Atwood Harbour & Plana Cay

Karen:

We left Calabash Bay at 2pm, knowing we had a night passage ahead of us, and that the weather window was closing in. We were able to sail up the coast of Long Island and then make our turn and get on a nice beam reach. The wind started to die in the evening, so we had the motor on, but kept the main sail up. Around 9pm the lightning started. It was off of Cuba and we were hoping it wasnt headed for us. The lightening was constant, and it made me very nervous. Michael started to fade and went to sleep, on the port side of the cockpit at 10.30. Flo got settled into the starboard side of the cockpit with a pillow and a sleeping bag. She does a lot better on deck. Christian was in his cabin below. He doesn’t have issues with sea sickness and generally sleeps really well on passages.

I got my podcasts going and got comfy at the helm. Far in the distance, north of us and heading in the opposite direction, I saw a few boats, but not many. Just the stars, the waves and the lightning. At 1.30, Michael got up and we considered raising the genoa. But we are still 2 scaredy cats at night and so we opted just to keep motor sailing and put a reef in the main. We were really powering along at 6ish knots.

I went into the main salon and fell asleep. I was sleeping so well that when I got up to relieve Michael it was 5.30 and the sun was coming up! He admitted he had fallen asleep at the helm for a moment (maybe 30 min?).I took over again and let him have a rest, until about 8am when we were getting close to the opening of Attwood Harbour. Its open to the north, protected by a reef on both sides of the entrance, which makes it a little tricky to navigate. We could see 1 other boat in the anchorage; in the spot Michael had marked on the chart as the one we wanted. Drat!  We anchored an acceptable distance away, getting pretty good now at manually releasing the anchor, and we immediately jumped in the water for a swim to cool off. Evan at 10am it was hot and muggy. In fact, the temperature during the day and night doesn’t really change, hovering around 28 degrees consistently. Michael and I went down for a nap. These night passages are really exhausting.

Michael reading ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South’ by Bruce Van Sant. A must read for the route we are taking!

Our boat neighbours showed up in their dingy in the afternoon, on their way to shore with their 2 dogs, to chat with us. They are on a beautiful boat SV Time, and have been cruising for over 20 years, and had also cruised with their teenager kids in the early days. We learned that they were on the same path as us, heading to Trinidad for hurricane season. We got connected on the cruisers app Noforeignland and would be able to give each other updates.

Michael’s birthday arrived, much anticipated with the big reaveal of ‘what is in that bag??’ Florence got it ready and presented it to her dad with a lovely card we had all signed earlier. He was beyond touched by her thoughtfulness. We were happy to celebrate the big man’s 45th birthday at anchor, minus the cake I had planned to bake because of our propane issues. Never mind.

We spent the next 2 days trouble shooting the electrical systems on the boat. Did we have a common problem that was taking all the high draw items down? We continued to clean all the negative wires coming off the battery. To  do this, we had to remove all the stuff from the aft storage in the boat, and Michael and I would sleep in the salon. We sent the kids off on a snorkel mission to shore. They happily swam off and we soon realized it was a bit farther than it looked! I had to use the binoculars to check on them, and eventually we decided Michael should swim off to meet them.

Acklins Island has a few inhabitants, and in the area we are in, 1 fishing lodge and that’s about it. Through Facebook and Noforeignland, we learned that there is a local guy who can help you get anything you need. I arranged with Fidel to get us 2 bags of ice and deliver them to us. I would dingy over and meet him on the beach.

As I got in the dingy and headed to shore, I realized it was my first time alone in the dingy, and really, driving it at all. The boys really like to do that so I just let them. But now on my own, and I approached the shore, I needed to lift the engine myself in order to beach it. And I didn’t know how! There was a pin, is that it? No. A lever? I tried to pull it up, but couldn’t. Fidel was already on the beach and he waded in to help me. We loaded the ice in and off I went. I started rowing away from shore and then tried to start the engine. It wouldn’t start. What was I doing wrong? I was drifting towards the rocks so I had to paddle back to shore. Fidel was there waiting. He helped me put the engine into neutral and it started just fine. Sheepishly, I sped back to the boat, kicking myself for not knowing these things!! As I neared the boat, I throttled down and then the engine cut out. For real. I was close enough to row to the boat and secure the dingy. Did I run out of gas? If so, that was pretty lucky!

When Michael got back from snorkeling I let him know about the outboard. The fuel was low but not empty. I practiced moving the engine up and down. We would need to keep an eye on the outboard.

New boat neighbours, this time a young couple from Austria on a Cat. Being Europeans they were very ‘free’ so lots of naked showering off the back. Well why not! They kept to themselves, and we passed a few more days of snorkeling and troubleshooting. I had pretty much given up, but each day, Michael had a new plan to try cleaning some new wires and boy, do we have a squeaky clean electrical system now!  With each new test of the system, our hopes were dashed as the same old alarms signaled we hadn’t found the root cause.

Florence’s 4th grade teacher, Ms Frehlick reached out again to see if we were interested in doing another call with the class. Flo was so excited! They have been reading our blog and loved the posts Flo has done. We helped her prepare some questions and some things she wanted to share. The zoom call was really fun, she shared about swimming with sharks and showed them the conch shell she found, and they shared all the news from the class.

A new weather window presented itself so we prepared to make our next leg over to Plana Cay.  I had arranged the night before to meet up again with Fidel, to get some more ice. This time, he offered us ice blocks from the non-potable water, instead of the lovely icecubes we had gotten from him before. He had shaken his head when I told him it was to keep our food cold and not to make cocktails! The previous $40 ice delivery was now free (I gave him money for delivering it). As I was leaving the beach in the dingy, he called out to me to give his number to anyone that might be in need of help. I was impressed with his kindness.

Plana Cay

We left in the early afternoon to sail 20 nm over to Plana Cay, a tiny little uninhabited island that would give us 1 more 40 nm day to get to Mayaguana, the eastern most island and our last stop in the Bahamas. We definitely prefer to do these shorter hops than big long days.

We sailed much of the way, and arrived in the late afternoon at the Cay. With the East wind we are having, its nice and sheltered but any shift to north, south or west would leave us quite exposed. We anchored off the beach, which was stunning, the entire coast a sandy bank with turquoise waters. Once anchored, we jumped into water and swam to shore. We played in the sand and walked up the beach, savouring how alone we are and how gorgeous it is. We could have easily spent another day there, but had the right weather to continue the next day, so we pressed on.