Heading west to Eleuthera

Sun 10th Mar 2024 - Daylight Savings Time change sucks, it was still dark at 6am our usual rise and shine time. Spent the day doing chores getting the boat ready to continue our northbound journey. Went for a last pizza at our favorite poolside Palapas restaurant.

Mon 11th Mar 2024 - Pretty windy and cloudy this morning, tomorrow looks like the better day to leave. Went for a great long walk in the morning and had some cocktails with Mike and Doralyn before we left. We’re trying to convince them to join us next season in venturing further south to the Caribbean; have we done enough?😁

Tue 12th Mar 2024 - After breakfast we said our goodbyes to Mike and Doralyn, they helped us off the dock and we headed north. 👋 For the most part we have been traveling with them this year, so we will miss them. Goodbye Emerald Bay Marina, we have very fond memories of this place (mostly the Mahi Mahi sandwich 😁). Hopefully we will see Doralyn and Mike again this season, but if not maybe next season? It is been a very social year so far, it feels surreal to be headed out on our own knowing that we will probably be on our own for a while. We made use of favorable wind and sailed for a while but by early afternoon we had to fire up the engines. We anchored at the Settlement in Black Point just before sunset.

Sunset Blackpoint, Guana Cay

Empty - what happened?

Wed 13th Mar 2024 - Quiet morning, just a gentle breeze. The settlement is packed with boats. We headed out just after breakfast to continue north. We had a strange incident on the way, some Defense Force boat came alongside us and tried to hail us on the radio. We couldn’t access the channel on our radio they wanted us to switch to (from the standard emergency channel 16). After some hand signs back and forth they gave up on us (just waved 👋) and moved along. Rob says he thinks they were trying to tell us to unravel our US flag (we keep it rolled up sometimes and bungee’d as it gets ruined so quickly by the salt water), so we did that when they left. 🇺🇸 We both felt like criminals. 🙄 The trip today was on the west side of the Exuma islands which is the shallow side, so a lot less bumpy and of course a lot of the beautiful turquoise waters. Nice day on the water for sure. We anchored at Shroud Cay in the Exuma Park in the afternoon. The park is a beautiful area that is protected so we’re looking forward to doing some exploring tomorrow. No fishing allowed in the park though. 🐟🫣

Marine police! What did we do?

Not sure but…

Sandbar!

Hmm?

Shroud Cay, my, how pretty

Gerda supervising the code 0 sail.

Thu 14th Mar 2024 - Peaceful morning, just a little breeze. Rob started doing our taxes, thank goodness for online access. 🙏 We decided to stay here for a day and do a dinghy ride through the mangroves of the park. Just gorgeous, I think the best I have seen in the Exumas. So shallow in places that we were churning up sand with our dinghy engine and this was at high tide! We were able to cross over to the ocean side and walk a while on the beach on that side. Rob took a dip in the water. Will be leaving the Exumas on a high note!

The hat!

Mangrove channel to the witches whirlpool

Ooo, the color of that water…

Fri 15th Mar 2024 - We got an early start thinking it was a long day on open water headed to Eleuthera, but when we got out the cut above Shroud Cay the wave action was too intense so we decided to head up to Highborne Cay and wait until tomorrow. It was a very bumpy short motor sail to take the next cut to the inside just before Highborne Cay where we anchored for the night. We’ll try again tomorrow. 😤

Sat 16th Mar 2024 - We’re able to head to Eleuthera this morning as there was a lot less wave action and still some wind. We put both sails up and we were on our way! ⛵️👏 Rob, the eternal optimist, put out some fishing lines as we are over deep waters today. 🎣 Not sure what he thinks will happen if we catch a fish because you have to slow the boat down to reel the fish in and with the engines off and the sails up there is no way to slow the boat quickly. 🤷‍♀️ Maybe he doesn’t really think we’ll catch anything. 😁 Nearing the island later in the day we went over an incredibly calm shallow water bay, we still had only the sails up and it was so quiet. Really peaceful. We both feel this is our favorite Bahamian island. For now. 🤪 We anchored in Rock Sound next to the town, we will do some exploring tomorrow.

Rock Sound

Sun 17th Mar 2024 - Woke up to the roosters crowing on land, a sure sign that there is a settlement here. We took the dinghy to shore and went for a long walk over to the other side of the island, the ocean side. Everything about this town is so neat and well taken care of, even though still run down. We had some lunch at a little restaurant on the shore close to the boat which was the only disappointing thing of the day. Not our best meal in the Bahamas. 🫣

Atlantic side across the island from Rock Sound

Gorgeous or what?

The school

Cold beer

Mon 18th Mar 2024 - We went onshore and walked to the grocery store for some fresh produce. We were pleasantly surprised but then our expectations were quite low. 🤭 Chrissie and Eric arrived overnight on their boat Ohana Kai and we all went for lunch, lots of fun! We headed over to the other side of the bay as it is better protection from the north wind we are expecting tomorrow. Seems everyone else is doing the same thing but we were able to find a spot and settled down for the night. 😳

Tue 19th Mar 2024 - Quiet day on boat. Thundershowers in the morning which are never fun on the boat. We cringe a little every time that lightning strikes hoping it won’t hit our mast. ⚡️🫨 Thunderstorms stopped by lunch but it remained cloudy for the rest of the day. We just hung out on the boat, Gerda recovering from a fall on the dinghy the day before. 🫣No biggie, just some rest required.

Wed 20th Mar 2024 - Sunny today! But we’re expecting bad storms this coming weekend so we’ll probably stay in this bay as it is very protected. We changed anchor spots again, went back to where we were first anchored when we arrived to accommodate changing wind direction. We need to be as protected as we can in the next few days! We dinghy’ed onshore and went for a walk to the local international airport 🙄 to get our visa extended for another few months. Back on the boat we did some laundry and made water, all ready to hunker down for a week if need be. 🫣 This evening was once again the calm before the storm, hopefully the predicted storm won’t be that bad.

Thu 21st Mar 2024 - Some more calm today, still waiting for the storm to arrive. Took a dingy ride onshore for a walk, drop off garbage and have some lunch. Not sure when we will be able to leave the boat again. 🤷‍♀️

Fri 22nd Mar 2024 - Some wind pickup during the day, but not too bad. This morning, on our regular call in with the meteorologist he assured us it is coming. Definitely mañana. It doesn’t sound good, but we’re quite protected here so we are hopeful that it will not be bad. The frustrating part of it is that there is another storm predicted to occur just after this one. 🤦‍♀️

Sat 23rd Mar 2024 - And here it is! Was woken up by lightning this morning. ⚡️⛈️ Both crazy surge and loco viento! 🌊💨 So grateful that we are in this bay, it would probably be way worse outside with no land protection. As the wind switches direction we lift up anchor, go across to the other side of the bay and drop anchor again. This way we always have land protection to lessen the impact of the wind and also surge, so it is less bumpy on the boat. There are about fifty boats in the anchorage and we’re all doing the same thing! A lot of playing musical chairs for this storm! Safe to say no-one is getting off their boat today as we’re all too busy going back and forth (and it’s too bumpy to even think of lowering the dinghy to go onshore). 🤷‍♀️

Sun 24th Mar2024 - No noise this morning, no wind, no rain, no thunder, no surge. Almost eerie it’s so quiet. Sun came out and it ended up being a beautiful day. 👏 Wind did pick up in the afternoon but nothing like yesterday. Gorgeous full moon across the bay tonight.

Full moon

Mon 25th Mar 2024 - After listening to our meteorologist we decided to head up further north on Eleuthera. A little windy so we were able to put the sails up, even though we were in the bay the motion was still pretty rough until we got close to the shoreline again. We anchored at the Glass Window Bridge anchorage, ready to do some sightseeing tomorrow!

Tue 26th Mar 2024 - Went onshore and headed across the island to the Atlantic Ocean side to see the Queens Baths. We have heard that there are these gorgeous ponds that have been carved out in the rock where you can get in the water and float around. We saw nothing like that today, the ocean was so angry that we couldn’t even get close for fear of slipping on the jagged rocks and falling into the water. We then walked further to the Glass Window bridge; this is the narrowest part of the island and it separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Exuma Sound. Supposedly you look over on the ocean side and see the rough waters and then on the sound side the water is like glass. While the difference is quite obvious today, the ocean side was pushing so much water under the bridge that the sound side was not looking like glass! Just a huge volume of water being pushed around, what an amazing site. 🌊 Rob says it reminded him of the Wild Coast in South Africa. We stopped and had a really pleasant lunch at a little pub restaurant on the water overlooking the sound.

Eating again, beautiful view, I’d love to show you…

Wed 27th Mar thru Sun 31st Mar 2024 - The first morning was calm and we motored to Spanish Wells. When we got there we anchored outside the town and dingy’ed in to get some fresh provisions from the grocery store but slim pickings, apparently as a result of the upcoming Easter weekend. Another bad storm came and went and we hunkered down for 24 hours. Once this passed (at least it was quick!) we ventured out for a walk and lunch with Eric and Chrissie. On Sunday we anchored just west of Egg Island (Happy Easter!) in preparation of a quick getaway the next morning as the trip to the Ábacos is long. Chrissie and Eric joined us on board for a beer in the afternoon and we discussed our passage for tomorrow, we are all planning on crossing over to Ábacos together. That is, together with the other 25 boats (or so) in this anchorage which is considered a staging area to cross over to Ábacos.