Black Point, the return trip.

We pulled anchor and headed to Black Point to be able to go in and connect to internet.  It took all of 30 minutes. Yep we had not noticed that we were just around the corner from Black Point the night before. Oh well we live and learn. The charts are several sizes and difficult for us newbie’s to figure actual distances. We were surprised to see how full the anchorage was. I counted at least 36 boats when we anchored and Freddie was able to count over 50 when he counted that afternoon. We just had a boat come right by to drop anchor as I looked up from typing this.  Several boats left this morning headed south and even more have arrived today. Black Point is hosting a big Super Bowl Party Sunday and many cruisers have been making their reservations. We are trying to determine the course we want to take home. That is my big plans for today after I go back into town to take in our garbage and upload the blog. Yesterday I had to go online to straighten out my credit cards. They thought that there was fraudulent activity since the purchases were from the Bahamas and had put them on hold until we verified the purchases. That wasn't so easy to do without internet and the phone numbers that were on the email did not work from the Bahamas. Oh well they just announced fresh caught lobsters at the dock. Since we haven’t had any luck catching our own I think we will check into buying a couple. We may stick around a couple of days.

Black Point anchorage

Ok I forgot to publish this post a while back. He He He.. I'm so silly.

Auto Pilots are PRECIOUS comodities

Auto Pilots are very precious. We left West Bay around 7:30 am and headed to Chubb at almost low tide. The entry and exit is not a problem for a boat with our draft but I still held my breath in a couple of places.  If we were in a full keeled boat we would have had to time our exit differently. There is a little more wind today and this area has a bit more wave motion than the shallow banks that we covered the past few days but not bad really. We unfurled the jib and were making good time.  Not more than an hour out our auto pilot quit. Yep, it has had low battery readings periodically but would come back quickly. This time, we weren't so fortunate. Hand steering a compass heading with the sea swells, current and wind gusts is tedious, tiring work. I go through all of our paperwork on the new auto pilot and find that when the display gives the low battery reading that it is not receiving sufficient power. Well Duh! Remedy press stand by to clear the warning and start the engines to re charge the battery. We already had the engines running so we kept checking as much of the wiring connections as we could get to while taking turns at the helm. Finally auto started to work again for the last part of our trip. We had secured a berth at Chub Cay Club marina and ate fish and fries in the club house. We were pretty tired for a relatively short trip. We took our first land showers this year. I also gave myself a quick hair- cut. I can cut Fred’s on the boat but I don’t have a mirror for outside and don’t want hair all over the front bedroom where the mirror is located. We are going to get diesel and check weather then head out for our first overnight-er this trip to be positioned at West End to cross for home as soon as we get a weather window.

Chub Cay Club

Entrance to Chub Marina

Building renovations, Beautiful place but has fallen into disrepair.
The new owner comes on board next month and is doing a lot
of renovations. The docks were the best we have seen since the States.

The infinity pool with swim up bar.

No Wind For Us

We picked our way through the coral heads and left Normans Cay about 7:30 am since we knew that we had a longer trip to New Providence and wanted to get there in plenty of daylight.  We elected to again go to the western side of the island as we did on the trip down. As forecasted there was almost no wind. I think we averaged around 2 knots so motoring we go. It is interesting how different things are on the return trip. There are boats everywhere. A lot more traffic than when we came down in November. Now it’s not what you would call rush hour traffic on the roads or anything but it is different. We may have seen on boat on a leg of our journey down in November but are likely to see 20 now.  Our little anchorage in West Bay that we had all to ourselves in November had more than 10 boats last night. The trip was pretty uneventful. We did see dolphins a couple of times but they didn't hang around long enough for me to get but a couple of pictures of them. Freddie kept ready to unfurl the jib and get some help for the motors but finally just gave up.  I worked on my basket weaving; I will post a pic when it starts to look like a basket. I cleaned a lot of the yuck off of the conch shell that I picked up at Normans.  I also read some of my book that my Aunt Jo gave me for Christmas. I am about 2/3 of the way through with it. It is the story of James Baldwin and his sail around the world alone on his sail boat Atom. Thanks Aunt Jo.  We did get settled in time to take the dingy and explore the Park that is on the western tip of this bay. We talked to a group doing an afternoon scuba dive with an instructor that is also professional a kick boxer.  Their Bahamian taxi driver asked us if we knew what beach this was and we said “no”. She then told us that this is Jaws beach, where they filmed Jaws. Glad I found that out after Freddie had dove the anchor! We have enjoyed the best internet that we have had since we left the states here. Freddie finally got the Bullet working and we have taken advantage of it checking weather, anchorages and updating the blog with pictures that don’t take 30 minutes each. Heading to Chub this morning and hang out through the cold front.

Finally got a picture of a dolphin escort

Jaws Beach. Da Dum..Da Dum........

Not even enough wind to stir our Courtesy flag!

Scuba divers getting ready to brave the Jaws Beach water.

Spinnaker Sailing, Drug Lords and Airplanes

We said Good bye to Warderick Wells around 9:30 Thursday Morning and headed to Normans Cay. The winds light and the seas calm as we headed North. After motor sailing with the jib the winds were still very light and Freddie suggested that we try our spinnaker sail. After our disastrous experience leaving Black Point and considering that the only time we had ever had the spinnaker out before we had tried to hoist it sideways, I was a little skeptical about giving it a go. Freddie reminded me that we will never learn anything if we don’t try it so I dug out the spinnaker. We not only got it flying but did so without any calamities or cross words. Score another one for Fred! For those of you that don’t know a Spinnaker sail is a very lightweight light wind sail. It is made out of what feels like parachute material and fills out with wind high and in front of the boat like a half of a giant balloon. Sailing with the Spinnaker went well and taking it down was a little more tedious but no real disasters or screaming.

We were anchored off of Normans Cay at 2:30 and were in the dingy headed to explore before 3 pm. Normans Cay rose to fame as Carlos Leder’s base during the bad days of Bahamian Drug trading. There are still some bullet ridden houses and crumbling remains of his territory just north of the airstrip. There is also a ditched aircraft in the southern anchorage that we had a great time snorkeling in. We came across the airstrip while exploring the island and had not understood it was still an operational airstrip until we saw a plane landing directly in front of us while we were standing on the air strip. We then noticed the hanger at the far south end of the strip where the plane let off its passengers and took back off. We were long gone back to the beach before we saw it leave not wanting to be plane food. We had a nice chat with some people that have lived on their boat for 4 years and are looking at coming and checking out real-estate in the St. Marys and Fernandina area this summer. Small world.  Leaving early in the morning for Nassau around a 40 mile trip,a full day when you only do around 5 knts. 

Yes we are flying that spinnaker!

We are getting pretty good at these selfee's  on Normans after
snorkeling the sunken plane and before dodging the flying one.

not a bad pic with a $10 Walmart camera.

Very spooky. All the coral around the seats and such looked
like skeletons.

I wonder if the fish ate the drugs?

Ah Freddie we need to get out of here.

On the Move towards Home

Freddie with my life in his hands. Good thing we had went to feed the pigs and I had fed him supper!

After going into town to connect to internet, top off time on our cell phones and the check the weather forecast we took off to Big Major beside Staniel Cay. Yes pig island again. Trying to sail there was a mess. The wind was only supposed to be blowing 15 but it sure felt like more to me as we wrestled with both the both sails. Lesson learned ALWAYS secure the wind generator when working with the main sail. One of our mainsail reef lines broke a blade on our generator putting it out of commission for the rest of our trip. We continued to have issues with both the main and jib, so much so that we put them away and just motored on to Big Major arriving around 3 pm. Some sailors we are! Neither one of us were in great moods, in fact we were both pretty snippy. The pigs make us happy though, so after setting the anchor we loaded up our moldy bread and took off to feed our favorite swine.  Our Bahamian courtesy flag line had chafed  through while we were at Black Point and needed to be fixed. With plenty of daylight left and since the wind had died  I talked Freddie into hauling me up the mast (I much preferred that to me hauling him up there) to restring it. We had a great dinner of left over steak with butter beans and rice and hit the sack. The next morning we took off to Warderick Wells. This time we just motor sailed with the jib and had a great trip. We picked up a mooring again at the Land and Sea Park where we had stayed on our trip down.  After paying for a night we hiked back up to Boo Boo Hill and found our sign we had left in November. They have a nice new memorial bench up there now and we visited with several other cruisers during our hike. We are making short day hops up the chain to be in a position to cross back over and head home. Right now it doesn't look like we can cross for at least another week. Every stop we make we have to make sure we have a secure anchorage close in case of a nasty cold front. Who knows with forecasts that far out. One thing for sure the weather is always changing.

Selfie from the mast behind Big Major

Only two pics. The worst thing about the Land and Sea Park is internet and no phone service. Otherwise, a wonderful place.

Super Bowl Sunday at Black Point

We attended Gethsemane Baptist Church Sunday morning. We were truly blessed. The entire service was ALIVE. These people truly know how to worship. They also know their scripture. They sing scripture, shout scripture and preach scripture.  The church was small and simple buy US standards with open windows and doors but full of joy. These people were glad to be in the house of the Lord and welcomed all who came that morning. We were truly touched.

We went back to the boat and had a light lunch and just relaxed until time to head back to Lorraine’s  for the Super Bowl party.  I must say that TV has been rare for us this winter so even I was interested in watching. Lorraine sings in the choir at church and had to leave after the song service to go to work cooking for the lunch crowd and cook up the mega feast for the SB Party. She made sure to come by and welcome us to church on her way out that morning.  She had to have gotten up before sunrise to start her day and serve two meals to hungry cruisers and locals. Super Bowl is a BIG deal here. Of course it is a major source of income for the community that hosts such a huge influx of cruisers during the winter. There were 3 restaurants hosting happy hours and dinner specials. Lorraine’s small establishment had 2 flat screen TV’s set up inside and one outside for the overflow tables . It was too bad that the game was such a blow out since many cruisers went back to their boats at half time. Freddie and I headed back to Stray Cat sometime in the 3^rd quarter. The majority of the people at Loraine’s seemed to be Seattle fans so it was a pretty happy group.

We went in to do laundry in Rockside Laundry Monday morning. $14 to wash and dry 2 loads. This is the first time I have done laundry in a machine this year. Most of the time I do it by hand on the boat. The laundry was packed.  It took from 10 am until 1 pm to get it done. There was a line for both the washers and dryers. Later in the day we walked to the beach to see the Exuma Sound side of the island. We will come in and update everything on the internet Tuesday morning then probably head a little North. If you ever come this way Loraine’s has the best internet in town. You can sit outside and get a good signal and reasonable speeds. For a small donation you can plug in to the electric also. We have taken advantage of the free internet there each day . We are still trying to decide our route for the passage North. The weather is foretasted to hold this week and a cold front  to come down around the 10^th. We are really looking at where we need to be to weather the front. Yep it’s not just old people that talk about the weather. It is a major topic in Cruiser circles.

Love their Motto!

Super Bowl Party waiting for the game to start.

No I'm not dancing on the bar, just hanging a banner.

Our waiter for the night.

Most people are now buried in Nassau. But we found this small
Cemetery on one of our walks.

The beach on the Exmua Sound side of Black Point.

February 1st in Black Point

We had a wonderful start to February. I know that most of our friends and family were cold but the weather here was glorious. We had a slow lazy start to the day since we had decided to stay here through the Superbowl party Sunday night. We took off in the dingy around the corner to Bitter Guana Cay to see the iguanas that are the main inhabitants on the Cay. I know that there are some other wildlife that inhabit the Cay but the iguanas are the main attraction. Taking the dingy also afforded us a close up inspection of Dothan Cut, the cut that we had tried to make but couldn't a couple of times. We had a great time swimming and walking the beach and checking out the iguanas until lunch time.

We have been looking for Lobster during our entire trip and have yet to come across one in the wild. When they came over the radio and said that a local had fresh caught lobster at the dingy dock in front of us yesterday we just had to get one. After our excursion to see the iguanas, we came back and dined on grilled lobster. Yum Yum.  Then we just laid around on the boat and read and relaxed. Now this is what I hoped cruising would be like.  The anchorage is really busy with people coming and going, many headed south to Georgetown. We continue to meet new and interesting people and run into other people we had met earlier along our journey. 

Ok so we cheated. This one's for you Grannie T.

On my way to check out the iguanas!

Freddie and friend having a conversation.

The original swimming with stingrays!

Say Cheese