Just for the record, we are not marina people! We much prefer to drop a hook or pick up a mooring. Besides the stress that often comes with docking, being at a marina vs. on a mooring ball or anchored is like the difference between living in an apartment building vs a house on 3 or more acres. While mooring fields and anchorages can get crowded too, there is a certain minimum distance between boats so that as wind direction and conditions change boats don’t collide into each other. But sometimes marinas are a necessity — like when you need to get to “civilization” to find a diver to squirt grease into your prop underwater. And so we found ourselves at Cape Eleuthera Marina which, being a marina aside, was really quite lovely. It was a sleepy little marina on the Southern end of Eleuthera. Eleuthera is often described as a pencil — it’s 90 miles north to south and at most only three miles wide. The Southern end fans out creating two tips — almost mimicking a whale’s tail — and the marina is on the northern of the two tips. While there is little development on any part of Eleuthera, the Southern end is particularly undeveloped. If you need to be at a marina this was not a bad spot.
While being at a Marina is not our preference, when we do find ourselves at one we take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. One is doing laundry in a true laundry facility with regular sized washer and dryers. We have a combined washer/dryer on Che Figata but it is small and slow. Our sheets and pillow cases alone are more than we can fit in a single load. Doing a few loads of laundry can take half a day and then, if not at a dock and hooked up to electrical, we need to run our generator which uses fuel. So we get very excited when we see laundry facilities! As Charles Schulz once said “happiness is a washer and dryer” (or something like that)! Consequently, doing several loads of laundry — loading up with sheets, towels and any clothes that were even slightly dirty — was a major part of our agenda for Tuesday, May 18.
But the most important item on the agenda was arranging for a diver to help us with our prop. Thankfully, with the help of a local dive shop, we were able to find a diver. That was not a given. Apparently, nurse sharks are not the only shark that inhabit the waters of the Cape Eleuthera Marina — Bull Sharks also frequent the marina due to the fishing boats that clean their fish in the marina (90% of the marina denizens are sport fishing boats). As a result, many divers will not get in these waters. The large NO SWIMMING signs support their reluctance. Fortunately, the diver we found is very familiar with the area and he said most of the Bull Sharks have left the marina by this time of year so he was willing to give us a hand. (The fact that business has been very slow due to the lack of tourist undoubtedly contributed to his willingness.) Still, he was on alert and did tell us that he had quite a fright while working on our prop as a large Nurse Shark came right behind him and, for a moment, he thought it was a Bull Shark. Lucky for him and us, that was not the case. He successfully greased our prop using almost the full tube of the grease we supplied. Based on what we heard from others who have experienced similar issues with their prop, and what we learned from the tech support crew at the manufacturer of our prop, we were cautiously optimistic that the application of grease would solve our reverse issue. Of course, we would not know until we left the marina. [Spoiler alert: it worked to much rejoicing!]
May 18 was quite a successful day. Laundry done ✅ Prop attended to ✅ Ordinarily, we would have made plans to leave the marina the next morning to sail a bit and anchor off some beautiful secluded beach — there is no lack of those in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, though, the winds were predicted to get uncharacteristically strong the next several days with gust of up to 30 – 35 mph. Those winds would make leaving the marina very tricky and then we would have had to find a very secure anchorage with good holding. Rather that give ourselves unnecessary anxiety we decided to stay put until the wind died down and explore Eleuthera the way most people visiting the islands do — by car.
The marina was quite happy to arrange for a rental car to be delivered to us bright and early the next morning so on May 19 we set out in a Honda Accord to visit some of Eleuthera’s gems. This included a visit to Island farms (a lovely little organic market), the Levy Nature Preserve (which we highly recommend – great way to learn about the island’s natural history in a beautiful setting), two different beaches — French Leave Beach and Ten Bay Beach — and the famous Tippy’s Restaurant, home to the best conch fritters on the island. (While, he had no real basis of comparison to affirm the #1 on Eleuthera accolade, our taste tester, Zack, confirmed that they were among the best — if not the best — he’s ever had.) All in all it was another successful day. We were two for two though, admittedly, we much prefer the successful days that revolve around play.
Of course, we can’t have a leg of our trip without some excitement. This time it was the invasion of the flies and it was no joke. To cap off a really fun day, Jill decided to prepare one of her favorite meals — caramelized baby belle mushrooms in a garlic cashew sauce with white miso paste. Among other parts of the prep, the recipe calls for sautéing 6 large cloves of minced garlic in olive oil. The minute Jill starting sautéing the garlic it was as if some fly had a loud speaker and had made an public service announcement to other flies because, in what seemed like a nanosecond, flies were swarming in the interior of our boat. This is not an exaggeration— there was easily over a hundred flies buzzing around. The noise of buzzing in the boat was eerie! (Cue the theme from The Twilight Zone!) While Jill continued to prepare dinner and do her best to ensure that we didn’t get any added fly protein into our meal, Zack quickly closed up the cabin and did his best to lure the flies into our head (they seemed to be attracted to the white surfaces) where he would encourage them to depart through the small port in the shower with those not encouraged suffering the consequences. (Zack reported that it was a quick and mostly painless death for those not heeding the warning.) Within 30 minutes Zack got the fly population down to a manageable number. Naturally, the next day we saw a post on the FB Bahamas Cruisers Group that this is the time of year that flies swarm at the smell of food with our fellow boaters providing useful (though one day late) advice on how to avoid an onslaught.
As we mentioned, the winds were still predicted to be strong the next day, May 20, which meant one more day at the marina before we could sail off. (Incidentally, it was not a false alarm — the gusts were every bit as strong as predicted. In fact, the winds we so fierce that we had whitecaps in the marina!) None of the sport fishing boats left the marina during this time—everyone was hiding from the wind. As much as we wanted another full day of play we had some chores to do before we could enjoy the day. The first, and most important, was beginning to look at the long range forecast for a weather window to leave from the Bahamas for the passage to New England. Though we have a target date based on when we want to arrive in Connecticut, weather always trumps our desires. (It’s very humbling!) Looking ahead allowed us to decide whether we needed to cut our stay in the Bahamas a bit short to take advantage of a good weather window or whether we could linger for a few more days as hoped. In addition to looking at the weather ourselves, we consulted with our now good friend, Dan Valoppi, to tap into his experience as a professional skipper. Finally, and I am sure the the relief of our parents, we also engaged a professional weather router to assist us with identifying the ideal weather window for our passage and the best sail plan for the conditions that we’d encounter in that window.
By the afternoon we had completed our chores and were able to borrow the courtesy bikes at the marina. We enjoyed riding on the many narrow dirt paths that led to several local beaches and, at the end of our ride, we found one with the quintessential rope swing hanging from a tree close to the ocean’s edge. It was an image out of a post card! To cap this wonderful day Jill prepared one of Zack’s favorite dishes — the delicious but very aromatic cold soba noodles with garlic and ginger peanut sauce. Needless to say, after our adventure with flies the prior night, we closed up the cabin completely before Jill began to cook. Zack, who remained up in the cockpit could not believe how the flies began to swarm our closed companionway though their efforts to breach our boat were futile!
We left the marina on Friday, May 21 and sailed about 30 miles to anchor off Alabaster Beach. As has been a common experience for us as we slowly sail up North, we had the anchorage completely to ourselves. In addition, the beach, itself, is undeveloped except for one small footprint resort. Apparently, it was reserved for a wedding on that day so we got to enjoy live music during cocktail hour and dinner on Che Figata. We felt Iike we had our own private party which we particularly appreciated after 3 nights at a marina. And, of course, our spirits were especially light because greasing our prop did seem to fix our problem. When we left the marina the first thing Captain Zack did was put our engine into reverse and Che Figata actually responded accordingly. We were almost giddy! Happiness is a prop that goes into reverse on command. (We’ll ascribe that to Charles Schulz too.)
Today (May 22) we left for Fleeming Passage and an anchorage off Current Settlement at the very North end of Eleuthera, arriving around 3 PM after a nice sail on a broad reach. There is a closer cut through the reef than Fleeming Passage called Current Cut but 11 knot currents can occur there. As Che Figata motoring can do 7.5 knots full out, a strong current either way is a huge issue. If you try to go against the current, you get pushed back with no control. If you go with the current, you don’t have steerage because the water does not pass over the rudder from bow to stern — again no control. The thought of trying to go through a cut that is 100 yards wide between large rocks, with shallow reefs at the end and with no ability to steer keeps our Captain up at night. Needless to say, we took the longer route, sailing another 10 miles to take a much better cut through the reef.
We just anchored off a beautiful beach near Current Settlement and are discussing our plans for the next few days. We are winding down our visit to the Bahamas. Tomorrow we have a long (a full day but not overnight) sail to the Berry Islands (affectionately called the Berries — because the islands are Straw Cay, Blue Cay, Rasp Cay and Bosen Cay — no, just kidding) where we will anchor and then, depending on what our weather window looks like, we will either take off the next day for another full day sail to Old Bahama Bay Marina on Grand Bahamas (our launching point for our passage where we will provision and clear customs) or linger one more day in the “Berries.”
