On Monday, April 21, the crescent moon was still glowing brightly even after the sun had fully risen.
Saturday and Sunday were quiet days. Farther south on Meeks Island was a farm that had pigs. Many of the tour boats that had been speeding by us were on their way to/from the pig farm. On Saturday, our big outing was a dinghy ride to see the pigs. We followed the island south.
We’d anchored near the area that we’d explored a few days prior. We noticed that there was a staircase carved into the rocks at the area that looked like it had once had a structure, so even though there wasn’t a beach on the west side, it was possible to anchor a dinghy and walk over to the beach on the east side.
Sunday, April 6 — According to the forecast, the wind was going to drastically switch directions on Tuesday. This meant that on Monday, we needed to move someplace with better protection for that type of wind. One of the primary topics of discussions the last few days was about where the best place would be to go.
The two sailboats in our D & D group both had obligations coming up in Georgetown, so they needed to ride out the winds at or near George Town. However, Eric didn’t think any of the anchorages in the George Town area looked like they’d be comfortable during the winds.
Eric decided to head north to an anchorage called Rock Sound on Eleuthera island, and so did Haste Away, the other powerboat in our D & D group. The problem was that Rock Sound was an awkward distance from North Bight, so we wanted to break it up into two hops. The sailboats agreed to go as far north as Fernandez Bay (still on Cat Island) with the powerboats so that the group could have one more day together. From Fernandez Bay, Monday’s run would be 12-hours, so we could do the whole passage in daylight.
As soon as we got up, we started getting the boat ready to go. Since we weren’t going far and we’d be in protected waters the whole way, we didn’t have to be too fastidious about securing stuff. We pulled up anchor at 0830 and dropped anchor in Fernandez Bay at 1045.
The wind was coming from the southeast, and this anchorage was totally protected from that wind direction. However, it was still a bit rolly from the swell coming in from the ocean. We decided not to deploy the flopper stoppers because retrieving them in the morning would cost us too much time.
The Kosmos crew decided to go for a dinghy ride in the estuary (the bottom part of the map above). We’d read that there was quite a bit of wildlife in there. As we’ve mentioned before, we haven’t seen a lot of wildlife in the Bahamas, so we were excited about this opportunity to see some. Here was the anchorage, taken from the dinghy.
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.
This week has been interesting. On Saturday, we played D&D. On Sunday, we were in a Nordhavn marketing photo/video shoot. A bunch of Nordhavns cruised around while a drone took photos and videos of us. After that, we went to a restaurant where I had a really boring time. There wasn’t enough food and I was absolutely starving.
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.
