April 9, 2014 - Waderick Wells, Exumas

Well here we are again in Waderick Wells – the site of the Exumas Land and Sea Park.  Once again, we are here waiting out a cold front!  This seems to be our spot for that.  I guess you would say that today is one of those mundane days of sailing/cruising.  The wind is blowing 25+ knots, it is now raining, the boat is bobbing around on its mooring ball.  So much of the day is spent sitting around; listening to the VHF to see what other cruisers are up to; catching up on small repairs/maintenance; and generally keeping dry.

One of my tasks for today is to bring the blog up to date, so here goes.

On the last update, I was in the states dropping Austin off at school after his Spring Break trip with us.  It was so good to see him and we hope he enjoyed his time with us.  After returning, we spend another couple of nights in Emerald Bay marina before we started to head north.  From Emerald Bay, we went to Little Farmers Cay and really enjoyed 2 nights there.  The small town was typically Bahamian and extremely friendly.  We learned the history of Little farmers, and here’s the short version that likely does not do it full justice.  But basically, the island was bought by a freed slave who then willed it to his descendants.  However, land can only be passed down to direct descendants – so essentially it is still the same family that occupies the island: about 55 people total.

We had the great pleasure of meeting Terry Bain owner of the island restaurant and mooring balls.  The restaurant is called Ocean’s Cabin, and Terry’s wife, Ernestine is the cook.  We had the restaurant to ourselves and had a wonderfully prepared lobster dinner.  This was also one of the best value meals we have had while here.  Terry should put his prices up – but don’t tell him!  While on Little Farmers, we also visited JR – the local wood sculpture.  We bought some of his hand-made carvings which were also very reasonable.  We met JR and spent a good 45 minutes with him in his workshop.  He signed and dated our carvings.

The water and small beaches around Little Farmers were really nice.  Salty had a blast on the beach as always.  We spent a few hours swimming and snorkeling the area.  Unfortunately we did not make it to Oven Rock – the site of an underwater cave, as we thought it was pushing the range of our dinghy a little.

We left Little Farmers somewhat reluctantly as we really enjoyed our time there.  In fact, I think I would place it top of our list overall for the Exumas.  From there, we sailed……well motored and sailed north in light to little wind.  Knowing that a cold front was expected the next few days, we looked for a protected spot.  We were going to head for Highbourne Cay, but heard they are typically booked up well in advance and that other protected areas in the vicinity are sparse.  Given that we elected to go in to Waderick Wells as we could not raise Highbourne on the VHF.  We spent a night at Emerald Rock which was quite exposed and bouncy.  The next morning we managed to get a mooring ball in the north field which has much better protection……..and here we are.  It looks like we will be here another night or two.

After we moved here, we took Salty for his beach walk and swim.  Unfortunately he had a little run in with the local wildlife.  He was doing his customary fishing in the shallow beach waters (he never catches anything, but it’s fun to watch him) when he suddenly pounced on a stingray.  The ray sshot into the air about 3 ft. out of the water and so did Salty letting out a yelp.  I called him back and he came in with his leg bleeding.  The ray had obviously caught him on the leg with its stinger and left a good sized gash.  We took him back to the boat and cleaned and dressed it.  Fortunately it seems the ray did not get him with a barb, and it looked like a clean cut.  After 2 days with a bandage and plenty of antibiotic cream, he seems to be doing fine.

Well that gets us about caught up.  Today is April 9.  We are seeing our first real bad weather spell, so we can’t complain.  Its about 75 degrees with sporadic rain; winds 20-25 knots and starting to clock around.  As I was writing this the direction has moved from west to northwest which by my reckoning is a little ahead of the forecast schedule………..so maybe this will blow through a little quicker.

Our next stop is a little in the air because of weather.  My plan was to head over to Cape Eleuthera (generally northeast of our current location), but its liking like the wind will not be too favorable for that.  Second choice is to go almost due north and go back to Spanish Wells, but it would be nice if we can break that trip with a stop at Highbourne, otherwise it will be a long day.  Third choice is either Nassau or Andros.  Nassau is the least appealing as we have heard increasing reports of theft from boats.  So we will play it by ear and see what the weather does the next couple of days.  I will likely not be able to upload photos with this post due to slow internet, but will try to do another update soon.  If you are interested in seeing our current location, please visit the delorme link at https://share.delorme.com/Midnightsunii Our current location should be updated about every 15 minutes.  Isn’t science amazing!  It certainly makes navigation a whole lot easier!

On the subject of navigation, a couple of people have asked me what we are using…..well we are not relying on one thing, so I will briefly describe what we do.  Its not out of a text book, but I have worked out a little system that seems to work quite well.  Here goes:

·         For quick overview planning, I use the Navionics App on my iPad – its simple to use and good for figuring out gross distances etc.  If it’s a simple or short course, I can plot it quickly on Navionics by simply putting dots on a map.  We can then steer a course (or use autopilot with headings) to follow the course.  Very quick and easy!

·         For more complex courses or courses that need accurate waypoints, I use iNavX again on iPad and also put the critical waypoints into our Raymarine chartplotter.  I am actually trying to get into the habit of using iNavX rather than Navionics as it has superior features but is not as intuitive.  Also, our AIS links to iNavX and shows positions of other boats and ships directly on the iPad also giving warnings of collision courses.

·         Chartplotter – Raymarine RL70C.  We have 2 of these: one at the helm and one at the nav station.

·         Of course we have paper charts – we are using Maptech. We get all our critical waypoints from the charts or occasionally from the Bahamas cruising guidebook.  On passages, we plot our position on charts making sure it makes sense.

·         More on iNavX….I have found the features on this to be very good.  I can download grib files (weather data) and show wind speed and direction directly on our chart.  Today, I am working on direct transfer of waypoints from iNavX to the Raymarine chartplotter to avoid duplicate entry.  I can do this several ways: (i) email the points, convert them, then upload to Raymarine using the user card; or (ii) transmit the file over NMEA through the AIS and direct to the Raymarine chartplotter.  In theory it looks like this can be done, so I am planning to spend a couple of hours later today or tomorrow and see if I can make it work!

·         AIS – just before the trip I installed a Vesper Marine AIS transponder.  I have been fairly pleased with it so far but have found a few software glitches and bugs.  I am pleased to say I have reported these to Vesper (I think they are located in New Zealand?) and they have got right back to me with answers – their support team is great!

·         Compass – yes, we do have a couple on board!  When Brian was with us, we also used his sextant – just to prove we could do it the old fashioned way.   

·         Of course I should quickly mention safety and communications – we have 2 VHF radios, 2 handheld VHF, a delorme 2-way satellite communicator, and our EPIRB, plus all USCG-required flares etc.