1st January 2020
One of the hardest things about cruising the way we do is choosing our own itinerary, its great but sometimes we cant do everything. On New Years Day Freeport holds its annual festival and street parade, its very famous and is called Junkanoo with its spirit, music, dancing and colourful costumes. It has its roots from the slaves that were brought to the Bahamas from Africa's West Coast it is actually a competition to see which group can create the best costumes, do the best dancing and make the best music and all the guide books say "if you get the chance to see one, don't miss it". We had to make a decision, do we stay one more night (paying US$100) or miss it and get moving to the next place where we will see the stunning blue water and white sandy beaches we are looking for.
We decided to move on, leaving the dock at first light we motored out following our incoming track the tide was much lower this morning, it had been scary the first time and we were even more nervous navigating the narrow channel on a lower tide.
We are headed to Little Stirrup Cay at the very northern tip of the Berry Islands, in search of our own deserted Island.
We upped the sails once we were clear of the entrance channel, we are heading further South towards our first real Bahamas anchorage. The winds were on our beam and pulled us along for most of the 60 nm trip. But it did ease off and we had to put up big red for spell.
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| Sailing along using Big Red, our spinnaker used for light winds |
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| The water is so blue and clear |
We put out the fishing line, and had it trailing behind us most of the way, we caught a fish !!!
it was a tuna, the same as the last one we caught. But as we were reeling it in a - shark attacked it!!
The shark was so fast - bang it was there and bit into our catch we tried to reel in our fish with the shark trying to steal it, eventually we won but the poor fish's head was caved in.
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| A SHARK attacked our catch |
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| We are getting better at containing the mess when we catch a fish |
There were so many Cruise ships passing us, eventually we realised why, our destination island is the cruise ship owned Coco Island where the ships anchor for the day and let the guests off to play on the beach, snorkelling, jet skiing even para sailing. On the way up we could see things up in the sky it turns out they were all activities related to the cruise ships we anchored on the west side in Slaughter harbour, I don't know where the name originated from but pirates did frequent this area. We have a clear view of the beach that the cruise ship passengers would use - so much for our deserted island.
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| What we could see as we approached Coco Island |
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There were cruise ships everywhere on our passage and then once we reached our anchorage
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The next day we arrived at White Cay only a short 16 nm sail away, we dropped the dingy and motored over to the beach it was sooo beautiful, There is a Blue Hole only a short walk off the beach so off we went to check it out, its a huge inland hole that is very popular with people jumping off the cliff down into the water, Craig did it but I declined, we actually forgot to take our cameras so no photos but we did meet up with Kyra and Jack a young Canadian couple travelling on Yellowbird, we ended up back on the beach chatting to them for a while, another family who were at the blue hole at the same time as us, handed out some beers and we finally felt like we had arrived.
The family are from California they have a house on one of the Cays and they charter a private plane to fly into the Bahamas and so they can bring their own supplies in, they were like have a beer, we have plenty, we understand how hard it must be for you on your yachts.
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| Finally ! |
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| Only a short dingy ride to the beach |
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| "Yellowbird" |
That night we experienced the very worst night aboard Adriana EVER !!! We knew the winds were forecast to increase and sit at a sustained 20-25 knots with gusts over 30 but it was the fetch that got us, at one stage we were nearly thrown out of bed Craig had to lie with both arms outstretched to keep himself for being thrown around. I spent the night wrapped in a blanket in the cockpit on anchor watch. The movement was like nothing we had experienced before we were being rocked from side to side in short sharp bursts, things were flying off shelves it was even worse than being in heavy winds out at sea.
Thank goodness our anchor held secure and the next day after taking the dingy around the corner a bit and chatting to Jack and Kyra we decided to move, we had to do something so that we were more comfortable than the night before. Yes we made the right choice and our new spot was much more relaxing, the beach was gorgeous and we had a nice walk and swim meeting up with Kyra and Jack again (Yellowbird the cutest little yellow 28ft yacht, towing a yellow dingy) for a chat on the beach.
Up early the next morning we are headed to Nassau the capital city, we have heard lots of bad things about Nassau and we had not planned to visit but now we will be going right past and it is the capital city so there must be things to see. The seas were a bit lumpy after the previous few days high winds so it was a bit of a bumpy sail but we managed to sail all the way.
We anchored between the City Downtown and Paradise Island just behind the Cruise ship dock !!
There was a bit of a blow winds gusting to 30knts the first night, we had read that the holding was not the best in Nassau Harbour, so put out tons of chain plus we had our anchor alarm on. Sure enough around 1am we heard a commotion outside, the 2 boats anchored next to us were both dragging their anchors, Yellowbird was one of them, they lifted their anchor and left, we found out later that the other boat had anchored too close to them and once things went pear shaped they decided to just head out of the harbour and
go under the 2 bridges and anchor on the other side away from everyone. Celia the other boat re set their anchor and went back downstairs, I sat in the cockpit with the anchor alarm and the charplotter on, taking my bearings from land lights and keeping a watch on our position until daybreak.
Our first day in Nassau we decided to complete some maintenance - there was SALT water under the engine - and our generator was overheating.
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| Adriana's generator with the engine behind |
It turns out the seal on the propeller shaft had deteriorated, not an issue until we are motoring then salt water is leaking in. Consulting google Craig realised that the system has a spare seal already installed - which was a relief we were looking at having to be hauled out of the water to fix it... so with much cursing Craig managed to remove the old seal and put into place the replacement, nothing is ever as simple as it looks on you tube. It was a very stressful 15 minutes when he was having problems repositioning the seal and salt water was flooding in through the gap !!
Our generator needed a new impellor and gasket seal we were prepared and had spares onboard these two jobs took all day, we have to remove the stairs to work on the engine, I don't think I went upstairs until about 4pm !!
Monday 6th January 2019
We felt we could not miss out on seeing another capital city so we dropped the dingy, and attached the motor.
On our way to the dingy dock (at a marina where we had to pay $6) we stopped in to see Alexi (from The Magdalene Islands) his engine had stopped, he had previously had engine trouble in West Palm Beach and had anchored close to us, Craig being quite fatherly had gone over and had a look, one of his previous boats had had the same engine. They had managed to get it working.
Alexi had a friend onboard who had spent Christmas with him they had travelled down the US coast, he had a flight booked from Nassau, to get back home, he had flown out the previous day and Alexi was back on his own with an engine that wasn't taking in water to the cooling system.
Craig went through a few things with him and we left him to sort it out
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| Alexi did get his engine working and made it to Georgetown before us |
Walking through the streets of Nassau there are very few pavements and what's there is all broken and uneven, so many closed businesses and empty shops, you can see hurricane damage everywhere. As we got closer to downtown there were more shops all geared towards the cruise ship passengers. Pandora, Jewellery, perfume, souvenirs, tiki bars and restaurants.
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| Taken in our first 10 minutes in Nassau, we cant believe we are here |
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| Lots of empty abandoned shops |
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| The pavements disappeared and we were walking along the side of the road for most of the day |
Up a side street we stumbled across a food outlet that was full of locals sticking our head in we found the best roast chicken served with corn, potato salad and the traditional rice and peas (chick peas).
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| Bahamian version of KFC |
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| The chicken was really delicious |
We walked up towards one of the old forts (there are 3) but there were no pavements so it felt a bit disconcerting, we were passing all the government buildings Police Headquarters, consulate buildings etc, walking uphill we found ourselves walking through the suburban streets. It all seems poor and rundown, we did feel slightly uncomfortable. Turning a corner we came across the 66 steps built by slaves in 1793 as an escape route from the fort.
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| Stone steps leading to the old fort carved out of the stone in 1793 |
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| It was lovely and cool at the bottom, photos make it look prettier than it actually was |
Once we had descended the steps we realised the fort was back up top so we never actually made it to see any of the Nassau forts. We kept walking back towards downtown and we came across the Historical Society Museum, we spent about an hour inside with the president of the society giving us the full guided history of The Islands interesting past, I think we were very lucky to have her attention for so long.
After that we were done, we walked back to Adriana passing a restaurant supply shop we stopped and picked up the juices needed to make rum cocktails and a coconut, condensed milk and gin drink that the islands are famous for.
We could have picked up so much more, they even had items that we could not find in West Palm Beach, such as shitake mushrooms, spring roll wrappers and yeast but as usual we can only buy what we can carry.
After a relaxing morning pottering around, I was reading the Nassau News online, and Nassau had just had their 3rd shooting fatality since the new year, that explained the screaming police and ambulance vehicles that flew past us yesterday. It turns out the shooting was in a street that we had walked up, on our way to the stairs/fort it was then we decided to up anchor and move on we had seen enough and even though there was food we had wanted to stock up on we were ready to go.
Around 11am we lifted the anchor and sailed under the bridges on our way to Highbourne Cay, we passed Alexi who had fixed his engine problem and was on his way to Euthera where he planed to do some windsurfing.
There is another weather front heading our way and we are headed for Highbourne Cay in the Exhumas to find a sheltered spot to hide from this incessant wind.
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