10th May the Berry Islands

9th to 10th May the Berry Islands
Position 25 05 N 77 12 W

Spent the night at Rose island, yet another very narrow entrance and not much swinging room either, its shallow and the wind wasn't too bad. When we left here there were so many wrecks, large and small, this is no place for a boat like ours.

Nassau

We have just past Nassau with its waterfront mansions, holiday apartments and the cruise ship docks no doubt spilling out the tourists. Someone mentioned when there are 5 liners in dock they spew out 25,000 people, the shops must have a field day but I guess they have to make a living somehow. We also heard it can be a very dangerous place to be with street gangs in just one day there were 3 murders.

Overall Nassau being so commercial is not the place for us.

Onward to the Berry Islands We spent the night here after Don carefully  steered us into this tiny anchorage, the water once again was very shallow and full of coral heads. The Bahamas is very nice but oh the stress of shallow water with cuts through reefs has us both with our hearts in our mouths, at times I thought the crossing from the Atlantic was better than that. 

So we had a peaceful night but did see lightening in the distance and heard the wind howl at times, I think I was so tired from the previous night my head hit the pillow and the next thing it was 5:45 when I woke up. 

At the moment we are still a few hours away from our last stop before we cross the gulf stream to Fort Lauderdale, all being well it will be tomorrow when we cross, it will be an early start and an overnighter, the last for a while we hope.

Once again no internet so it looks like the US before we do.

We are sailing downwind making 6 knots with Big Red flying loving it. 
Position now 25 28 N 77 35 W COG 340

BFN
Agua Therapy
Don and Glenys

Monday May 6th

Monday May 6th 

Position 24 31N 76 47W
We have just arrived at another mooring ball at Shroud Cay, Bahamas after leaving Warderick Wells Cay. 

Its seems so barren compared with the last place. We went into the mangroves to explore and didn't see a thing except mangroves. There were a couple of others on the mooring balls and that was it.

Tuesday 7th May Highbourne Cay 24 42N 76 49W

After crossing 12.4 nm from Shroud Cay in a maximum depth of 6 metres but had an average of 4 metres we have dropped the anchor in about 2.3 metres. Again we had to motor all the way, not a breath of wind. The motoryacht beside us has a waterslide and has so many “toys” jet boat, big tender and 4 jetski’s the boat is quite big. Sorry I can't seem to find the photos.

Approaching the marina was very exciting, through the cuts again but this time on the dinghy, the biggest sharks we have seen so far most were more than 3 metres long and roughly 40 or so in numbers, all hanging around the marina entrance wow you really wouldn’t want to fall in here.

So we went ashore, we tied up in the small marina close to another gin palace, named “Incognito” with lots of crew and the stern has a big sun lounge area with very comfy beds and rolled up monogramed towels. 

Hardly Incognito!

We took the trash to the bin and paid our 5 US $ for the privilege. The marina office has a shop with some provisions but soooooooooooo expensive 65 US$ for 24 small cans of beer so they stayed in the shop but we did by some cans of sprite and coke and 10 eggs, a total of 89 $ we don’t plan on buying anything else here apart from fuel.

The restaurant was very quiet, just us there we ate lunch nothing special Don ate a chowder and burger me coconut prawns and a fish sandwich, 4 beers and 2 sprites, 101 $. I guess we won’t be eating there again. Ashore you have to stay within the marina area and not venture any further as the “guests” pay a lot of money to be private I heard the lady in the office tell someone.

Very nice for some

I'm sure we would have been evicted had we tried to sit  here

This guy landed dropped off his wine and beer then took off

We had quite a wet ride back to the boat as we went through the cut on a flood tide, whoops!

The plan is to stay here for another day, pick up fuel in the jerry cans we are too deep to get inside although inside is very deep the way in isn’t.

BFN Agua Therapy

Don and Glenys

29th April Warderick Wells

29th April Dons Birthday

Early the next day we set off for Warderick Wells, a national park with just 20 moorings, it dries out in places you can actually walk across to the beach but there are quite a few sharks and stingrays about. 

You can see the hut, this was taken on one of our expeditions ashore 

The island itself has no facilities apart from an office where you pay for the moorings, it has postcards, T shirts, books to exchange and buy. There are lots of tracks on the island but sometimes you have too wade through water and the mangrove swamps, some places had huge holes in the rock you really don't want to fall into. Talking of holes there are "blow holes" in the rocks you ought to hear the sound of the water rushing up from the sea way below and the updraft is very loud.

You can see just how narrow this island is

There are lots of tracks on the island but sometimes you have too wade through water and the mangrove swamps, some places had huge holes in the rock you really don't want to fall into. 

Talking of holes there are "blow holes" in the rocks you ought to hear the sound of the water rushing up from the sea way below and the updraft is very loud.

We walked up to Boo Boo Hill where so many boaters have left a huge pile of boat names on driftwood, so we were not going to be outdone, Don did a sterrling job on some wood we found and burned our names and date onto so its now with all the others. Maybe we will return one day to add another date.

Look carefully you will see our sign

It was only water

The wildlife there, well lots of rare birds and one creature which looks like a giant hamster or rat as some may say is called a Hutia, they nest in trees or rock crevices, we were very lucky to get a picture as its nocturnal, the one we saw came down to steal the crackers the party goers had dropped.

On Saturday nights boaty people meet up on the beach for sundowners and snacks, we met some great people.

 One of the birds sometimes named a "sugar bird" and some people leave sweet things for it to eat but I'm not sure it was supposed to be drinking from the coke can that someone had turned their back on. Its so pretty, yellow, black and white, its real name is a Bananaquit" its yellow and black with some white, quite small with a slender curved bill so it can take nectar from flowers without pollinating the plant, it eats small insects too. It always has to perch as it can't hover like the hummingbird.

It has a curved bill

Thats us in the middle

Soft sand to land on

The wildlife there, well lots of rare birds and one creature which looks like a giant hamster or rat as some may say is called a Hutia, they nest in trees or rock crevices, we were very lucky to get a picture as its nocturnal, the one we saw came down to steal the crackers the party goers had dropped.

Hutia eating a cracker

On Saturday nights boaty people meet up on the beach for sundowners and snacks, we met some great people and exchanged info about places to see and go.

Soft sand between our toes

We had only planned to stay 2 or 3 days but we heard about the storms which were on our planned track so we stayed for 6. Way in the distance were some pretty spectacular lightening displays.
This place is one of our favourites by far, I took so many photos but can't post them all.

BFN 
Agua Therapy
Don and Glenys

The last month April - May

April 25th
Position 24 13 N 75 24 W
Had a great sail to Fernandez Bay, it's private resort so you have to ask permission to go ashore with the dinghy. We just enjoyed the peace and quiet on the boat, didn’t see a soul. 

Cat Island, no trips ashore no pics as posting pics of yet another beach would probably bore you all.

April 26th.

Little San Salvador West Bay renamed by the cruise liner companies, Half Moon Bay. Again the spot is idyllic if you could flatten the purpose built garish coloured cabins and silly looking old galleon for the tourists. Having said that all we saw were machines sweeping the sand ready for the arrival of another ugly floating monster with people. We were so lucky to have this place to ourselves and snorkel on a patch of reef and saw a few sunfish in the crystal clear water. This is a tiny island the cruise ships are bigger than the island. 

Carnival Splendor

Sunrise 6:30

27th April 24 10N 76 27W

We left Little San Salvador immediately after the arrival of the cruise liner “Carnival Splendor” we had to wait for the boats which collect the tourists go to the liner that was anchored behind us. Oh boy we wish we had left an hour or so earlier but that would have been in the dark. 
So off we go sailing downwind big red flying making good speed but the swell was a bit of a pain, oh well Sampson Cay was our destination not to far away. Our plans are to just do day sailing now towards Fort Lauderdale except for perhaps one overnighter. So we crossed the very dangerous looking reefs of the 'Exuma Cays' in front of us, you can only see the entrance when you are almost on top of it. The sails were down and we motored into depths seeing so little under our keel as we entered Sampson Cut, talk about heart stopping stuff. After clearing the cut, Don had plotted a route through the deepest parts to steer us towards the anchorage but, we just ran out of water and ended up sitting on the sand with zero on the depth sounder. 

Lesson 1 learned, don't plan a route through very shallow water on a falling tide one hour before low water. 
Deciding that sitting on the sand was not such a good idea, we lifted the anchor, for all the good it was doing anyway, and ploughed our way into deeper water, anchoring once again to wait for the rising tide. 

Twice we attempted to break out of our enclosure and could not understand why we could not find deeper water, as marked on the chart. 

Oh so pretty but oh so scary, the part you can see is after we went through

Magnificent Osprey

That's where lesson 2 comes in, check the tide tables carefully as the tidal range can be negative of LAT (as shown on the charts) during springs, that we are in. Our concern was that if we waited for high tide, we would be moving in darkness and trying to find a safe anchorage. Not the best idea in these waters so, we plotted another route through a charted channel and finally made it out with 0.1 mtr under our keel for most of the way. Eventually dropped the hook in safe water just before dark. Not the best day of our sailing experiences so far. Having said all that, the surroundings, rocks and so many different shades of blue sea makes a more than stunning picture postcard. 

The following day we took the boat into the marina to refuel, wow expensive at over 5$ per US gallon. 

We stayed just one more night at anchor in Great Majors spot with quite a selection of yachts all about us.