The leisurely sail back up to New England — Part V — May 9 through May 12 (Subtitle: Fun with Furlers!)

We really enjoyed our short but memorable visit to Turks and Caicos.  The beaches were pristine and so magnificent (hopefully you had a chance to see the pictures we posted on Instagram or, better yet, you’ve had a chance to visit Turks & Caicos yourself) and it will be hard to top swimming with wild dolphins.  Still, we were ready to head to the Bahamas and visit the many places we’ve heard about for years but never had a chance to visit.  The Exumas and Eleuthera are top on our list.  Curiously, Jill recently found out that in the Bahamas, swimming with Flipper, or one of his wild cousins, is illegal.   (Though they do allow — and actually encourage — tourists to swim with pigs in the Exumas.  No thank you.)  Not sure about how the T&C views this, but in case any of the law enforcement personnel on T&C are following along, or any of you are tempted to rat us out, we suspect that we may have hallucinated the whole “swim with wild dolphins” thing.  Likely it was a couple of large grouper cavorting in the waves with us, or perhaps a wayward manatee .  .  . could even have been a large school of shad.  Needless to say Jill will remain chained to the boat in the case of a dolphin sighting here in the Bahamas.  

We had a lot to do to get ready for our trip to the Bahamas.  As you have all figured out by now, we are not simply hopping on a plane.  We had to make a sail plan and accommodate the whole “entering a foreign country by sea” thing.  Preferably we would just have one overnight and an easy check in along the way.  Tough part was that unlike the portion of the Bahama islands near Florida up north, few close options are available when entering from the South.  We basically had three options.  Option One was a trip to Greater Iguana Island — our closest option — but that would require back tracking south a ways and our path is headed north.  Option Two was Long Island and due to our draft, we were faced with the choice of a marina or a government dock.  Flying Fish Marina on Long Island was full due to a fishing tournament.  The other option, the government dock, was described in one of our guide books as a beat up concrete pier with no fenders and more conducive to steel barges than fiberglass boats.  Option Three was George Town on the Great Exumas which involved a longer sail than we ideally like (280 nautical miles) but it presented any easy customs option (at least allegedly — more on that later) and got us further in the right direction.  So while we would have preferred Option Two if the marina could have accommodated us, we went with Option Three and we were able to develop a sail plan that would allow us to anchor after a single overnight passage if we felt we needed to.

In addition to developing a sail plan, before we could leave we needed to reprovision, clean, do laundry and pre-prepare meals.  Laundry is ordinary the easiest of our pre-departure tasks because most marinas have washers and dryer for guest use but our selected marina on Providenciales did not (ugh) so that meant 4 loads in our small combined washer/dryer unit.  The most time consuming part of our passage prep is pre-cooking meals because in a small galley kitchen everything takes twice as long as it would in a conventional home kitchen. First, there is limited counter space so you are constantly moving things around.  For example, our refrigerator is located underneath prime counter space. You lift a door in the counter to access the upper food storage area of that fridge.  Despite the best planning, you always need to move something you placed there to get out some food item (or to get your captain a cold drink of water or his “arrival beer”).  Second, to maximize the limited storage space, everything you need — pots, pans, colanders, storage containers, etc. — is stored in a nestled fashion that makes taking out and putting away time consuming.  Just imagine if you had to store your salt in the smallest of one of those Russian nesting dolls and every time you needed salt you had to take the doll apart to reach that smallest doll and then you had to reassemble your doll to put your salt away — every time.  

Having ready made frozen meals for this trip, however, was pretty critical.  The Bahamas are spread out over an area that is more than 500 nautical miles long — the distance between New York City to Charleston SC.  Just to get from one end to the other you’d have to travel about 50 nautical miles a day (roughly 7 hours for us depending on wind speed and direction), and that doesn’t leave much time for enjoying any particular area.  Instead, we planned to sail a double overnight passage to get to the Bahamas in George Town, Great Exuma (Option Three!) and then 2 to 3 single overnight passages once in the Bahamas.  This would allow us to enjoy specific locations for 2 – 3 days at a time with just short hops, if we so desired, to explore different cays.  During an overnight sail it is much easier to pull something pre-made from the freezer than to try to prepare a meal when you have following seas with big rollers.  All of that kept us very busy on May 9 (Mother’s Day) and the morning of May 10.  Still, we found time on Mother’s Day to call the important mothers in our lives and Jill took time to visit with each of our children when they made the obligatory Mother’s Day call.  We think they were all secretly relieved when Jill kept the calls really short.

We set sail for the Bahamas at about 2 PM on May 10.  Turks & Caicos has lots of skinny water and the area surrounding our marina was no different.  Unfortunately, to avoid arriving at our next destination in the dark (not when you want to anchor or show up at a marina) 2 PM was our ideal departure time but it also meant departing at low tide.  Thankfully, we chose a marina that was situated such that the channel could accommodate a boat with our draft, even at low tide, as long as you followed the navigation chart and ignored the channel markets.  It felt very odd deliberately sailing outside of the channel markers but it would have felt worse if we got grounded on one of the shoals.  Zack masterfully guided the boat though the channel, closely watching the chart on our nav system screen and steering our boat accordingly.  Jill commented that all those years of video games were paying off.

Our sail plan had us heading West and then North.  For the West part of the sail the worst possible wind direction is dead East because that puts the wind right behind us.  We wanted to sail if possible so we put out the full genoa without the main so that the wind would fill the sail and not be blocked by the main.  We were sailing at 160 degrees apparent wind — not the ideal angle to the wind.  Unfortunately, the genoa is not designed to operate like a spinnaker so with the northern swell pitching us all over, the sail would often spill air and even flap and threaten to jibe.  We decided that as much as we prefer to sail, the better approach — to letting our genoa get beat around — was to furl it and motor until the wind changed direction or we got to our turning point heading North and the East wind would become our best friend.

Not so fast.  As we attempted to furl the genoa there was a lot of resistance.  Zack thought that the line might be tangled in the furler and, after donning his PFD, he went forward to investigate.  Sure enough the line had jammed in the furler due to the snapping and flapping of the genoa with — and we are kicking ourselves for this one — excess line in the furler as a contributing factor.  We are kicking ourselves because a few days before we left for the Bahamas we had noticed that there was a lot of line in the furler and made a mental note that we needed to remedy that situation as too much line can cause a problem like the very one we encountered.  Another reminder that when you notice problems fix them then and there, don’t wait!  So, there we were in 18 to 20 mph wind, bounding and pitching in a northern swell hitting us on the stern quarter and Zack has to go forward to the bow.  Not what anyone should have to do if at all possible!  The drum was a tangled mess.  There was no way to unravel the twisted line by pulling, so Zack determined that he would pull all the furler line forward and then back line out of the furler — actually threading the line backwards out of the furler and eliminating the tangle.  In the end, after 20 eventful minutes wielding a can of spray lube, a long screwdriver, a hack saw and duct tape (just kidding about the hacksaw and duct tape) Zack got the furler cleared and operating — just as the sun was setting.   There was much rejoicing.

The rest of the sail was uneventful.  Of course, that doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing. We encountered the typical large rollers that seem to follow us as we head up North.  We are not sure if this is just our imagination or the wave gods have it in for us, but they always appear to get worse just when Jill goes down to the galley to prepare a meal or when one of us is trying to sleep while the other is on night watch.  Nothing to fear — as we have said many times, this is what Che Figata was built for — but it definitely causes the comfort level of the voyage to precipitously plummet.  We were very glad to reach our destination in the Bahamas on Wednesday, May 12, almost 48 hours after we left Turks & Caicos.

On a highly positive note, we have now completed a first, solo, 2 day passage.  We decided to go straight through rather than anchor.  We are slowly building up our stamina and double handle passage capabilities for true blue water crusing.  We need to really step it up because our circumnavigation will have us on several 2 – 3 week passages and while we hope to have “crew” (aka friends or family members) along for some of the longer legs, we want to be able to complete long passages on our own.  One thing we really need to work through is our watch schedule.  We’ve been following a 4 hour watch schedule (4 hours on/4 hours off) which definitely reduces the burden of the watch but doesn’t allow for a really sufficient block of solid sleep.  We know a couple of really experienced  cruisers who are currently in the Bahamas or will be up in the New England this summer and we plan to canvas them to see if there is a general consensus on what works best for a crew of two.  Like most things in sailing, we know everyone will have an opinion!  

After arriving in George Town our first and primary task was to clear customs.  One of the reasons we chose George Town was that is was supposed to be “easy peasy.”  In our experience, not so much.  First of all, like many countries, the Bahamas as an online portal to obtain a “health visa” to enter the country due to Covid requirements.  We followed all of the requirements and submitted our applications more than two days before our arrival.  For some reason, Zack’s got approved and Jill’s was still pending when we arrive in George Town.  You can’t clear customs and immigration without the health visa so this was a problem. We went ashore anyway, figuring that we might be able to get Jill’s health visa in person under the circumstances.  So we took the dinghy ashore and headed to customs.  When we arrived at customs they informed us that we needed to meet with immigration before they could clear us.  While in most countries we visit customs and immigration are in the same office, here they are in different buildings about 1/2 mile apart.  So, after first appearing at the customs office we head to immigration.  Of course, once we arrived there they inform us that they can’t clear us to customs unless we both have our health visas.  Naturally, the issuance of the health visa is handled by yet another office — the Bahamas Office of Tourism — so they send us there.  At least this office was in the same building complex as immigration. The woman in that office was incredibly kind.  She was actually mortified that after more than 48 hours, Jill’s visa hadn’t been approved and she went above and beyond to try to secure Jill’s visa.  She even called the “help desk” on Jill’s behalf — we learned that there were 123 callers ahead of us! — and then called a personal friend of hers who would be coming into the office at 4 PM and would assist.  As it was only 2:30 PM at this time, we decided to have a bit to eat while we waited for her friend to show up with the real hope that sometime while we were dining Jill’s approval would come through online.  Fortunately, that is what happened.  Around 3:30 PM, Jill received an email that her health visa was approved so we ran to the immigrations office and then back to customs.  Four hours after we we first got to shore we cleared customs we were now free to explore the islands!

Of course, all was not lost.  Lunch turned out to be great.  We picked a local spot — Sonya’s — with a limited menu of conch salad, conch fritters, garlic shrimp, garlic lobster and conch, fritters, conch fritters and more conch fritters.  (Sonya’s small restaurant is the featured image of this blog entry!) Though there was nothing on the menu for our resident vegan, Sonya offered to make Jill a salad and presented Jill with a beautiful salad of fresh lettuce and tomatoes and a dressing made with oil, vinegar and lime.  Zack order the specialty of the house (yes, the conch fritters) and we both had a really delightful meal along with some adult beverages to help soothe our souls after the “stress” of trying to get through customs and immigration.  (It’s okay if you roll your eyes –  we get that our definition of stress is set at a much lower bar than when we were working full time.  It’s all relative, right?)

Now that we arrived in the Bahamas and cleared customs/immigration our plans are loose.  We definitely have specific places we want to visit but with low land there are many unprotected anchorages so watching and heeding the weather will be important.  If you can’t be flexible you should not travel by sailboat!  We will write an update at the end of our Bahamian adventure and before we jump on the Gulf stream for the journey back to New England.