A long stay in Chub Cay

 We arrived at Chub Cay on Friday, March 10th, with the expectation of staying the weekend before traveling again.  We made the reservation there because the forecast was for a large storm, Saturday and Sunday with winds of 30 mph and we wanted to have a little more protection for out boat.

Chub Cay is a beautiful resort on the southern most tip of the Berry Islands.  It has an airstrip that some visitors fly into, but the majority of the people arrive by boat.

And some of the boats are pretty impressive.  Did you see the one that looks like it belongs to a Bond 007 villain? There was another yacht in the harbor that was for sale.  It's name was "C'mon man", and the asking price was 3.5 million.

Our boat was anchored on a floating dock which could rise with the change of tides.  This particular anchoring post needs a little TLC but each of these is about a foot in diameter and are sunk many feet into the bedrock of the island.

This marina is unusual in that the seawater is allowed to flow into the marina and go back to the sea through this manmade canal.

   As a result we have some interesting visitors in the marina.

This guy was only about 6 ft and harmless, but we did see Bull sharks in the marina.  There were lots of signs saying "No fishing or diving in the marina" because of those visitors, but our next door neighbor named Mike dropped his favorite coffee mug overboard and couldn't retrieve it with out net soooooo......

The initial forecast of one storm became one low pressure after another so we were stuck in the marina until March 20th but at least they had hot showers, a laundromat, a very nice pool area and beach.

We ate dinner one night at the Nauti Rooster which was delicious, but most of the time we cooked for ourselves on the boat.  We got to know several other boaters who were kind enough to lend us a hose to refill our water tanks and give lots of advice about the weather.  We actually left the marina on Saturday, March 18th, but after being thrown around in the pre-dawn darkness by 6 foot waves and having the boat list to each side by 30 degrees at a time, we radioed our buddy boat that was supposed to follow us out and said we were coming back in.  The staff at Chub Cay is outstanding and accommodated our extended stay and even made us feel welcome.

One night we had a BIG thunderstorm with a downpour of rain that we've rarely seen.  Our previously watertight hatches suddenly weren't, under the onslaught.

All through that night, the boat though tied down with multiple dock lines, rocked and rolled and leaked.

Notice the pots and pans under the worst of the leaky hatches. But the storm brought down more than rain.  It knocked coconuts out of the trees!  They were yummy.

Finally on Tuesday, March 21st, we set out from Chub Cay to Bimini with our buddy boat, "Island Girl" which is a trawler!

Heading south to Chub Cay

 When we decided to go to the Berry Islands, part of our excitement was that the islands from top to bottom are only 20 miles long so we thought we could easily move through that particular chain, but we learned that much of the west side of the islands is very shallow water, so to travel south we needed to travel 10 miles to the west to find water that was at least 12 feet deep to safely turn south toward Chub Cay.  This turned what we originally thought would be a 4 hour trip into a 10 hour one.

But the weather was beautiful and we were able to put our sails up and use the wind to propel us. This is actually our buddy boat "Dream Again". 

The sun cast a shadow of our sail in the beautiful Bahamian water.

And the winds were gentle enough that Cindy was able to catch a nap for part of the trip. 

Part of the trip we traveled through deeper water so we put out a fishing line hoping to catch dinner. But we only caught a barracuda and we had been told not to eat it because they can carry a parasite that makes people sick, so David cut him loose.

In the process of cutting the fish loose one of our cockpit cushions blew over the side of the boat and we spent 15 minutes chasing it and luckily retrieving it with a long handled net.

David got a little war wound in the process.

Our second catch of the day.

Our first Bahama anchorage!

 We  anchored  Monday, March 6, at Grand Harbor in the Berry Islands.  We were on the eastern side of the island and we were rewarded with a white sand bottom, and water that was out of the world blue.

This is the water in a 9 ft. deep anchorage.

  

David and I had a great night sleep at anchorage, but our buddy boat dragged anchor twice, which means their boat was drifting around and so at about 6 am, they called over the VHF to say they wanted to move to the lee side of the Berry Islands so we had more protection from the wind.  We motored around the top of the Berry's past Little and Big Stirrup Cay.

Our third buddy boat was waiting for us on the east side of the Berry Islands at Bullocks Bay.  He had made the crossing a couple of days before us.  He has 8 seasons of experience in the Bahamas and is much more sure of himself.  His name is Art.  He is married to Linda and they have Sophie the wonder dog that travels all over with them.  Their boat is Saltshaker. This is Art and Sophie coming to visit us with a piece of tubing that David hoped would fix a leak.

We were so grateful for his wisdom, experience and advice.  Our other buddy boat was Dream Again.  She is captained by Tim and Sandy.  They have been sailing for several years but only this year they committed to living aboard.  It was their first season in the Bahamas too, so sometimes it was the blind leading the blind, when Art would go ahead to a new destination.  One night we all went on to the island and had dinner at a local restaurant called Hammerhead.  I had some of the best bbq wings I've ever eaten.

Tim and Sandy have a youtube channel if you want to check out what they are up to. https://www.youtube.com/@dreamagainsailing  

One of the days we were anchored off of Bullocks Bay we used our dingy to go onto the island and shop for some food.  We were lucky to find an avocado, some eggs, a head of cabbage and a green pepper. We passed on buying a box of cookies because they cost $10.  Most of the islands completely depend on supplies delivered by boat.  It made us more grateful for the huge selection of food available at home.

Our neighbors at anchorage.
 

The islands don't support much fresh fruit or vegetable growth, but we have found chickens on every island we have been on. We've also seen peacocks on the islands, although I'm not sure why. The peacocks crow along with the roosters, even in the middle of the night.  More unanswered questions.

We were at anchorage from Monday, March 6 until Thursday, March 9th.  You may wonder what we do at anchorage.

We clean off in the salty water.

We try to fix things like our macerator.

We bake cookies because our solar panels are making lots of electricity and we don't need much to run the boat.

We do laundry and hang from the underside of our bimini to dry out.
David went out one day to see a wrecked DC3 airplane.  There is an old airstrip on the island and the story is the plane kept circling to wait permission to land until it ran out of fuel and crashed beside the island. 

Most of our days at anchorage were good weather although the winds were usually between 10 and 20 mph.  Occasionally, we had a little rain.

 There was a bigger storm predicted so we next headed south to Chub Cay which is the southernmost tip of the Berry Islands.  We had a slip reserved at the marina there to ride out the storm.

Are we there yet?

 Something those Youtube videos don't tell you about when it comes to sailing is that the wind doesn't always cooperate and the diesel motors on sailboats are NOT meant for speed.  Hence the name of this post.

  We had experienced winds of 20-30 mph for several days and had to stay in a marina for protection.  As several people with much bigger sport fishing boats told us, "The sea is confused out there" and after trying to take fisherman out, even they returned to the marina.  We did hit the jackpot on Saturday night, because one of the local men who fishes came back with fresh lobsters and offered us some.  Yum!  Hopefully we will be able to catch some of our own.  They are in season here until March 31.

There was a beach right by our marina and we explored it a bit while waiting for the wind to change.

Oops it's a new go pro and I need to get my finger out of the way, but this picture shows you how much wind we had going.

And thanks to Starlink, David was able to get a little bit of work done too.

On Sunday, March 5 the winds calmed and we decided to make the 25 mile trip from Old Bahama Bay Marina at the north western tip of Grand Bahama island to Freeport.  We wanted to sail but the winds were directly from the south and that is the direction we needed to go, so we motored at about 5 mph.

We had hoped to anchor off the south coast of Grand Bahama, but the shore is a steep drop off and is rocky so we had to spend a night in Freeport Grand Bahama Yacht club and Marina. This was to be the jumping off point for another open ocean crossing. 

We left at 4 am knowing it would take about 12 hours to cross the 55 miles.  We had head winds of 16 mph and tried to sail but angle of the wind and the swell of the ocean 3-4 ft. kept our sails from being very effective so back we went to the motor.

On our trip we saw funnel clouds, a rainstorm,

a gorgeous sunrise,

Lots of container ships

And a fun pod of dolphins!

After 11 hours of sailing we finally saw something stationary on our radar.  It turned out to be two cruise ships that were docked on Big Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay which are now privately owned by Royal Caribbean cruise lines and Norwegian Cruise lines.  They drop their passengers there for a day of water parks, eating and beach time.  We were just happy to see that we had arrived at the Berry Islands.  We will be here for several days and are looking forward to more fun encounters.