Staniel Cay, Georgetown, and south Exumas

I am behind on blogging, due to WiFi being a bit sporadic, so I will try to catch up in one long post.

Staniel Cay

We arrived in Staniel Cay on March 13, supposedly for one nite, after coming down from Warderick Wells on the tail end of the front that came, planning to stay only one night. We were on the beach at Warderick Wells at happy hour for the assembled boats, watching the clouds build, and everyone was taking bets on when it would hit us. We waited till the first drop of rain started, and noticed that the boats had shifted their direction from W to N, just a few minutes before. The front was so well defined that we could actually see it travel across the anchorage. We arrived there, looking for an anchorage, but it was blowing like stink, and all the moorings and anchorages were taken, so we decided to go into the Staniel Cay Yacht Club.

Staniel Cay is a small hamlet whose main claim to fame is the Thunderball Cave, which was used in the James Bond movie of that name. You can snorkel into it and it is wonderful. We have now done it twice, and discovered that the fish really like canned peas. We had dinner in the marina restaurant twice, after finding the food to be really good the first night. We sometimes get a bit tired of what we have on-board, although jlm has been incredibly creative about putting meals together that don’t require refrigeration. We bought a number of items such as bacon and ham in Miami and Stuart that we thought would last till April, and they have, in general. But we have been hoarding them, and trying to make do with stuff in cans, or dried, that only require adding some water, and we have been generally successful. Risotto is one of our favorite meals at home, and it travels quite well on the boat. We have also made some interesting hors d’ouvres by combining leftovers with the last bits out of some jars (artichokes, bruschetta, etc), so we haven’t eaten badly at all. But a restaurant meal now and again is a nice treat.

We stayed in Staniel Cay for two nights, to wait for availability of fresh local bread, and have a second meal. On Tuesday we headed further south, to the “cut” where we left the Bahamas Banks, down to Lee Stocking Island, where we anchored for a night. This leg was quite nice, with gentle winds and pretty flat seas, and we decided to push it past our planned stopping point of Little Farmers Cay. Passage through the Galliot Cut was uneventful, although there was a strong ebb current, and the sea was quite lumpy on the outside of the cut. A boat that was coming in had a rough time, but we just kept enough speed to maintain steerage, and let the tide take us out.

These legs are generally not very long - ~25 miles each, at most, and we are happy with this pace. It would have been nicer to have been able to made the legs even shorter, and checked out some other spots, but we have a plan, and now a deadline (!), so we are making the best of the weather windows. We are NOT taking any chances, though, to make the deadlines.

Kitties were very happy to be here in Staniel Cay, because there were birds on the docks, and these were highly amusing. They haven’t been on a dock in a long while, so we have to be careful that they don’t desert. In addition, there are about 6-10 nurse sharks swimming around the docks, and one very large stingray resident in the marina, which fascinated them to no end. They ddidn’t understand that these fish are quite out of their league, and we had to be vigilant that they didn’t jump overboard in their enthusiasm.

Lee Stocking Island

This anchorage was located in front of a NOAA-funded research station, and there were about 10 boats there on moorings. We anchored with two other boats, and passed quite uneventful night, after a spectacular sunset. Then off the next morning for a short trip down to Georgetown, on a close reach, in glorious conditions.

Georgetown

Georgetown (named for some ancient British monarch who seems to have a town named for him EVERYWHERE) is the cruising mecca for the southern Exumas. As we were headed there, we listened to the weather reports from individual cruisers, which include the number of boats in their anchorages, and the boat at Georgetown announced that a LOT of boats had left, but they still had probably 280-300(!) boats in the anchorage. And when we arrived there, it was clear that this was not an overstatement. We arrived at high tide (for a change), and had no problem getting into the cut or down the length of Elizabeth Harbour, past “Hamburger Beach” and “Volleyball Beach” on the eastern side of the harbour. It looked like the fourth of July in Annapolis, with so many boats, and the boats anchored so close together. We did not want to stay here, so we continued south, till we were just about even with Georgetown itself, on the eastern side of the harbour, about 1 mile away. We anchored in 15 feet of water, in sand, fairly far from other boats. We think that our spot had been recently vacated by other cruisers, and this has been a constant observation of this trip. We started late from Baltimore, and are about 4 weeks behind the “normal” cruising schedule, and are therefore finding places to anchor, to moor, and in marinas, that would not be available if we were on the normal schedule. It has not been a bad thing, at all, except for the fact that we have less time to poke around in small cays. Maybe some time in the future…

We went ashore to check out the town, and found it to be quite active and cosmopolitan. You enter a pond via a very narrow road tunnel, and tie up your dinghy at the dinghy dock provided by Exuma Markets, which is the main grocery store in town. They even provide a free hose tap on the dinghy dock for cruisers to fill up water bottles with RO water. This is one of the very few places we have seen free water here in the Bahamas, but it is limited to what you can carry (literally, in your dinghy). We are really greatful that we have the watermaker, or we would also be hauling water, too. Instead, the watermaker is working its little heart out, on the boat, using wind and solar power, while I type this sitting in the bar at the SCYC.

The Exuma Markets is quite well stocked, to the point that we saw many types of bruschetta toppings, LOTS of ice cream, LOTS of fresh fruits and veggies at semi=reasonable prices, and even some jars of French black truffles(!). Given the number of very large vessels here, it seems that some people MUST have truffles in their eggs in the morning, or on their pasta in the evening.

We did some snorkeling on the reef just down the harbour from the boat, and saw some very nice coral and fish, and found an internet connection that we could use from a mile away, but which was a bit spotty. We think that there are so many boats here that they swamp the ISP with their need for service. Lots of people seem to have found out about external antennas that really extend the range of WiFi, and they are using this service for Skype and Vonage, which takes a fair amount of bandwidth. In response, the ISPs seem to limit the amount of time that they will hold a connection, and some even seem to be able to detect Vonage boxes, and really cut down on service to access points(like us) that have them connected. So, in these situations, we disconnect from Vonange, which makes sense, since we don't have a working regular phone any more.

We also went up to Volleyball Beach to check it out, and found a fairly large number of well-aged, retired cruisers playing volleyball and hanging out in the Chat ‘n Chill bar and on the beach. You can really understand why people would want to spend a whole season down here, after seeing what life is like in these enclaves.

We spent 3 days in Georgetown, and then headed back north. This leg was the most perfect of the entire trip from Baltimore. A beam reach in about 12 kts of wind, flat seas, and glorious sun. Calypso, who had taken to drooling at the sound of jingled keys, or the beep of an engine starting on a neighboring boat, spent the entire trip lounging in tranquility, and did not drool a drop. We therefore considered this leg an unqualified success. We pushed this leg a bit, doing about 40 miles, to get to Farmers Cay, just up the coast from Galliot Cut. We arrived with no problems and set the anchor in a sandy spot, and then dove to make sure that it was buried, and discovered that we were right next to a really nice coral reef. This meant that we had to do a late afternoon snorkeling trip, which was highly satisfying. Overall, quite a good day.

Farmers Cay

The next day, rxc was awakened by the deep thrum of a large low-speed diesel engine, and we were both jolted out of bed by the single blast of a loud horn from a commercial landing craft, of the type that is typical here in the islands. It had managed to sneak itself through our anchorage, between 3 boats that were not very far apart, to land 2 large tanker trucks, and then wait for them while they dropped off their loads. The boat next to us was evidently terrified by this experience, because they up-anchored and left immediately, while the other boat just moved. The captain of the landing craft asked us to move when he left, so we shortened scope and re-positioned the boat around the anchor so that he had plenty of room to back out, turn around, and leave. We also did some more snorkeling, which was really nice in the good morning light. We also went into the settlement at Farmers Cay, looking for fish or lobster, but it was Sunday, and everything was closed up, so back to the boat, up anchor, and off we went back to Staniel.

Staniel Cay (again)

We are now back in Staniel, on a mooring in front of the Thunderball Club, with the wind blowing like stink out of the east. The entrance to the harbour from Exuma Sound is breaking with waves, and we have some tremendously lumpy seas here inside when the tide changes. But we are all now quite used to it, and we even made a dinghy trip yesterday to the Yacht Club for lunch, to pick up some bread, and to check up on email. The WiFi at the Yacht Club is free, but it is so weak that you can only pick it up in the club itself, or on the piers. I think we might pick it up if we anchored across from the piers, but out here on the moorings, we can see the signal, but cannot make any useful connection. So today we went into town to pick up some coconut bread and post this.

Staniel has become quite familiar to us now, and we can well imagine people staying here for a long time. The YC is quite civilized, the weather is wonderful, and you can get every basic necessity here. So why go anywhere else? We have been here 2 nights, and will stay another, heading off for Warderick Wells tomorrow, and then to Exuma after that.

Kitties are still doing quite well. The rolling in this mooring field does not seem to faze anyone, and we wonder if Calypso has finally found her sea-legs…