Great Sale Cay to Cave Cay

Day 13: Sunday March 8, 201

Sleep didn’t come easily last night.  We both finally fell asleep but with the boat swinging and making all of its noises, it was a somewhat restless sleep.  Had the anchor not drug yesterday, we probably would have done better.

We shared a 3 egg bacon and cheese omelet and marveled in the fact that the wind and finally moderated quite a bit and the skies were mostly clear.  It was going to be another great day in the Bahamas.



On hard ground on Cave Cay

After cleaning up a messy boat and doing a few little maintenance chores, we got underway at about 10:30. I had noticed that the motor was missing and didn’t want to run up to full rpms so I dug out a new set of spark plugs and installed them.  We also found water in the bilge under the v-berth so I sponged that out and cleaned out a box of spare parts that had gotten wet.  This was fresh water that was obviously there from the leaking frozen water line. 

It was still quite breezy so I set a reef in the main before I raised it.  We pulled the anchor and I unfurled the jib as we ran out of the anchorage with a following breeze.  Once out of the cove, we headed into the wing, raised the main and turned about heading south on a beam reach.  The easterly winds gave us an exciting sail at about 6.3 knots which is about boat speed for this boat.  We traveled 6.5 miles on this tack.

Our goal is the small Hawkbill Cay that lies just off of the much larger Little Abacos Island and the village, Fox Town.  I calculated it to be about 30 miles.  We would anchor on the lee side of Hawkbill and take the dinghy into Foxtown.  This destination is approximately due east of where we had spent the night but to get there we had to head south 6 plus miles to round a shallow reef.  When we made the turn, we headed directly into the easterly winds that were ripping so we had to drop the sails and proceed to bang head on into the waves.  Our speed immediately dropped to about 4 knots and a bit of quick calculating alerted me to the fact that we were not going to be able to get to Hawkbill before dark and one does not want to approach anchorages in the Bahamas in the dark. 





Cave Cay vegetation
 

Two options remained, we could turn around and sail back to Great Sale Cay and plan for an earlier start tomorrow (which was not an appealing option for us) or we could look for another destination.  I checked the charts and found a little group of Cays that the guide books described as beautiful, interesting and seldom visited.  They said that the anchorages were quaint and the skin diving was good.  The main island, Cave Cay, is about 16 miles due east from where we were when I started looking. 

Motoring and banging into the 3 to 4 foot waves was not unlike what we had

More Landscape

encountered in the “Crossing” except that it was a beautiful, sunny, warm day over beautiful clear Bahamian water.  We arrived at Cave Cay and dropped the anchor at about 4:30.  We agree that this an interesting place with no other boats visible. 

We settled in, enjoyed a warm beer, took brief naps and prepared supper.  This evening we dined on canned steak and mashed potatoes and gravy over flat bread.  Interesting.  After dinner we, since I finally had cell service, I contacted our sons to let them know that we were still alive.  And, we entertained ourselves with a rousing game of dominos at which Janine beat me again.  We crawled into bet at about 9:00.

Not long after getting into bed, my cell phone alerted me to the fact that I had just received an email.  I had previously had the data roaming function deactivated so that I wouldn’t get any emails.  It turns out that I must pay for all emails coming and going while we are outside of the US.  So when I looked at my phone, I had received 72 emails.  All but about 4 of them were the unwanted ones that I had now paid for.  What can you do!  Go back to bed!