Wildcat-January 31, 2005

January 31, 2005

When we anchored in Great Sale Cay we had a lovely calm evening. We looked at the weather reports we could get and thought we'd move on the next day. Luckily the next day at dawn the winds increased rapidly and our decision to stay put was easily made. We spent the day catching up on projects we had left to do when we stopped for a few days. It blew 20-25 with gusts to 30 out of the NE all day. One little power boat kept dragging his anchor. He finally took off to points unknown.

The next morning a catamaran had dragged through the night. We're carefully surveying each type of anchor that we notice has dragged. Of course we can not be sure how much scope they put out, but we thought it might be a place to start. The winds started to die down a little and we decided to head out to Crab Cay.

What a mistake. It was quite a difficult trip. We couldn't make Crab Cay so we decided to cut it short and ended up at Allan's Pensacola Cay. We were the only boat there and I'm sure that says something about our decision to move. Allan's is notorious for poor holding, so Chris set our gps coordinates for whoever woke up in the night to look at. We looked at it many times, but we never moved an inch.

Our next destination was Green Turtle Cay. We only had 20 miles to go with 10-15 SE winds. We tacked our way south until the winds switched more to the south. We had a glorious sail. We found our way into White Sound on Green Turtle Cay and anchored amid many moorings. The Bahamians are busily fixing their damaged buildings and docks. They had gotten quite a storm surge but felt they had done pretty well considering 2 hurricanes came through there. We met lots of cruisers there and got all the local information about getting weather and a morning cruisers net where the local businesses describe their specials for the day. The VHF is like the old time party phone lines. Everyone pretty much knows what everyone else is doing.

Moving on. In typical weather fashion a rain squall came through that night at midnight. Chris and I were busy checking that all was well on our boat. No dragging boats this night so we were thankful. The morning brought us 10-15 N winds. We decided to move on. Our big challenge today was the outside passage around Whale Cay. While this passage is only about a 6 mile trip around an island it is one you need to be careful about doing. A condition called a "rage" can develop around this inlet with breaking seas in 35-40 feet of water. We decided to try it and were amenable to the idea of turning back if we deemed it necessary. Well we got through it. We did see white water but were able to carefully navigate through it. As Chris says, it was exciting to say the least. Once back into the calmer Abaco Sound waters we again had a wonderful sail to Marsh Harbour. Marsh Harbour was hit very hard by the 2 hurricanes this summer. Apparently a surge rushed into the harbor and probably came up 10 or more feet. Several buildings have the high water level marked. Then the water rushed out and the harbor was dry. It was an unbelievable sight for those who saw it. Most of the docks were destroyed.

The resilient Abaconians are hard at work as I write this rebuilding and hoping to get their tourist trade back to normal. We see destroyed boats still lying on the shore but not as many as we saw in Fort Pierce, FL. We are anchored here with about 100 other cruising boats. I'm sure we're helping the economy because how can we resist fresh Bahamian bread and cracked conch.

This gets us up to date. Just a note about Justin. He loves what he's doing right now at York High School. The swim team is doing great. He's so busy he doesn't always read my emails right away. Hopefully he'll meet with us in the Bahamas over his Spring break.

So, fair winds and smooth seas to all.

Pam and Chris