On leaving Turtle Cay we had a tip that we may find wild dolphins that are used to human interaction off the Eastern outer reefs. We took Sandy Feet out and around some slightly treacherous reef but had no luck with finding any dolphins. We did however find some of the best coral bombies and reef caves of the whole trip to date and spent some amazing hours exploring the area.
Whilst walking around Green Turtle we saw a notice board that was asking for any passing yachts to drop some food for the wild pigs on the next island, No Name Cay. This of course piqued our interest and so we came back inside the reef and found a beautiful anchorage off No Name Cay in some incredibly clear water.
Sure enough as soon as we approached the beach in our dinghy we were greeted by a large sow who had no hesitation in swimming out to us when we didn’t land quickly enough. She was fairly intimidating and we had been warned that these pigs bite so it was with a fair amount of caution that I got into the water to get some photos of her swimming. Luckily we had a box of cereals (which everyone hated) to keep her distracted as well as a bunch of vegetables and apples. Once on the beach her litter turned up and the girls got their baby animal fix.
We ended up really loving No Name Cay and the planned over-night stop turned into several days. There is a really interesting lagoon, the entrance being so shallow and narrow you’d quite easily pass by without noticing but it opens up into a beautiful bay teeming with life including Turtles, Sharks and loads of Fish. At the Southern end of the Cay is a narrow reef opening called Whale Passage where we discovered some more amazing snorkelling.
In the end necessity forced us onwards, we had the looming disaster of running out of cooking gas and stocks of fresh fruit and veg had been decimated by the pig encounters so it was on to one of the biggest settlements in the Bahamas, Marsh Harbour.
We always have mixed feelings when going into the larger settlements. After being in remote anchorages with only one or two other boats a larger town is an assault on the senses. The threads of everyday life catch up again with decent internet and it feels like Christmas when you walk into a well stoked supermarket as opposed to the two shelf island shops but after a couple of days we really feel the need to move on again and get back to the serenity of sailing and quiet islands.
Amongst the regular routines on the boat, one of the most important is watching the weather. This is usually something done over breakfast where we download data from a number of sources and compare them to our own observations. There are a few different computer models that forecasters use and they can be surprisingly different in their predictions. As we were now approaching the official start of Hurricane Season we watching them all and from the long term forecasts and the very unstable skies it became obvious that something was on the way. Marsh Harbour is ok to shelter from a storm but very open to the West so we decided to check out some other spots in the days before the weather was due to worsen. One of the best candidates was Man of War Cay which has an almost completely enclosed lagoon. The entrance is not much wider than Sandy Feet but a doozie compared to our experience at Xanadu -Grand Bahama. Inside it was crowded moorings yet deserted with no one on the boats. The place had a distinctly “Deliverance” feel to it and with banjo music playing in our heads we made a hasty retreat.
Back at Marsh Harbour we met a German sailor who said we should checkout Treasure Cay as that’s where he was heading and he had kids onboard who were DESPERATE for some contact with other kids. The next day the wind was up quite a bit but we decided to go anyway and had a boisterous sail upwind to Treasure Cay with a snorkelling stop at a tiny scrap of an island on the way. Treasure Cay turned out to have an excellent very protected anchorage with a world heritage listed beach nearby.
The following day we got together again with the crew from “Anne Ahoi” and as the weather still hadn’t turned too bad be decided to take them to another nearby island for a snorkel. It wasn’t the best site but I managed to spear one of my favourite eating fish (Mutton Snapper), the skies were however starting to look very dramatic and to the accompaniment of rolling thunder and cracks of lightening we hastily upped anchor and ran back to the safety of Treasure Cay.
Halfway back the storm caught up with us. We were sailing well on just the head sail but as the first bit of cold air hit we quickly furled that as well and started the motors. Within a minute the wind had swung 180 degrees and picked up to 30+ knots, the anemometer showed gusts of 60kts but I suspect it was playing up. With the wind came the rain and the visibility dropped to about 20 meters, the perfectly benign day had suddenly turned to chaos. Whilst Stephan and I stayed up on the bridge, eyes straining to pick out the passage into safety the kids broke out the board games and lego below. At times like this the stability of a catamaran is just such a huge advantage, even with no sails up a monohull would be heeling quite dramatically which makes everything just feel so much worse.
Just as we reached the channel, which like so many entrances is quite narrow, the visibility dropped to almost zero. Unwilling to risk the entrance without being able to at least see the channel markers we held off to see what the weather would do, if it abated we could go in, if not we’d have to head back out to clear water and wait it out. After 15 min the rain did drop off and we had a clear view of the channel but it wasn’t to last long. We made it in and minutes after dropping anchor the storm resumed with renewed intensity making us glad for the shelter of the enclosed bay. A charter catamaran behind us started to drag their anchor and was almost washed onto a sea wall by the time they’d started their engines to hold position. Given the crowded anchorage and high winds they were pretty much stuck in a nasty spot so we quickly loaded our spare anchor, chain and rhode into the dinghy and passed them a new anchor line to pull forward on.
The storm ended up staying with us for almost 2 days after which we finally retrieved the our spare anchoring equipment. Anne Ahoi meanwhile prepared to set off on their long journey back towards Europe. With a tooting of Conch Shell horns they departed and we too decided it was time to leave for pastures new.
