Category Archives: Cruising Life

Describes an experience regarding the boating lifestyle of our travel.

Welcome to Old Bight, The Bight Bay, Cat Island, Bahamas

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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.

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Preparing to Leave Elizabeth Harbour/Freezer Issues

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The sky looked like a massive bird just before the sun peeked over the horizon on Monday, March 31.

Yesterday morning, the wind was back down to 9 knots when we got up in the morning. The motion in the anchorage was pleasant compared to previous days, but there was still a notable amount of motion. It rained periodically for the entire day. The showers usually passed quickly, and several were quite hard rains. 

In a previous post, we’d mentioned that we’d (relatively) recently bought new refrigerator and freezer units. We bought one dedicated freezer unit, where both drawers are only freezers. We bought two combo units: each unit has two drawers, and each of the drawers can be set to be either refrigerator or freezer independent of the other drawer. Since leaving San Diego in December, we’ve had all four drawers set to refrigerator mode.

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The Coconut Club and Food at Chat N Chill, Exuma Islands, Bahamas

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Saturday, March 29, 2025

We normally put our dinghy up in inclement weather because a plethora of things could go wrong. Since our dinghy was light weight, it could easily flip in the bigger, choppy waves. Lines could fray or loosen, and then the dinghy could float away. Or, the waves could push the dinghy up against Kosmos, causing damage to the dinghy and/or to Kosmos. This week, there had been at least seven announcements on the radio that dinghies had blown away. Some were recovered by fellow cruisers or locals; some were just gone.

Today’s forecast was still very windy with a chance of scattered showers. But we were so tired of being uncomfortable onboard that we decided it was worth the risk to get the dinghy down. When we went out on the deck, we were surprised at how salty it was. Our guess was the waves have stirred up a lot of salty moisture that has settled onboard. 

Getting the dinghy down in the heavy winds used to be tough when it was only Eric and Christi. But now that Keith is a full fledged crew member, having his third set of hands makes it relatively easy, even in the wind.

We decided to try a new place for lunch, called The Coconut Club, located a little farther north up Stocking Island in an area called Monument (red dot on the map below). The ratings all said it had a great ambience, but the food was expensive and mediocre, and the service was slow. Truth be told, every place we’d eaten at in the Bahamas has been expensive with slow service, and, while the food at most of the places has been good, we hadn’t had anything fantastic as of yet. We figured it was worth a try.

We were delighted to see that our friends from Baja, Oceananigans, were anchored near the restaurant. On the way to the restaurant, we stopped by and asked if they want to join us. They said they had guests coming and the majority of the crew needed to stay onboard to get the boat ready for guests, but one of the crew Ryan, would come with the two younger kids.

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Stormy Weather in Elizabeth Harbour, Exuma Islands, Bahamas

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The sunrise on Thursday March 27, 2025 was blocked by clouds, but it still was pretty with the crescent moon

When we woke up, we saw that the wind had picked up to 12 – 15 knots, but it didn’t appear to have rained. The harbor was choppy, and the motion was uncomfortable. The waves seemed to be coming from two directions: We were pitching (the waves on our nose), but we were also being pushed to the side a bit.

When we’d done the photo shoot on Sunday, we’d been in a hurry to leave for shore after we’d re-anchored, so we hadn’t put out the flopper stoppers. Since then, the motion hasn’t been that bad, so we hadn’t bothered to put them out. But this morning, putting out the flopper stoppers was the first thing we did. The flopper stoppers did help to dampen the motion quite a bit, but it still wasn’t pleasant onboard.

The wind screamed all day. We never got the dinghy down. One of the cruisers had a LEGO building playdate for kids on their boat. Eric and Keith went, and they managed to catch a ride with some of the other attendees. Christi never left Kosmos. This was taken shortly after the sunset.

On Friday, weather conditions worsened in the wee hours of the morning. The wind was consistently at 20+ knots. We had one gust at 27 knots and one at 28 knots! There was heavy rain, but we lucked out and had a break in the rain during sunrise.

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Lunch at The Rusty Anchor and a Turtle on Great Exuma Island, Bahamas

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When we woke up on Tuesday, March 25, we saw that the storm had not hit yet. It was an unusual dawn, with the colors darker than normal.

Eric checked the forecast; the storm was still on its way, and now it was supposed to be even bigger than what had been predicted yesterday. The barge was still there, too. On the radio net, someone said the barge was waiting for a tow boat to come rescue them.

It was the hottest and most humid day that we’ve had in the Bahamas. It was so hot that we broke down and turned on the AC – it was the first time that we’d run it since arriving in the Bahamas. 

Eric was still hesitant to turn the Zeus back on. He decided to only turn the power on, and didn’t run it. The first thing it did was demand a software update in order to operate.

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