Lower mooring field Hawksbill- without me in it

Hawksbill, Highbourne, Twin Sisters, Traveling Soul, Blue Bloods and Blue Boat Buddies. All this fun initial stuff was too humorous to pass up. And I know it’s the sort of thing that’s funny/cute to those involved and not so much to y’all out there. But it’s worth it for the great photos, right?

With a forecast that included wind speeds greater than 20 with higher gusts, rain and chance of thunderstorms… ah you get the picture. We hunker down. Twins is such a lightweight and even though she doesn’t show much of a waterline that’s not enough weight to make her as stable as larger, heavier sail cats or motor yachts. Remember too, we met our March 20 goal, so no rush now.

The trip Hawksbill would be 21 nm. We raised anchor, reluctantly, after Russ finished his death-defying paddle and made the trip in 2 ½ hours.  We chose Hawksbill because it offered options. Mooring balls in two places and close-in anchoring if you so choose. The reason Park provides moorings (at $20 and up) is to protect the sea floor from damage to small coral and other living things. Except for the North field at Warderick Wells, anchoring is allowed but keep away from the location’s mooring field.

Meeting up with boat friends when cruising aimlessly about the Bahamas, is best done by chance, luck and tweaking your plans just a tad to make it happen. So when we heard that Traveling Soul would not be tracking down Christopher Columbus’s stops, but heading north up the chain, perhaps a meet-up would happen.

Not only did they show up, but we had a little surprise…. visitor that is.

What’s in the bag??

Why it’s Spot! Out for a rare dinghy ride, she checks us out at Hawksbill moorings

Later, while still calm on Thursday, Russ does his thing.

The triangle paddle method. Before Spot and family came by to bump him 🙂 nah.

Hawksbill selfie with Traveling Soul, Twin Sisters and Russ all in

We went in to the beach to pay our fee. There’s a sign and a secure box where you deposit an envelope with your $$ and write your info on the envelope.

In middle of night- pouring rain and a window leak

Russ got creative to catch the dripping water. Mostly this doesn’t happen, but today it did.

Russ the Cobbler-a man of many hats- and few shoes.

On windy, rainy days we tackle projects and things like the blog and such. Happy hour on Traveling Soul the first night and a delicious Shrimp Creole dinner the second; what’s not to love? Toss in five seasons of Blue Bloods and we are happy on all fronts. Good times with good friends and sniffy kisses from Spot; life is good. We are blessed. What bad weather? We got the dinghy down and back up without incident- whew- good to know we haven’t become too wimpy.

Oceanside – Hawksbill looking north

Saturday, 3/25, we moved around the corner to the more northern anchorage at Hawksbill, which was even calmer than the place we left. Easy shore access and we climbed up the path in a futile attempt to gain cell service. The Staniel tower doesn’t this far north and the Highbourne tower isn’t very strong, sooo, we were without for days. Survived this too. 🙂  Met the folks on the sail cat anchored nearby; they are headed south. March can be busy with boats moving in both directions.

Our next stop (that I’m writing about) is Highbourne Cay- another HB. In the right conditions we like to avoid the marina and instead anchor off and go in for lunch and raid the expensive small grocery store. Oh and fuel too. Fill ‘er up – should last until Florida.  Our BBB likes to be here too. Something about being anchored right under the cell tower.

Now that’s one tough, young couple in that compact sailboat. Traveling Soul is 52′- if you flip that to 25′ that’s about the size of this sailboat in between us.

TS & TS once again enjoy a resort lunch- at Xuma on Highbourne Cay

Lobster salad lunch at Xuma. Delicious and I’m not a fan of cold lobster. My Gintini was good too

The light bulb went on and Russ said, “why not jump out to fish since we are moving up a few miles anyway?” So we did and caught nada. Out Highbourne Cut (a new one for us) and back in over the top of Highbourne which is so wide (watch the rocks) that you can’t call it a cut. We did cut below SW Allen’s Cay which sits above Allen’s and Leaf Cay on our way to anchor in the lee of Allen’s Cay to get a jump on the next day’s 70-plus mile trip to the Berry Islands.

SW Allen’s Cay- if you tuck in here you can escape the current

The current runs strong through here and you can see the gurgling water as evidence of that. Boats swing with the current and today was a good day to be here to see the iguanas because the current ruled with no fight from the wind. Click to see when we stopped here years ago.

Wednesday bright and early we’d head off and you will learn about BBB as we head past Nassau to B in B. Yep, I’m getting tired… trying to use up Bahamas cell data before we cross back.

Anchored close to Black Cay- Hunting for sea glass, sunrise tellins and treasure

Yes, folks, there is life after George Town, Exumas!

Twins has been wonderfully problem free since she got splashed in after the long haul-out this summer. Routine stuff like oil changes we plan for and do when the time is right. Around the time of the Cold Front Party Russ investigated what turned out to be a tiny diesel leak at the injector hose attach point. Once you get the area cleaned up, place pieces of towel paper around, wait awhile then voila! Tighten the naughty hose clamp and good to go: no more clothes smelling like warm diesel- yay! (Note: we have Rudolf Diesel to thank for inventing the diesel engine. Good thing his last name wasn’t Schwarzenegger!)

Our biggest trouble, however; was with the iPhone (mine) we were using as our Bahamas phone. The battery began to swell which pushed on the case, the button freaked out and the phone screen turned blue. Yikes, this isn’t good. We Googled it and sure enough, it’s not uncommon. We sprang into action.

Russ’s iPhone 6 had to be paid off before we could request the unlock code 24 hours later. Fortunately this happened in George Town where the BTC cell service is strong and Russ was able to pay off his phone, get the unlock code, remove the Sim card, replace it with the BTC sim card that had been in my phone and we were back in business.  With one phone to do it all, we had to be careful not to mess up the anchor drag alarm, so the phone often had to stay behind, thus fewer photos.  How did we all (those of a certain age) get by without a cell phone? More than 25 years ago we had our first installed car phones (Russ got them for his locksmith biz so I got one too) and look where we are today!

Ok, enough of that, but I want you to know it’s not all pristine beaches and happy times with friends in scenic anchorages in the Bahamas. When things go awry here you’d better be able and equipped to deal with it yourself; unless it’s really bad- but we won’t go there.

First stop: Black Cay 18nm north of George Town. Lesli on PDQ Soulstice tipped me off that sea glass could be found here. Right she was! Not to mention a plethora of pretty sea fans on the ocean facing beach and a zillion sunrise tellins on the banks side-facing beach.

Someone was building a house on Black Cay, but that stopped and you could see they’d made good progress. Maybe it will happen; the beach is lovely and the house has decent elevation.  We stopped for two hours- to beach comb and eat lunch before heading back out Glass Cay cut then in at Rat Cay cut. The tour boats are far more numerous than six years ago and we see them all over the Exumas. Good for the Bahamians; maybe not so good for the pigs and iguanas.

By Rat Cay- the ever-present annoying tour boats

Rain happens infrequently during winter; you look up, see the dark clouds and there’s your weather report. Pouring rain forced us to make a short stop at Norman’s Pond Cay (not to be confused with Norman’s Cay many miles north) because visibility sucked and we really needed to see. First time we’ve had to do that in Twins.

That night we sought shelter from mild West winds behind teeny Gaulin Cay- I mean- look left, look right and that’s all there is. For the next few days we needed to hide from winds out of the NE. Did a short and sloppy trip to Big Farmers, but the winds had yet to shift from NW so our comfort wasn’t exactly stellar until they came from NE.

Two bi-color goats on Big Farmers

When we anchor at Big Farmers we always watch for goats. They are elusive, but this time we saw two different families.

Being on a schedule to have to get somewhere is a no-no, but we’d allowed 7 days to get to Staniel Cay to celebrate Russ’s birthday and the first day of Spring! – minus a surprise visitor, the stop was good but not great.

So to make Staniel in time and stop at Black Point for laundry and coconut bread, a stop at Ty’s on Little Farmers didn’t happen. But we did stop at my favorite ocean beach for treasure hunting.

Little Bay sunset- pink sky surrounds (a vacant) pick house

A few hours spent at Bitter Guana produced a few shells and this view:

Look carefully- see the photo shoot happening on bow of Isla Bonita

Two mega yachts were there anchored too so we got to see their activities, including a sea plane landing and boys with their toys.

M/Y Free Spirit & sea plane delivery

These motorized Jet Board things are new to our eyes but have been around at least five years. Very zippy and if you can balance you can ride one.

JetBoarder, yachties and iguanas at Bitter Guana

Southside of Big Major Cay by Staniel

Fun times securing dinghies by the Yacht Club. We landed at the beach on the other side- much easier

Staniel Selfie

Important & official cargo arrives at Govt dock Staniel Cay

Newly paved and busy Staniel airfield

After a stop at one of our favorite almost secluded anchorages on the west side of Pipe Cay, our next stop would be a new one.

Paddling at Pipe

Reached the point (almost) where we can define cruising as “Russ paddling by sparkling beaches and doing odd chores in exotic locations.”

Little Halls Pond Cay (LHPC), owned by… here’s a clue: “The problem is not the problem. It’s your attitude about the problem that’s the problem.”   For those who haven’t memorized or recently watched Pirates of the Caribe; that was Cap’n Jack Sparrow, whose alter ego, Johnny Depp owns LHPC.  Many of the cays within the Exuma Land and Sea Park boundaries are privately owned. This is one of them, including its extremely close neighbors Ridge Cay and Halls Pond Cay.

Near the southern tip of the cay is a small but amazing snorkel spot called the Aquarium; the Park provides one big boat mooring nearby, as well as two dinghy moorings right at the Aquarium. The spot, which is near O’Briens Cay is a bit out of the way but not too far from the mooring field at Cambridge Cay; a very popular mooring/anchoring field in the Park.

Very soon, winds would be blowing from the NE>E and we wanted to tuck in at Hawksbill Cay further north up the chain and still in the Park. Decisions and choices. Rarely do we have more than a day or two in a row with very calm “can do anything” conditions. I thought, and even suggested- I want to go on record here- that we might jump out into Exuma Sound to fish for Mahi. Snorkeling won out as Russ hadn’t snorkeled at all this trip.

Russ snorkels the Aquarium near O’Briens

The main beach- very tropical with the usual accoutrements at the Depp island of Little Halls Pond Cay

The main house on Little Halls Pond Cay

Oh look, a cay named Sandy Cay with lots of sandbars off it. And only 1.5 miles away- dinghy ride!

1.5 mile dinghy ride to Sandy Cay now called Osprey Cay (according to the sign)

After that it was time for… yes- another paddle in paradise, but first a working swim.

” I think I need some paddle time”

Self preservation move. Rental boats and yacht tenders head to snorkel and sightsee.

Next stops- Hawksbill and Highbourne and some TS, TS BBB time. 🙂