West End, Grand Bahama Island – 27 Mar to 31 Mar

We spent 4 nights at the Old Bahama Bay Yacht Club waiting for weather to jump to the US. Since our cruising permit was expiring on the 31st, we were gratefully relieved when Chris Parker forecast SE-S wind at 15 to 20, starting on the 31st. Our hope was to head north with the Stream, so the forecast seemed like a blessing. The story of that crossing (and the disappearing weather window) will be in the next blog entry.

Old Bahama Bay Yacht Club is a high dollar, touristy resort set on the the west corner of Grand Bahama Island. It’s an hour drive to Lucaya and the shopping and casinos. The resort has almost everything you need. We relaxed in comfortable opulence as we awaited our weather window.

On the 28th, we made a day trip to Lucaya to shop, gamble, and get groceries. We were successful on all fronts. We are way too good at math to think that gambling is anything but a losing proposition, long term. But we’ve enjoyed some excellent short term swings at the blackjack table recently. We finished the day with an extra $200 in our pockets that paid for groceries and a nice dinner back at the club.

On the 29th, we started doing taxes. Eeeeinnnh, what a miserable experience. Our taxes this year are obscenely complicated. We’re claiming significant damage to our home from Hurricane Ike, and we need to decide how to report some very minor rental income from our house in Houston. Although Ike raided our cruising kitty, ole George W signed some laws that will make it possible to recoup a portion of that loss via our tax return. So we will see some money back this year.

We spent the evenings with fellow cruisers also waiting on weather. Dennis and Katya went spear fishing one afternoon and scored half a dozen fish. We appropriated the club’s barbeque, gathered some drift wood, and grilled fresh fish. The club staff did not quite know what to make of us. All the other clubbers were dining in the club restaurant that evening. We did have a few party crashers. The party crashers would invariably comment that they wished that they had barbequed fresh fish, and then complain that we seemed to be having more fun than anyone else.

Will civilization agree with us? Although we’re looking forward to being back in the US, life in consumerville may be overwhelming. Do we really need an IPhone? We’ve been off the grid long enough that we kinda like it.

West End, Grand Bahama Island – Mar 26 to Mar 31

We left Spanish Wells early on the morning of the 26th, bound for Charleston, SC. Or at least we thought we were going to Charleston. I’ll reproduce some select bits of the ship’s log, below, to let you know how it went. I eliminated the lat/long reports and some of the boring reporting that we do (like engine hours and voltage and stuff.)

08:45 (David) underway at Egg Island. Big seas as soon as we hit the Sound. Crew restless. Situation normal.
09:15 (David) encountered NE swell, 5-6 feet. running dead downwind WNW in 10-15 knots breeze under full main. speed is 6 knots over ground.
10:02 (Sam) taught Dad how to use ship’s log place keeper correctly
14:30 (David) speed is 6.7 knots ddw towards Freeport. wind ESE @ 15, eta to Freeport is 03:00 tomorrow morning. as we rounded the southern tip of the Abacos, the NE swell disappeared. we’ve now got little 4 foot rollers coming in from directly behind us. I’ve noticed a strange vibration. No one else can hear it.
16:00 (Dana) one oil tanker has passed us so far. zero fish caught so far on blue and white lure. just passed a flock of birds… 2 large birds circled up high and appeared to be frigates. very cool. Sam and I on watch reading. beautiful day.
16:24 (Dana) Mahi on. Dave reeled in a 3 foot bull around 16:15. Now it is time to filet. My job.
17:15 (David) Dana done fileting. Mahi for dinner. Wind has filled in to about 20 knots. Boat speed 7+
20:05 (Dana) my shift started 1900. Sam stayed up with me so far. I’m reading Old Boys. every chapter, I look around. No ships so far. stars are coming out. David is attempting to sleep. new moon tonight. sea temp 78 deg F. 41.8 miles to go to Xanadu waypoint. windspeed 13-15 knots. boat is doing 6.5. Sleigh ride!
21:30 (Dana) ship passed a mile or two off starboard side in opposite direction. turned north and turned on all its lights. gambling ship? interesting. cloudless night. stars are very bright. wind 12-15 from the SE. 7.1 knots on GPS. waves only about 4-5 feet.
23:30 (David) wind slowly picking up to 20 knots. mainly running under auto pilot. lots of ships about. all passing over 1 mile away. making good time (7 knots) at waypoint slightly south of Freeport. should arrive at West End before daybreak. good chance of crossing the stream tomorrow if the weather is good.
01:00 (Dana) the crap shift. feeling good and think I can handle it. I wonder if Sam will wake up. 9.4 miles out from Freeport. winds 15+
04:00 (David) took a hard look at weather and decided to go into West End (Bahama Bay Marina) rather than try for the States. we are concerned about a reported northeast swell in the Gulf Stream and XM Weather predictions of 10+ foot waves. Chris Parker claims we will likely see a good weather window on the 30th or 31st.
05:00 (David) almost got run over by a tug boat. he passed 200 yards behind us after altering course away from us. alert skipper saw me. i did not see him until it was almost too late. easy to get lackadaisical out here.
08:20 (David) arrived Bahama Bay Yacht Club – tied up and trying to sleep
17:00 (David) happy hour and barbeque with our new friends, Daisy and Dazzle.

And this was one of our nicer trip. 130 miles in 21 hours. Not our best, but acceptable.

We stayed at West End until the 31st, when a supposed weather window was available to jump to the States. But that is another story. And a good story. While at West End, we started doing our 2008 taxes, visited the casino in Lucaya, did some fine dining, and hung out on the beach with our new cruising buddies. It was a gentle way to end our Bahamas experience. A little touristy for our tastes, but we made the best of it.

Spanish Wells, Waiting On Weather- 20 Mar to 25 Mar

Our Bahamas cruise was coming to an end and we knew it. Our cruising permit only allowed us to stay in the Bahamas until the end of March. So by April 1st (you figure out the irony) we would be illegally in the country. Although, from what we could tell, this was commonly done by many cruisers, it’s a bit of an eerie feeling to know you could be arrested for simply being there. And we had no wish to see the inside of a Bahamian jail or figure out what the fine would be for breaking the law. So we made plans to leave.

The obvious way to leave the Bahamas (from Spanish Wells) is to cruise leisurely up the northern Abacos, wait for a mild southeasterly breeze, and motor or motor sail across the Gulf Stream towards the Florida coast, making landfall in Cape Canaveral or nearby.

We seem to have a unnatural dislike of the obvious.

We’d heard from many cruisers that check in in Florida was inconvenient and that the customs agents were rude and intractable. We also never purchased the US cruising permit that we were supposed to have bought before we left the States. We did make an honest effort to buy the permit via the US Customs web site. But it took a near Herculean effort to wend through a bunch of unrelated dialogs and memberships and passwords. As far as anyone knows, it may not be possible to purchase a new cruising permit from the US Customs web site. The site certainly advertises that it can be done. But we’ve never met anyone that was actually successful at purchasing a new cruising permit. We did talk to one poor soul who managed to renew his permit. But after the experience, he always drooled a little bit and walked with a list to port.

With our permit issues, and knowing that Florida customs agents were relatively aggressive, and with the Gulf Stream running north and all, we settled on Charleston, South Carolina as a potential destination. It was only 420 miles away.

The weather refused to cooperate with our plan. It blew hard from the north for 5 days. On several occasions, we made plans to leave. Only to hear Chris Parker (our weather guru) call for northeast breeze at 20 knots for the next 3 days. We spent the intervening days socializing with Rio Dulce and ruminating on the finer points of preparing coffee with Bailey’s and cooking lobster.

On the 20th, we went snorkeling with Rio on the north side of Spanish Wells. David killed a grunt, but a cuda got him. Dick got a nice sized lobster. we spent the evening at the home of Becky and Mike Sutherland (friends of Rio) where we were treated to an amazing fish dinner and got to see some NCAA basketball tournament games.

We had the Rio kids over for movies on the 21st, and we got caught up on our blogging. Blogging has become a little bit of a chore. We find the updating the blog has ceased to be a big priority. Not sure how much longer we’re going to do it. We do like to have a permanent record of the places we’ve been and the people we have seen, but the ship’s log does the same thing. So let us know if you want to keep reading these blogs. Maybe it will motivate us.

The 22nd was Brian C’s (one of 3 kids on Rio) 9th birthday. We spent the day playing games on the beach and letting the kids XBox a little while we supervised. We had cocktails that evening on another Caliber 40 belonging to fellow cruisers named Ed and Eva. Their Caliber 40, Makai, is barely a year old and it showed. Caliber has definitely changed the boat over the years. Everything is stainless on deck. The woodwork and cabinetry down below are much better than on our 1993 boat. Some of the problem areas (like the shallow chain locker and the mid ships holding tank) have been removed or eliminated. We had fun picking over a nicer, newer boat.

We hung out with the Rios for a few more days, and then on the evening of the 25th, wished them a tearful goodbye. I really cannot say enough about the people we have met on this trip. That has, somewhat surprisingly, been the true highlight of the trip. You can get tired (believe it or not) of white sand beaches and deserted islands. But the collective family experience of the cruising community at large, and the grace and goodwill of certain families has just been overwhelming at times. We’ve never met a more helpful, friendly, good natured bunch of people. Probably never will.

Spanish Wells (Vincent and Janet Visit) – 17 Mar to 19 Mar

We sailed 25 miles from Glass Window to the south side of Spanish Wells on the 17th. We were fortunate to meet up with our cruising friends on Rio Dulce. Rio Dulce staked out the best anchorage in Spanish Wells and we stayed within a stone’s throw of them for several days. Sam was thrilled to be around kids again.

Vincent and Janet arrived to visit on the 17th via airplane from Houston. Since it was St Patrick’s Day, we promptly introduced them to Rio Dulce as Vincent and Janet O’Ruder. And the throw down began. We told lies until early in the am. At one point, we may have watched the movie, Wind. At another, Dana was heard exclaiming, “Where did all the Bailey’s go?” Vincent was seen banging his fists on the table and chanting “We will not sleep until the sun comes up!”

We woke up the next day around noon to the sound of heavy rainfall. The next two days were to be the worst weather days we’d seen in our 6 months of cruising. It was cold and wet and miserable. We did make it into Spanish Wells for an hour or so, but it was a bad day for sightseeing. And snorkeling would have been very cold. We wish we could have shared more of the Bahamas with the O’Ruders.

On the 19th, we bit the bullet and took two taxis over to Harbor Island. Harbor Island, or Briland as it is called by the locals, is a vacation spot for the rich and famous. As our friend Uzi would say, “There’s lots of action on this island.” The island is littered with souped up golf carts, resort hotels, pretty bungalows, gargantuan winter homes, and over-privileged kids yakking on their cell phones. We spent the day driving around on our rental golf cart looking for Elle McPherson. Dana and Janet rode in the front of the six person golf cart. Dana drove. Janet navigated. And Vincent, David, and Sam took turns yelling “We’re all gonna die!”

Interestingly, Harbor Island has no laws regarding drinking and driving. Or at least none that anyone obeyed. In fact, drinking and driving seems to be moderately encouraged. We saw one fella driving a motorcycle with one hand on the handlebars and a beer bottle tipped up to his lips. Very different from home.

Unfortunately, Vincent and Janet had a plane to catch, so we had to cut our exploration of the island short after only a few hours.

Glass Window – 16 Mar

We sailed 15 miles up the coast of Eleuthera to Glass Window; a funky break in the island that allows water from the Sound to penetrate onto the Banks side when the tide is high. All the cruising guides say it is beautiful.

We did catch our first mackerels on the trip over. We were doing steady 7+ knots, so none of the banks fish (with the exception of the mackerel and barracuda) were fast enough to catch our lure. Each mackerel was about 20 inches long. Our fish guide said they taste gamy, and there did not seem to be much meat on them, so we just set them free after catching.

Glass Window is called Mutton Fish Point on the chart. We should have known by the name. Anything called Mutton Fish point could not be very interesting. In retrospect, we really should have given Glass Window a pass. We could not get in very close because it is surrounded by shallow water. So we hung about a half mile off, and wondered what all the fuss was about. After taking a few pictures, we motored a couple miles south to a swelly half bay and spent the night.