2.27 – Thursday

We woke up in the wee hours of the morning when it started pouring rain. Then we got a burst of strong wind. It seemed as though our front was coming through early! The front was scheduled to pass through around 10am, when the wind would switch from the south to the north, and a north wind would carry us southward towards the Aquarium (a snorkel garden that I’m very excited about) at O’Brien’s Cay!

When we got up, we had coffee and I was antsy to go. The wind was from the north already so there was no reason to wait. We anticipated a slow sail down to the Aquarium, then some snorkeling, and maybe a quick move over to Compass Cay for the night.

Kyle dropped the mooring ball and I drove us out of the channel towards the Exuma Sound. When we got out there the wind was a little higher than forecast, more like 15-20 kt, but that just meant better sailing. We could only sail with the main, it was buffeting the genoa so the genoa just flopped around until we rolled it up. The sky was dark and the wind was picking up. When we hit 30 kts sustained we knew we had to put a couple reefs in, it would be foolish to keep all that sail out. A boat that followed us out of the mooring field was paralleling our moves, as we turned back into the wind we noticed he had turned to put a reef in as well.

Our top gust was 36 kts. In our downwind course, the autopilot couldn’t steer us so I had a deathgrip on the wheel trying to keep us on course. I had to use the engines a couple times as well. The swell grew way beyond forecast in that wind, of course. We had to pass by the entrance to O’Brien’s Cay because the swell made entering dicey, plus in that swell the anchorage would have been quite uncomfortable. It seemed that we hadn’t missed that front after all.

We kept going.

We discussed several options, in the end we decided to anchor near Staniel Cay. We wanted groceries and there is a popular snorkel destination there, so it’s our consolation prize. Naturally, the wind died down as soon as we reefed so we had a slower sail, but that was fine. After the excitement we could use a little boredom.

The famous snorkel spot at Staniel Cay is Thunderball Grotto, named after the James Bond movie that sort of features it. I had been planning on giving it a pass because it’s a huge tourist destination and I don’t care to snorkel in crowded water. Everyone goes at low tide because there’s no current, plus the grotto can be entered without swimming underwater (there’s about a foot of clearance between the rocks and the water at low tide). We changed into our snorkel gear and headed over about an hour before low tide. It was a long dinghy ride and there were a couple boats already there when we arrived.

We jumped in and snorkeled around and it was truly amazing. I snorkeled in and even though there were a couple other people, I still felt like I had my space. Inside the grotto is a big round opening, like a tiny amphitheater. I decided the fish were better outside, so I went back out.

Big thanks to Kyle, who takes all our underwater photos while snorkeling! I asked if he’d taken any video. We decided to go back inside the grotto to shoot some video of the fishes. By that time the tourists had all crowded in and it stressed me out so I headed right back outside. This is what Thunderball really looks like!

This whole time I’d been dragging my inner tube along. I know I looked like a dork, but with all the center consoles bringing tourists around it was really nice to have a huge floaty with me because otherwise it can be hard to spot snorkelers.

Pretty much all the footage from inside the grotto didn’t turn out because it was too dark, but there were lots of fish outside that Kyle got great photos of! I wasn’t excited about it, but Thunderball Grotto ended up being a blast and I loved it. It was so thick with fishes that I could reach out and grab one (actually, I tried, and they all swam away too fast).

There was a fun variety of fish throughout the area. This is the best pic Kyle took, there’s a queen parrotfish, two striped parrotfish, a spottail butterflyfish, and more! Amazing that he caught all that in one shot!

This pic didn’t quite turn out but it’s one of the most unique fish we’ve seen, a rainbow parrotfish! It reminded me of Marcus Pfizer’s children’s book, even before I remembered that the book is called The Rainbow Fish!

And more queen parrotfish, they look so goofy up close!

What an amazing side trip! Stoke levels were SO HIGH after that experience!

Back at the boat we had a celebratory beer, then we watched Thunderball (1965) with dinner. We would have been in bed by 8, but this is the first time we’ve had internet in over a week so we caught up with world news on our tablets.

2.28 – Friday

We drank some coffee and discussed our plans. It’s a gray, cloudy day. The wind is still blowing from the north so today seems like a good day to keep moving. Out on the Exuma Sound we started sailing south, again with main only with a single reef because the weather looked a little hostile and the waves were pretty big.

As we sailed, I considered our plans and destination. All our friends are in Georgetown right now – nearly every single boat we’ve met in the Bahamas. We could get to Black Point today, then head to Georgetown tomorrow.  Or we could go to Rudder Cut Cay today, then Georgetown. The forecast shows the waves calming down today, but building tomorrow. Since they were already pretty big, I was anxious about heading to Georgetown tomorrow because there’s no place to bail out. Once you get along Great Exuma, there are no places to duck in and wait out weather.

Kyle and I talked about all our options, and in the end we decided to go straight to Georgetown. This means a night arrival, which we aren’t thrilled about, but the entrance looks wide and deep and navigable. We texted a friend and she confirmed the charts are accurate, which means we would feel comfortable navigating almost solely by instruments.

Mid-afternoon the wind died down enough that we started up an engine. We’ve had all the fishing lines out all day but all we’ve caught was seaweed. I did all the right stuff, I took a nap, I was elbows-deep in pizza dough for a while, but still nothing (fish tend to bite at the most inconvenient times!). I suggested we try the WD-40 trick. The flappy bird line looked like he caught some seaweed anyway, so it needed to be pulled in. Kyle gave it a squirt of WD-40, then let it back out. Around 5pm, a hand line snapped, and behind the boat I saw a flash of yellow jump out of the water. A mahi! Kyle started pulling it in, and we saw flashes of blue and silver. Not a mahi?

He pulled a beautiful cow mahi aboard and pinned her down, not before she flailed everywhere and covered the entire cockpit in blood. We dispatched her humanely and I went back to the helm to throttle up again, and I looked down at him and started laughing. Blood on his shirt, in his hair, in his EAR! And he said “What are you laughing at, you’ve got blood on your neck!” Oops! I had already given myself the once over and thought I was clean.

We decided we’d better have dinner before filleting the fish, so I made pizzas and we had dinner. By 7pm the wind was almost gone so we dropped the main. Around 9:30pm we arrived at the inlet, I navigated us in and as soon as we got near other anchored boats we prepped to anchor. It’s one thing to navigate an inlet at night, it’s a completely different thing to navigate a crowded anchorage in the dark. Georgetown has well over 300 boats in the harbor because this is the Regatta week.

We dropped anchor, then Kyle gave me the all-clear to back down on it. I put both engines in reverse and started pulling. As I reached my peak RPMs and held it there, it broke loose and we dragged. We moved to a different spot and tried again, same thing. We moved to a third spot and this time it held, but neither of us could trust it because it only broke loose at max RPMs, so there’s the possibility that a big gust of wind could pull it free. We never drag so this made us wary. Neither of us slept that night.

2.29 – Saturday

We got up with the sun and moved to the town Georgetown. We dinghied in and got some groceries. I was disappointed with the grocery store, this is the cruisers mecca so I thought it would be bigger and have a better selection. Then we got back to the boat and pulled up anchor to move to the east side of the anchorage, closer to the events.

Almost immediately, Trent from Consort dinghied over and asked if we wanted to go in and watch the coconut races. It sounded like good entertainment so we headed in. At this point we’ve anchored three times (five if you count the two times it dragged) and Kyle still hasn’t had an anchor beer, so he grabbed a cooler and we headed in around 10am. By the time we got there the races were over, so that was a bummer, but we met up with some friends so we still had a good time.

The lack of sleep started catching up with us so we headed home. Lunch was easy because we had pizza leftovers, then I utilized our high battery voltage to edit all the Thunderball photos, and finally, sweet, sweet rest.

Even after a nap I still went to bed early.