2008 Cruising

4/1 to 4/15/2008

This is our log for 2008; the 2007 East Coast and other voyages are now in Prior Voyages.

We plan to post and update at least weekly. We move the older portions of the log to secondary pages accessible at the bottom of the page. Join our voyage!

Updated on 04/25/2008

4/1/08 - Wow, April! Last night was another windy one. Light showers passing through this morning. As our next leg is over 50 miles of exposed Atlantic Ocean we are still waiting for the wind to change. This will be our 4th day holed up at Royal Island... sure makes a joke out of attempting to schedule destinations. We can move about on the banks but with the wind and 12' seas coming unabated from Europe we don't want to try to cross. Survivable in our boats, easily, but not pleasant and likely to break a few things. Looking at the SkyMate satellite weather it will be the weekend before we have a decent window for crossing. An intense low front over the Great Lakes is pushing a large high down the Atlantic, creating our winds. We listened to S/V Mango asking a freighter for a weather update. Mango was making the crossing we're anticipating. They were reporting 25 knot winds and 15' seas, noting they were getting knocked around a lot. They asked the freighter if they had weather for the next 24 hours and whether it would improve. The freighter gave them an update - pretty much what you got is what you are going to get, with maybe a squall or two thrown in. Even if we are getting cabin fever, we're snug. Ruth has borrowed Miles' GlobalStar satellite phone to catch up with business. As bad as GlobalStar service is here it's better than our cell phones. They don't work in this area though they did in Georgetown. No internet here either. Rain showers, little squalls, passed through all afternoon and evening. To the south we could see thunderstorms but nothing affected us. 4/2/08 - Another windy morning with scattered showers. We moved 6 miles to Spanish Wells for water, provisions and internet. We took two nights at the Spanish Wells Yacht Haven, a small marina, for a dollar a foot per night. Power is $0.45 per kilowatt, water is r/o (reverse osmosis) at $0.50 per gallon. We ordered 20 gallons for delivery tomorrow. We didn't fill our tanks as it comes in 5 gallon jugs. We walked the town - very pretty, in fact the nicest town we've seen in the Bahamas... green lawns, low walls along the front of many of the nicely maintained homes, and beautiful gardens. We found the grocery store closed for Wednesday afternoon - haven't figured that one out yet. Spanish Wells is a dry town, like Tangier Island. It was settled after the American Revolution by loyalists and is still heavily populated by their Caucasian descendents. It is a working fishing community, not a tourist town - though far prettier town than most of the tourist destinations we've visited. The fishing boats are immaculate - to the point that some look like yachts. This a community with a lot of civic pride! Ruth went on a cigarette search and found a fish market. She scored 8 oz. lobster tails for the four of us and we did an excellent dinner on AA. Buddy loved the mashed potatoes! He's a real carbo freak. The lobster was delicious! 4/3/08 - I took advantage of shore power last night and equalized the batteries. Miles intended to do the same. Equalization is intended to rejuvenate the batteries by over charging them (higher voltage than normal) to break down the sulfate that builds up on the plates. We'd run a discharge test yesterday and found that we did not have a deep charge and were discharging too fast. Hopefully it will buy us enough time to get back to the States to replace our house battery bank - they date to the summer of 2003 (bought them in Mackinaw City while Bill & Jill were aboard) and we cycle them daily. Conventional wisdom is 300 cycles... we've had over 5 times that. Took on 30 gallons of water today at $0.50/gallon. Rum is $10/gallon. Fuel is $5/gallon. The gap is closing - soon we'll be running the engine on rum. Wouldn't you know... we got a marina with WiFi and Batelco's system goes down... so we can communicate with the marina but not with the internet. Arrrggghhhh! 4/4/08 - We plan to exit through the north channel tomorrow using a local pilot. The cost is $40.00 for the first boat and $5.00 less per boat for each successive boat. Looks like we could have a flotilla heading for the Abacos. Ruth had a blast last night. It started with a sport fishing boat tying in the slip next to us. Ruth got talking fishing with them and lent them spices for cooking. They gave her a nice 2# dolphin fillet and a lure that has been a good one for dolphin. We'll find out tomorrow. Then, while I was trying to wifi the website she joined Amy and Kenny, S/V S/V Mary T, in the slip on our port side. The three of them put together a drum, sax and rhythm combo and laughed most of the night away. HEAVY rain mid-afternoon, nice free fresh water wash-down, great! Renee came over and layered Ruth's hair... lookin' good! I like it. 4/5/08 - Up at sunrise to pick up our pilot and head out. As the third boat slipped into line Ariel declared a problem - no forward gear. The pilot, Ole Pot, took 2 boats out while we tried to resolve the issue. The linkage was all connected, the problem appears to be inside the transmission. We tried to leave a second time and Ariel had the same problem. It was pretty intense for while with a dozen folks on AA fending off Ariel. English and French was flying back and forth as the other cruisers helped us. Ole Pot returned and found a mechanic who repeated our troubleshooting and further inspected the linkage, noting that the transmission was failing, but should get Ariel back to the states. 600 hours is not a lot of time on a marine transmission. Looks like we'll try again tomorrow morning. Renee and Ruth have their line passing drill down in case we need to take Ariel in tow quickly. Sounds like another adventure. Ole Pot stopped by to note he had 2 additional boats lined up to go with us tomorrow (I think he's hedging his bet). It is Renee's birthday... dumb us, we thought it was tomorrow. Mile took her to dinner at the local diner... what a guy! BTW, we are in the marina as the guest of Ariel, Miles paid for our slip. Kewl! Batelco's system is down again tonight. No internet. This sucks! We will try again it 2-3 days when we get to Marsh harbor. 4/6/08 - Ole Pot joined us at 7am to pilot us out of the north channel, called Devil's Elbow. Ariel pushed off with all of us holding our breathe. Miles shifted to forward and the boat started moving - good news. Our 4 boat flotilla spent the next 20 minutes tracing Ole Pot's wake as he threaded his way out to the sea. On clearing the channel we all thanked him and headed for Abaco. Enroute we encountered two ocean going freighters. Trawler Moon Beam, one of our flotilla, had AIS which provided the name, course, speed and destination of each vessel. He contacted the first ship as our radars were indicating a meeting of courses. The ship immediately responded, noting he was aware of us he had adjusted his course to starboard so we'd pass behind him. We confirmed the crossing, passing a mile aft of the freighter. The seas were running 6-7 foot with a 9 second period. Not bad, just uncomfortable. The wind was 12-15 knots just off dead astern. Around noon we had our frontal passage. It was quick, about half and hour, and brutal - a white squall. Miles clocked a  38 knot peak. The heavy rain was a great wash-down. We entered via the northern passage to Little Harbor. While not particularly dangerous it is always a rush when the transom rises and the boat starts surfing into a washing machine with jagged rocks along each side. You can't help worry that you'll snag something with an ensuing disaster. Ruth's made the Dolphin she'd been gifted by the sport fishermen. She used their cooks recipe. Mmmmmum, good. 4/7/08 - After a rolling night we woke up to gray skies and a forecast for a repeat of yesterday's weather. The weather network said we could expect rain all day with high winds during the night. The French-Canadians on the Kelt had caught two large dolphins yesterday and delivered a nice 2 lb piece to Ariel and AA as thanks for providing weather info to them the past few days. We headed to Little Harbor in drizzle. The guide books say this is a must see destination with Pete's beach bar, sculptures, beaching. The harbor looked like an ideal shelter for the expected winds. Entering the harbor we bumped bottom, but got over the sand bar and into the harbor. Ariel with and addition 9-12" of draft got stuck. We turned back to help Ariel with a tow. We re-grounded in falling tide... stuck ourselves. A lot of great folks tried to help with their dinghies but Ariel was in too hard; as the water fell it was obvious AA wasn't going anywhere. The chart shows adequate water but it isn't actually there.  Nothing to do until the water came us so we took our dinghy to Pete's for a burger and drink, touring Little Harbor. Decided we didn't trust the two open harbor moorings and would be better off if we didn't stay. At 6pm AA floated free first, we entered the harbor and anchored until Ariel was free. She exited on the rising tide and we followed, returning to our anchorage of the night before, Spenser's Bight. We're glad we saw Little Harbor but have no burning desire to go back. 4/8/08 - Dead calm at dawn. The winds? Never materialized. A line of clouds arrived about 9am with a wind shift and temperature drop - probably what was left of the front. Speaking of clouds, there is a neat phenomena here, the undersides of the clouds reflect the greens and blues of the water. Kewl! We hung around Spenser's Bight until 10 then motored and motor-sailed to Tilloo Cay where we anchored. The wind still had not shifted north so we were on a lee shore with 1' chop. Ariel was not happy with that so we weighed anchor and crossed the Sea of Abaco to a small cove at Snake Island. In afternoon Ruth went beaching, found a number of sand dollars but not much else. That evening we had another delicious dolphin dish on Ariel... using Ruth's recipe and the dolphin from the Kelt. 4/9/08 - Sunny morning, bouncing a little as the wind was NNE at 12-15 knots. Motored to Marsh Harbor as Ariel's draft ruled out most other options. Marsh Harbor is even a challenge at 5-8'. We stopped at Harbor View Marina for fuel (50.1 gal, $287.49 and water @ $0.20/gallon). Ariel took a slip for the night and we anchored in Marsh Harbor. This will be our last major re-provisioning port before we return to the US. We walked about 6 blocks to Maxwell's, a supermarket that would fit well in any US city. Most pricing was fairly comparable to US. We were able to restock our pantries for the trip back to the states. 4/10/08 - A few clouds this morning. Listening to the Cruisers' Net it looks like our next cold front will be coming through Sunday or Monday. There was a report from a flotilla that crossed a few days ago. 19 boats left West End for the US. About midway across the gulf stream they hit the cold front that crossed us enroute to the Abacos. They had 3 hours of 30+ knot winds blowing against the current resulting in a traumatic crossing. Two boats lost their main sails, one lost their bimini and dodger, another had to cut away their dinghy and one lost their boom. I don't understand their departing with the advance of the front being so well documented. We crossed the harbor to visit Chuck and Bonni Morrell on Star Gazer. Chuck, with Ecky, had helped me deliver AA to Annapolis about 16 months ago. It was great to meet Bonni and catch up with their cruising adventures. We walked the town, Ruth and Laureen hitting all the shops as we roamed. The feminine gathering gene can't be suppressed for extended periods and they obviously enjoyed the release. It's hard to do much gathering when you live in the space of a boat. 4/11/08 - Bright sunny morning in Marsh Harbor with very light breeze, mid 70's - beautiful. High tide is around noon. Things we take for granted back home... the other day we heard a marina report they were out of water. They will be out for 4 days until the next water barge comes in. We hung around Marsh Harbor until high tide, noon, so there was enough water for Ariel to leave. A short 4-5 sail  in 9' to 14' of water took us to Fishers Bay on Great Guana Cay where we anchored for the night. Ruth fished along the way, no joy. The cays in this area are more populated. We see a lot of homes along the water. A quick look at a realtor's bulletin board showed lots in the $275,000 to $1 million range. Homes from $775,000 to $3 million plus. We took our dinghies to Orchid Bay Marina, planning on stopping for a drink and looking around. We were led into the marina by 4 large stingrays. At the dock a security guy on a bike said we couldn't enter the grounds unless we had a boat in their slip. Renee asked what their rates were. He responded "call us on channel 16 and we'll tell you". We left wondering why 80% of their slips were empty. Go figure! As we walked Guana Cay we saw signs that said 'no golf on Guana Cay'. At first it didn't make sense, then we saw a sign denoting how a golf course clearing and fertilizer would damage the fragile environment of the cay - then the signs made sense. It makes no sense to build golf courses on these arid cays. We saw the damage to Royal Island and the course is barely started. What they really need is blacktopped parking lots, freeways and malls. 4/12/08 - Awoke to clear skies and no wind. Another beautiful day. While we were listening to the net Ruth noted that we had two large (12-14") starfish on the bottom near our boat. Very beautiful golden brown color. We sailed off our anchor about 9am in light winds. Ariel left later, catching up with us in the passage off Whale Cay. Just as we entered the passage we saw a large resort development under construction on the northern end of Guana Cay. Sure enough, the scars of another golf course were present on the shallow rise of the Cay. With the light winds the passage was virtually flat - a 1-2' swell with a 4 second period. We motor sailed through, then returned to sail only while Ariel charged ahead to make sure they entered Green Turtle Cay at high tide. We arrived a half hour later, anchoring while they took a slip. We'll likely be here a couple of days while another cold front passes through. Hopefully this will be the last cold front of the season and we can proceed to the States without hiding from another one. As we work north our foul weather systems will be Nor'easters. The anchorage is snug and totally surrounded by land. There are 2-3 resorts, pretty, colorful in the Bahaman style... not like the multi-storied concrete monuments we saw going up on Guana. Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot... 4/13/08 - Sunday - the front should hit tonight and carry over until Tuesday. The prefrontal clouds have already moved in. Current forecasts indicate we may be holed up in Green Turtle until Wednesday at the earliest and possibly until Friday - that's what makes keeping a schedule really difficult. After a quiet day of exploring afoot we had the crew of Ariel join us on AA for a grilled potluck dinner. It was delicious... meals like this make me wonder why we ever to to restaurants. 4/14/08 - It's Miles birthday, he's 5X (promised not to publish). A cloudy morning with a forecast of rain turned into a beautiful day in the 80's. Mile's rented a gas powered club car (golf cart) and the four of us tore off to New Plymouth, a loyalist settlement dating back to the end of the American Revolution. The island couldn't support a large population and the village remained small, surviving through the centuries. The older buildings date to early 1800 in spite of several hurricanes. We lunched at Laura's Kitchen, a place John & Neil had recommended. The food was very good. We saw a charter boat aground near the channel to New Plymouth. We all felt sympathy pains... nothing to do but wait for the tide. Later we saw a barge and backhoe. Dredging? Nope, down hear they use the backhoe arm and bucket like a man poling a skiff to move the unit from job to job. It's fun to watch - they have it down to a science. It beats waiting for and paying for a tugboat. The ride back didn't have near the thrilling adventure of the ride to town, Miles knew where we were going now and avoided the steep goat trails we tore into town on. In a week or two my hands will loosen their grip and my legs will relax again. We stopped for some shelling on a white sand beach covered with seaweed. Next to the beach the wicked rocks of the island were visible. If you washed up on this in a storm you'd be grated to death. The harbor continues to collect boats waiting for the front to pass.... we're pretty much at capacity. So far the front has been a non-event though the weather service keep threatening higher winds and seas. It's not a warning we can ignore as there is not a lot of good cover for the 3 day run between here and the states. If only I could adjust my hindsight to look forward we might chance it. 4/15/08 - Last night was intense. At 2am (go figure) the winds from the cold front slammed the anchorage like invisible fists. Ruth led the charge out of bed. On deck we realized about 20% of the boats in the harbor had blown their anchors and were fighting to miss those still secured. A heavy gust threw us into the fray as our chain sprang taunt and the anchor released from the sand. Ruth quickly started the engine while I went forward and retrieved the anchor. In a few minutes we were reset and secure. Our tension rose as Orca (a large cat) snagged Dolce Vita's anchor and the two of them did a salsa around the harbor before snagging an unoccupied vessel on a mooring next to us. The cat stayed snagged while Vita broke free and struggled for an hour trying to re-anchor. We felt bad for them. Pelican, a Bayfield WI Jeanneau DS 42 had their anchor snagged by a runaway cause them to tangle with yet another boat. Ruth and I stayed up the rest of the night on anchor watch - afraid if we went to sleep a runaway would snag us. Spent from 6:30am - 9:00am working with Klaus of Kayanna (another Bayfield boat) getting Pelican's anchor back aboard and separating them from a Canadian boat. Keith and Joanie had released their anchor when a Moorings catamaran dragged over it, becoming snagged. The cat did damage to stanchions and lifelines as it hit them, leaving them caught on the third vessel. The forecast for tonight is for winds even higher than last night, arriving about midnight. We elected to take a slip at Bluff House marina, near Ariel. The holding isn't good enough here for a crowded harbor and gale force winds.

Click on the photos for an 8" x 10" view. Use Back to return to the site. What do you call a one legged gull? Miles making water Spanish Wells home Look at the finish on this vessel - beautiful. This is a working fishing boat typical of the Spanish Wells fleet! Where's the water going? Dinghy flotilla to the rescue It's a Small World... One of the guys trying to help free us said, "Hey AA, remember me? You missed the Camp Lejeune bridge in NC to help me when I grounded. I couldn't believe it when you turned back to pull us off the mud knowing the next bridge would be an hour later." What goes around comes around; there he was trying to help us. Miles organizing the crew Ariel at Spenser Snake Island by blue hole Reminder of past hurricane Holiday Marina, Star Gazer's slip Cruiser's in Marsh Harbor Island freighter entering Marsh Harbor Green Turtle Cay looking northwest Green Turtle Cay looking west Buddy scoping out Green Turtle Charter boat aground - New Plymouth Dredging? Nope, poling with a backhoe... Beaching party A shoreline of razors Okay, how do we get them apart?

Visit earlier portions of our 2008 east coast travels...

Boca Raton to Miami, FL - Jan 1 to 15, 2008	Miami to Key West, FL - Jan 16 to 31, 2008
Key West to Marathon, FL - Feb 1 to 15, 2008	Marathon, FL to Nassau, Bahamas - Feb 16 - 29, 2008
Norman Cay to Georgetown, Bahamas - March 1 - 15, 2008	Georgetown to Royal Island - March 16 - 31, 2008