maneuverability. Not 10 seconds later I say honey I think the dagger board is hitting… no it is hitting… no it is stuck… so much for maneuverability! So, now here we are stuck, run aground for our first time, in a small harbor full of boats! Some things seem so unjust! It takes us about 10 minutes to pull the dagger board loose. We wonder about putting handles on top of the boards and how a comealong may have helped. In the meantime another boat has entered the harbor and taken our mooring. We weave in and out of boats until we find one last mooring on an end spot… this is good. We have one miss but the second time around we hook it, tie up and again settle down talking about cruising and drinking and the whys.
A man on a boat comes up and collects our money for the next two nights. We lower the dinghy and head off to Capt’n Jacks for dinner where we sit outside and watch the sunset over the harbor. It’s a lovely scene. It is all so quaint, with water and boats everywhere, people coming to dinner in their dinghies, tying up to the dock, locals and tourists alike, dressed up for a nice date or in boat clothes, wrinkles and all. It’s fun to watch. We really like this place and would find it a nice place to live, but it’s been discovered and real estate is outrageous.
Today we take a tour of the area in the dinghy, climb 120 steps to the top of the lighthouse and walk over to the other side of the island and eat our lunch. The views are spectacular and the water is unbelievable. Tomorrow we will spend at the beach, snorkeling, as we plan on leaving here Friday to head to Marsh Harbor on Great Abaco. This is where we will haul out SongBird and give her a fresh coat of paint. We are hoping this will only take about 2 weeks but we don’t really know. We do plan on staying on the boat while on the hard.
Lessons Learned
The hatches have two options for being in a closed position. One is only slightly opened for ventilation, while being able to be locked. The other is in the fully closed and locked position which is preferable in large seas.
Make sure nothing is caught in any hatch.
When the water is churned up it’s because it’s shallow.
Raise dagger boards in shallow water.
Dagger boards can be used as an extra anchor in shallow waters… not!
We draw 3ft with the boards UP
Carey’s trying to tell himself to stop stressing so much over everything.
Friday, December 26, 2008
NASSAU NOTES
Mates Log: 15.12.2008
Today is Thursday the wind is still blowing the wrong direction for us to leave but the weather report confirms that Friday is still our day to head to Nassau. We start to prepare SongBird for our departure with a few basic checks, the first being to check on all of Otto’s parts, namely his steering gear on the port side under a swim step. To Carey’s surprise and frustration he has discovered that the potentiometer (this is the sensor for the rudder angle for the auto pilot) has broken off due to the link arm raising it up and down (the link arm will also have to be replaced if we don’t want this to continue to happen). A little JB Weld and 8 hours should do the trick for the potentiometer; the link arm will have to wait. The amazing thing is the potentiometer must have broken loose after we arrived at Chub Cay and once again the autopilot would have rendered itself useless! We cannot deny God’s hand on us… nor do we want to.
LEAVING CHUB CAY (pronounced key)
The weather report indicates that the wind will shift around 4am so we plan to leave at 4:30. We head off to bed early. Carey wakes me at 1:30 informing me that the wind has shifted and he wants to leave right away. He promises I can return to my peaceful sleep once we are underway. My mind is foggy and I don’t know why we can’t wait until a more decent hour, but what I do know is Carey has a good handle on the wind, waves and weather and I have no problem trusting his judgment or reasoning. I do have trouble waking up and finding the check list. Tom and Susan are also leaving today and we hope to see them in Nassau. Once out on deck I see the seas and understand why we are not waiting to leave. Our protected harbor is no long protected and the waves are mounting. Let me say this about that! In the dark everything is bigger. The land is closer, the waves are bigger and the deep troughs in between the waves are deeper yet. As I look out at the seascape I wonder what kind of sail we will have today, should I take seasick pills and if so how many! The seas look like our biggest yet! How will SongBird ride and will anything break today? Its dark… gads its 1:30 in the morning! Then the thought hits me… How will we see the bottom?! My hesitations start mounting, I’m tired, I’m foggy and I can’t get everything clear in my head… but again the thought haunts me… just how are we going to see the bottom? We always watch the bottom, it’s shallow in these parts, and the charts don’t claim 100% accuracy, coral heads sleep in these waters waiting for their prey, the bottom of boats. They linger near land, they roll around in the shallows seeking, trying to hide, preparing to hit with lighting speed while the unsuspecting captain plows onward. I can no longer deal with my haunting concerns to this lingering question, even though I know my husband is going to have a good answer for me and that my apprehension will prove to be ridiculous. I have to ask “Honey how are we going to see the bottom, it’s so dark?” “Sweetheart”, he patiently replies, “we are going to be in The Tongue of the Ocean”. I knew it! I knew I was going to feel ridiculous! The Tongue of the Ocean is 6,000 feet deep!
THE TOUNGE OF THE OCEAN according to Wikipedia:
The Tongue of the Ocean is the name of a deep oceanic trench in the Bahamas separating the islands of Andros and New Providence. The depth of the water drops from roughly 115 feet along Andros' east offshore barrier reef to over 6,000 ft, and the drop is roughly 100 miles long.
This channel - and the Providence Channel - are the two main branches of the Great Bahamas Canyon, a submerged geological feature formed by erosion during periods of lower sea level. During their early history the Tongue of the Ocean and the Providence Channels were broad, relatively shallow basins flanked by growing carbonate banks. As the Blake-Bahamas platform subsided, sedimentation kept pace with subsidence on the banks, but not in the basins. Many Bahamian people believe that this trench "feeds" the surrounding water area because many species of marine life emerge from it.
We pull anchor without any hitches, close calls or yelling over the wind. We are working on our hand signals for everything, its not been easy but we are improving. Underway, we raise the jib, Carey grabs a bowl of cereal and I head back to bed. Carey takes the first watch, he will make sure everything is working and that our sail choice is good. We are no longer able to use the screecher, our new whiskers have stretched too much and the sail is slightly sagging, I have raised it as high as it will go. I am concerned if we use the sail it will get beat up too much, requiring a replacement. To replace this sail alone would probably cost about $4,500… we treat them with great care.
The rhythm of the boat quickly puts me back to sleep. I have grown use to SongBirds movements and the slapping of the waves and I now find them very comforting. I am not sure how I will ever sleep on land again. I wake once the sun starts to come up and head up on deck to see how Carey is doing. He’s starts telling me how quiet and peaceful it was and how things were going along just fine when all of a sudden something landed on the deck right next to him…. It’s black out and he can’t see a thing but something is making a racket and he has no idea what it is! He grabs the flashlight aiming it in the direction of the noise… it’s a flying fish! How did this thing get all the way up on the deck and so far onto the boat? The fish is not on the edge of the deck but in the cockpit by the door! This thing is flopping around and he’s trying to pick it up to put it back into the water. We don’t have a fishing net, we weren’t sure we would need one; he’s having second thoughts about this decision. Finally he gets a hold of the fish and flings it back into the ocean. His heart is still beating and he wonders if the stress will ever end. There is something about being in a big deep ocean in the pitch black of the night experiencing flying things boarding your boat uninvited. It can be a bit unnerving so your imagination goes wild. You now know what it is but those moments before you have things under control you think you might die or worse yet get attacked by some undiscovered sea creature lurking in this very deep part of the ocean. OK, so maybe all that didn’t go through his head but it did cause his heart to do some healthy pounding and get his adrenaline going! He heads down below to sleep.
I settle in with my bowl of granola and grape nuts and watch the changing sky. It’s lovely this time of morning and I take in the view. The ocean is so deep here that there are no longer the light greens and turquoise colors that dominate this part of the world, only a deep dark blue with no end. When you sail in the Bahamas you feel as though you are sailing on top of a big sand bank. The waters are clearer here than in any other part of the world due to the high concentration of calcium carbonate. You can always see the bottom and you always wonder just how deep it is since it always looks as though you could jump in and touch the sandy bottom. I can now clearly see that we are in the deep of the deeps and I can’t help but wonder what sea creatures lurk in the blackness.
OTTO ISSUES
Otto doesn’t seem to be having any problems…, or so I think. I go inside the salon to see where we are on the chart and if I need to make any heading adjustments. Otto seems to be having a hard time staying on course he veers off 35 to 40 degrees at a time, corrects himself then does it all over again, but his behavior is sporadic. I’m not sure what is wrong with him, his course is not steady but I am hoping it is only the nature of the wind astern and a following sea. I look at the instruments inside the salon area and notice Otto’s screen is displaying AUTO FAIL. I can’t get him reset so I go down and wake up Carey hoping it’s nothing, while at the same time hoping I haven’t woken him for nothing. I am informed that this was Otto’s condition during the first watch and is currently not of concern. These are the things we are learning… when you brief the next watch you have to pass on all information and observations about the last watch. I feel bad waking Carey for nothing but at the same time relieved that this is nothing… at the moment.
We have wind so are able to sail all the way to Nassau; it’s not an easy sail as the wind keeps shifting around our aft from side to side. The seas have at least 4-5 foot troughs with an occasional 6 footer. Since we are going with the wind and have following seas SongBird rides well. The sun comes up I can see more action on the water, mostly flying fish as they are everywhere here. I notice some fish are taking flight when all of a sudden, not far behind them is a mahi mahi (Dorado) in quick pursuit! It is amazing! The Dorado is coming up out of the water by a foot then dipping just barely back in the water before jumping out again. It looks like something out of a National Geographic movie only it is happening right off the forward port side of our boat! I could only sit and watch in total amazement realizing I may never see this kind of thing again.
NASSAU
Six hours later we arrive at Nassau Harbor; this is our first big port of entry that we are unfamiliar with. We have to call Harbor Control for permission to enter and give them SongBirds information. I am a little nervous and working on my radio etiquette, making sure I can understand what we are being told to do. We are taking it all in, huge ships are everywhere, and a humongous cruise ship is following right behind us. Carey tries to speed up our two 8 HP engines and I can’t help but laugh. We will never keep ahead of this thing they have to slow down for us.
There is a lovely old light house on our port side where you can stay and be the light keeper for the night, if you like. Six cruise ships sit anchored off our starboard while the world famous resort, Atlantis, becomes visible to our port. We have heard about Atlantis, huge aquariums everywhere, water slides, pools, beaches, a lovely marina, and a can of soda for three dollars. It is quite the site, and if you are looking for a fabulous resort in the Bahamas go to and money is no issue visit www.atlantis.com, they do have it all.
WORST FEARS
From here on I’m not sure how I’m going to explain our “comedy of errors” or more aptly called our “worst fears”. I call Nassau Yacht Haven where we will be staying, to let them know we have arrived. I pass the radio to Carey so I can go up front to get out the fenders. Carey is now attempting to understand where the marina wants us to dock. It is not always easy understanding folks on the radio, but when an accent is added, well, it's near impossible. I can’t understand much of what the guy is saying at all. Carey seems to be able to get most of it, or so I think. I will mention here that the tide is going out… this is called a tide but really it’s a river flowing through the harbor at 3 to 4 knots. The current is rushing by us… and again I will mention we have two 8 HP engines. This does not allow for a lot of control. Oh, did I mention yet that we keep having engine troubles? Yes, we do, they like to die, and they like to die (instead of idling) at critical moments, moments when you need them the most.
So, here we are heading into a marina with no real idea where the guy wants us, the water is rushing by us at breakneck speed, and one of our engines dies. This marina is packed full of boat with docks going every which way. No one is on the dock to direct us, but evidently they can see us in the office and keep telling us we are going down the wrong dock. I’m not sure what is happening except that we are headed, seemly, full throttle into a dock. I am at the bow and yell (the wind is blowing like crazy here and I have no hand signal for you are running into a dock!) that we are headed straight into the dock. Carey yells back “Yes, I know.”
At this point I don’t know what to think other then I better hold on to something. I can't help but wonder... if he knows we are heading straight into the dock why is he not putting the motors in reverse to stop us? I decide I better hang on or prepare to perform some Superman stunt to stop us! I choose to hang on. Right before we are getting ready to hit the dock we stop and then ever so slowly start to move backwards. I turn to look at Carey, to get some kind of indication as to what might have happened. The only indication I have is he is stressed and I don’t blame him.
This place is crazy and we are doing our part to keep it that way! We back out with the wind howling and seemly little control over the boat. We move on down to the next dock and some guy starts telling us where to go, so we head in this new direction. The radio cracks and the marina is telling us again we are going the wrong way! We can’t help but wonder who the heck is this guy on the dock!? We again back out and a cacophony of yelling breaks out and I slowing start to understand, "SHALLOWS"! We are backing up onto a sandbar!
By now it is quite clear to us why cruisers drink so much and start to entertain the thought ourselves! Carey moves SongBird forward, wind blowing and water rushing by. Once more we try to find out where the guy wants us, only this time the marina has finally sent someone out to show us where to go. My fear is they have sent this guy out to tell us to leave because obviously, we have no idea how to drive a boat!
Fortunately this is not true, he is informing us to take our pick of the slips on the end. Please, just take anyone! This may sound all nice and dandy to be able to pick your own slip, but at this point we don’t care, we want it over with as much as they do! We still have a long way to go before we can actually breathe a sigh of relief!
I give Carey two reasonable (yeah right) options and he picks one. We are not properly lined up because we have been on our own personal tour of the marina, and we really can’t get lined up between the current, the wind speed and failing engines.
Finally, we head into a slip, by now I should be throwing dock lines to the guys on the dock… But, I have forgotten to get the dock lines out I have been so distracted by our marina tour! The lines are not attached to the boat!!! In all of the commotion and terror they just slipped my mind! This is not good and we find out just how 'not good' it is.
There is the wind (I may have mentioned) and the current (I may have mentioned) and there is a stationary dock on one side of us, and a sailboat on the other side, and a dock in front of us. We have two, I say 8 HP engines that are not working well!!! First we kiss the boat then we kiss the dock. By now I at least have the lines out, but, Carey is yelling at me and I’m thinking, someday we will laugh at this!!!!
Finally we are tied up and standing on the dock, actually Carey is laying on the dock. There are people everywhere, politely pretending they did not see a thing. I can’t help but think back at the night we left FL, perfectly docking in the dark with not a soul to see, of course the water was perfectly flat and there was no wind. I now wonder if we will ever repeat that performance. Probably not, for awhile.
FRIENDS AND FAMILY
We have finally made it to Nassau, we wash the boat down, we take out the trash, we do laundry and we take showers. You may wonder why we have a need to mention showers. We don’t have a real shower on the boat and we don’t want to use our water in the sprayer (our version of a shower) if we don’t have to. Showers have taken on a new meaning for us a “special day”, a “day of celebration” and always noteworthy.
While doing laundry I hear my name and turn to see Tom. Tom and Susan our new friends we met in Chub Cay have just arrived, we make plans for dinner. The folks from CA have passed on some fish for us. We love the cruising community.
My girlfriend Lisa, and her 4 year old daughter Leyna, arrive the next day. It’s great to see friends and share our new life style with them. Leyna is a trooper and we are all hoping no one gets seasick. It is rocky here and I do mean rocky. We are on the edge of the marina which is not protected at all. The wind howls, the current flows and only when the tide is changing do things calm down for a few moments. The waves slap the boat, the halyard slaps the mast and it is hard to stand up, even on our catamaran. Lisa and Leyna seem to be settling in, except for the rockiness. We talk about staying at the Atlantis Marina for 2 days, one, so we can all get a break from this wind and two, so we can all play. If you stay at Atlantis everything is free except food and drink, of course. We know Leyna would have a good time and we don’t have any doubts about the rest of us. Plans are made to go to Atlantis Marina after our trip to Rose Island.
Before we can leave Carey will need to fix Otto and the link arm issue. He is sure that he will not be able to go to a boat store and just buy what he needs. He is now faced with the familiar task of deciding what will work in its place, and what resources are available. Improvising is a big part of life now. As always he rises to the challenge and seems to enjoy it. While Lisa, Leyna and I go looking for a phone card, a phone, and the internet service company. Carey heads to the boat store across the street from the marina... nothing there, as he suspected. He is hoping for a motorcycle shop but that would be asking too much, so he finds a place that sells personal watercraft (Seadoo style craft). Sure enough he figures out what type of parts they have that he can make use of, and is on his way. After a few custom adjustments his parts work perfect! Who could ask for more? Not only is Otto fixed but this part of him should outlive all of us.
Jared and Ruthie arrive 2 days after Lisa and Leyna. As soon as they arrive at the marina and hugs and kisses are given we start to take off. We will head to Rose Island and anchor out for 2 nights. We have to plan to leave at the change of the tide, so we can have some control over the boat. Please note the word some… The wind will still push us, but it should be much easier. Please note should.
We all have our orders and are prepared to leave. I can’t really tell you what happened; I wasn’t looking in the direction of contact, but was watching out for the dock in front of us. All of sudden I hear this noise and turn to see Jared pushing with all of his might the piling at the end of the dock while SongBird hits and rubs the corner of the dock. Jared’s heroic efforts work as he pushes us off and no damage is done. We are free, free of the magnetic control a dock seems to possess over a boat. Then and there we decidedly agreed that being on the hook (anchoring) is so much less stressful than this marina stuff!
OUR ISLAND
Rose Island is small and has maybe 4 houses on it. We anchor at West Bottom Harbor just off the island, in between another spit of land. We are nicely protected and we view a beach we want to explore the next day. This place is beautiful, and peaceful, a nice change from Nassau. The next day we take the dinghy over in two trips to get us all to a little deserted beach. Check out the pictures. It’s about 150 yards wide and a half a mile long. No one is on it. A local guy has two tourists with him and they are fishing in the waters just off the beach, which is only three feet deep. The local comes over and says “Welcome to my island!” I ask him if this is truly his island, he shakes his head no, and says, 'you can call it your island too'. This day we have our own private island and we enjoy every moment of it. We stay in this protected anchorage for 2 nights until it’s time to head to Atlantis.
Atlantis is high roller and the marina is lined with mega yachts. I use to think SongBird a good size, I still do, but in this arena she is smaller than some of the dinghies on these mega yachts! I have included a picture, but am not sure you can get a good sense of what she looked like. Also, remember she is in need of paint and has a few patches, and half sanded areas. We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies in this marina and we can’t help but laugh!
For our docking performance at Atlantis we kept things simple, after all, this marina is protected. We are given a slip number so we know right where to go and they have guys on the docks ready to catch your lines, which were of course all in place. I also had all the extra lines out “just in case”. There were 5 of us and all hands were on deck. We were prepared… we are heading towards the dock and this time we are parking on the side, no boats to slip in next to, and no dock in front of us. Just mosey on up to the side of the dock. But I notice we are coming in too fast and not turning, but heading at a 45 degree angle into the dock. I run up with a fender while Jared performs more heroics. We hit the dock instead of just kissing it this time, and leave a white mark that unfortunately, we forget to sign. We don’t know what happened but Carey will tell us in due time. To protect the innocent and the guilty we will be keeping our Lessons Learned section at the bottom of our letter.
We have arrived at the infamous Atlantis, made our mark and once again survived yet another docking experience… it’s time for a walk. This place is amazing and we can’t wait to go play. We spend the next day playing in the water, riding slides, winning money, losing no lives, and wearing out a 4 year old. A very good time was had by all.
Today is Friday December 26th and I promise I will bring this up to date and keep it short. Lisa and Leyna left last Saturday. We were so sorry to see them leave as it was great having a friend here and so much fun getting to know Leyna again. Leyna was about 18 months the last time I saw her. Lisa said Leyna cried all the way to the airport, I think she had a good time. We still had Jared and Ruthie here with us so we celebrated Christmas with them on Sunday. We made Christmas dinner, exchanged gifts and played games. Monday we walked to the beach on Paradise Island and hung out. They had to leave on Tuesday, and I cried. We are not exactly sure when we will see them again or where but hopefully within the next 3 months, and we are hoping Jeff will be with them, or us, by then. We think (Carey, Jared, Ruthie, Jeff and me) will be broke about this time and in need of work so we plan on staying in St Croix or St John for a spell.
This morning we got up at 3:30 in the morning to go to Junkanoo. This is the biggest event of the year in the Bahamas and the biggest social event. The girls all have special hairdos and colors and their cutest clothes on. The event starts at midnight and goes until 11am. There is a parade that has to circle town twice and each group is judged. The groups have an elaborate float with a group of people following, beating on a variety of types of drums, horns, whistles and brass bands. Each person has a costume that looks like it took months to prepare. My pictures did not come out well since everyone is dancing, but I’ll post one so you can at least get an idea. It is a parade of rhythm and dance.
One of the floats gives tribute and thanks that Obama is president, they see him being president as an end to the war and greater freedom for blacks. Another, celebrates the birth of Jesus, children’s rhymes, and self employment. A few businesses are represented; gangs and violence are encouraged to end and some cowboy and Indian thing. The fire department had great costumes but they were shaking and jumping too much for any of those pictures to come out, which was too bad as I know my old fire chief would have gotten a kick out of them. Everyone was friendly, no matter their age.
This brings me to a custom they have that I would like to tell you about. When you pass someone on the street they will say hello as many times as there are people in your group. They may say hello, hello, hello, how are you, how are you, how are you, because there are three of you together. People walk by you and look you in the eye. They would consider it rude if you walked up to them without a proper greeting of hello how are you today, and just started talking. Everyone wishes you Merry Christmas on Christmas day and Boxing Day (the following day). They are a spiritual lot and freely talk about God in their general conversation. We have enjoyed these islanders immensely. We have also enjoyed riding the bus and not really knowing where we were going, getting to know other cruisers, meeting the local people and finding every day so different from the last.
We are on a great adventure and have loved sharing it with my kids. We are hoping that as time goes on more of our family will be able to join us.
Do stay in touch, we love hearing from you! As always, love Carey and Lisa
Lessons learned this time around:
Do not put the engines in a forward motion when you really want to go in reverse.
If one engine dies keep steering especially while docking.
Have all dock lines out and attached to the boat before docking.
Make sure you understand what the person is saying on the radio.
At the change of a watch make sure all briefings are complete before going to bed.
Come up with a hand signal that communicates, 'you are going to be hitting a dock soon', but it can’t be obscene.
Where strong winds and currents exist, wait for the lull at the tide change before docking.
Purchase two 15 HP engines in St Martin ASAP.
Sign all dings left by your boat at marinas.
Friday, December 19, 2008
We Finally Made it Out of FL
WARNING! We have been waiting out a weather window with too high of winds to go play so here I have sat on the computer writing our update that has turned into a book. Really you don’t have to read this and you don’t have to feel bad about not reading it. It really is just long due to the amount of time I had on my hands, and not at all because it’s so interesting!
We finally made it out of Florida! It was touch and go there for a while. We found out Otto (our autopilot) needed two new batteries and a new compass. It was actually quite amazing he worked at all when we went to Bimini! Once installed, we discovered he still did not want to do his job. We took his brains into the shop, his brains were fine. What now… after many phone calls, trying this, trying that he was fixed and we could prepare to leave, return the rental car, hoist and secure the dinghy and stop at the public marina after hours for water. I say after hours since we were not needing gas and our boat is 40’ the guys at the marina had requested we wait until they were closed to get our needed water.
Please picture this with me if you will… we have been working on this boat non-stop for 4 months, we have sweated, we have bled, we have thrown our backs out, we have barely been able to get out of our berth on occasion, we have spent too much money, we have questioned our ability to succeed and learn to work together as a team, we have been out of the marina twice, and we had friends come who we did not get to the Bahamas. In other words it has not been easy and we have had times of doubt. So here we are, Otto is working, we are heading out of our cozy little anchorage where we have spent the past 5 days praying for Otto’s return and a weather window.
Its 6:15pm, the ICW is perfectly calm, the lights are spectacular and the temperature is perfect. We are headed to the first bridge which is scheduled to open at 6:30. Carey is not speeding down the ICW this time as he had done in the past, and we are both feeling quite relaxed. We pass under the open bridge to the gas dock where we will top off our water tank. Carey docks SongBird perfectly while I keep us from kissing the pilings with fenders. It’s all perfect, the instructions are clear and we are feeling like a team of old salts (finally!). We leave the fuel dock and start howling… we are so excited that we can’t contain ourselves. We are finally off, we are alone and stress free. We love it, we know it’s been worth it and we finally have a sense that we are truly on our way this time!!
We pass through the next two bridges; Carey is relaxing while I’m at the helm… yes it's true, he's finally relaxed! This is what we have been waiting for, this is what we have been working so hard for, and this is why at this moment we are rejoicing. We take a moment to thank God for getting us here, for His grace and safety, and we ponder just how truly blessed we are.
We are heading south now where we will anchor off Biscayne Bay for the night. The trip down is uneventful in terms of problems, but the sight is spectacular. The moon, the clouds, the sea, the lights, the picture turns surreal and I want to reach out and touch it or pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.
We set anchor around 11pm, ready for a good night’s rest. Who were we kidding! We can’t sleep, the water is slapping like crazy (it’s a little rough), and the anchor alarm goes off, either we are dragging the anchor or we did not set our drag distance wide enough. Fortunately, it’s the later and the alarm is reset. We once again settle down, rocking and rolling in a manner that would put a baby to sleep... so what are we waiting for? We are under the flight path for the Miami International Airport! The dagger boards are banging now and we wonder if we will ever get any sleep tonight.
After a restless night of banging, clanging, slapping and rollin’ we head off early for Nixon’s Harbor at Bimini. Our plan is to cross the Gulf Stream while it is rather flat. We are unable to sail so we are left to motor dead to weather all the way across. Once we have crossed the stream the winds had changed to the south so we put out the screecher… and we’re off! We are doing 5 knots in 8 knots of wind! The weather is warmer here and we are enjoying the ride. We each take turns taking a much needed nap. We see a lot of Portuguese Man of War jellyfish. These are the most interesting creatures. According to Wikipedia: it is not a single animal, but rather a colony of four kinds of highly modified individuals, specialized polyps and medusoids. There is a high degree of specialization of each zooid which is structurally similar to other solitary animals; however the zooids are all attached to each other and physiologically integrated rather than living independently. Such specialized zooids usually lack the structures associated with other functions and are therefore dependent for survival on the others to do what the particular zooid cannot do. They are in clusters in the water and look like odd shaped bubbles.
We arrive at Nixon’s Harbor around 3 in the afternoon. We anchor, I fix dinner, clean up and by 6:30 I can no longer function and have to go to bed. I sleep 12 hours. Carey has a fitful nights rest and wonders if he will ever not worry about everything. He says I only woke up enough to tell him the anchor alarm was going off but I have no memory of this. We are trying to get use to all of the noises the boat makes, trying to determine what each of the sounds mean, what is of concern and what is not.
We head out Sunday morning to Chub Cay. We are not sure that we can cross the banks in one day and we are not convinced that we want to sail all night. The wind is perfect so we are able to sail all day and not use our engines. We don’t see much in the way of wild life, one lone dolphin with his dorsal fin half missing and three Mylar birthday balloons (Carey is sure one of them we saw twice). We anchor a few miles off our course for the night. The wind has picked up in the early evening and we are now rockin’ and rollin’ all over the place or at least it feels that way.
After another night of fitful rest we are headed for Chub Cay. We plan on anchoring off of the beach at the marine entrance. We arrive around two in the afternoon and set the anchor. We are getting more and more efficient at everything we do. We lower the dinghy and head into the marina to check things out.
Someone has put a lot of money into this place but it is only half finished and no one is working. As a matter of fact the place feels deserted. We tie up at the dinghy dock and wander over to the “Shoppe”. The cruising guide said we could purchase a phone here or phone cards. We need to call ahead to Nassau. The girl who works at the “Shoppe” is sitting outside because it’s too dark and stuffy inside. She informs us that the power is off until 5pm. We take a look around at all the empty shelves and few remaining items that look as though they have been sitting in the same place for years. We buy 2 cold sodas, we had been on the water for 4 days and a grape and orange soda looked great to us!!!! This is not encouraging!! We don’t drink grape and orange colored soda so why are we now?! What does the ocean do to you to make you do such things! We can’t answer the question, but we keep a lookout for any other odd behaviors.
We head back to SongBird eat and are off to bed after all the evening checks are done. The wind is picking up and we decide tomorrow we will move the boat in further behind a sea wall where we will be more protected.
A wild night commences and Carey is up and down all night. I can’t help him; he is just making sure everything is OK. By now we have learned to raise the dagger boards up as far as we can, so of course they are much quieter. We are not always the brightest folks!
From the loud noises and sounds I venture to guess that the waves are crashing over the boat and water is flooding in! Well, of course it isn’t but if it ever does I have no idea how I will know! The water is coming up over the swim steps and the waves are slapping the fiberglass hull, the noise is incredible. You get a sense from the sound of things that you are in a bathtub with all the water sloshing out, we again find it hard to sleep. I am starting to wonder if this cruising thing is mostly about what you can do living with sleep deprivation. The weather is rather cyclic; so you sail like crazy, the wind gets wild so you have to wait out the weather... but… you can’t sleep at night due to all the racket… we don’t go anywhere during the day because winds at 20 knots are not appealing to us in the dinghy. So we hang out, work on small projects if we can stand up or take naps and read. Actually, you should be able to tell what I do by the length of this update!! Like I said you don’t have to read this I just didn’t have anything else to do!
Tuesday night a catamaran from the marina joins us anchoring out. Oh, did I mention our SSB is no longer working? We can’t get weather and are feeling a bit frustrated, we hope to get online tomorrow. We try hailing our new neighbors for some kind of report. No response.
Just before dark a mono-hull is on its way in. The winds are 20 knots and gusting. The mono-hull, a centerboard boat, is obviously having trouble as she seriously rocks back and forth. I start to wonder if she will fall over and if we will be launching a rescue. I am also thinking if I was on that boat I would be chumming over the side and am thankful for the design of a catamaran. Her sails had been down as she motored towards us… the next thing we see they are trying to raise their foresail. They must be having engine trouble. They pull up trying to anchor out with us and the other cat but they can’t get their anchor to hold and they are violently rocking. Their engine sputters and spits and you can sense their frustration. They give up and head into the marina.
Wednesday the winds are still blowing the wrong direction for us to leave, but we can now launch the dinghy, get gas at $5.20 a gallon (we only needed 6 gallons), try and get online and look for a much needed shower. We head down to the docks to find the owners of the troubled mono-hull. Tom and Susan are from Massachusetts, and are into their second year of cruising. We get the skinny on their woes and all decide to have dinner together at the marina restaurant… with their famous coconut fish. We meet at the restaurant when another couple show up. They are off the catamaran docked across from Tom and Susan. These folks are from California… and get this, which if you are from CA and have been north on 101 will know what I am talking about. They own the Paul Bunyan and Babe Gift Shop in Klamath. His family has owned it since 1942 and the distinctive thing is the huge wood Paul Bunyan statue outside the shop. I have seen this statue since I was a kid every time we went camping, fishing or water skiing. It is a small world! We all enjoy a great meal together as we learn more about where to go and what to see, how to get there and how not to get there. Cruisers are a friendly lot, quick to be friends and quick to help.
The folks from CA left today as they are headed back to Florida, the winds are perfect for them. Tom and Susan are headed to Nassau and are waiting out the weather with us. The winds are predicted to die down tonight and be perfect for us to leave around 4:30 tomorrow morning.
Carey recently discovered a new issue with Otto during his routine pre-check but we think he was able to fix it. If not we will just hand steer our next 37 miles. We are off again and all is well.
Thanks for the emails and if we don’t get back to you please know we love hearing from you and would love to be able to respond to every one, all of the time. But our online time is random, too short and very slow. So we make sure we get done what we have to first and try and catch up personally next.
Love to all, Carey and Lisa
We finally made it out of Florida! It was touch and go there for a while. We found out Otto (our autopilot) needed two new batteries and a new compass. It was actually quite amazing he worked at all when we went to Bimini! Once installed, we discovered he still did not want to do his job. We took his brains into the shop, his brains were fine. What now… after many phone calls, trying this, trying that he was fixed and we could prepare to leave, return the rental car, hoist and secure the dinghy and stop at the public marina after hours for water. I say after hours since we were not needing gas and our boat is 40’ the guys at the marina had requested we wait until they were closed to get our needed water.
Please picture this with me if you will… we have been working on this boat non-stop for 4 months, we have sweated, we have bled, we have thrown our backs out, we have barely been able to get out of our berth on occasion, we have spent too much money, we have questioned our ability to succeed and learn to work together as a team, we have been out of the marina twice, and we had friends come who we did not get to the Bahamas. In other words it has not been easy and we have had times of doubt. So here we are, Otto is working, we are heading out of our cozy little anchorage where we have spent the past 5 days praying for Otto’s return and a weather window.
Its 6:15pm, the ICW is perfectly calm, the lights are spectacular and the temperature is perfect. We are headed to the first bridge which is scheduled to open at 6:30. Carey is not speeding down the ICW this time as he had done in the past, and we are both feeling quite relaxed. We pass under the open bridge to the gas dock where we will top off our water tank. Carey docks SongBird perfectly while I keep us from kissing the pilings with fenders. It’s all perfect, the instructions are clear and we are feeling like a team of old salts (finally!). We leave the fuel dock and start howling… we are so excited that we can’t contain ourselves. We are finally off, we are alone and stress free. We love it, we know it’s been worth it and we finally have a sense that we are truly on our way this time!!
We pass through the next two bridges; Carey is relaxing while I’m at the helm… yes it's true, he's finally relaxed! This is what we have been waiting for, this is what we have been working so hard for, and this is why at this moment we are rejoicing. We take a moment to thank God for getting us here, for His grace and safety, and we ponder just how truly blessed we are.
We are heading south now where we will anchor off Biscayne Bay for the night. The trip down is uneventful in terms of problems, but the sight is spectacular. The moon, the clouds, the sea, the lights, the picture turns surreal and I want to reach out and touch it or pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.
We set anchor around 11pm, ready for a good night’s rest. Who were we kidding! We can’t sleep, the water is slapping like crazy (it’s a little rough), and the anchor alarm goes off, either we are dragging the anchor or we did not set our drag distance wide enough. Fortunately, it’s the later and the alarm is reset. We once again settle down, rocking and rolling in a manner that would put a baby to sleep... so what are we waiting for? We are under the flight path for the Miami International Airport! The dagger boards are banging now and we wonder if we will ever get any sleep tonight.
After a restless night of banging, clanging, slapping and rollin’ we head off early for Nixon’s Harbor at Bimini. Our plan is to cross the Gulf Stream while it is rather flat. We are unable to sail so we are left to motor dead to weather all the way across. Once we have crossed the stream the winds had changed to the south so we put out the screecher… and we’re off! We are doing 5 knots in 8 knots of wind! The weather is warmer here and we are enjoying the ride. We each take turns taking a much needed nap. We see a lot of Portuguese Man of War jellyfish. These are the most interesting creatures. According to Wikipedia: it is not a single animal, but rather a colony of four kinds of highly modified individuals, specialized polyps and medusoids. There is a high degree of specialization of each zooid which is structurally similar to other solitary animals; however the zooids are all attached to each other and physiologically integrated rather than living independently. Such specialized zooids usually lack the structures associated with other functions and are therefore dependent for survival on the others to do what the particular zooid cannot do. They are in clusters in the water and look like odd shaped bubbles.
We arrive at Nixon’s Harbor around 3 in the afternoon. We anchor, I fix dinner, clean up and by 6:30 I can no longer function and have to go to bed. I sleep 12 hours. Carey has a fitful nights rest and wonders if he will ever not worry about everything. He says I only woke up enough to tell him the anchor alarm was going off but I have no memory of this. We are trying to get use to all of the noises the boat makes, trying to determine what each of the sounds mean, what is of concern and what is not.
We head out Sunday morning to Chub Cay. We are not sure that we can cross the banks in one day and we are not convinced that we want to sail all night. The wind is perfect so we are able to sail all day and not use our engines. We don’t see much in the way of wild life, one lone dolphin with his dorsal fin half missing and three Mylar birthday balloons (Carey is sure one of them we saw twice). We anchor a few miles off our course for the night. The wind has picked up in the early evening and we are now rockin’ and rollin’ all over the place or at least it feels that way.
After another night of fitful rest we are headed for Chub Cay. We plan on anchoring off of the beach at the marine entrance. We arrive around two in the afternoon and set the anchor. We are getting more and more efficient at everything we do. We lower the dinghy and head into the marina to check things out.
Someone has put a lot of money into this place but it is only half finished and no one is working. As a matter of fact the place feels deserted. We tie up at the dinghy dock and wander over to the “Shoppe”. The cruising guide said we could purchase a phone here or phone cards. We need to call ahead to Nassau. The girl who works at the “Shoppe” is sitting outside because it’s too dark and stuffy inside. She informs us that the power is off until 5pm. We take a look around at all the empty shelves and few remaining items that look as though they have been sitting in the same place for years. We buy 2 cold sodas, we had been on the water for 4 days and a grape and orange soda looked great to us!!!! This is not encouraging!! We don’t drink grape and orange colored soda so why are we now?! What does the ocean do to you to make you do such things! We can’t answer the question, but we keep a lookout for any other odd behaviors.
We head back to SongBird eat and are off to bed after all the evening checks are done. The wind is picking up and we decide tomorrow we will move the boat in further behind a sea wall where we will be more protected.
A wild night commences and Carey is up and down all night. I can’t help him; he is just making sure everything is OK. By now we have learned to raise the dagger boards up as far as we can, so of course they are much quieter. We are not always the brightest folks!
From the loud noises and sounds I venture to guess that the waves are crashing over the boat and water is flooding in! Well, of course it isn’t but if it ever does I have no idea how I will know! The water is coming up over the swim steps and the waves are slapping the fiberglass hull, the noise is incredible. You get a sense from the sound of things that you are in a bathtub with all the water sloshing out, we again find it hard to sleep. I am starting to wonder if this cruising thing is mostly about what you can do living with sleep deprivation. The weather is rather cyclic; so you sail like crazy, the wind gets wild so you have to wait out the weather... but… you can’t sleep at night due to all the racket… we don’t go anywhere during the day because winds at 20 knots are not appealing to us in the dinghy. So we hang out, work on small projects if we can stand up or take naps and read. Actually, you should be able to tell what I do by the length of this update!! Like I said you don’t have to read this I just didn’t have anything else to do!
Tuesday night a catamaran from the marina joins us anchoring out. Oh, did I mention our SSB is no longer working? We can’t get weather and are feeling a bit frustrated, we hope to get online tomorrow. We try hailing our new neighbors for some kind of report. No response.
Just before dark a mono-hull is on its way in. The winds are 20 knots and gusting. The mono-hull, a centerboard boat, is obviously having trouble as she seriously rocks back and forth. I start to wonder if she will fall over and if we will be launching a rescue. I am also thinking if I was on that boat I would be chumming over the side and am thankful for the design of a catamaran. Her sails had been down as she motored towards us… the next thing we see they are trying to raise their foresail. They must be having engine trouble. They pull up trying to anchor out with us and the other cat but they can’t get their anchor to hold and they are violently rocking. Their engine sputters and spits and you can sense their frustration. They give up and head into the marina.
Wednesday the winds are still blowing the wrong direction for us to leave, but we can now launch the dinghy, get gas at $5.20 a gallon (we only needed 6 gallons), try and get online and look for a much needed shower. We head down to the docks to find the owners of the troubled mono-hull. Tom and Susan are from Massachusetts, and are into their second year of cruising. We get the skinny on their woes and all decide to have dinner together at the marina restaurant… with their famous coconut fish. We meet at the restaurant when another couple show up. They are off the catamaran docked across from Tom and Susan. These folks are from California… and get this, which if you are from CA and have been north on 101 will know what I am talking about. They own the Paul Bunyan and Babe Gift Shop in Klamath. His family has owned it since 1942 and the distinctive thing is the huge wood Paul Bunyan statue outside the shop. I have seen this statue since I was a kid every time we went camping, fishing or water skiing. It is a small world! We all enjoy a great meal together as we learn more about where to go and what to see, how to get there and how not to get there. Cruisers are a friendly lot, quick to be friends and quick to help.
The folks from CA left today as they are headed back to Florida, the winds are perfect for them. Tom and Susan are headed to Nassau and are waiting out the weather with us. The winds are predicted to die down tonight and be perfect for us to leave around 4:30 tomorrow morning.
Carey recently discovered a new issue with Otto during his routine pre-check but we think he was able to fix it. If not we will just hand steer our next 37 miles. We are off again and all is well.
Thanks for the emails and if we don’t get back to you please know we love hearing from you and would love to be able to respond to every one, all of the time. But our online time is random, too short and very slow. So we make sure we get done what we have to first and try and catch up personally next.
Love to all, Carey and Lisa
Ahoy
Ahoy!
We’ll were off! That is Thurs Nov. 27th! We are frantically getting ready, picking up supplies, trying to get seven months of meds, selling a truck, seeing friends before we leave and making sure SongBird is, in general, ship shape. We are ready for a vacation! It has all been quite exciting but exhausting.
Friends, Noel and Letti, are flying out this Thurs. to crew as we head to the Bahamas. The weather seems to be cooperating nicely which is wonderful! It looks like everything is falling into place and all systems are a go!
Or so we thought… we started out Thursday our heading dead north up the Intercoastal waterway passing under the three draw bridges that separate us from the open waters of the deep blue sea. All systems are a go. I am so nervous. I can’t seem to get Carey to slow down enough as he approaches each bridge to help relieve my building anxiety as we are headed towards each bridge at lightning speed while I am sure we are going to hit a bridge before it is fully raised! Just how fast could we be going?! We have two 8 HP engines on a 40’ catamaran for Pete’s sake, we can only go slow! Are these the moments of sheer terror I have heard about…? I don’t think so but I am so excited and nervous and can’t wait to get out into the open where our chances of hitting anything are slim.
We are finally out of the ICW and Port Everglades heading south for Fowey Rocks where we will anchor for the night before our crossing to the Bahamas. We are also ready to set the auto pilot we have named Otto. We love Otto, he is worth three crew members and we fondly call him our German crew member. Once Otto takes over we hope to settle into some long awaited and well deserved “wind in our hair, salt water in our teeth” hanging out. We’re tired and looking forward to taking a few moments to just breathe in what we are doing.
Otto is turned on but something unfamiliar is flashing on his screen… INT COMP. Hmm, have you seen this before… no…I don’t remember this being here before do you…. no…what would that mean… I don’t know… me either… well, let’s set the course and find the book. Things start looking funny… Otto is not running the same course as our compass or chart plotter and he keeps making sharp turns to starboard. Our German crew member is misbehaving!
Once the book is obtained Carey and Noel spend the afternoon trying to reset his internal compass and trouble shoot the problem. They think they have fixed it numerous times only to discover differently. Noel gets online via his iphone (sometimes you gottta love technology) to find a service center that we hope to call on Friday… what were we thinking! Friday is still part of the long weekend for Thanksgiving! We also discover all the service centers are in Ft Lauderdale where we have just come from. We continue on south anyway where we will pull into No Name Harbour hoping to spend a quiet night relaxing under the stars while we ponder our current circumstances. We pull into No Name along with every boat from Ft Lauderdale to Miami that will fit into this very small harbor. What were we thinking! Its Thanksgiving weekend! We find a spot near the mangroves where we hope to be out of the way and find less congestion. We lower the dinghy and head to a restaurant located at the end of the cove. The place is hoppin’ and people are everywhere. Boats, kids, dinghies, skateboards, bicycles, and some other 2 wheeled rolling boards we have never seen pass us in entertainment.
Once back on the boat we discover no see ems’, our peaceful spot near the mangroves turns out to be a favorite place for these bugs, that you can’t see but with teeth the size of Kansas, like to hang out. We quickly put the screen up before they haul Noel off the boat or he decides to jump over board to get away from these annoying and painful bugs. The noise outside starts to escalate and get louder the later in the evening it becomes… someone starts singing and we think, Oh, live entertainment, this guy has a nice voice. Two songs later we hear something else coming from the restaurant at the end of the cove and realize someone else is singing… or at least giving it their best shot… karaoke has arrived!! It’s a long night. Around 2 am some boater has had enough and starts blowing his very loud boat horn hoping the wildlife will take the hint. No one notices. Sometime around sunrise it’s quiet and sleep finally comes.
We leave No Name, my guess is this harbor has come by way of its name because once the wild parties are over no one would remember the name of this place anyway so why bother. Heading towards Miami Harbor while we again try to find an open service center, we get an email from some guy doing a little work from home telling us our internal compass has died and we need to take it in for service in Ft Lauderdale. Last night we figured we would not be making it to the Bahamas but now our thoughts are confirmed. We have also missed our weather window and will have to wait for another.
We are now back in Ft Lauderdale, anchored on the ICW by our old marina. We take the dinghy to shore and have rented a car. We drove Noel and Letti down to Miami yesterday from a vacation that did not include the Bahamas as they had hoped and we took Otto to the service center. We hope to hear back from them in a couple of days as to his condition. We went to see Jared and Ruthie and d found them putting plastic and tarps over their boat as the down pour the night before made for the discovery of many a leak. They leave Thursday for VA and hope to come home to a dry boat.
Today we will continue to work on SongBird and run errands with Jared and Ruthie. Otto with get fixed and we will wait out our weather window. Right now Friday or Saturday may be looking good. We will stay where we are if we can, there is suppose to be a 24 hour limit for anchoring on the ICW but so far no one has bothered us.
We do hope our next communication will be from the Bahamas, but until then we still say life is good on a boat but life is never routine on a boat.
Love as always, Carey and Lisa
Casualties and lessons learned:
Two pairs of reading glasses and one engine key sacrificed to the ocean.
Don’t leave reading glasses in your pocket while dropping the anchor
One pair of sunglasses sat on, again leave glasses in pockets
Make sure the dinghy is completely secured before leaving
Don’t leave port on a long holiday weekend
We’ll were off! That is Thurs Nov. 27th! We are frantically getting ready, picking up supplies, trying to get seven months of meds, selling a truck, seeing friends before we leave and making sure SongBird is, in general, ship shape. We are ready for a vacation! It has all been quite exciting but exhausting.
Friends, Noel and Letti, are flying out this Thurs. to crew as we head to the Bahamas. The weather seems to be cooperating nicely which is wonderful! It looks like everything is falling into place and all systems are a go!
Or so we thought… we started out Thursday our heading dead north up the Intercoastal waterway passing under the three draw bridges that separate us from the open waters of the deep blue sea. All systems are a go. I am so nervous. I can’t seem to get Carey to slow down enough as he approaches each bridge to help relieve my building anxiety as we are headed towards each bridge at lightning speed while I am sure we are going to hit a bridge before it is fully raised! Just how fast could we be going?! We have two 8 HP engines on a 40’ catamaran for Pete’s sake, we can only go slow! Are these the moments of sheer terror I have heard about…? I don’t think so but I am so excited and nervous and can’t wait to get out into the open where our chances of hitting anything are slim.
We are finally out of the ICW and Port Everglades heading south for Fowey Rocks where we will anchor for the night before our crossing to the Bahamas. We are also ready to set the auto pilot we have named Otto. We love Otto, he is worth three crew members and we fondly call him our German crew member. Once Otto takes over we hope to settle into some long awaited and well deserved “wind in our hair, salt water in our teeth” hanging out. We’re tired and looking forward to taking a few moments to just breathe in what we are doing.
Otto is turned on but something unfamiliar is flashing on his screen… INT COMP. Hmm, have you seen this before… no…I don’t remember this being here before do you…. no…what would that mean… I don’t know… me either… well, let’s set the course and find the book. Things start looking funny… Otto is not running the same course as our compass or chart plotter and he keeps making sharp turns to starboard. Our German crew member is misbehaving!
Once the book is obtained Carey and Noel spend the afternoon trying to reset his internal compass and trouble shoot the problem. They think they have fixed it numerous times only to discover differently. Noel gets online via his iphone (sometimes you gottta love technology) to find a service center that we hope to call on Friday… what were we thinking! Friday is still part of the long weekend for Thanksgiving! We also discover all the service centers are in Ft Lauderdale where we have just come from. We continue on south anyway where we will pull into No Name Harbour hoping to spend a quiet night relaxing under the stars while we ponder our current circumstances. We pull into No Name along with every boat from Ft Lauderdale to Miami that will fit into this very small harbor. What were we thinking! Its Thanksgiving weekend! We find a spot near the mangroves where we hope to be out of the way and find less congestion. We lower the dinghy and head to a restaurant located at the end of the cove. The place is hoppin’ and people are everywhere. Boats, kids, dinghies, skateboards, bicycles, and some other 2 wheeled rolling boards we have never seen pass us in entertainment.
Once back on the boat we discover no see ems’, our peaceful spot near the mangroves turns out to be a favorite place for these bugs, that you can’t see but with teeth the size of Kansas, like to hang out. We quickly put the screen up before they haul Noel off the boat or he decides to jump over board to get away from these annoying and painful bugs. The noise outside starts to escalate and get louder the later in the evening it becomes… someone starts singing and we think, Oh, live entertainment, this guy has a nice voice. Two songs later we hear something else coming from the restaurant at the end of the cove and realize someone else is singing… or at least giving it their best shot… karaoke has arrived!! It’s a long night. Around 2 am some boater has had enough and starts blowing his very loud boat horn hoping the wildlife will take the hint. No one notices. Sometime around sunrise it’s quiet and sleep finally comes.
We leave No Name, my guess is this harbor has come by way of its name because once the wild parties are over no one would remember the name of this place anyway so why bother. Heading towards Miami Harbor while we again try to find an open service center, we get an email from some guy doing a little work from home telling us our internal compass has died and we need to take it in for service in Ft Lauderdale. Last night we figured we would not be making it to the Bahamas but now our thoughts are confirmed. We have also missed our weather window and will have to wait for another.
We are now back in Ft Lauderdale, anchored on the ICW by our old marina. We take the dinghy to shore and have rented a car. We drove Noel and Letti down to Miami yesterday from a vacation that did not include the Bahamas as they had hoped and we took Otto to the service center. We hope to hear back from them in a couple of days as to his condition. We went to see Jared and Ruthie and d found them putting plastic and tarps over their boat as the down pour the night before made for the discovery of many a leak. They leave Thursday for VA and hope to come home to a dry boat.
Today we will continue to work on SongBird and run errands with Jared and Ruthie. Otto with get fixed and we will wait out our weather window. Right now Friday or Saturday may be looking good. We will stay where we are if we can, there is suppose to be a 24 hour limit for anchoring on the ICW but so far no one has bothered us.
We do hope our next communication will be from the Bahamas, but until then we still say life is good on a boat but life is never routine on a boat.
Love as always, Carey and Lisa
Casualties and lessons learned:
Two pairs of reading glasses and one engine key sacrificed to the ocean.
Don’t leave reading glasses in your pocket while dropping the anchor
One pair of sunglasses sat on, again leave glasses in pockets
Make sure the dinghy is completely secured before leaving
Don’t leave port on a long holiday weekend
The Journey Begins
The Journey Begins
Day 1:
After three months of preparing, fitting and cleaning our newly purchased catamaran we have set sail. Well, we like to call it set sail when in reality we set off motoring our way out of the Intercostal Waterway from Hollywood, FL heading to the Bahamas. The weather is perfect and Carey gets us out of the marina looking like a pro. Before we even get to the first draw bridge, there are three; we begin to have engine problems. We have two outboard, 8 HP Yamahas that we serviced before we left. What maiden voyage would be complete without a few snags, right? We get the problem figured out but need parts. Our captain gets on the phone and in 30 minutes we have our parts, launched to us from the side of the road with instructions on what kind of rum to bring back from the Bahamas. Life is good on a boat.
We pass three draw bridges as we enter Port Everglades, continuing out into the Atlantic, huge cruise ships and cargo ships dwarf our size and I think about what it’s going to be like crossing the Gulf Stream with these garganous creatures in the dark! We head south, the winds are E at 5 knots so this is not sailing weather. As a matter of fact from FL you don’t usually sail to the Bahamas but for maybe 5 times during the year assuming you hit the winds and seas just right. So we are motoring, slowly and not always on two engines. It’s a snail’s pace at 4 knots… but it’s beautiful! The water is the most amazing color and we aren’t even where the “good stuff” starts! I have been taking seasick pills for 3 days now so I am expecting to feel great, which I do as long as I stay outside on deck.
I set up a night watch schedule from 4 pm until 7am the next morning. My first 2 hour watch will start at 8pm so I head down below for a nap. I feel fine if I keep my eyes close and lay still, I doze, listening to t he hum of the engines when they are running (we still are having engine troubles). I’m hoping they will be resolved by the time I’m on watch.
After a 2 hour nap I stumble on deck, we are in the Gulf Stream so the seas are bigger, and I find Jared has caught a Dorado. We learn how to clean a fish so it doesn’t taste fishy and make a mess. Jared cooks the most amazing dinner which was enjoyed by all including his seasick mom. Life is good on a boat.
My first watch started with the rising of a huge moon peeking out from behind the clouds with not a boat in sight. The engines run fine the entire time and I recall the events of the day. Everyone is below sleeping as they prepared for their watch. I felt alone except for this big ocean full of life and intrigue and wonder. All seemed well with the world, at least for those two short hours, life is really good on a boat.
Day 2:
At 4 am the engines die and Carey jumps out of bed, I wonder if we are out of gas. He returns to tell me we have arrived. I stumble up on deck, scan our new environment, check that the anchor is holding and go back to bed.
Today we head to the Sapano, an old Liberty ship that was left to rot just off Bimini. The snorkeling is fantastic! Conch litter the bottom of the ocean, the old rusty ship houses an incredible variety of fish, rays and coral. The water is warm, visibility is fantastic and life is good on a boat.
After our snorkel and lunch we head to Weeches, an old marina where we will dock for the night. This gives Carey a chance to dock backing up in a strong current. It’s stressful at best but we don't hit anything, no one falls off the boat and we don’t sink the ship.
First order of business is forms, customs, and clearing in. Carey and the captain head off with our passports for the process. They return an hour later, we are now free to leave the boat.
We are all ready for cocktails and pupu’s, so we head off to our captains favorite place for conch salad only to discover it’s closed. As we continue to walk we find out everything is closed, the economy here is getting hit hard. The tourists aren’t coming like they used to. Big boats that used a lot of gas are staying docked at their home ports waiting for times to improve. We do eventually find a small bar open that will make us a conch salad. We share a salad and all order rum and coke. The Bahamas are famous for their rum, and it’s cheap. Coke is more expensive so you are served a drink with a lot of rum and a little coke. We dance with Sherry who owns the establishment, while her young son learns to stand on his hands just like Jared. We all enjoy playing with this delightful boy who is soaking in the attention. Life is good in the islands.
Day 3:
We do more class work, hang out at Weeches Marina and go for walks. It’s really windy and the seas are too big for newbie’s. We enjoy showers, and use lots of water, just because we can. We walk the beautiful beaches gathering shells, visit with the locals and go to every grocery store, looking for produce so we can make our own conch salad, and resupply. We play cards that night and head to bed early, we know tomorrow will be a big day. Life is good and slow on a boat.
Day 4:
We head out of the marina into the wind which is about 15 knots, perfect for sailing. Now the real fun begins. We discover we have a really heavy mainsail. So heavy in fact it takes two to raise it. I’m at the helm learning how to keep the boat steady into the wind while the sails are raised. Lines are getting caught and stuck but it’s going up, slowly, but steady. What a site Songbird is with her sails up. I fall off the wind, the sail fills and we pick up speed.
We are headed to a small island where we will find conch, snorkel and make lunch which is of course conch salad. Jared and Ruthie come back with four conchs. We are taught how to clean this odd looking creature and advised not keep the shells, they will stink way too much. We pull anchor and head south to where we will jump off, either tonight or the next morning.
An hour later we are approached by the US Coast Guard and a Bahamian National Guard. They are friendly and professional, all goes well. The updated weather information we receive from them convinces us we better leave straight away once we are far enough south. The front is coming in a day earlier than expected.
As we continue to sail the seas are getting rougher, but we still aren’t in the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream runs like a river north around 2-4 knots, the winds usually blow N NE or E NE but rarely S. Wind creates waves so when the water is flowing N and the winds are blowing from the N it can make for an angry sea.
I have been taking seasick pills for days now and am feeling pretty good as long as I stay out on deck. Jared and Ruthie are left cooking dinner and cleaning up since I am not of much use inside. They are superb cooks so no one complains; they do have a time of it since the seas are now pretty high. I start to day dream about building a bamboo house on a solid piece of land and going for calm, pleasant rows in our dinghy. The worse I feel the more I wonder about life being good on a boat and trying to sail for weeks at a time.
As I watch the sea I notice that the spinnaker is flapping in the wind and that the lines (whiskers that hold the bow sprit and the spinnaker) have snapped. Fortunately the sail is furled so no damage is done. Our catamaran is a lot of boat and we are feeling overwhelmed. We talk a lot about what we can do to lighten the tasks, an electric windless would be a huge help. Songbird is light and very weight sensitive. She wants to fly, we will try and keep her light but we will have to add a few things so we can sail her by ourselves. It took Ruthie and me everything we had to raise the mainsail and we still had the jib to raise, we were tired.
We get into Port Everglades about midnight, by now we are out of the Gulf Stream so the water is flat. I come up from my berth and find Jared and Craig changing the sails. Jared tells me that I missed the dolphins which swam with us for about 45 minutes. The lights of Port Everglades, the Intercostals Waterway, the stars and the reflections remind me that life is good on a boat and that I really am not yet ready to build a bamboo house on solid ground.
We come into the marina we are now calling home and Carey once again backs this large boat into our slip… no one falls off the boat…no lives are lost… no boats sink… and no damage is done. It’s now 1am and the five of us sit in the cockpit and talk about our roses and thorns of the past five days. It was a great learning experience and one we all loved.
We have been home for two days now and are not feeling quite so overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of us. We will be going out as much as possible once our whisker lines are repaired. We will be putting SongBird on the hard so we can clean and paint her bottom. She will be much happier, and faster after the attention.
Life is now spoken in terms of knots of wind, flat seas, wind direction, skinny water and ablative paint. We are enjoying our new adventure and are hoping to see our friends and family come visit us. We will be in FL until the end of Nov at which time we will head to the Bahamas. If at any time this winter you want to come to the Bahamas just let us know we are happy to have guests and have plenty of room.
We can’t use our phones when we are out of country so email is the best bet… we just won’t be online very often. Please come visit and you too will see that life really is good on a boat.
Love, Carey and Lisa
Day 1:
After three months of preparing, fitting and cleaning our newly purchased catamaran we have set sail. Well, we like to call it set sail when in reality we set off motoring our way out of the Intercostal Waterway from Hollywood, FL heading to the Bahamas. The weather is perfect and Carey gets us out of the marina looking like a pro. Before we even get to the first draw bridge, there are three; we begin to have engine problems. We have two outboard, 8 HP Yamahas that we serviced before we left. What maiden voyage would be complete without a few snags, right? We get the problem figured out but need parts. Our captain gets on the phone and in 30 minutes we have our parts, launched to us from the side of the road with instructions on what kind of rum to bring back from the Bahamas. Life is good on a boat.
We pass three draw bridges as we enter Port Everglades, continuing out into the Atlantic, huge cruise ships and cargo ships dwarf our size and I think about what it’s going to be like crossing the Gulf Stream with these garganous creatures in the dark! We head south, the winds are E at 5 knots so this is not sailing weather. As a matter of fact from FL you don’t usually sail to the Bahamas but for maybe 5 times during the year assuming you hit the winds and seas just right. So we are motoring, slowly and not always on two engines. It’s a snail’s pace at 4 knots… but it’s beautiful! The water is the most amazing color and we aren’t even where the “good stuff” starts! I have been taking seasick pills for 3 days now so I am expecting to feel great, which I do as long as I stay outside on deck.
I set up a night watch schedule from 4 pm until 7am the next morning. My first 2 hour watch will start at 8pm so I head down below for a nap. I feel fine if I keep my eyes close and lay still, I doze, listening to t he hum of the engines when they are running (we still are having engine troubles). I’m hoping they will be resolved by the time I’m on watch.
After a 2 hour nap I stumble on deck, we are in the Gulf Stream so the seas are bigger, and I find Jared has caught a Dorado. We learn how to clean a fish so it doesn’t taste fishy and make a mess. Jared cooks the most amazing dinner which was enjoyed by all including his seasick mom. Life is good on a boat.
My first watch started with the rising of a huge moon peeking out from behind the clouds with not a boat in sight. The engines run fine the entire time and I recall the events of the day. Everyone is below sleeping as they prepared for their watch. I felt alone except for this big ocean full of life and intrigue and wonder. All seemed well with the world, at least for those two short hours, life is really good on a boat.
Day 2:
At 4 am the engines die and Carey jumps out of bed, I wonder if we are out of gas. He returns to tell me we have arrived. I stumble up on deck, scan our new environment, check that the anchor is holding and go back to bed.
Today we head to the Sapano, an old Liberty ship that was left to rot just off Bimini. The snorkeling is fantastic! Conch litter the bottom of the ocean, the old rusty ship houses an incredible variety of fish, rays and coral. The water is warm, visibility is fantastic and life is good on a boat.
After our snorkel and lunch we head to Weeches, an old marina where we will dock for the night. This gives Carey a chance to dock backing up in a strong current. It’s stressful at best but we don't hit anything, no one falls off the boat and we don’t sink the ship.
First order of business is forms, customs, and clearing in. Carey and the captain head off with our passports for the process. They return an hour later, we are now free to leave the boat.
We are all ready for cocktails and pupu’s, so we head off to our captains favorite place for conch salad only to discover it’s closed. As we continue to walk we find out everything is closed, the economy here is getting hit hard. The tourists aren’t coming like they used to. Big boats that used a lot of gas are staying docked at their home ports waiting for times to improve. We do eventually find a small bar open that will make us a conch salad. We share a salad and all order rum and coke. The Bahamas are famous for their rum, and it’s cheap. Coke is more expensive so you are served a drink with a lot of rum and a little coke. We dance with Sherry who owns the establishment, while her young son learns to stand on his hands just like Jared. We all enjoy playing with this delightful boy who is soaking in the attention. Life is good in the islands.
Day 3:
We do more class work, hang out at Weeches Marina and go for walks. It’s really windy and the seas are too big for newbie’s. We enjoy showers, and use lots of water, just because we can. We walk the beautiful beaches gathering shells, visit with the locals and go to every grocery store, looking for produce so we can make our own conch salad, and resupply. We play cards that night and head to bed early, we know tomorrow will be a big day. Life is good and slow on a boat.
Day 4:
We head out of the marina into the wind which is about 15 knots, perfect for sailing. Now the real fun begins. We discover we have a really heavy mainsail. So heavy in fact it takes two to raise it. I’m at the helm learning how to keep the boat steady into the wind while the sails are raised. Lines are getting caught and stuck but it’s going up, slowly, but steady. What a site Songbird is with her sails up. I fall off the wind, the sail fills and we pick up speed.
We are headed to a small island where we will find conch, snorkel and make lunch which is of course conch salad. Jared and Ruthie come back with four conchs. We are taught how to clean this odd looking creature and advised not keep the shells, they will stink way too much. We pull anchor and head south to where we will jump off, either tonight or the next morning.
An hour later we are approached by the US Coast Guard and a Bahamian National Guard. They are friendly and professional, all goes well. The updated weather information we receive from them convinces us we better leave straight away once we are far enough south. The front is coming in a day earlier than expected.
As we continue to sail the seas are getting rougher, but we still aren’t in the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream runs like a river north around 2-4 knots, the winds usually blow N NE or E NE but rarely S. Wind creates waves so when the water is flowing N and the winds are blowing from the N it can make for an angry sea.
I have been taking seasick pills for days now and am feeling pretty good as long as I stay out on deck. Jared and Ruthie are left cooking dinner and cleaning up since I am not of much use inside. They are superb cooks so no one complains; they do have a time of it since the seas are now pretty high. I start to day dream about building a bamboo house on a solid piece of land and going for calm, pleasant rows in our dinghy. The worse I feel the more I wonder about life being good on a boat and trying to sail for weeks at a time.
As I watch the sea I notice that the spinnaker is flapping in the wind and that the lines (whiskers that hold the bow sprit and the spinnaker) have snapped. Fortunately the sail is furled so no damage is done. Our catamaran is a lot of boat and we are feeling overwhelmed. We talk a lot about what we can do to lighten the tasks, an electric windless would be a huge help. Songbird is light and very weight sensitive. She wants to fly, we will try and keep her light but we will have to add a few things so we can sail her by ourselves. It took Ruthie and me everything we had to raise the mainsail and we still had the jib to raise, we were tired.
We get into Port Everglades about midnight, by now we are out of the Gulf Stream so the water is flat. I come up from my berth and find Jared and Craig changing the sails. Jared tells me that I missed the dolphins which swam with us for about 45 minutes. The lights of Port Everglades, the Intercostals Waterway, the stars and the reflections remind me that life is good on a boat and that I really am not yet ready to build a bamboo house on solid ground.
We come into the marina we are now calling home and Carey once again backs this large boat into our slip… no one falls off the boat…no lives are lost… no boats sink… and no damage is done. It’s now 1am and the five of us sit in the cockpit and talk about our roses and thorns of the past five days. It was a great learning experience and one we all loved.
We have been home for two days now and are not feeling quite so overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of us. We will be going out as much as possible once our whisker lines are repaired. We will be putting SongBird on the hard so we can clean and paint her bottom. She will be much happier, and faster after the attention.
Life is now spoken in terms of knots of wind, flat seas, wind direction, skinny water and ablative paint. We are enjoying our new adventure and are hoping to see our friends and family come visit us. We will be in FL until the end of Nov at which time we will head to the Bahamas. If at any time this winter you want to come to the Bahamas just let us know we are happy to have guests and have plenty of room.
We can’t use our phones when we are out of country so email is the best bet… we just won’t be online very often. Please come visit and you too will see that life really is good on a boat.
Love, Carey and Lisa
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