January 26, 2016 Hatchett Bay, Eleuthera

Royal Tern

some of the small houses in Alice Town

Moonlight Maid getting water … when we went to get some, it was broken…

this house on the right is 150 years old

and this beautiful woman lives here, she is 92 years old and her family built the house

there is very narrow streets

the salt has rusted this machinery right to the barge

with trees growing on the barge 

having drinks at Da Spott bar

walking another beach with Kevin and Debbie on Grace

this cemetery is right close to the beach

looking for sea glass

some interesting patterns in the RO water ice cubes

January 26, 2016 … Tuesday

first thing .. i don't know if this happens every where .. but on the boat .. we have no idea what day it is .. that is why i try and tell the day … when i  worked i knew what  day it was, cause  i was working to Sunday my day off …

anchoring in Hatchet Bay/Alice Town .. the wind was not too bad overnight, and I was up a few times checking the anchor lights around us, it was not strong enough to make us break free .. paranoid again ..

Joe woke before 6am with his 3rd migraine in three days .. I hope this pattern stops cause it is very hard on him …

Chris Parker at 6:30am , weather expert, down payed the next low front a bit.

All of the Abaco, Exumas, Eleuthera has been hit with 2 fronts a week .. 

we have one good day and 3 in hiding in protective harbours, which is hard to find in Exumas and Eleutheras .. for the last month.

I just finished reading a Lee Child novel, Echo Burning … so good

Joe is continuing to upgrade Modaki and is now varnishing the companionway on the outside .. do you know how difficult it is to go out and in with out touching any thing 

we decided to go to town and let the varnish dry

we met Moonlight Maid getting water from a local tap, to buy water here is $1/gal .. we are glad we filled up in Spanish Wells at .54 cents/gal

we found a grocery store and picked up a few things .. cassava we will try and cook … it is a root crop ..  

we ended up at Da Stopp  a bar and food place, we got Curry Chicken, mac n cheese and rice for $8  and split it .. we met Grace a Morgan 35, with Debbie and Kevin aboard .. they took us to a beach with a cemetery only 100 feet from the shore .. all the burial sites are looking out to sea .. it is still in use … there are caves in the area to explore 

.. then we headed back to our boats .. some boats came in the harbour .. and tried to pick up mooring balls … not knowing that these mooring balls have not been serviced for 15 years …  then they dropped them and anchored in 30 ft of water ..  

nothing happens fast here in the Bahamas

waiting out the next blow and low …

January 24-25, 2016 Glass Window to Hatchett Bay

we just passed thru the Current Cut  and was surprised to 

a local fishing boat in the calm waters

once thru the cut it calmed out and was a large vast body of water, but you still have to

stay in the channel  for the next 6 miles

Rotten Bay anchorage

a good night

anchored off by the Glass Window

Glass window bridge with a wave passing under it

during storms the waves thru this opening and washed the guard rails away

some views of the ocean

this boulder was thrown up on the cliff top during a storm

.. see Joe off to the right

a blow hole from the ocean

the road to the bridge

this is the guard rails that was washed out during a storm

lots of caves along the way

a village along the cut

the entrance to Hatchett Bay .. only 80-90 ft wide

Sunday  January 24, 2016

The wind was still blowing hard in the morning, so we delayed our departure off the mooring balls until 11:45.  All 7 boats left.  Four of us headed to the Currant Cut and 3 to Harbour Island.  We had the foresail up and slowly sailing.  It is advisable to go through the cut 2 hours after high

or low tide at Nassau.  So the time today was 4:15pm, low tide, but you can also pass one hour before or one hour after the slack.

At 1:30 Grace entered, with Moonlight Maid following, they radioed back and said they had 3 1/2 knots against them and lots of rocking and rolling, not an easy passage.

at 2:45 Lagom and Snowbird went through with 1 1/2 knots against them and lots of rocking and rolling, it was a doable passage, but uncomfortable 

at 3:15 Modaki went through with .5 knots against us and we surfed the waves and NO rocking and rolling.  We are happy we waited for the advisable time, also we are the smallest boat in this fleet.

We all ended up at Rotten Bay, Eleutheras by 5pm, and had a calm, windless night.

Monday  January 25, 2016

Anchor up at 8am and we motored in flat seas about 5 miles to The

Glass Window and Bridge.  This is the skinniest part of

Eleuthera, which is just 30 ft wide.  The land here is high on either side and abruptly falls away to nearly sea level almost dividing the island in two.  You can stand in one spot and see the gray Atlantic Ocean to the east and Exuma Sound to the west.

When the Atlantic Ocean rollers come surging in, or the powerful

swells of a distant mega storm, 3,000 miles of ocean fetch hits

that rock spine beneath the bridge and can throw walls of water 100-200 feet high and will carry away anything on the bridge.  It has

happened more than once, including removing the bridge itself.

Then we moved down to Hatchet Bay Harbour, the entrance is 80-90 feet

wide and is man made, formed by cutting through the limestone cliff to

form an entrance into a landlocked pond, this was carved out just after 

WWI.  The harbour was planned to use it to load quarried stone from the island onto ships bound for construction projects in Nassau and the U.S.,

but it failed.  In the 1970's the Hatchet Bay cattle-raising project started and it too failed.  We could see about 10 silos in the hill tops as we came down the coast, all vacant now.

It took us a while to find an anchoring spot, and we ended up in 25 ft of water, which is unusual for the Bahamas, with 150 ft of chain and some rode … there is another low coming in a few days. 

We hope to get to town tomorrow …..

January 22-23, 2016 Spanish Wells

Friday January 22, 2016

Joe and I stayed on the boat most of the day to collect rain water, but it

hardly rained at all, so by 3pm, we put the motor on the dinghy and went to shore for 11 gallons of RO water 54 cents/gal.

We still need another 9 to fill our jugs.

Saturday  January 23, 2016

The wind picked up around midnight and another rain squall and it continued to blow 20-25 knots gusting 30 plus.  We took the dinghy to shore for more RO water and paid for our last 2 nights on the mooring balls.

I made Sour Orange Pie, with my Omni Oven to take to another boat to discuss the next days traveling plans.  We all wished we had seconds.  The wind was still the same with heavier gusts of 30.

We had two dolphins spending time swimming around and under our boat.

It was movie night with popcorn, we watched

Waking Ned Devine and by 9pm the winds where still howling.

Thank goodness we are on mooring balls, and will have a good cold nights sleep

even though we have unpacked our down duvet,

it is to be 59 degrees F tonight.

January 21, 2016 Spanish Wells

the bridge from Spanish Wells to Russell Island, only wide enough for one car or golf cart at a time

abandon Pelican Harbour

stone wall of a house with sea glass and shells 

shells, stones and sea glass

there is a lot of goats on this island

a great walk on the beach, but it was cold

mutton fish

Bernard

the freighter is in with lumber and supplies

the next freighter with the fresh veggies is arriving

it was low tide and we watched it pass close

Joe squeezing the sour oranges and I made Sour Orange Pie

and fish bone soup ..

Amish family going from one island to another

Thursday  January 21, 2016

Joe took me to town and I went to the only place that I know of for good wifi and I spent a couple of hours catching up.

Joe headed back to the boat to work on his inside urethaning projects, soon the whole interior will have 3 coats. 

Modaki is looking pretty sharp these days.

I had the hand held radio and called Joe to come and pick me up, around noon hour.

We had made plans with Snowbird and Moonlight Maid to rent golf carts to explore this island and Russell Island, which is connected by a single lane bridge. Russell Island is home to the locally owned and run power plant for both islands. It is very agricultural with goats every where and a few sheep.  There was a lot of citrus trees but it didn't look like they where maintained.

We came across Pelican Bay, we don't know the story, but it is another Bahamian Development that some one spent a lot of money into it and it is vacant.

Back across the bridge to Spanish Wells, we walked the beach, but it was too cold to stay very long.

We stopped into Bernard the Fish Man, he was there with a fresh

catch of Mutton Snapper.  I bought 2 lbs, one for supper and the other

to freeze  $9/lbs. I also got the backs which have the large bones, and I

made Bahama Fish Bone Soup, with potatoes, celery, carrots and

Old Bay Seasoning … it was so good

Everyone wanted to go to the grocery store again, the freighter with milk and bread arrived, but the fresh veggies are on tomorrows freighter.

The golf carts got returned for the evening and our dinghy needed air again, so we hauled it on to the foredeck and found 2 more pin holes leaks.

Joe patched them and will see what tomorrow brings.