Friday Jan 30 – Eric woke up at 0500 to help coordinate the group re-anchoring. It began, as planned, at 0700. By 0900, the shuffle was mostly done. Everyone agreed to put out 7:1 scope so that all the boats would swing the same. Here was the new positioning on the radar. 65 was where Kosmos was and 66 was where Kosmos moved.

Deeper-draft boats in the darker blue part of the cove on the map we’d posted.

Shallower draft catamarans in the lighter blue part of the cove on the map we’d posted.

A view of Elizabeth Harbour

In the early afternoon, Eric and Keith went to lunch at The Rusty Anchor again. At 1600, all the boaters in the anchorage met up onshore on Crab Cay. Everyone wanted to enjoy dry land while they could; it was unlikely anyone would be going to shore during the storm tomorrow and Sunday. Here was a rainbow after a rain shower.

The anchorage had a clay bottom. On Saturday morning, the wind shifted and we spun around. When it happened, Kosmos’s anchor moved about 10-15 feet before it seemed to catch and reset itself. One of the other boaters in the anchorage dove on it for us and reported that the anchor was well-set and we did not need to re-anchor again. The image below shows how much Kosmos swung with the wind shift, and the new location of the anchor. Most of the other boats wound up resetting their anchors.

While it was windy all day, it wasn’t as strong as some of the models had predicted until the middle of the night. Eric got up at 0100 on Sunday just to make sure everything was okay, which it seemed to be. At 0300, there was radio chatter between two boats in the anchorage that were getting too close to one another. They agreed that one boat would let out more scope so that they’d settle farther away from the other boat. That seemed to work as planned.

Things really picked up around 0500, when the gusts got up to 39 knots! At 0800, the morning Georgetown radio net reported that in the main anchorage area of Elizabeth Harbour, the waves were 3 – 5 feet at 3 seconds. Two boats broke off their moorings. Eric was glad to be tucked away in Crab Cay — it sounded like it was uncomfortable in the main anchorage. Not long after sunrise, Eric took a couple of videos where he tried to show how much worse it was outside the anchorage than inside.

Here was a rainbow in between showers at around sunrise on Sunday.

And the nearly full moon shone brightly well after sunrise.

Here was another video taken around 1000:

Eric and Keith stayed hunkered down onboard all day Sunday. Eric was tired from getting up a couple of times in the night. He did a lot of cooking, making more elaborate food than what he’s been making since Christi has been gone. Here was a rainbow in between showers. It was cold by Bahamas standards — the temperatures were in the low 60s, but with the wind chill factor, it felt like the high 40s. Meanwhile, in San Diego, it was sunny and 75 degrees, which was exceptionally warm for January. While Eric and Keith were wearing the warmest clothes they had onboard and donning blankets, Christi was running errands in shorts.

Monday was another day where they stayed onboard all day. While the storm was over, the wind was still relatively strong from the northwest, which meant going out in the dinghy was not fun. It was still cold (by Bahamian standards). Some of the boats in the anchorage left, but Eric decided to stay since it had such great protection. They did see a lot of dolphins, which was kind of unusual as we hadn’t seen many dolphins in The Bahamas.