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.