Trekker's Travels: Living the Bahama Life

We arrived at West End, Grand Bahamas Island and decided to treat ourselves to a few days of well deserved R&R. We also wanted to wait for our “cruising family” to catch up so we could all spend Christmas together. The first couple of days we spent working on the boat, cleaning it from top to bottom as she had become neglected over the past few months with our constant traveling. The afternoons were spent by the pool or on the beach.

Old Bahama Bay beach

We stayed at the Old Bahama Bay Marina and Resort, which is a holiday resort with rental suites and as we were in the attached marina we had the use of all the facilities, including a gym, pool, bikes, paddle boards and kayaks. The resort was badly damaged by Hurricane Mathew in 2016 and was still recovering in some areas. But it was a lovely place to spend a few days! The resort happens to be where John Travolta’s son Jett died following a seizure. Very sad.
The days flew by, as we met new boaters coming in for a night and then leaving the next morning to continue on their trips. The marina is the first stop for many boaters coming across from Florida. We saw boats of all sizes and shapes come and go, including a 116 foot motor yacht with full crew. Rumour had it that they were interested in buying the resort.
The first day we were there I noticed a large motor yacht at the end of our dock called Southern Cross. It wasn’t in great shape; having quite a lot of damage along the sides. But what really caught my eye was a camera man following the owner(?) around and filming him. The next day several guys were loading up equipment onto the boat, including more cameras. And after a few hours they set off, with a small boat and camera following them. Curious, I asked around and it turns out they were filming a Discovery Channel series on oceanography. I never did find out what the name of the series is.

Southern Cross leaving Old Bahama Bay

I was told to look out for fresh bread in the Bahamas, and sure enough one afternoon a lady came down the dock selling freshly made bread and banana loaf. Yum! I was also able to buy 10 small lobster tails from the nephew of a guy on a boat just down the dock from us. I bbq’d a couple of them and froze the rest!
Christmas Eve day was fairly quiet until boats started to arrive in the afternoon. It seems there is always a flurry of activity first thing in the morning, when boats are leaving, and around 4pm, when boats are arriving from Florida. I had come back to the boat from showering when I got a text from Bill on Aquila who said there was a disabled boat coming in and could I help them. I got on the VHF radio to talk to them because they couldn’t contact the marina. Apparently they had broken their transmission cable and would not be able to put the engine in reverse to stop themselves. For some reason the marina’s VHF was not transmitting clearly to the disabled boat, so I acted as the go-between to tell them where the marina thought they could dock safely. After they arrived, Aquila and Her Diamond, who were behind them, started their approach to the marina. But there was another boat coming up to the entrance with their sail up, trying to get in as well. After more radio contact it appeared that they were also disabled, but with no engine at all and were trying to sail into the marina. However, there was no wind, so that wasn’t happening. They asked for assistance from the marina, but there was only one dock hand working and he had no boat available for his use. So Hugh decided that he would go out in our dinghy and try to help them in. I went along too, in case he needed four hands, and for moral support! When we got there we went along the side of the boat and tied on with ropes and a bumper between us and their boat. The idea was for us to be their propulsion and they would do the steering. And it worked very well! Once we got going we were moving at quite a good clip! All hands were on deck to catch them at the marina. It was our good deed of the day. They were very grateful to us and later even brought over a bottle of wine as thanks.
Once all the excitement was over there was a happy reunion of the three buddy boats and we all went to dinner at the Resort restaurant to celebrate.
I knew Christmas was going to be difficult being away from family and friends, but I also knew I was amongst new friends and, look at where I was!
So I decided to arrange a pot luck Christmas dinner with all the boaters who were there and also away from family. I went around to all the boats and told them about my plan, and they were all very excited about gathering together. In the end there were 17 of us including a family of five who had just started their three year adventure on a 52 foot catamaran. We gathered poolside using the tiki bar’s (which had closed early) picnic tables. I brought a turkey breast that I bought in West Palm before we crossed, cooked with stuffing (package) and gravy (jar). Everyone brought something different and it worked out beautifully. We even had a pumpkin pie, brownies and Christmas cake (which I brought from home!) for dessert. A big success!

Christmas dinner at Old Bahama Bay

Boxing Day was very windy and cool as a cold front had come in overnight. We decided to stay one more day to let the winds calm down. So we borrowed bikes from the marina and we all rode into town. As I mentioned before the area was hit hard by hurricane Mathew last summer, and the town certainly was still suffering from it. There were many houses with collapsed roofs and walls. The town consisted of a convenience store, a liquor store, a medical clinic, police station and a telephone store, and all were closed for Christmas. The other thing we noticed were huge piles of discarded conch shells by the shore. Selling conch meat is big business in the area and it was quite obvious by these piles. But the people we saw all waved and said hello and seemed perfectly happy.

St. Mary Magdalene Church, West End

Dinner that night was freshly caught MahiMahi that one of the cruisers had caught on their trip over and generously shared. We bbq’d the fish and everyone contributed to the meal. We were going to eat outside but the wind was still high so Trekker hosted the meal.
Even though we are in the Bahamas we still have quite a ways to get to our final destination of the Exumas. The next stage was crossing the Little Bahama Bank north of Grand Bahama Island and Little Abaco Island to cruise the Abacos, a group of barrier islands between Great Abaco Island and the Atlantic Ocean. As easy as this sounds, we had to go through the Indian Rock Cut, a short cut to get to the bank. The problem is that it is very shallow, and there was a good chance we could hit bottom, with our keel being 1.72 metres deep and the depth shown on the chart being 1.4 metres in some places. Luckily we had met another boater who had done it before, and offered to lead the way across. So at 9am, with 0.2 metres above low water and a rising tide (in case we couldn’t get through and needed to wait a bit for it to get deeper) the four boats left, and slowly made our way across the 3 mile long cut.

Indian Cut Channel procession

I stood on the bow with my headset on, instructed to tell Hugh if I saw shallower water, but honestly, I couldn’t tell. He kept calling out the depths, and at one point we saw 1.7 on the sounder, but no bumps. It was pretty consistently 2.2 meters, until we were out of the cut and onto the bank and then we had a whole 4 meters for the rest of the way. It’s very strange to be sailing in 13 feet of water when we are so used to Georgian Bay with its hundreds of feet of depth. For the Georgian Bay sailors, it’s like sailing across the Hope Island anchorage for many miles, except there are starfish on the bottom! We motor sailed for the rest of the way and anchored just before sunset in Great Sale Cay (Cay is pronounced “key” in the Bahamas). A beautiful anchorage in the middle of nowhere. There were about 5 boats already there, most which we knew from the marina.

Sunset at Great Sale Cay

We decided to spend the next day in the anchorage. We all went for a dinghy ride along the shore and saw lots of marine life, including turtles, stingrays, and even a small shark. The afternoon was lazy and then with everyone on Trekker for happy hour we all watched the spectacular sunset, some claiming to have seen the “green flash”.
The next morning we left the anchorage with more wind than predicted and had a great sail. The original plan was to anchor at Allan’s-Pensacola Cay for the night, but with the strong west wind the anchorage was no longer an option. So plan B had to be decided “on the fly”. Since most of the anchorages in the Abacos are exposed to westerly winds, I called the one and only marina nearby and asked if there was room for all three boats. No problem was the answer. So we all headed into Spanish Cay Marina to find only four other boats there. Apparently this is considered low season in this area, with high season being April to September. They think it’s cool here (23c) and a lot of their clients come over from Florida. Most cruisers head further south to start with, like Nassau or the Exumas, but we thought it would be nice to see this area first. With westerlies still forecast we stayed at the marina for a day, went to the beach, swam in the pool and ended the day on Her Diamond with a game of Wizard.
We headed to Green Turtle Cay on New Years Eve, a very popular destination, and were lucky to get into the Leeward Yacht Club for a few days. A big front is supposed to come through with high winds and rain, so we decided it would be good to tuck into a marina. Once we arrived, after an awesome sail down from Spanish Cay, we made reservations in the marina restaurant for their New Years Eve dinner. They even had a DJ and food was great. Champagne was popped on Aquila at midnight and we all brought in 2018 together.

New Years Eve at Leeward Yacht Club

New Years Day is very big in the Bahamas, and they have a celebration called Junkanoo, which includes parades, vendors selling local food, and music. We all went into New Plymouth, the town on Green Turtle Cay, to enjoy the festivities. It was great fun to see all the local people dress up in costume and dance in the parade.