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.