Tuesday, January 27 — When Eric chose to anchor in front of town, he knew it would only be for one night as the wind was going to shift today, making this anchorage uncomfortable. He was planning to move over by Chat N Chill. As he looked at the updated forecast, he saw the blow predicted for Saturday night/early Sunday morning was pretty bad, with 30-knots of sustained winds and gusts to 40. Eric thinks this may be the biggest wind forecast he’s seen in The Bahamas. Eric studied the charts and determined that he wanted to ride the storm out in Crab Cay. Since the anchorage was small, he decided to move there today to ensure getting a spot.
This morning, Eric and Keith went to shore first thing. When they left Kosmos at 0650, the anchorage was flat and calm. They went to the grocery store in the hopes that maybe they had gotten in more inventory, but they still didn’t have eggs or bread. When Eric and Keith returned to Kosmos at 0720, the wind had already shifted and picked up, and the anchorage was already getting rolly. It was crazy how fast the conditions had changed! Since Kosmos was already mostly ready to go and they towed the dinghy, they pulled up anchor right away.
In the image below, they started from basically where the Exuma Markets was, went to the channel that was dredged to the right of Crab Cay (the darker blue line), and anchored in the dredged area on the right side of Crab Cay (the darkest blue blob) at about 0815. The lighter blue blob under the darker blue one was deep enough for catamarans, but it wasn’t deep enough for Kosmos.
The Crab Cay anchorage was calm, despite the 20-knot winds. They didn’t even need to get the flopper stoppers down. The biggest downside of the anchorage was it was a far ride to Chat N Chill to hang out with the other families — too far to go with our little electric dinghy motor. Bogumila had also arrived yesterday, and they kindly picked up Eric and Keith and took them to Chat N Chill. There were less kids there than usual (probably due to the weather), so they didn’t stay that long.
Eric and Keith were feeling out of sorts — passages usually left us feeling off kilter, and they’d gotten up extra early two days in a row. Rain was also in the forecast. So they decided it was best to lay low onboard in the evening. Eric had been pretty stressed out about getting from Rudder to Staniel and then to Georgetown and hunkered down for the blow, so now that they were hunkered down, he finally started to relax.