Adlers Cay In The Berry Islands — 12•2•21
I wanted to push hard to get us to the Exumas. Our weather window for sailing would be a little tight with two overnights at anchor, and the wind clocking around to being close to on our nose the last day.
Our first stop is Adlers Cay which is a private island in The Berrys, about 34nm from Great Harbour Cay. We cleared the Great Harbour Cut at 0800 and had full main and genoa up with engines off by 0900. The autopilot (see the last post) was working well again and didn’t cause any issues.
We had our fishing line out and got a big hit. It looked to be a Wahoo, but before we could get it in, he just bit through the line and took the lure with him. Now we are down 2 lures with a couple of fish out there with nice lip bling.
After clearing Great Stirrup Cay, we dragged the screecher out and got it out. The screecher can be a handful with one person if you run into any issues. So with Pete aboard it made it an easy task. We had a great sail down to Adlers Cay.
We cleared Adler Cut and had the anchor down by 1500 hours (3:00 pm). We even caught a couple of conches, and Pete made cracked conch that night. A great ending to a beautiful day.
West Bay in New Providence — 12•3•21
We had the anchor up and underway a 0745 hours (7:45 am). Our destination was West Bay in New Providence. New Providence has the capital city Nassau. We are only anchoring for the night and not going ashore for a few reasons (crime and retesting for covid rules).
By 0800 we had the engines off and the main up with the screecher coming out, as we had it all set from the day before. Unfortunately, I was not paying attention, and the furling line for the screecher got tangled up. We had to drop it and untangle the lines. This would have been tough with one person, but with Pete aboard, we go it straightened out, and the screecher back up and flying nicely.
A few other boats started out going the same direction as us but turned more east to go to Rose Island on the east side of New Providence. Some talk on the VHF was that West Bay would be rolly with the wind direction. Our plan was still to get to West Bay.
We pulled into West Bay, dropped anchor at 1435 (2:35 pm). There was great Sunset (header photo) and there barely was any roll in the anchorage that night.
Norman’s Cay in The Exumas — 12•4•21
0645 anchor up. We would be leaving The Tongue of the Ocean and running on the Exuma Banks today. The water is much shallower on the banks. Today we would have the wind hard on the nose and a bit of chop. We have about 50nm to cover today, but we would finally be in the Exumas, which is nice island-hops down to Georgetown, Great Exuma, the final destination for Christmas, with Pete leaving Trouble behind and my family coming to the Bahamas.
No screecher today with the wind direction. We had the main up and the genoa out but had to keep an engine on (ECO mode) to hold our course and keep our arrival time. Norma’s has a shallow entrance where we are planning to anchor and I wanted to enter it on a rising tide.
Dolphins joined us for a bit which took our mind of the bumpy ride into the waves. Trouble doesn’t seem to mind the waves, but I never really like bashing into waves all-day.
1530 anchor down. After navigating the thin water into Norman’s Cay and setting the anchor. We took off in the dinghy to make some reservations at Macduf’s restaurant. After the anti-climatic dinner at Macduf’s, we settled in for the night as tomorrow we’d start our Jurney down the Exumas.