Well, today at 06:15 we hoisted our anchor and headed out for Cuba, finally, after months of work and head scratching on how to do it legally and safely.
So, off we go and our next landfall will be Great Inagua where we will spend the night before continuing on to Cuba Sunday morning.
As we left George Town today, threading our way between electronic way-points, as there are very few navigation aids or buoys anywhere in the Bahamas, our electronic chart plotter started acting up, rebooting every few minutes and freezing the screen. We were blind, at least electronically blind. Fortunately, we have backup charts on our i-Pad as well as paper charts but the idea of loosing our primary plotter at the helm was very bad news. We continued on while I tried to figure out what had happened and after about an hour I decided to call Raymarine Tech Support for a solution.
Fortunately, The Bahamas have excellent cell coverage so I was able to get someone on the first try. The solution, it seems, is that we somehow suffered a voltage spike, perhaps when I started the engine, that had sent the plotter into an endless loop and the only way to solve it was to do a “factory reset”. Simple enough but all of our routes and waypoints were gone. Not the end of the world as I can put them in again. And that’s far, far better than loosing our Radar, AIS and electronic charts. However, it’s resolved now but not without a few, well more than a few, nervous moments.
There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about the question of the value of paper charts in an era of electronic charting and today’s experience is just one more piece of evidence that paper is here to stay, at least aboard Pandora for years to come. Call me old fashioned, but today is not the first time I have had my plotter act up and I shudder at the thought of what would have happened if the hardware instead of a simple “reset” as there aren’t many places to have equipment fixed in the middle of “frigging” nowhere
Anyway, problem solved for now.
A little while ago I spoke by radio with my friend George on Trumpeter and he told me that he and Nancy had visited Great Inagua many years ago and had been amazed by a huge number of parrots that they had encountered on shore, making a huge racket. I can’t recall ever seeing a parrot in the Bahamas so I guess it’s very different there, so much further south and close to the Caribbean. The island is also known for their huge flocks of pink flamingos.
Interestingly, Morton Salt has a huge plant on the island where they harvest salt in enormous evaporation pans where ocean water is pumped into shallow “lakes” on an industrial scale where the sun does it’s work and all that’s left is salt. This part of the Bahamas gets very little rain so production of salt by evaporation is practical, unlike other areas of the norther Bahamas that are too wet, if still arid by our standards.
As I write this we are making our way south along the eastern side of Long Island. In a few hours we will pass the southern tip and head out into the ocean for the over night portion of our trip, prior to landing in Great Inagua on Saturday afternoon.
When we are making passage, we settle into a routine that involves reading, preparing meals napping and some boat chores. As Brenda and I will have to spell each other during the over night hours to be sure that someone is “on watch” at all times, we try to take it easy and prepare simple meals.
My favorite spot to read when the weather is settled.
I will say that it’s pretty hot and a bit uncomfortable down below. Unfortunately, because of the risk of spray getting down below through open hatches, we have to keep the boat well buttoned up. We do have fans but with the engine located under the galley in the main cabin, there is extra heat down below so it’s pretty warm.
There is also very little wind which is a bummer so we are motor-sailing with both sails and motor to keep moving. The weather forecast calls for light conditions for much of our trip meaning that we will be under power most of the time, at least until we get to Great Inagua.
We should pick up some good wind on Sunday as we pass through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba prior to turning west along Cuba’s south coast until our arrival in Santiago de Cuba on Monday. Our landfall is about 30 miles past Guantanamo Bay.
It would be nice to be able to sail but there is a risk that we will encounter very strong winds upwards of 30kts going through the Windward Passage if we don’t get through there by mid day on Monday. And, even though the winds would be behind us, we have been advised to press on as the seas there can be quite confused with a strong NE wind.
Well, that’s about all I have to report but I thought that I’d put up a post while I still have cell coverage. After we pass the southern end of Long Island later today we will loose coverage until we get to Great Inagua.
I expect that I’ll post again sometime on Sunday morning.
Until then…
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