Shroud Cay to Highbourne Cay

Hi everyone,

Today we did the short 14nm passage to Highbourne Cay, our jumping-off point for Nassau.  There was very little wind so we motored apart from a brief 30 minute period when we had a little wind.

Early morning halo

Here are the usual plots...

Overall Track

Arrival Track

Graphs

Not much to say about this short passage really - it was a donk!  It started with a spectacular halo around the sun, the water was clear once the sun came out, and the water's very clear here at Highbourne Cay.  A bit of tidal current runs through the anchorage.  The bottom is nice deep sand but you do need to pick a patch.

Approaching Highbourne Cay

One of a dozen superyachts in the anchorage

View ashore from the anchorage

While anchoring I noticed the windlass was starting to jam.  I last serviced it in July last year in Grenada.   So I spent 30 minutes disassembling, cleaning, greasing and reassembling it this afternoon.

In other news, last night we downloaded the latest issue of Yachting Monthly magazine.  Our second article made it into this issue.  This piece describes our being caught out by a squall when approaching Bermuda - a few years back now.  Fun getting an article into a magazine I've read for decades.

See bottom-right!

Get your copy today!

Staniel Cay and on to Shroud Cay

Hi everyone,

Today we had a very light wind day sail from Staniel Cay to Shroud Cay.  Less then 50nm to go to Nassau now.  We spent three days and four nights at Staniel Cay.  On day 1 we visited the famous swimming pigs and Thunderball Grotto.  Just as well, because days 2 and 3 were wet and windy!

Spectacular Thunderball Grotto

We visited the swimming pigs fairly early in the morning.  They were up and about but not swimming.  We beached our dinghy and walked along to meet them.  Quite a few pigs and many piglets.  The piglets are cute. 

Pig Beach

Big Pig

Little Pig

Piglet Roll (with Mum)

After returning to Zen Again to don our snorkelling gear we dinghied onward to Thunderball Grotto.  There were several tour boats outside and a couple of other yacht dinghies.   We anchored the dinghy outside the entrance.  It was mid-tide so we could swim through the main entrance without having to dive.

Thunderball Grotto

Swimming through the entrance

In the grotto

Another entrance/exit

After a while in the grotto we swam out and snorkelled around the island.  Some very nice coral, fish, a decent sized barracuda and two turtles.

Nice corals

Barracuda

Spot the Turtle

The next two days were were holed-up on Zen Again riding out bad weather.  A front had come off the US SE coast and a trough was lying W-E to our north. Wind gusts up to 35kt in the anchorage.  We had 20m of chain out in 2.5m of water with the Manson Supreme well buried in the sandy bottom.

The first morning the rain was so heavy we stripped off, soaped up and had a good shower!  Couldn't see the boat 100m away through the rain.   Filled our water tanks in 10 minutes after the salty deck had been thoroughly rinsed off.

Weather clearing in Staniel Cay

Today we sailed to Shroud Cay.  It was a 30nm sail in very light SE winds of 5-8 knots.  It took us 9 hours at an average speed of 3.8 knots, gybing downwind over the 3-7m banks W of the islands.

Here are the usual plots...

Overall Track

Arrival Track

Graphs

It was a lovely quiet sail, marred only by the big motor yachts passing by.  We'll have to get used to them as we get closer to the US.

Anchored at Shroud Cay

Trust all's well where you are!

Little Farmers Cay to Staniel Cay

Hi everyone,

This morning we motored the 20nm between Little Farmers and Staniel Cays.  There was no wind, which is unusual in the trades.  There's a big storm up north and it has stopped the trades here.  In a couple of days we're expecting a strong NE wind with rain showers.  So we wanted to move a bit closer to Nassau, and to somewhere interesting to stay a few days.

Following our shadow in very shallow water!

Our night at Little Farmers Cay was quiet.  Very still anchorage in light & variable winds.  We spent part of the evening with Jack of Aussie sv Vesna aboard for a chat.  We hope to see them somewhere on the US east coast later this year.  This morning we set off at 0815.

Here are the usual plots...

Track

Arrival Track

Graphs

I won't bother with the usual stats since this was a boring motor.  However the shallow water and Bahamian light was spectacular.  Watching our shadow on the sea bed through crystal clear water was an experience we haven't had for a very long time.

Dawn at Little Farmers Cay

sv Vesna

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a strange triangular shape in our boat speed graph.  That was us speeding up to 2000rpm then stepping down 200rpm at a time for a speed trial.  The conditions were perfect for this with flat sea and calm winds.

• 1000rpm => 3.9kt
• 1200rpm => 4.6kt
• 1400rpm => 4.9kt
• 1600rpm => 5.5kt (starting to bury the transom)
• 1800rpm => 5.9kt
• 2000rpm => 6.2kt (transom well buried)

The self-pitching Bruntons Autoprop certainly makes it hard to slow the boat down.  At lower revs it just takes a bigger bite!

On arrival at Staniel we went for a little cruise past the town towards the cut.  Past Thunderball Grotto made famous in the Bond movie.  Might take the dinghy there and have a snorkel. 

Staniel Cay's Marina

Thunderball Grotto

We motored back past the town and around to the N to anchor S of Big Majors Spot island at 1215.  On the W side of this island is the Bay of Pigs where visitors feed the famous swimming pigs and hope not to be bitten.  Not sure that's our thing, but we may take a look in a day or two. 

Anchored

View to SW point of Big Majors Spot

We're still pinching ourselves at being in the Bahamas.  It's certainly a big tick on the Bucket List.  And the waters really are as seen in the brochures.  Magic.

Trust all's well where you are!

ps - If the track looks dodgy, it is!  We forgot to turn on tracking in our chart plotter so I 'recreated' one from our route.