Rock Sound and Hatchet Bay

We left Warderick Wells on Saturday the 22nd, with a very nice SSE wind. We had to use the engine to get off the mooring and out of the cut, but once we were in Exuma Sound, the sails came up and we stayed on one tack all the way to Eluthera. It was a GRAND sail, in 15 kts of wind, going 7 kts, on average. We arrived at Powell Point around 1:00 pm, and then pinched our way into Rock Sound, until we couldn’t quite round Sound Point without tacking to get the last half-mile to Rock Sound. Since we wanted to be nice to our four-footed passengers, who do not like the sound of aggressive sailing (i.e., tacking) we decided to start the engine and motor the last bit. If we had tried harder, we could have done the entire trip on one tack. We anchored right in front of the town, and it was clear that they were celebrating something (we found out later it was “homecoming”, but we are not quite clear what this means). We stayed on the boat and made some very nice seafood risotto with canned salmon and crab out of a pouch, and were well satisfied with the results.

Next day, up at 7, to hear the weather, which was for south winds, around 10 kts, so we motored out of Rock Sound, and up north to Hatchet Bay, which is near Bill and Dot, who now have a family vacation home on Eluthera. We motored all day, because the winds were too light from the south, across 40 miles of calm water that never got deeper than about 25 feet. We got our first real taste of crab/lobster pots in a while (we think). At least that is what they looked like, with lines of floats across our path north. Being well experienced with such critters, we stayed away from them, and arrived in Hatchet Bay around 2:30 PM. We took our time checking out the harbor, because Bill and Dot were off at a pig-roast, and we decided to set the anchor in one of the deepest parts of the Bay, about 30 feet(!).

For those of you who are Ches Bay sailors, this sounds a bit daft, but the only spots to anchor in shallower water were taken up with moorings, which were occupied. The charts all say that the holding in Hatchet Bay is poor, with lots of grass, so we put out 150 ft of chain and increased the pulled on it gradually, until we thought we were well set. Then we got ready for dinner. Bill called from the govt pier about 4:45, and we went off in the newly-speedy dinghy to meet him.
We had to weave our way under the mooring lines of the local ferry, to the small dock where we left the dinghy and went off to see the new house.

Bill and Dot’s house is up on top of the ridge north of Hatchet Bay, with amazing views of both the Bight of Eluthera to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Bill’s grandfather bought the land 60 year ago, but they didn’t build on it until last year, when one of Bill’s sons found a good contractor, imported a lot of building materials, furnishings and other assorted stuff to Eluthera, and spent considerable time and effort to make sure that the job was done right. And he really did, because the house is spectacular. We had diner with Bill and Dot, son Mike, his wife sandy, and their children Ryan and Sarah. Great meal, great wine, and great conversation. Bill and Dot are absolutely wonderful hosts, and we would LOVE to come back after we get settled in France. We finally had to say goodnight when the lightning from the approaching storm became too frequent to ignore. Bill took us back to the dinghy landing, and we got back to the boat just as the drops started to fall.

We have been diligent this trip in not leaving the dinghy in the water at night. Part of this is to minimize the chances that it might decide to “walk away”, but also because we want to be able to start up the boat and move, if we have to do so in a hurry. We also don’t like to hear the slap of the water against the dinghy in the night, or hear it bump against the boat. We therefore have gotten quite good at getting the dinghy up on the stern quickly and ready to move, and this stood us in great stead that night.

No sooner did we have the dinghy up, and ourselves stowed down below, when the winds just started to HOWL. The windmill gave out a sound that we don’t think we have every heard before, the rain started to come down in buckets, and the boat heeled over like a drunken sailor. Given the reports of poor holding in this anchorage, we abandoned the interior for the cockpit, turned on the navigation instruments and the radar, and prepared for some heavy weather. The wind shifted 180 degrees from the direction we had set the anchor, so we were mightily concerned about dragging. We were also concerned about another boat that had anchored a bit closer to us than we would have preferred, after we had anchored.

With the wind howling, and the GPS saying that we were doing 1.6 kts, we started the engine and tried to hold position with the engine and the bow thruster. The chartplotter showed that we had moved from our original anchored position, but we were still in 30 feet of water. Eventually, we realized that we were doing 1.6 kts sideways, as the boat swung back and forth, horsing in the wind. It was a bit unnerving to see the speed on the GSP display, but the speed vectors on the chartplotter were consistently showing lateral motion, not dragging aft, so after about 45 minutes, when the winds abated and we were sure that we were still set, we buttoned up for the night. jlm did not sleep much, and rxc got up a few times after some quite vivid dragging-dreams, but in the morning, we found ourselves back in the identical spot where we had originally anchored. Evidently, with 150 feet of chain out, the anchor was indeed well-set, and we had just swung in a circle. The boat that had anchored after us was in the same spot, although one other boat that had been on a mooring, with a bit of a long mooring rope, now had an anchor out, as well as the mooring, and they had shortened the line to the mooring.

We got under way from Hatchet Bay at about 9, after hearing Chris Parker the weather guy, on the SSB for the first time. Everyone is convinced that the weather is going to turn nasty tonight, so we wanted to be up in Spanish Wells, in a marina, when the front came thru. The trip across the Bight was quite lumpy, with3 very unhappy cats, but we made it, and then made the passage through the Current Cut with no problems, and the short leg up to Spanish Wells, where we are now firmly tied up in the Spanish Wells Yacht haven. More in the next installment…