Friday, April 4, continued — A little bit north of where we were anchored was a line of small bungalows along the shore. We were told that they were restaurants, and most were only open for dinner. One of the cruisers went to check, and was told that the restaurants opened at 1730. Just about all the families agreed to meet onshore for dinner. At 1730, we were the first in a long line of dinghies that pulled up onshore.
However, there was only one restaurant open, a sandwich shop that looked like it was open all day. The sandwich shop was overwhelmed by the number of people and simply could not serve everyone.
The sandwich shop had creative chairs.
Those who couldn’t get food waited for more restaurants to open. The kids played and the parents talked.
Yesterday, the families agreed to moved to New Bight — the northern part of The Bight Bay — where there were more activities and amenities within easy dinghy/walking distance. Eric had been reluctant to move because we’d heard it was less comfortable in the northern part of the bay, but we couldn’t resist the appeal of more activities/restaurants.
Since we were only moving about 3.5 miles within protected waters, we didn’t do a great job of securing things for sea. We did bring up the dinghy, though. With our dinghy being so lightweight, we didn’t want to take the chance of it flipping it during towing.
We pulled up anchor at about 0830 and by 0915, we were anchored in our new location. As anticipated, up here, the swell and waves came from different directions and it was rolly. We immediately put out the flopper stoppers. With the flopper stoppers out, it was still a tad lurchy, but the motion was fine overall.
In the early afternoon, the families went for a walk to Father Jerome’s Hermitage. Father Jerome was an Anglican missionary in the Bahamas for over 10 years. He then converted to Catholicism and continued missionary work in Australia. Prior to becoming a missionary, he’d been an architect, and he used his architecture knowledge to build simple, yet beautiful churches. Upon retirement, Father Jerome moved back to the Bahamas and built the Hermitage on the tallest hill in the country, Mt. Alvernia, at 207 feet. He passed away in 1956.
After lunch, we dinghies to shore near the dock. Since the dock was in disrepair, we all beached our dinghies.
Tuesday, April 1 – We got up early to finish getting ready to go. It was still cloudy and rainy when we first woke up, but it quickly cleared into a sunny day with scattered clouds. Here was the sunrise.
We pulled up anchor at 0730. It was a moderately uncomfortable ride to Cat Island for most of the trek; only the first and last hour had protection from the open ocean. The wind was about 12 knots. The swells were 3 – 4 feet at 6 – 7 seconds from starboard (right side of the boat), plus 1 – 2 foot wind chop. The wind chop waves were rapid and sharp. The motion was lurchy, and it was not easy to move around. Eric had to turn the stabilizer actuation rate up from what we normally run them at.
The red dot on the bottom left was our starting point in Elizabeth Harbour; the orange dot on the top right was our destination in The Bight Bay. The purple dot on the right (about 1/3 way up) was Calabash Bay on Long Island. And yes, the dotted line was the Tropic of Cancer, so we’ve been technically out of the tropics since leaving Little Harbor, Long Island (note, The Rusty Anchor appears to be right on the Tropic of Cancer, so maybe we were back in the tropics while eating there).
Since Cat Island was one of the few places near to George Town with good protection from southeast winds, which the forecast said the wind was about to shift to, there was a conga line of boats going to this island. We were one of the earlier arrivals at 1600.
On Monday, March 24, the crescent moon was still shining brightly despite the cloud cover as dawn started.
Dawn was spectacular
This morning, Eric called ARCO again and managed to get through to a customer service person. This time, the customer service person did send the schematics over to Eric and told Eric to check the regulator setting to make sure that it was set to Viktron. Eric spent the day mulling over whether it was wise to turn the Zeus box back on.
Friday, March 21 — The Nordhavn 68 in this photo was named Stella Luna, and we got this great shot of her under the brightly glowing, half-full luna at dawn.
Like yesterday, the wind was low and the bay was calm, so after we finished school and chores, we headed out to go snorkeling with some other families. Our rendezvous spot was at the southwestern tip of Stocking island.
As we had briefly mentioned back in December, we (relatively) recently upgraded our dinghy. We’d had a Gig Harbor hard shell sailing/rowing dinghy with a Torqueedo 503 electric motor with 1.5 horsepower. We also had 50-watt solar panels to charge the motor when we had it out, which were made by Torqueedo. We were very happy with those solar panels.
