Marsh Harbour to West End

After seeing Trevor and Kate off Friday morning we went back to bed for a couple of hours. The plan was to do laundry and then head over to Orchid Bay Marina around mid day, near high tide.  It appears many cruisers are much earlier risers than us because when we got to the laundry machines we were fourth in line! Changing plans, we decided to leave for Orchid Bay Marina.  Our timing leaving the marina wasn't the best, backing out in front of the small ferry that runs over to Hope Town. Ooops. Anyway the ferry courteously backed down and let me by, however I went the shallow side of him and saw 1.7m on the depth sounder.  We draw 1.72m so I guess we cleaned the bottom of the keel!  Once clear of the many boats anchored in Marsh Harbour we raised sails and had a speedy sail back to Orchid Bay on Great Guana Cay.  On the way we contemplated carrying on through the renowned Whale Cay passage. We put out an "all stations" call on the VHF radio requesting a report on the conditions in in the Whale and received a report from a smaller trawler that the waves were very confused and that he wished that he had not transited.  We decided to stick with our plan to stay at Orchid Bay for the night and run the Whale Saturday when wind and waves were forecast to be less. At Great Guana we walked to Captain Kidd's beach restaurant for lunch only to find it closed.  Oh well, back to Orchid Bay where we both had chef salads at Sunseekers restaurant.  Fresh greens are something we don’t get as much of in the Bahamas, so the salads with house made mango poppyseed dressing were outstanding! Karen made banana chocolate chip muffins and I checked the impeller that pumps cooling water through the engine (looked like new after 500 running hours) in the afternoon. Dinner on board and a game of rummy cube closed out the day.
Saturday morning we filled the diesel tank and headed for the Whale around 0900.  We heard a couple of favorable reports on the way, which turned out to be very accurate.  We had about 1 m swells spaced well apart with small wavelets on top.  The wind was kind enough to fill in part way through so we were able to turn off the engine and took off up the Sea of Abaco averaging 7 to 8 knots!  The joy of sailing with translucent turquoise water rushing by the boat is probably the hardest thing to describe to those that have not experienced it. Those that have know what I’m talking about!  After an absolutely perfect day we arrived at Spanish Cay an hour earlier than expected! Up at the bar the Masters golf tournament was on, so in the interest of beginning our assimilation back into our “normal” world we had a couple of beers and watched!
Sunday the forecast was for westerly winds, which is the direction we are going now, so we decided to sit it out, me watching the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix and Karen chilling in the morning. In the afternoon we took a walk to the beach, watched the final round of the Masters and had an outstanding meal of blackened grouper at the restaurant. For most of the day we were the only ones in the marina!
Monday had forecast southerlies and Tuesday Southwesterlies (the direction we have to go for the last leg of our trip to West End Grand Bahama Island) so we decided to get as far as we could Monday, which turned out to be Mangrove Cay, a 60 nautical mile day.  We were very lucky with the winds, only motoring for 20 minutes when the wind disappeared under a black cloud.  We also came across a patch of very light coloured water which normally means shallow water on the cruising guide's suggested route, so decided to change course and tack around it.  Better safe than high and dry on the Little Bahama Bank! Arriving at Mangrove Cay at 1700 hours we joined 6 other boats also staged for their next legs. We were really hoping for a nice sunset but as the sun dropped we realized that there were clouds on the horizon … oh well, a dramatic sunset anyway.

Sun setting at Mangrove Cay

While the forecast had been for the winds to drop and shift to the west, they continued in the high teens out of the southwest through dinner and the 1st episode of the second season of House of Cards  (poor Zoe!).  We have been using an anchor alarm called SailGrib AA which lets you estimate where the anchor was dropped AFTER the anchor is set (because we never remember to set the alarm as we are dropping the anchor).  It shows the track of the boat swinging in orange.  You can see from the pic below that sometime overnight the wind did shift, as evidenced by the two blobs of orange.  

Trekker's track overnight at Mangrove Cay

We rolled out of bed to find only two other boats left in the anchorage. Based on the radio chatter we heard Monday, we think most of them left around midnight to travel straight to Fort Pierce, Florida. Looking like the wind was actually more northerly than westerly we raised anchor and left, hoping for a leisurely sail while we had breakfast. But is was not to be. Once out from behind Mangrove Cay the very light breeze was on the nose.  Motoring with the main up to give us a little push, we headed for the Indian Cut which, those of you that have been following the blog may remember, is where we saw 1.7m depth (our draft) on the way east.  Coming east I thought we were about 0.2 m above low water, so this time we planned on 0.3m above low water, meaning an arrival time of 13:19!

Trekker's shadow on the bottom of the Little Bahama Bank

Having motor sailed most of way and sailed for a short time we arrived at the cut at 13:19 (really!).  We passed through uneventfully seeing a minimum depth of 1.9 m this time.  

Trekker while under sail briefly to West End

We were tied up at Old Bahama Bay Resort and Marina by 14:45. 
Once connected to Wi-Fi all the emails came tumbling in including a free weather routing that I picked up at the US sailboat show in Annapolis.  Weather Routing Inc. thinks that Friday is the day to cross, which confirmed what we were thinking. So we're nearly done with the Bahamas.  We'll clean tomorrow and donate our excess canned goods to the St. Mary’s Church soup kitchen (once customs has given us approval).  Then it's across the gulf stream again to Fort Pierce and getting the boat ready to leave her for 8 months in the hot Florida weather. 
That'll be work … one day at a time!