Monday 23^rd March

We arrived in Georgetown on Great Exuma Island on Friday, planned to coincide with a period of stronger weather that we wanted to take shelter from, and of course the need for internet to watch the Ireland vs Wales match on Saturday. Georgetown marks the most southerly destination for many US and Canadian boats that spend their winters cruising, and we’d been warned that cruisers are herded like sheep with a tinge of military precision – perhaps related to the fact that so many Americans cruising are ex-military.

We navigated through the masts searching for a good place to drop the anchor and then I headed to shore in search of internet and a new inverter to replace our West Marine one that died for the second time. I found an amazing little wifi shack called J&K Productions that provides wifi for $5 a day or $15 a week – instead of the $10 a day we’re used to paying – and got connected to read the pre-match stories and check the bandwidth for iPlayer. With the main mission accomplished I collected Kel from the boat for a quick walk on the beach nearby and a beer in the tiki bar.

Since we last posted we’ve travelled from Norman’s Cay through some amazing anchorages and mooring fields – Shroud Cay, Warderick Wells, Cambridge Cay, Samson Cay, Staniel Cay, Black Point and Lee Stocking Island.

Warderick Wells was a particular highlight; it’s one of the main islands that make up the Exuma Cays Land a Sea Park, a protected area of 176 square miles where fishing and shell collecting are prohibited.

The mooring field at the north end of Warderick Wells is postcard perfect, although our little camera won’t do it justice. A crescent shaped bay sounded by islands on all sides, with a narrow deep channel no more than 10 metres wide arcing from the north inlet down to the southern end. The water colour was such a deep turquoise and the contrast of the drying sand bar at low tide was stunning. We walked some of the trails on the island and on one longer walk Kel met the island local mammal population – the Hutia. Hutia are like overgrown gerbils, a cross between a guinea pig and a rabbit, and as long as there’s even one palm leaf between you and the Hutia they’re content to watch you and sniff the air as if you can’t see them at all.

     

The park also provides dinghy mornings beside many of the best snorkelling spots so that you can visit them without damaging the seabed with your anchor. We spent a couple of hours every day diving on the various reefs and caves. At Cambridge Cay, ten miles south of Warderick, we swam into two caves on Rocky Dundas that were full of stalagmites and stalactites.

Harrington pulled off one of her amazing ‘tell little lies to get myself into more trouble experiments’ in Warderick which was very funny. We had stayed the night previously in Shroud Cay on a mooring ball and not visited the island to pay our $15 mooring fee into the honesty box – my fault I admit. On arrival at Warderick Kel went ashore to pay for our mooring there at the park office and had the following interaction with the office manager who is an amazing helpful woman:

OM “you were at Shroud last night”

K: “yes”

OM: “on a mooring”

K: “no at anchor” (beginning to turn pink)

OM: “oh, cause the warden knocked your hull and he was pretty sure you were on a mooring, did you anchor in the mooring field?”

K: “yea….we were close to the mooring field”

Kel came back to the boat totally embarrassed and relayed her story. Naturally I laughed hysterically, as I am doing now, and then asked her why she didn’t just say yes we owe you $15 for that. I went back to the office the next day and confessed that it was my fault that we hadn’t visited the honesty box and that Kel was trying to keep me out of trouble. By the end of our stay Kel had plucked up the courage to go back to the office to look a their book collection and buy another reference book for tropical fish and reef life – all was forgiven.

We’ve had some maintenance and repair issues on the boat in the last couple of weeks, and one of the reasons we came quickly to Georgetown from Samson Cay was to attempt a repair on our roller furling which gave up the ghost en route to Samson. The furler allows us to keep our head sail up all the time and just roll it in and out as and when we need it. Without it we have to drop the sail entirely and store it down below. It also makes sail adjustments a two person process, which isn’t great for longer passages. We had been struggling to furl in our sail at Shroud Cay and realised that the problem was the long aluminium extrusion that runs the length of the forestay and which the sail is fed into had cracked about 3 feet up from the drum at the bottom.

We knew that it wasn’t in great shape as it’s as old as the boat, but we certainly weren’t expecting it to expire in the first two months of cruising. The Bahamas has an import duty of 40% on all items so we’re going to attempt a repair to limp to somewhere like the Dominican Republic before ordering a new furler. They cost over two grand as it is without adding the import duty and shipping – we could be penniless pirates before June at this rate, something that’s provided it’s fair share of anxiety in the last week or two.

In another more straightforward fix I got our sail repair kit out in Samson to redo some fraying stitching in our mainsail. It takes about an hour per foot of stitching, which feels like an eternity, but once done the main is good as new (or good as a 23 year old sail) and I was feeling quite proud of myself.

Samson and Staniel Cays provided a few days of good entertainment. Firstly we took our dinghy to shore on Big Majors Spot to meet a herd of wild pigs that live on the island. They’re clearly smart hogs because on our first attempt, arriving with no food in hand, only one showed up and spent less than 3 minutes with us before deciding we weren’t worth her time. She trotted back up the beach and lay down in the sunshine. Better prepared we thought, we returned the next day with some scraps to feed the lads. A full compliment of pigs this time, but again our food offerings were apparently below their normal. They stayed and chatted for a couple of minutes, but before long went back to their sleeping positions in the shade of trees. It was still amazing to meet them and watch them interact with each other.

 

Just off Staniel Cay is Thunderball Grotto, named after the James Bond film that it featured in. Thunderball is a tiny island that’s been carved by the sea into a main cave with a large domed roof that the sun pours through to illuminate seabed and fish inside. At high tide the entrances to the cave are submerged, but once inside you can surface to get air and snorkel down a number of rocky channels that are filled with fish. Again it’s a no-take area for fishing, much like Exuma Park, and the increased number and variety of fish life is noticeable.

On land by Thunderball Grotto we walked on Staniel Cay to dump some trash – I have to say I’m depressed at how much waste we produce in as little as two weeks on the boat – and take a walk round the island. Staniel is small, but it does have three grocery stores and we took a walk to two of them to check out their supplies. Miss Flo runs the Pink Pearl Supermarket and we had a very funny interaction with this energetic lady in her 70s who could sell snow to Eskimos. We collected two bottles of (very expensive) Guinness for Paddy’s Day the following day and some conch and fruit for the boat. After we left the shop Kel remembered that we wanted to go the ice cream shop on the island and so I ran back to get directions from Miss Flo.

I walked into the store and posed the question, to which her response was “There’s the ice cream shop right there”, pointing to her freezer. I laughed and said “no, but there is an actual ice cream shop on the island isn’t there?” to which she replied “yes, there’s the ice cream shop right there” again pointing to her freezer. She finally conceded that there was another ice cream shop on the island but told me it was about a mile away near the airport. I thanked her and Kel and I walked round the corner, only to discover the ice cream shop three doors up. Very funny.

We celebrated St Paddy’s Day in style with some new found cruising friends from Canada, Australia and the States, no Irish to be found at Samson I’m afraid. Nathan and Tayanne have been on a similar route to us since Nassau and anchored beside us in Samson along with Ben who is single-handing his boat. On the way back from the shops on Staniel we’d also met Alan, Tony and Doonya who were anchored just off Big Major’s by the pigs. The guys joined us in the afternoon for poopoos – a Canadian expression for pre-dinner snacks like cheese and crackers – and drinks and we finished off the evening with some Bushmills and a nice Cohiba cigar.

So back to Georgetown, and rugby. We tucked ourselves into the web café to catch some of the France Italy game and check the bandwidth for the connection. Thankfully it was really good and we headed out for some lunch and a walk before we came back for the Ireland match. The nerves were phenomenal and we sat huddled by our laptop with our headphones on to catch the commentary. What a match, and what  lucky sod Paddy Wallace is! We were so sad not to be in Holywood with the folks or down in Lisbellaw to be shouting at the tele – we were there in spirit!

Due to weather, and our broken furler, we’re in Georgetown for the next few days. And then on to the outer islands, the Turks and Caicos, and then towards Dominican Republic. I’ll get some more blogging done this week tho before we leave.