C:\[esc] (Sea Escape) Blog

Treasure Cay is a vacation community with a very nice marina. We spent a few days in the marina, but most of the time we were anchored in the harbour. The beach is billed as one of the top ten beaches in the world and it certainly is beautiful. It has soft white sand with water several shades of blue and green stretching for 3 miles in a semi circle. We spent a lot of hours on this beach and really enjoyed it. Lots of Man-O-Wars were strewn on the beach, so we were careful where we stepped. They are a pretty blue with nasty tentacles. There is a really nice beach bar that has good food and the BBQ pork night was delicious and fun. They had a band that played good music to dance to and so we did. The other fun place is the Tipsy Seagull. Their special night is Pizza Night which attracts a huge crowd.

One of the most beautiful beaches in the world

Portuguese Man-O-War

Our first and last Cay to visit was Green Turtle Cay. The settlement is called New Plymouth which resembles an old English Seaport. This town still looks like the “old Bahamas” and has a friendly feel about it. The buildings are the pastel clapboard with a British tone. The streets are golf cart sized which is the major mode of transportation on the island. We spent a few days with another couple exploring the island on the golf cart and going to the various beaches. One of our favorites was Gilliam Beach as it is pretty and we found our Sand Dollars and Starfish on it.
On our first visit here we began it by going to Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar which is famous for her Goombah Smash which we sampled. It has several types of rum and fruit juices and packs a wallop. It was a great way to start our visit to the land of rum drinks. The walls and ceiling of the bar are covered with business cards, pennants, and burgees and we put our boat card on the wall. One of our favorite places to eat lunch was the New Plymouth Liquor Store. It consists of a lunch counter and several shelves filled with liquor. They have the most tender conch and really wonderful cucumber salad.
Our second time to be here, we hiked to White Sound (about 4 miles) and went to Green Turtle Club. It is a beautiful resort with a nice marina. In the bar, the walls and ceiling are covered with dollar bills with people’s names written on them. We wrote our boat name on a Bahamian dollar and stapled it to a burgee hanging from the ceiling. Eric thought the inside of the club had an old British feel so after lunch we sat in the bar and had a drink.
Green Turtle Cay with it’s “old Bahama” feel on one side and a nice resort on the other side was my favorite Cay.

Our first trip to the Bahamas on C:/[esc] was spent in the Abacos. The great Abaco Island and it’s Cays, which are located in the northernmost portion of the Bahamas, has one of the largest bodies of semi protected waters in the Bahamas. The Abacos are 130 miles long and have a population of about 15,000 located about 200 miles east of Miami and 75 miles north of Nassau. The unspoiled waters with their sugar white beaches and turquoise waters are great for sailing, swimming, snorkeling, and beachcombing. Many a day was spent sailing to a Cay and wiling away hours on the beach enjoying picnic lunches and hunting for Sea Glass and Sand Dollars.
The settlements were established by the Loyalists after the American Revolution. The first settlement was on Treasure Cay. Six hundred people sailed from New York in 1783 and established Carleton which only lasted a few years. Two thirds of them left and founded Marsh Harbour and the rest went to the various other Cays. Life was difficult for them as it was hard to earn a living. Farming wasn’t very successful as there is only inches of soil on top of limestone. They made money from sponges, lumber, and wrecking which is salvaging the cargo and usable parts of the ships that wrecked on the reefs and banks. After the lighthouses were built, earning a living became even more difficult.
The climate here is a dry desert like environment causing a lot of supplies to have to be shipped in which makes most provisions expensive.
Each Cay has some good restaurants that offer Bahamian dishes. Our favorite foods are peas and rice, baked macaroni and cheese, conch fritters, cracked conch, and grouper fixed any way. Yes, even I really like grouper. Our most favorite thing here is the bread. We love the Coconut, Cinnamon-Raisin, and Wheat bread. It is so dense and delicious.
The lizards here are called Curly Tails because of how their tail curves around and looks like a curl. We saw them on every Cay.
We have thoroughly enjoyed the friendly people and the charm and warmth of this environment.

Floyd, our cat, came to live with Ellen after he was kicked out of college–more accurately, after he was kicked out of the dorm where her son, Russell, had been hiding him for a semester.

He joined a household that already had one cat, Marvin. Although Marvin was smaller then Floyd, he remained the boss and Floyd sought affection and approval from him (although the most he received was grudging tolerance). Floyd had no use for humans, basically ignoring Ellen and me. I guess he saw us as supplying food, which he enjoyed eating. I don’t think he saw us as suplying shelter, he rather considered that he was sharing his living space with us.

He lived mainly in the woods that bordered the rear of our condo. A kitty door allowed him ingress and egress at will and he spent most of his time out.He hunted with enthusiasm and skill, bringing in mice, voles, baby rabbits, chipmunks, and, once, a full grown Robin. Rarely did he kill these, but rather released them in the house for Ellen and me to recapture and put back outside. Once when the 13 and 17-year locusts were swarming, he spent three weeks gone. We had given him up as lost until one evening, while sitting on our deck, we heard his “Meeoww.” The return of the prodigal cat was a joyous occasion for us. Ellen contended that he had been kidnapped and imprisoned by a neighbor, for everafter he was leery of beiing shut up in a room (although he was leery before he left). I contended that he had roamed far afield living on the plentiful locusts and just didn’t feel like coming home until he was sick of that diet. In any case, he was back and we were relieved.

When Marvin died, Floyd’s attitude and behavior towards us changed. He began to seek our attention–or at least to share the same space with us. When we were watching TV, he would climb up on the couch and lie between us. He began to sleep at the foot of our bed (near the door so he could scoot out if necessary). He would let us pet him but he drew the line at sitting on our laps–unless we were brushing him, which he came to enjoy thoroughly.

When we began cruising his world changed completely. Gone were the woods of his youth and middle age, replaced by endless mysterious water, calls of unfamilar large birds, boats floating liesurely at anchor close by, and noisy dinghies gadding about. He didn’t like being in the cockpit–he didn’t want to see all these new and threatening things. Sometimes at night when he felt safer, he would sit with us for twenty minutes, maybe a half hour before he would return below. But he spent most of his life in the salon and the aft berth. When we were moving, he would wedge himself between his litter box and the hull in the aft head where he was closest to the center of gravity and the movement was the least. He wouldn’t leave there until we were at anchor and then he would come out to the salon to receive a brushing, which became our ritual after a day of sailing.

A year ago, we were told that he had an irregular heart beat that missed one in five. Last Christmas a vet told us he was suffering congestive heart failure. Still he seemed in fairly good health: he would play with us if he had the opportunity, he ate regularly and with good appetite, and his bodily functions were regular. We left the boat yesterday at 12 for lunch and a walk on the beach. When we returned about 4 he was struggling to walk or even hold his head up. He appeared almost a new born, struggling to get his legs to obey his mind’s commands. We knew this was the end. We took him to the vet who agreed and put him down.

He had a full life. He touched our hearts. He was a good and handsome cat.

This morning as we were going to take a shower we heard a dolphin sounding. He swam around our slip and the adjacent two “slaloming” around the pilings and generally just showing off. Ellen got the video camera and got these pictures.

Getting from the north Abacos, for instance Green Turtle Cay, to the central Abacos, for instance Marsh Harbour, requires going around The Whale–Whale Cay. The problem, however, is that Whale Cay is not protected by a barrier reef and if conditions are right, a “rage” develops in the channel when waves break all the way across it. A 100+ foot freighter caught in the rage sank. Unfortunately, the conditions in which a rage might develop are not completely predictable, at least we never heard of specific weather parameters to avoid.Part of the problem is that storms off the coast of Africa, for instance, can generate waves that three to five days later cause a rage at the Whale.

Thus it was with a certain amount of anxiety that we set off from Green Turtle Cay last Monday. We thought that conditions would be good but we couldn’t be sure. Of course, there’s no shame in going out to take a look and turning around again if it seems to risky and we had made up our minds to do just that.

But our predictions were right. When we reached Whale Channel about 8:30am, there was a 4-6 foot swell and a very slight wind chop on top of that. And nothing was breaking within a half mile of us. So we had a great passage and arrived at Marsh Harbour about noon very happy and not a little relieved.

Our route through Whale Cay Passage

Another nice sail today–at least for the first part of the day. After noon, the wind was too much on our nose and we gradually dropped from 6.5 to 2 knots. We were reluctant to turn on the motor but eventually had to.

We arrived at the Crab Cay anchorage as the only boat but were soon joined by a small catamaran who is anchored 150 yards away. We’re at the very isolated tip of Little Abacos Island. The only signs of civilization are some small wrecks and an incongruous cell phone tower.

But I was wrong. Night revealed street lights and house lights on the shore several miles away. Also there were the red lights of several other towers. And, from the other side of the island, the glow of lights from Foxtown.

We weren’t as isolated as I thought.

But it started off a little hairy. When we left the channel from Old Bahama Bay Marina–at last–seas were 2-4ft. Quickly they grew to 4-6 and were quartering so the motion was uncomfortable. We motored an hour and a half north until we could turn East onto the Little Bahama Banks to Great Sale Cay.

Just before turning, we raised the sails. Then after turning we were on the Little Bahama Bank, depths about 12 to 20.ft. Seas quieted to 0 – 1 ft and, on a close reach in 17 knots of wind we were doing 7 knots.

What delightful sailing–very, very relaxing skimming over beautiful torquoise water, able to see the bottom, feeling like we should put wheels on the keel because we were that close to the ground. Gradually, over the next eight hours the wind speed dropped to 10-11 knots and our speed over ground dropped to 5+ knots.

We both took naps in the cockpit (at different times) and enjoyed the day.

After four days of finding and fixing electrical problem after problem, all caused by the flooding, and still not having the charger work, we had made our plans to leave day after tomorrow to go back to the States and have an expert look at it.

Today, I was checking one last thing, the 120v input into the charger. I was sure that it was ok and it was. But there’s a battery switch that turns the charger on and off and I thought, “Why not cycle that to make sure the contacts are clean.” (Now, mind you, this switch was two feet above the water at its highest.) So I rotated the switch and it came off in my hands! Whoa. I wasn’t sure if I’d disconnected that charger so I opened up the switch to check the voltage at each of the poles and found a 2 volt difference. On the battery side, it was 12.2 volts; on the charger side, 14.1. It was almost obvious to me that the charger thought the battery was full because 14.1 is the most it will output. But, because of the 2 volt drop, the batteries weren’t really charging. So I thought, “Just take the switch out of the circuit by connecting the two wires directly.”

Then I thought, “You’re no electrician and that might be screwing things up. But the guy in the boat next to us IS an electrician.” He came over, did the tests that I had done and said, “Take the switch out of the circuit.”

As soon as I connected the two leads directly and turned on the 120v juice to the charger, the amps coming out of the charger started to ramp up and went to 125 amps going straight into the batteries. The batteries were finally being charged.

Yeehaw, problem finally solved. And that ironic part is, I think that switch had been failing for awhile and just chose now to finish the job–it had nothing to do with the flooding.

In any case, tomorrow or the next day we’re leaving–with the electrician–for Great Sale Cay.

Last night we went to bed secure in the knowledge that the weather today would be perfect for going to Great Sale Cay and that, after much deliveration, we had decided on the safest and best route for us.

Then, at 0130 we were awakened by the alarm on the Gasoline Fume Detector. We looked around, and mainly sniffed around and could find nothing amiss. Besides, we don’t even have gasoline aboard. Why did someone install that detector. We turned the alarm off and went back to bed.

Then at 0400 the alarm went off again. I cursed and got up to turn it off again. In the salon I confronted wet rugs and in the v-berth, floating floor boards. Water was coming up from the bilge and we were going down.

I awakened Ellen and told her we were sinking. I was thankful we were still in the slip. I turned on our first line bilge pump, she turned on our second (it should have come on automatically, will have to investigate that later).

She had to keep holding the switch so I started feeling around in the bilge to find the leak. I went to all the through hulls, checked the prop shaft. I couldn’t find anything. So I closed all the through hulls and went to find Security to see if they had a high volume gas pump. I couldn’t find them but got a phone number. But our new Bahamian cell phone wouldn’t turn on and our iPhone service suspension had gone into effect four hours ago.

So I went to the pay phones, but they’re only for making long distance credit card calls. Damn. On the way back to the boat, I got the BaTelCo cell phone working and explained our plight to security.

He said he’d call the head engineer and see what help they could get us. In the meantime I started manning the manual bilge pump. It was obvious to me that we were making good headway against the water as it started to recede.

So shutting off one of the through hulls had stopped the leak, I just didn’t know which one. We went to bed about 0630 exhausted.

Today we found that a tube that carries the cooling water for the freezer had slipped off the pump. Easy to fix. However, we now have problems with the battery charger, the bow thruster, the genset, and God knows what else.

Ellen spent most of the day cleaning up the mess (there’s still some to go) and many of our stores are ruined–anybody know how heavy a four pack of toilet paper is when it’s soaked? I don’t either, but it’s damn heavy.

And to top it off, looking out over the Little Bahama Banks this morning, we realized it would have been a perfect day to sail to Great Sale Cay.