12/24 s/v Trouble Update: Ava (Daughter) flew in Monday(12/21) for the holidays. We left the marina the next day for Hoffman Cay as we had a small weather window to do this trip. It was a brisk sail mostly downwind. I wanted to time our arrival at Hoffman Cay to be at high tide. This will be my first time dealing with navigating in the shallow Bahamas water. We arrived at the entrance. I had plotted my course the day before. But in the Bahamas, the bottom can shift, so you are supposed to “Read” the watercolor to determine depth. I have no experience in this. I just went slowly and aimed for what I thought was deeper water. We cleared the shallow part fine and arrived at our destination. A Dutch boat was in the spot I had hoped to get, so we anchored out a little further. It was still a good spot. The anchor went down in a spot of sand, and we set it hard. I told Ava to get her swimsuit on, and she was delighted by that. We dove on the anchor to make sure it was set well. The water is unbelievably clear and mesmerizing to swim in. The anchor looked great, set deep into the very soft and very white sand. We then put the dinghy down and went to the beach to explore. It took us no time to find the Blue Hole. We planned to come back the next day to play in it. That night we had cheeseburgers for dinner. The next day (Wednesday) we had our avocado toast with egg breakfast. We packed up to two paddleboards into the dinghy and went to the Blue Hole. We had it to ourselves, just enough time for Ava to get her photos. The Dutch boat crew showed up shortly and were doing the jumping off the cliff into the blue hole. We weren’t brave enough to do that. After talking to the Dutch crew about routes leaving Hoffman Cay, we headed back to the boat and worked on scrubbing the hulls of Trouble. She has not had a thorough scrub of the hulls since launching. There was a bit of green growth but no hard barnacles on the bottom paint. I did notice a loose and lost zinc. I repaired those. I dropped the zinc part three times trying to attach it to the saildrive (prop). The water being shallow and so clear with a white sand bottom made it easy to swim down and pick up the part. It was a full day. Thursday morning we got up. We need to head back to Great Harbour Cay Marina as a big cold front with strong winds was coming in. I wanted to be back before dark. But we couldn’t leave on a low tide which was in the morning. Having briefed with the Dutch boat about routes out of Hoffman Cay, I was going to exit the Cay a different way than what I had come in on. It was not a straight course and required visual cues to what path you had to take. We waited as late as possible for the tide to come up a bit. We were still 3 hours from high tide but we had to go. We took it slow and made the first zigzagged shallows fine. We had to get very close to a rocky shore to do this. The next shallow was really hard to read. I just did my best going slow and watching the depth gauge. At one point I think we just grazed the bottom, but it was all sand. We made it through and out into deep water. We got the mainsail up and the genoa out. It was a downwind sail in a brisk breeze. I motor-sailed the whole way back just so we could get in before dark. It was a great trip. Of course, Ava slept the whole way. We tied up, had dinner, and went to bed early. I hope everyone had a great Christmas Eve.
s/v Trouble – Destination Unkown
