Well, it’s Tuesday morning and the winds are strong from the west, again.  That’s not a normal direction for this area of the Bahamas and certainly not this late in the season.  However the pattern of cold fronts penetrating into the area about every six days continues, unabated.  Fortunately, we are tucked into one of the few harbors in the Exumas that offers protection from the west so it’s very calm, even if it’s windy. However, there is hope that things are improving as this front isn’t as strong as the last few have been.

The unrelenting fronts have been the topic of discussion among cruisers here who say that they have not experienced adverse winds and fronts like this in the Bahamas in many years, with the exception of this year and last.  Of course, the last two years have been out total experience, so to us, the weather is always “like this”.

Don’t get me wrong as the “like this” weather is pretty good compared to good old New England.  While our friends are experiencing relentless snowfall, we see views of clear blue water and powder fine white sandy beaches.  Yes, there’s white here too but it’s not quite the same, somehow.   That’s good, very good.

Yes, there’s even a bit of white in this photo from yesterday when Brenda and I went for a walk on the beach with some friends.  Love the gentle lapping of wavelets on the beach.  I’ll take white puffy clouds and sand over drifts any day.  See the two dinks anchored in the shallows in the distance?  One’s ours. Pretty bucolic.

As I have mentioned, no actually whined about incessantly in past posts, we have been “e-challenged” with the demise of our iPad a few weeks ago.  We are hopeful that this will be resolved soon, perhaps in just a few days.  It’s expected to arrive in Staniel Cay  very soon.  Yahoo!!  Thanks to our son Rob for handling the logistics from “State Side”.

For the last few weeks Brenda and I have been “buddyboating” with our friends Loreen and Miles who live aboard Ariel, a wonderful boat.  They have been living aboard full time for about the last six years and spend their time running from the Bahamas to Maine and back each year with an occasional run back to Wisconsin, where they keep a “land home”.

We have been swapping off on dinner prep most nights.  It’s fun, sometimes too much fun actually, to spend evenings with them.  We hope to see them again in Essex in June.

After we pick up our iPad in Staniel in a few days, we hope to make a run down to Georgetown, a very popular cruisers hangout in the southern Bahamas.  We’ll be able to visit a “sort of real” market there to re-provision.  We haven’t been to a market that has any real choice since leaving Nassau a month ago. The lardor is pretty sparse, as you can imagine.

In April we are hoping to connect with our friends Maureen and Bill aboard Kaloona Moo.  They have been in the Caribbean since November and are currently in Puerto Rico.  They will be heading north towards the Bahamas on their way back to New York, where they spend summers.  We’ll likely hook up with them south of Georgetown.

We are very interested in hearing about their time in the Caribbean and what it’s been like.  As Brenda’s “guardian angel”, no make that “guard dog”, Maureen won’t let me take Brenda somewhere where she will be unhappy, so we should get a pretty good feel for what it is like down there for girls like Brenda, self-described “cream puffs”.

I did get a note from them a few days ago and have spoken to them on the SSB radio as well.  One thing that they did mention is that the weather is a lot more settled down south as the fronts that have been vexing us here just don’t come down that far.  Yes, the trade winds are quite strong with winds blowing in the 20s each day.  However, when you anchor you are sheltered behind volcanic islands that soar thousands of feet into the air.  As a result, the winds are blocked and anchorages are calm and settled.
After months in the Bahamas with unrelenting winds we are probably ready for “settled”.  Perhaps that should be our destination next year.   I guess we will soon learn more when we hook up with Bill and Maureen to get the “download”.

Don’t get me wrong, the Bahamas are beautiful and WARM and it’s certainly better than being in the grips of a sub-zero winter.
Am I sounding a bit whiny?  Perhaps, but I am told that writers with angst are more interesting.  I guess  you’ll have to be the judge.

Oh yeah, I should mention that this post was set to our son Chris, who is now in San Francisco making some contacts in the tech area.  The routine, given our “e-challenges”, is for me to send the text and a single picture to him via our long range radio, the SSB.  Chris then takes the text and photo and posts them on my blog.  Interestingly, the “node” that I am using to connect to send this to Chris is located in Panama as that location has the best “propagation”, or signal, this time of the day.  The way it works is for my radio to send out a signal that “bounces” off of the upper atmosphere and then back down to the receiver in Panama. Pretty amazing, actually.  Thanks Chris.

It’s Saturday morning and we are once again anchored near Staniel Cay.  On the one hand, I am not unhappy to be in what is a very nice spot having already been here twice this season.

However, we are still trying to get the problem with our “mort” iPad resolved.  If you recall, we use this as an important navigation device here in the Bahamas and having it die some two weeks ago has left us with no good backup and anxiety about getting around with confidence.

Yes, we have a plotter with charts as well as the paper chart books.  However, for close in work, in narrow channels, it’s nice to have the extra detail that shows on the i-Pad.

After a week of messing around with an order from Apple, we discovered that they won’t ship to a “re-shipper” and canceled our order.  The package was supposed to be mailed to an air-freight company in Ft Lauderdale and then to be flown to Staniel Cay in the Bahamas.  As we were receiving e-mail via our iPad, we were unaware of the cancellation until we saw their cancellation notice a week later, very frustrating.  Frustrating indeed.

So, we lost a week waiting for something to arrive that hadn’t even been shipped.  Ugh…
Now what?

First we scratched our heads trying to decide what the best option was.  Then we sent a note to our son Rob in MD and he agreed to order an i-Pad and to ship it to Watermakers Air Airfreight, the “re-shipper” that Apple wouldn’t send to, in Ft Lauderdale.  They run flights to Staniel Cay daily and can drop the package there for us.

Alas, it seems that it’s not that simple as I have been frustrated in getting them to respond to my messages.  Given the starts and stops of the iPad order, I guess that they have decided that this order has become too complicated and confusing.  Whatever the reason, they have not been very responsive and getting an answer from them has been spotty at best.

One way or the other, I am anxious to put this episode behind me and to get on with our run south to Georgetown and the southern Bahamas.

Yes, yes, I do realize that this sounds very whiny given the fact that we are sailing in some of the most beautiful waters in the world.  However, it can be treacherous making our way around without good charts.  Shifting shoals and lots of “hard stuff” to bump into make getting around here iffy at times.  That’s why we need to have access to good charts and a way to see exactly where we are.  And, the iPad app, Garmin Blue Charts, gives that.  Besides, having backups for key systems is critical.   I realize that we have become perhaps over-reliant on electronic charts, but it’s just easier and less stressful to use them than to rely on paper charts as the primary course of getting around.  I can do it but would prefer not to have it be any harder than necessary.

What I have learned from this exercise is that for some systems having a backup to a backup is important and that some who have called for the end of paper charts are just barking up the wrong tree.

Enough whining about charts for now and I hope that we will be back on track (chart wise) by next week.

Today is a beautiful day and we are expecting, yet again,  a front to hit us, albeit less powerful than the one we “enjoyed” the other day, to pass through here early next week.  With that in mind, we are headed back to Warderick Wells again this afternoon so we will be in a well protected spot when the wind veers west for a bit.

We should have a very nice sail this afternoon, even if this means heading north when we ultimately want to head south.  One way or the other, we will get a nice sail out of it and will still be fairly close to Staniel Cay to pick up our packages (Did I mention that we have packages coming to Staniel later in the week?  Thought so)

Anyway, perhaps I will close with a photo of us feeing the wild piggies near Staniel.  Actually, they look pretty wild from close up.  Ok, ok, they not so “wild” but they are piggies, never the less, and very close.

Here’s to hoping that we will be free to move on soon and have our navigation “issues” resolved, once and for all.  Fingers crossed.  No make that “piggies” crossed.

Oh yea, thanks to our son Christopher who has been posting these for me since we have been “Net-compromised”.  Thanks Chris!!!

One of the things that Brenda and I really enjoy doing is shell hunting.   It is just so pleasant to wander onto a new beach and wade through the shallow warm waters, to see what has washed up on the beach.  We have found, over the last two winters, that each beach has it’s own characteristics that make every day of shell hunting a unique experience.

You’d think that shelling on the ocean side would be great but that’s actually not the case.   It would seem logical that the surf would wash up shells.  However, we have found that on beaches with big surf that the shells are mostly broken up and those that you do find are quite damaged or worn down by the constant action of the waves.  As the surf rolls in and tumbles shells in the churning sand, what you find is pretty well worn.  Of course, one exception is sea glass, pieces of broken bottles that are worn smooth by the surf.  However, we actually find very little glass bits.

The one thing that washes up in great quantities on the ocean side, however, is plastic trash.  It’s pretty depressing actually to see literally hundreds of plastic oil cans and other non-biodegradable items strewn along the beach.  In many areas, cruisers gather up the trash into piles which helps minimize the mess.  Unfortunately, any plastic that finds it’s way onto beaches will persist for dozens of years.  Even after a long time plastic bottles are still around even if they have become brittle from exposure to the sun.  Over time they become brittle from sunlight and break into tiny bits but they never really go away.

It’s unfortunate that people are so casual in tossing things overboard.  Given the number of items that wash up on beaches here have writing in Spanish, I suspect that much of the trash floating around has probably come up from the Caribbean via the prevailing winds and the Gulf Stream.   Someone told me that in Haiti trash is just pushed into the water where it floats away with the wind and current.  I don’t know if that’s accurate but it’s certainly not good to hear.

Interestingly, you don’t find much trash on beaches that are west facing, away from the ocean here.  That suggests that the Bahamians and visitors are pretty good about not tossing garbage into the water.  That’s encouraging.

Well, back to shelling.  No, you don’t find great shells often on the ocean side but on the west facing Bahamas Banks, the shelling can be quite good.  As the wave action is minimal those shells that wash ashore tend to be in quite good shape.

The great variety of shells is amazing.  Interestingly though, you tend to find many shells of the same kind on any given beach with little variety at a particular location.   In some spots sand dollars are very common and on others colorful “tellins”, which come on yellow, red and purple are everywhere.  These little “clams” are, not surprisingly, called “sunrise” tellins if they are yellow and “sunset” if they are purple.  This photo shows the shell diversity from one of our recent outings.

We particularly love the small or juvenile conch shells, the ones with the points on them, but finding them isn’t all that easy and most of the time they are alive, so we put them back.  This photo has a number of really nice little juvenile conch.   We tend to find the little ones on exposed sandbars at low tide.  I suspect that these little guys wandered into shallow water and were exposed to the sun for too long at low tide.  The juvenile conch look similar to the adult but much more delicate.  When conch are about 1′ long they are harvested as a major food source here in the Bahamas.

As I finish up this post it’s mid-morning on Wednesday and were are expecting the wind to increase a lot over the next 24 hours and swing around to the west for a bit as the cold front passes  through the area.  After the winds settle down, from forecasted speeds in the high 20s, we will head down to Staniel Cay, a short distance away, to pick up our new iPad and parts for the watermaker.

After that, we hope to head south to Georgetown and our next opportunity for a “real” food market.  However, with one cold front after another coming through these days, we may have trouble finding a “weather window” long enough to make the 75 mile run south to Georgetown.

Well, I guess I should be getting on with my day so I’ll sign off now.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and a beautiful day here in the Bahamas.   Brenda and I met up with our good friends Loreen and Miles aboard Ariel yesterday and did some catching up over dinner.  We have been connecting with them for several years now and have seen them at Block Island, in Maine, at our home in CT and here in the Bahamas.  They live aboard most of the year and travel between Maine and the Bahamas.

Their boat Ariel is larger and a lot more lux than Pandora.  I have to say that I do lust after their boat and it’s the only other sailboat that I have seen that I’d give up Pandora for.   Too bad they are worth so much more than Pandora.  Ariel is an Aerodyne 47 of which only four have been made.  A great looking performance ocean sailing boat.  I can always wish.

Today we headed out at low tide to do some shelling and had fun finding some really nice shells.  At low tide there are a number of sand flats to explore in the area and there are often a large number of great shells to pick up.  I have to say that shelling is a pastime that I find endlessly interesting.  Happily, Brenda enjoys it too so it’s a great thing for us to do together.  Walking along a beach for hours is just so relaxing.

Yesterday Brenda and I visited a spot on the north end of Compass Cay called the “bubble bath”.   This is a very unique place where the ocean rollers run into a small cove and slosh up over some rocks so that the foam pours over into a small pool on the other side of the rocks.  The “bubbles” are created by the wave action and to watch the “foam” pour over the rocks every few seconds is really a sight.

We didn’t realize that we could swim there so weren’t prepared with our swimsuits. When we head back there in April with Rob and Kandice, we’ll be sure to bring suits along.  I’d say that this really qualifies as a sort of “natural wonder” here in the Bahamas.

Compass Cay is a private island and you have to either take a slip at the small marina on the island or pay a “landing fee” of $10 per person to go ashore.  I can’t say that I am crazy about the idea of a fee to tie up my dink and go ashore.  However, the island is very nice and $20 is a small price to pay to enjoy a walk on a beautiful beach for the day.

One of the highlights of the island is the large family of “tame” nurse sharks that hang around the docks.  As the fisherman clean their catch, the sharks show up from all around for handouts.  Nurse sharks are quite harmless and don’t have sharp teeth like other sharks.  They actually encourage you to jump in and swim with the sharks.  Not sure I have the nerve to do that.  The largest of the sharks were about 8′ long.  That’s a lot of shark.

It was hard to believe how many showed up all of a sudden when snacks were being handed out.  Perhaps I’ll swim with them when Rob visits in April. Hmm…

I wish that I could include more photos but this post had to be sent to Christopher via the SSB radio so he can publish it for me.  Unfortunately, we still don’t have the iPad so we are very limited in our ability to connect with e-mail and work with our blogs.  Soon, hopefully soon, we should be back in business with all this.   The new iPad we ordered should be here later in the week.

As I have mentioned in other posts, every week or so a cold front comes through the area and with it bring very strong winds from an unfavorable direction.  As the front gets closer everyone finds a place to “hide” from the winds.  And, as there are so few spots in the Exumas that offer protection from the west, the anchorages that are not exposed to the west fill up.  Just yesterday Brenda and I were anchored here in Compass Cay all alone and now that a front is on it’s way and due to arrive tomorrow, the place is filling up.  There are now 4 of us and others will surely arrive soon.

The winds are supposed to pick up tomorrow, Wednesday and won’t settle down again until some time on Friday afternoon.  That’s pretty good timing as I expect that our packages being flown in from the US will be delivered to Staniel Cay, which isn’t far away from here, by that point.

After that we hope to catch the next weather window to make the run south to Georgetown, our next major destination.  Our provisions are getting a bit sparse and there aren’t really any good stores here in the Exumas.  Georgetown is the next best spot to shop outside of Nassau.

After a month out with no real provisions available things are getting a bit sparse in the food department.  Good thing we have a freezer aboard that’s full of meat.   However, some fresh veggies would sure be nice.

It’s Sunday morning and we are anchored in a snug little harbor near Compass Cay, one of our favorite spots in the Exumas.   The last few days have been a bit “different” as we have been struggling with a number of issues that have made things somewhat challenging.

As has been the case for much of this winter, here in the Bahamas, the strong cold fronts that have been lashing the US East Coast, have been causing havoc with the weather here in the Exumas as well.   When I say “havoc”, it’s fair to say that it’s a relative term compared with “real” winter weather such as those in New England have been enduring.

However, here on a small boat in the Bahamas, wind is king and the “king” has been throwing his weight around plenty this season.  The problem is that when a cold front comes down off of the south east US coast, the normal easterly trade winds are disrupted as the front passes through the area.  When this happens, the prevailing winds give way to winds that clock toward the southwest, west, northwest and then settle into a north wind following the passage of the front.

What this means is that just about everyone in the Bahamas must run for cover as most anchorages are only protected from winds with an easterly component.    So, a few days ago, Chris Parker, the weather router that we use, was forecasting strong westerly winds that would persist for at least a day, perhaps longer.  Nearly everyone listens to him so when he says “run for cover” that’s exactly what they do.

We did too, and Pandora had to find a spot with good protection from the west.  We chose Cambridge Cay as our “safe harbor”.  This anchorage, and it’s a pretty big one, is on the southern end of the Exumas Land and Sea Park, one of the environmentally protected areas of the Bahamas.   When we got here on Wednesday there were plenty of boats and by the time the west winds kicked in, and kicking they were, there were more than 30 boats sitting it out.

The strong winds really filled in on Friday morning and peaked with gusts near 30kts for much of the day.  Believe me, that’s a lot of wind.  Just a bit less than “gale” conditions, actually.  Overnight things finally calmed down and shifted to the north where they are expected to remain for the next day or so.   It was very good that we were in sheltered waters as the surf was pounding in any west facing anchorage and it would have been very uncomfortable, or worse, to be on an exposed shore.

I can’t say that it was pleasant hearing the wind roaring for two days but at least the anchorage was fairly calm.  We had been invited to have dinner aboard a friend’s boat at the other end of the harbor, perhaps ľ of a mile away, but we opted to stay aboard Pandora as getting over to our friend’s boat would have meant getting splashed plenty on the run over.  And, to get soaked on our way home after a few glasses of wine didn’t seem like a particularly good way to end the day.

Last winter we had a similar situation when we visited friends when the wind was blowing very hard and by the time we got back to Pandora following dinner, Brenda and I both had to strip in the cockpit and jump into the shower to get rid of all the salt.  We were drenched.

We decided we didn’t want a repeat performance so Brenda and I opted to stay aboard.  We did and enjoyed some of Brenda’s fresh baked peasant bread, cheese and wine.  Actually, a bit too much wine but I won’t get into that right now.

Speaking of technical problems (how’s that for a segue?), we have been using Brenda’s iPad as a key navigation device here in the Bahamas as the charts that are in my dedicated helm plotter doesn’t show enough detail for the Bahamas.  Our solution is to use the iPad loaded with a suite of charts and navigation software in addition to the paper chart books that we keep handy as well.

In any event, the iPad died unexpectedly a few days ago which freaked us out.   Unlike in the US, there are no buoys or other aids to navigation so knowing where you are at any given time can be a bit challenging, especially when you are surrounded by many low lying islands that all look the same.  Yes, we can get around with paper charts and careful plotting but it’s a lot easier more comfortable with the iPad open as a reference.    I always feel better if I am sure I am where I think I am.

On top of being a key source of navigation information, we also use the iPad for e-mail access.   So, here we were with no way to fix the iPad and now way to connect to the Internet.   Fortunately, our friend Joe on Onward, who we have known for a number of years, came to the rescue and offered for me to use his e-mail to order a new iPad.   Simple enough, right?

Yes and no… Unfortunately, the signal strength in this area is pretty weak so getting online was a challenge.  After messing around with Amazon.com for a bit, I was able to order a new iPad and arrange to have it shipped to Ft Lauderdale to an airfreight company.  From there (for a fee) the would fly it in to Staniel Cay.

Sounds simple, if not inexpensive.  Right?   Not so fast Bob.  Inadvertently,  I ordered the WRONG model and it would not work for navigation or e-mail aboard Pandora.  No problem, just cancel the order.   Not so easy…  I wasn’t able to cancel the order as I lost the signal at the “critical moment” and the “wrong” package shipped in spite of my best efforts.  Bummer.

Well, that was Thursday.   On Friday Joe let me visit again and order the correct item, this time from the Apple Store, and now that package too, is winging it’s way to Florida.  Somehow I have to be sure that the folks in FL are able to identify which is the “wrong” iPad and send it back.  Let’s hope that they get it right or I will be the owner of two new iPads, one right and one WRONG.  Yikes!

So, later next week we will have a new iPad flown into Staniel Cay and we should be back in business.   I won’t even talk about what sort of import duties I will have to pay on this.  If items are defined as “ship’s stores” or “equipment”, there isn’t duty to be paid but I am fearful that customs will define the iPad differently and charge me 40% of the value to bring it in.  And that’s on top of the cost of flying it in from Ft Lauderdale.   It’s going to be expensive, that’s for sure.  However, I have been told that computers are imported “duty free”.  Let’s hope that they are right.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the last few days, here in paradise, haven’t felt so “paradisal”.   However, after a rum punch, things always seem better.

Yesterday, after moving here to Compass Cay, Brenda and I did a bit of beach combing as the tide went out.  This area is particularly shallow so much of it is dry at low tide.  As a result, the shelling is really terrific.  We had a wonderful time walking all over the flats picking up shells.   We got a particularly colorful haul.

It’s interesting how different the shells are depending on what are of the Bahamas you are collecting in.  The haul was particularly colorful.

Along the way we spied a really big ray.  This fish, which looks like a giant black round rubber disk, was over 5′ wide.  I also saw a very pretty little shark, about 3′ long that swam right by me, only a few feet away.

The sandbars are such a lovely contrast to the deeper blue water.  Very pretty in the afternoon light.

Each day I listen to a group “Cruiseheimers” on the SSB radio for news on what’s going on and where folks are on their boats.  This “net” operates each day at 08:30 in the morning.  Interestingly, “Cruiseheimers” has this name as it’s designed to help cruisers who forget which day of the week it is after months aboard, keep their bearings.  Actually, if it weren’t for this group, we would not have known that today was the beginning of Daylight Savings Time.  The idea is that folks who live onboard end up contracting a case of “cruiseheimers”.   Get it?

One nice thing about this group is that it gets many boats on a single channel at the same time each day so you can find out where your fiends are.  Today our friends, Maureen and Bill on Kaluna Moo, who are currently in Puerto Rico, about 700 miles away, asked to talk to us.  We switched to a different channel and had a nice chat.  We hope to connect with them in April as they make their way north from their time in the Caribbean.   Maureen really took Brenda under her wing last winter as we muddled through our first winter in the Bahamas.  It will be fun to see them again.

Today it’s a beautiful day here in Compass Cay.  Our plans are for us to head to the Compass Cay Marina, that’s on a private island.  For a fee, $10 per person, we will be able to have the run of the island.  I understand that it’s very pretty.  Should be fun.
Lastly, this post is low on pictures as I had to send it via SSB radio, as our web access is zip (recall no iPad?).  I sent this to our son Christopher who did the post for us.   Thanks Chris.