Gumeleni Cay

Today the winds were light. They were something like 5 MPH so we could go about anywhere we wanted to with the dink because the water was like glass.

We anchored out in the sea of abaco a few miles north of Marsh Harbour and then went to Scotland Cay. We poked around a bit in between Scotland and Guana cay enough to see a few bone fish an some grey snappers.

From there we went north to the beach in the photo which is on Gumeleni Cay. This is just off the north end of Guana Cay. It was pretty sterile as you can see looking at the sand. On the other side of this small island is the Atlantic Ocean. Once again, the water was amazingly clear since the wind has been light for a couple of days. That gave everything a chance to settle out and moving slowly through the water we could see all sorts of sights. The star fish in the first shot had to be about 5 feet below the surface.

Spoil Island shell hunt

Spoil Island is an Island off of Loggerhead channel that is manmade. At one point the locals wanted to have cruise ships (Disney?) coming into Guana Cay. The deal folded either at the hands of environmentalists, or, at the hands of skippers that did not want to handle the channels in bad weather. They face directly into the Atlantic. Anyway, we took the dink over from Orchid bay. It was perhaps a 15 or 20 minute ride at speed to get there.

Upon pulling into the shallows from the deeper water (maybe 30 feet deep at the most) we spooked a couple of spotted rays that wound up going right under us. They had to have a wingspan of about 4 feet, and it took some maneuvering to make sure we wound up leaving them in one piece.

Once on the island, which may be a weekend anchorage kind of hang out for the locals, we picked up a few shells and headed back out.

On the way out we ran into a number of schooling baracuda. Also on the bottom we could see many large starfish. Obviously the water was extremely clear, and with the light winds the surface was flat enabling us to see deep into the water .

Maybe tomorrow we'll bring the rod and reel since the structure in this area supports quite a bit of fish. Either that or we head to Scotland Cay to the south where there is a channel to the Atlantic and perhaps more fish.

What does it take to travel to the Bahamas by boat?

We met an interesting couple the other day, Lou and Deb. They also have the dream of coming down here and going further to Georgetown. We used to think that Freedom was a bit cramped for this sort of jurney until we met them. The boat is just about totally independent of shore requirements and has 6 months of food on it!
All of this in something like 28 feet. Amazing, and it reflects nicely on some words (on the test floor) I heard in reference to our intentions to make this trip; "that's the biggest pile of sh*& he's come up with yet".


Suffice it to say, we are not roughing it, and my hat is off to this couple that are also enroute! Note that if you click the photo, you will see there are two outboards one for the dink and one for the sailboat. No impressive horsepower required here.

Checking the Zincs

Since we have migrated to the salt from fresh water, concern over zinc life has surfaced. So I took out the 2 mil suit and jumped in.

I know you folks are expecting 6-12 inches of white stuff back up at home. It looks like it'll be white for Christmas up there also!

Anyway, the zincs and underwater gear looked ok. We have a vibration on the port side so we must have whacked something with that prop again. However there was no damage apparant so hopefully we can make it back to the states where services are readily available as long as we take it easy.

Night fishing

The water here at Orchid bay is quite clear and once in a while I have been turning on the transom lights at night. One night we here this strange slashing noise and figure there is a large fish down there worth exerting a bit of extra effort to see. As it 'terned' out, there is this heron of some sort hanging out on the swim platform way past his bed time scarfing up all the bait fish! Obviously this bird had been on boats doing this before because it did not care if we made noise, it moved to a safer spot under the dink. Interesting...
With all the time we have on our hands maintenance items have been getting taken care of. Cetol has been (and will continue to be) applied to the bow pulpit and rails and other general clean up will get done.
I have to admit with being away from the Rondout the boat stays much cleaner on the outside. There is no gravel mine dust and train exhaust to settle on the boat. We get light grey streaks down here, not black streaks.
Hopefully the wind settles down today (as predicted) and we get to do some fishing.

What piece in this photo doesn't belong with the others?

Ok. I had nothing to do with it. It was like that when we walked up to it.

Anyway, today we walked quite a bit of the beach here on Guana Cay and if you were looking for a (almost) white Xmas, this is a pretty good start.

We checked out several of the places on the island which included 4 restaurants, a dive shop, grocery, post office and pharmacy. All within walking.

Today we had a pleasant surprise to find that a couple we met at West End and again at the GTC made the crossing around Whale Cay today. They had heard on the Single Side Band that if they did not do it today, they were going to be out of luck for quite a while. Tonite we are going to the Full Moon party at Nippers -> http://www.nippersbar.com/ which includes a special Prime Rib dinner for 20 bucks a head.

The ships log gps data was getting too large and that was what took down the converter. So the compressed file on the server has two sections now. If you have issues displaying the data in Google Earth, let me know.

Hint: Jimmy is all boned up.

Great Guana Cay fom Green Turtle Cay

This was the part of the trip that had us most concerned excepting the Gulf crossing. We could either go out into the Atlantic around Whale Cay from White Sound or we could attempt a shallow water passage to Marsh Harbour via Don't Rock. With the current weather forecasts being laced with gloom (gale warnings to the north affecting wave action locally), we were resolved to sitting at GTC for at least another week since Don't Rock is very risky due to the possibility of bottom bouncing from wave action. In other words, if a big wave trough pulls enough water out from under you, 'badabing' you bounce on the bottom. Not good in a 20 ton boat.

So this morning I decided to request local information via VHF 16. I received a reply from a sailboat that Whale Channel was only 2-3 foot rollers. Nothing serious. We were all surprised and another boat decided to run it also. A respected Caribean forcaster was all wet. He was suggesting it would be 6-8.

We checked out and stowed everything and left for the channel. As it turned out it was a bit rougher than reported but all's fair since the wind was building. When we were about 2 miles west of Whale Cay we found ourselves in 3-5 square on the bow. Freedom was plodding along at 9.5 knots and running the waves comfortably. We however were getting bounced around. A couple of 'holes in the water' produced deep breaths but otherwise going out around Whale Cay into the ocean was fine. We both thought we were going to be ok since we could see the Atlantic well enough to know there were no whitecaps.

Later as we swung around into Loggerhead channel we were in 3-5 quartering and again Freedom performed well.

And here we are at the Orchid Bay Marina/Resort. We are sitting in a washing machine because the wind is out of the South East. At least the bow is into it. It's sort of like Lincoln Harbor without all of the clanging (and burning boats as of late news). We're behind the break wall but it's kinda sloppy in here.

We walked over to Nippers and had some conch fritters and a round knowing that now the rest of the boat movement is in relatively easy waters with no large obstacles or weather dependencies. This photo is of us sitting at the rail looking out at the Atlantic wondering why it looks so calm here... The wind is at that time is now SW so the Atlantic near shore is in the lee.

I'll have GPS data shortly. The formatting tool is whining.