These birds standing on a rock did not see the wave coming.  Some flew away.  Others got a bath.  Birdbath???

Here we are cruising along in Turtle Creek.  It is pretty with nice water and mangroves, but best of all it is filled with sea turtles that come in to play in the sun-warmed water.  The water drops on the camera lens are from the rain that just stopped.

Turtle Creek has birds too.  These are some of the great egrets that were there.

The osprey looks sort of fierce with the severe aggressive stare.  He won.  I backed away.

It is sad to see the amount of trash on beaches… plastic things, bits of rope, and most worrying for us, a piece of a refrigerated shipping container that had obviously been floating in the ocean.  Had it been broken up by waves, or had some vessel hit it?

Three of these 5 foot long sharks and one equally sized barracuda circled around our boat the whole time we were anchored at Conception Island.  It was sort of unnerving.  The theme song from Jaws ran through my mind.

Just off the beach near the McQueens settlement on Cat Island we came across this bird tracking station.  I explained it a little more below.

Bill took this picture of a herd (or is it flock?) of goats that he met in the woods near New Bight.  He said that there were maybe 25 of them all together and that they were friendly.

Our flopper stopper comes in handy for stopping the boat from rolling when we are anchored in a place where there are small waves.  It hangs over the side of the boat and is pulled up and down dampening the roll.

The Bahamas are all limestone and filled with hollows and caves.  At Rock Sound there is a nice cave that Bill walked (and crawled) through.  In town is the Ocean Hole which is connected to the ocean and rises and falls with the tides.

The Hatchet Bay entrance looks just as narrow on the chart as it does from the restaurant porch.  They say it is 90 feet wide, but I’m not so sure.  We anchored about where the "C" is in Hatchet Bay.  The Front Porch restaurant is in the north east corner of the harbor.



Today, we are anchored at Royal Island; at the north end of Eleuthera near the town of Spanish Wells.  We had lots and lots of rain over the last few weeks.  Cold fronts from the USA have come down from the north.  Atlantic tropical waves have come in from the east.  Moist air from the Gulf of Mexico has come across Cuba to get us from the west.  So, short story, we are wet.  And now, Chris Parker (our radio weather guru) is talking about a possibility, abet a small possibility, of a tropical low forming in the Caribbean next week!  Weather, bah humbug.  People who live in houses have no idea how much weather influences our life on a boat.

Bill and I left Georgetown early on April 19.  We had topped up our fuel, bought the few groceries we needed, ate in our favorite restaurants, and walked the beaches.  Our initial destination was New Bight on Cat Island, but once we left the harbor, we discovered that the wind was also favorable for sailing to Conception Island.  Conception Island is part of the Bahamas National Trust.  No one lives there.  It is a nature preserve and bird sanctuary.  It is a beautiful place.  We had to go there.  Along the way we hooked a nice dolphin (not the mammal like Flipper, but the fish that restaurants call mahi mahi).  Unfortunately, the line broke as Bill was pulling him in over the stern, and he got away.  As soon as we dropped the anchor at Conception, two local fishermen came by in their boat and sold us a grouper and three conchs.  I’d rather have the grouper and conch myself.

Conception Island has an interior creek which is full of sea turtles.  Our first morning at Conception, we decided to walk the nearby beach and then dinghy up the creek to see the turtles.  As we were nearing the end of our beach walk, the biggest, blackest, ugliest cloud started coming our way.  We abandoned the beach tour and hurried back to Irish Eyes.  It rained enough to fill our water tanks, and then it put another thirty gallons of water in plastic jugs before we opened the deck drains and let the rest of the rain run into the sea.  Our turtle watching tour would have to wait for another day.

If you looked at a chart of Conception Island, we were anchored on the northwest side in the lee of the island at say 11 o’clock.  Bill’s plan for the day was to take the dinghy on an island circumnavigation.  We’d go clockwise around the island stopping at all the beaches along the way, and when we got around the island to the 8 o’clock point we’d tour Turtle Creek before coming back to the boat.  It did not work out that way.  We had only gotten as far as 1 o’clock when both of us had had enough of the wind and waves on the windward side of the island.  Plus, I was tired of dodging the coral heads that rose up like columns from 20 feet down threatening to grab our little rubber dinghy as we went by.  By mutual agreement, we retraced our steps back to Irish Eyes.  That was a good thing.  It started raining again, and we stayed dry aboard our boat before later continuing to Turtle Creek with its amazing population of sea turtles, fish, sharks, and birds.  We toured the whole creek.  At times the GPS showed us in mangroves or on land, but we were not.  We were just going places the map said we could not go.  It was a special place.

Back at the boat, we were surrounded by wildlife.  Tropic birds with their nests in the nearby cliffs soared overhead whistling loudly to each other and fishing in the water behind us.  In the water under the boat, we had three sharks and one large barracuda swimming around and occasionally resting in the shade of our dinghy.  One night I got out a flashlight to watch the smaller fish under the boat, but I felt guilty when the barracuda came into the light and quickly ate them all.  We did not go swimming.

Intent on seeing the windward side of the island, Bill put on his hiking boots and walked along the cliffs and through the bush to two of the ocean side beaches.  He found only a few shells, but there were tons of plastic stuff and lots of lost fishing gear… the detritus of modern civilization.  He brought back two red plastic milk crates from a dairy in Puerto Rico.  They are now on our boat taking up room.  He did leave behind all the fishing gear and a much desired (by him) 200-quart Coleman cooler, thank goodness.

On April 24 we packed up Irish Eyes and headed north to Cat Island.  In the beginning the sailing was a bit rolly, but in the afternoon the wind died and the seas went flat, so we motored the last few miles and anchored near the McQueens settlement on Cat Island.  McQueens seemed to be a village that everyone left.  Just inland from the beach, we could see several abandoned or unfinished houses.  I walked along the beach, and Bill walked up the road into town.  He found a well maintained small church amid mostly derelict houses.  We saw what looked like an old TV antenna in the bush near the beach, but it turned out to be an automated Smithsonian Institution bird tracking station.  The endangered Kirtlands Warbler spends its summers in lower Michigan and its winters in the Bahamas.  The station tracks the tagged birds as they fly by.  Back at the boat, hot from the sun, tired from our walk, and without our “fishy friends” from Conception Island, we had a nice swim and a long pleasant soak in the ocean.

We had been away from civilization for over a week, and it was time to move over to New Bight, a settlement with people.  Bill made dinner reservations for us at the Bluebird Restaurant and Bar.  We would be their only customers that evening.  The place was owned and operated by three sisters.  One mixed the drinks and waited on the tables.  One was the chef.  The last had a stroke; she sat at the cash register and talked with us.  We had a delicious lobster dinner and a great time talking to them.  We knew it was time to go when all three sisters gathered closely around the satellite TV to watch Wheel of Fortune.  They reminded me of my grandmother and great aunt.

New Bight is the home of the Hermitage, a tiny one-man monastery atop the highest point in the Bahamas.  I had been here twice before, and I did not want to accompany Bill to the see it again.  For some reason I find the place creepy.  He went alone, but he did get to speak to a herd of friendly goats in the woods on his way back.

Several thunderstorms rolled through New Bight while we were there, and with the wind blowing out of the southwest we were not protected by the land.  Irish Eyes rocked around, especially at night.  We have two “flopper stoppers” that Bill has made.  They are aluminum triangles about the size and shape of a Yield sign.  They hang horizontally in the water on the side of the boat from three ropes, one tied to each corner.  One of the corners is weighted.  When the boat rolls one way, the plates rise, dragged up through the water by the three ropes and thus slowing the roll.  When the boat rolls the other way, the ropes go slack, and the weight pulls the one corner quickly down lowering the plates to be ready to slow the next roll.  They do make a difference.

The weather forecast was for the wind to swing around to the northeast and blow twenty to twenty-five knots for the entire next week.  It was time to either stay at Cat Island for a week or move north to Eleuthera for a change in scenery and for protection from possible west winds.  We decided to move, but it was raining.  The boat’s radar showed a break in the rain coming our way, and when it arrived we sailed off to Pigeon Cay at the north end of Cat Island.  During the trip we could see rain all around us, but it did not rain on us.  We anchored there ready to make the longer jump to Eleuthera in the morning.

The next morning, we were up and underway early as we had a long way to go.  We sailed the entire trip, but we occasionally ran the engine to keep up our speed (and to run the freezer to make ice for out arrival drinks).  We passed Little San Salvador (now owned by Princess Cruise Lines and renamed in their advertisements, Half Moon Cay).  We could see a cruise ship shuttling its passengers to the shore.  The island has been transformed into a completely fake Bahamian Island with a fake village, buffet food, jet skis, ATVs, a netted fish free swimming area, tiki huts, and beach bars.  It is a shame.  There is a real Bahamas nearby that is better than the theme park one.  Oh well, I guess some people prefer theme parks.  After a 60-mile day, our anchor was down in Rock Sound, Eleuthera before sunset.

Rock Sound has a couple of grocery stores, a filing station, a laundry, and several restaurants, but most importantly it has a completely protected harbor with a good sand bottom for our anchor.  We shopped and did laundry between the ever-present rain and wind storms.  One of the restaurants, Wild Orchid, had moved from its old location.  The owner, Sybil, had transformed a cute blue house on the water’s edge into her new location.  She had only been open two weeks, but the food was good, and we enjoyed talking to her.  After a week of rainy days, Captain Bill was getting very antsy and tired of being trapped on the boat.  He went ashore and hiked all over town taking shelter from passing rain storms in a cave, under the porch of the AME church, and while pretending to shop in a small store.  I elected to read and knit on the dry boat.  On his trip Bill bought a plastic bag full fresh conch from a local fisherman.  I’m now trying to perfect my conch chowder and conch cake recipes as we eat our way through the slimy mess.

Finally, on May 6 the weather cleared, and we left Rock Sound.  As we were preparing the boat to leave, I kept finding small sticks on the deck. Then, I noticed a bird on the radar antenna.  The silly thing was building a nest there.  The bird few away as we started moving.  I hope it found a better place for its nest.

We had a nice sail to Governors Harbour.  We managed the trip without any rain, but the rain did return several times while we were there.  Once again, we were able to top off our water tanks.  We have only had to purchase water one time on this trip.  So, I guess rain is not such a bad thing.  We bought cinnamon rolls, twists, and bread from the bakery and had delicious sandwiches and a beer in a cute little coffee shop.  Bill went on two hikes along the roads going out from town.  The first was cut short after two miles by the swarms of mosquitoes that emerged from the wet woods.  When he got back I actually picked the dead ones off his tee shirt.  His second hike took him to the abandoned Club Med site with its mile-long pink sand beach.  I would have liked to have gone, but I don’t think my knees would have cooperated.

Thursday, May 10 was a dry day, and the winds were blowing from the east.  The long-range forecast was for lots of rain and some strong wind.  We sailed north from Governors Harbour to Hatchett Bay.  Hatchett Bay claims to be the safest harbor in the Bahamas.  It was once a half mile wide inland lake or pond, but it was made into a harbor by blasting a 90 foot wide entrance through the rock to the Exuma Sound.  The surrounding land gives wind protection from all directions.  We launched our dinghy and explored Alice Town, the village along the east shore of the bay.  It was hot, so a cold Kalik beer at the Da Front Porch restaurant was very nice.  We liked the restaurant so much, we went back the next day for lunch.  I had really good grouper fingers, and Bill had a huge double mahi burger.  On our way back to the boat, eagle scout Bill did his good deed for the day when we towed a fisherman back to his dock.  The fellow had been sitting on the bow of his boat paddling upwind with a board when we saw him.  We got a hearty thank you.

Yesterday after breakfast, we listened to the radio, checked the internet, looked outside, and scanned over the horizon with our radar before deciding it would be a good time to go farther north through Current Cut to the northern end of Eleuthera.  Once outside the harbor the winds were from behind us at a light 8 knots.  We put up our genoa and also ran our engine to keep the boat moving at a decent speed.  As we traveled along, clouds moved in, the sky darkened, it started to rain around us, and the wind kept increasing reaching a steady 18 knots as we approached the cut.  That was not good.  There is a reason for the name, Current Cut.  Only 250 feet wide, the current can reach 6 knots during tide changes making it difficult to control a slow sailboat.  Worse, because of outlying sandbars the approach to the cut is along the land south of the cut, only then at the last second turning into the cut itself.  We took down the large genoa and put up the small staysail before we started the half mile run along the rocky shore.  The deepest water was only 50 to 150 yards off the land where the 3 foot wind driven waves were crashing on the rocks with spray flying everywhere.  Prayer, luck, charts, and GPS got us through the cut, and we emerged on the lee side into almost tranquil water and light wind.  After all that excitement, it was an easy and uneventful hour and a half sail to Royal Island where we got the anchor down and the boat stowed away before the real rain began.  Whew…….

Cheers.