Bahamas trip

[rfrance0718]

Great trip! I've wanted to sail a trailerable to the Bahamas for a long time. Never got there in my boat, but my buddy's Presto 30 was really up to the task! I'll give you some headlines for now and then do details and pics as I get the chance.

Launching at Harbour Town Marina in Dania Beach may not be the best choice!

Nearly run over by a freighter in Ft. Lauderdale Harbor.

Night crossing was pretty cool.

Trying to clear Bahamian customs when you've lost your cell phone also not great idea.

Double Breasted Cay anchorage was probably most scenic.

At Green Turtle Cay we docked at a pier that had been wrecked by Forian in 2019. It was mostly standing but not connected to shore. The price was right.

Motored against 20n breeze and 8 foot rollers outside of Whale Cay. Presto chewed it up and spit it out!

Man o War Cay is very picturesque and interesting. Not very crowded, maybe because the town is dry.

Hopetown was beautiful and fun. Historic lighthouse still uses kerosene lamp and is manually turned, with mercury bearing!

We left Hopetown on the 2nd and Lynette Hooker met her fate on the 4th. Sad sad story. Terrible reporting.

The wind blew out of the ESE between 20 and 35n for about 10 days.

Surfing downwind on outside of Whale Cay was awesome.

Last night at West End was beautiful, as was our whole two weeks.

We were amazed how much the current was slowing us down on the way back across the Gulf Stream, but it wasn't the culprit.

Ft Lauderdale Harbor just as scary coming back, at 2:00 AM.

Dragging two carbon fiber spars for several miles on the freeway is also not a great idea.

I learned a lot!

[rfrance0718]

OK, I don't have any pics of the mast near disaster, so I'll tell about that.

We were heading north on the way home, at 1:00 AM on I77. I was driving and all seemed well. At some point I noticed a truck riding in the left lane seemingly trying to pass. Except he didn't pass, he just stayed there. After a bit I slowed down some, but then he slowed down as well. So I sped up some, and he didn't drop behind us. OK, what the hell us going on? I looked into the mirror again and , oh shit, the base end of our masts are over the port side of the boat dragging about 2/3 of the way across the left lane! The trucker was blocking for us!

I was able to pull over and get far enough off the berm so that the masts weren't still out in the right lane. The top ends of the masts were somehow still tied onto the trailer tongue crutch. If the spars would have been metal, or had stays, there would have been sparks. As it was they just road along smoothly, slowly having the bases getting ground at an angle like someone had machined them on purpose.

I actually think it will be a relatively easy repair, as the fix won't have to do anything but fill the space at the bottoms of the tubular steps.

Mark has been towing boats around for 60 years. He's a good engineer and has fashioned numerous systems for tying down boats and holding spars. In this case he made a miscalculation. The tops of the masts rest on a standard trailer tongue crutch with two cradles. The masts are tapered and only about 4" diameter at the top.  For the base end of the masts he found that there was a std pvc tube with a diameter that matched the masts perfectly. The mast steps are tubes about 5 feet long, similar to how Laser masts are stepped. Mark used a 7 foot long pvc tube and made a double cradle, similar to the front end but with larger diameters. He then bolted to cradles to a pvc cap and glued it on. The cap, as it turned out, wasn't made with the same thickness of pvc and it just split apart.

This could have been much worse!

[pgandw]

Great cruise to the Bahamas. I am envious. I'd love to do another one, but I think that time has passed me by.

I had spent my junior high years living in Nassau, with family vacation to Man O War cay, and school field trips to Bimini and Eleuthera. I was itching to go back and visit. As a young LTJG, got assigned to Coast Guard AirSta Miami (1977-1981, against my desires). Went to the Miami Boat Show and bought a Venture 22. Had a blast with it in the northern Florida Keys and Biscayne Bay, but felt it was too lightly built to go to the Bahamas.

The following year, traded the Venture in on an ODay 25. This was a capable yacht in comparison (and my payments were hefty). Carefully tracked my leave, and the calendar, and made arrangements to take 4 weeks off in Sept-Oct '79 to make the Bahamas cruise. Couldn't afford to equip it very well - had a VHF, a handheld RDF, and a compass. Had an area chart, and the hand drawn chartlets in the Yachtsman's Guide to the Bahamas (there were no harbor charts for the Bahamas back then).

So DW and I set off in the evening for an overnight sail to Bimini, leaving from Biscayne Bay. We were becalmed all night and I realized we were going to miss Bimini, and if I didn't get that Chrysler 9.9 hp cranking, we were going to miss West End, too. Only had 6 gal of gas, and that motor burned nearly a gal/hr. So every time there was a puff of wind, turn off the motor, sails up, and make whatever we could to the east. I was getting really worried, but the motor was still running when we pulled into West End the next afternoon. Bahamian Customs comment was nice dinghy, where's your real boat?

Set off to do the Abacos from north to south. Back then, October was the off season, no tourists around, and nobody locked doors. So we spent a night at Green Turtle Cay in a marina club house. Eventually got down to Little Harbour, where 20+ kt NE winds made the waves break across the bar.

Waited 3 days for good weather which never came. But I had to be back at work when the 4 weeks were up. So we crossed the bar through the breakers for the run down to Spanish Wells. The motor head went under pitching up on one wave, but the motor kept on trucking. Once out in the ocean, it was a wild surfing ride in the waves with water squirting up the centerboard pennant pipe into the cockpit. Never thought that boat could plane, but it did. Easy sail on to Nassau, where we rented a scooter and went to see all my boyhood haunts.

At some point, some steaks we had in the icebox went bad, and the juice got into the drain, unbeknownst to me. But a large shark knew, and banged against the rudder and hull as he was trying to get at the meat.

The route home was Nassau to Bimini, and then back across the Gulf Stream. During the overnight passage to Bimini, around midnight, DW told me something was wrong with the rudder. At that time, I could just see the Bimini lighthouse light against the clouds. Discovered bottom gudgeon was broken. Winds were up to about 20 kts. Decided to try anchoring as we should have been on the Berry Island banks in the middle of nowhere. Barely managed to get the anchor line cleated before I ran out of rode. I figured the anchor would surely drag in the waves and wind, and we would be in Cuban waters by daylight. Daylight came, and couldn't see land anywhere. So all I could do was assume we had stayed put and try to make Bimini somehow.

DW, bless her heart, suggested steering with the outboard. So I extracted every bit of strength in my shoulders and back, leaning over the transom, trying to hold course to Bimini. It worked! Docked in Bimini on Friday, and collapsed in delight. Called my boat dealer, who did not have any spare gudgeons, and didn't know when he could get one. I was due to be at work on Monday and was desperate. So we took Chalk Airlines seaplane back to Miami, and left the boat at Bimini.

A week later, gudgeon in hand, father-in-law and I flew Chalk back to Bimini and I stood in the water at the dock and replaced the broken gudgeon. We anchored out that night, and set sail back to Homestead the next morning. Beautiful dark night with stars and shooting stars. After a few hours sailing, tried to get an RDF fix to see what the Gulf Stream was doing to us. Wasn't happy with the fix, and it showed us well south of where I estimated we were. An hour later, another RDF fix showed us even further south. I couldn't figure out why we were so far off course, but hid it from my father-in-law who wasn't a sailor.

Then he decided to get up from his seat and get lunch and a drink. The compass suddenly swung about 30 deg. What the ....? I finally suspected and asked what he had in his pockets. He pulled out a jackknife. I then had him sit down and get up from where he had been sitting, and the compass swing repeated. The fixes were right, I adjusted our course, and we made it back to Homestead.

The memories are still with me, nearly 50 years later.

Fred W
Stuart (ODay) Mariner  Sweet P

[rfrance0718]

Great story, thank you! We were no where close to being that adventurous. Chart Plotter, Waterway Guide Book, internet info, In Reach device, brand new 9.9 ho Yamaha, and a Tiller Pilot. And the weather was very nice to us.