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. We’d been told that someone had started to put in a marina into this cove, but abandoned the project midway.

On Monday, January 26, the alarm went off at 0545. Christi hurriedly showered, dressed, and packed up the last minute items. We pulled up anchor at 0645 and transited the one mile to the Staniel Cay Marina. The sun rose while we were in transit.

We reached the dock at 0700. No boat had come in to the end-tie, so the dock was clear and all went as planned. Here was Kosmos on her way to Georgetown after dropping Christi off.

Christi started walking the half mile to the airport, and the first golf cart to drive by picked her up. She appreciated not having to do the walk. The airport was tiny.

Sunday, January 25 — Christi needed to fly to San Diego to take care of “life chores.” Most cruisers flew in and out of Georgetown for a slew of good reasons. However, we opted for Staniel Cay because it had better logistics for our tentative cruising plans. A large numbers of families were planning to start another flotilla to go to the Ragged Islands at about the same time that Christi needed to be in San Diego. Eric was planning to go to the Raggeds with them.

Now we know that there was a channel that was deep enough for us to get to the Raggeds from Georgetown, but at the time we booked the flight (when we were in Nassau), we thought that the only channels deep enough were via Staniel and Long Island. If Christi flew out of Georgetown, Eric and Keith would either have to go back north towards Staniel to a cut out to the ocean, or they’d have to go south around Long Island. Either way, it added a lot of extra miles. To minimize mileage, we’d chosen to book the flight out of/in to Staniel. Eric and Keith would drop Christi off at Staniel, join the other families in the Raggeds, then leave a little early to pick her back up when she returned. 

Yesterday morning, five family boats left for the Raggeds, as planned. However, the rest of the group bowed out since it looked like the weather was not going to be good. The anchorages apparently weren’t very well protected from the direction that the winds were forecast to come from, so if the forecast was accurate, it would be two weeks of uncomfortable anchorages.

Since we hated rolly anchorages, Eric and Keith bowed out, too. Eric decided the best place to ride out the coming weather was in Georgetown. We looked into changing Christi’s flight to/from Georgetown, but the airline we’d booked with, Makers Air, didn’t fly into Georgetown. 

So this morning at 1030, we pulled up anchor to make a 4-hour trip north to Staniel to drop off Christi, then tomorrow Eric and Keith would make a 10-hour trip back south to Georgetown. It was ironic that they added an extra 8-hours of total transit time to their trip to Georgetown when the whole reason we didn’t book Georgetown in the first place was to shave off those extra hours from the trip to the Raggeds. And, of course, they were going to have to make the 10-hour trip back north to pick Christi up. 

After SCUBA diving yesterday, Eric had rinsed all the gear and left it all in the cockpit to dry, intending to put it away this morning. This morning, a small squall came through that brought a quick, hard rain. In good news, the hard rain gave us a pretty good boat washing. In bad news, it made all the gear wet. We didn’t want to put it away wet, as it was likely to mold, so we just left it all in the cockpit for the passage.

Eric took the same course out of Rudder that we’d taken in. Here is another shot of the channel, and it was equally narrow on the other side. Being that close to the shallows was nerve wracking!