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Raccoon to Double Breasted Cay, Jumentos Bahamas 4-3 to 4-6-10
When we left you we'd just anchored, quite alone, at House Bay in the
southern end of Raccon Cay following a marvelous sail. We have to say that we much prefer the isolation of solitary anchorages and deserted beaches, so this suited (or not - the weather was adequate to shed all that) us just fine. Once settled in, we got out our charts and the notes which Lydia had taken from two fellow cruisers on our last night in Long Island, giving us lots of local knowledge for the Jumentos and Ragged Islands. We'd heard such great things about the area that we were anxious to get on with our adventures. Our original plan had been to get all the way to the Ragged Islands, immediately, as being the best protection for the expected northeast to east-northeast winds to come in the next few days. However, the southern part of the Jumentos are virtually north-south oriented, and nearly any would do as well as the other. So, we chose to enjoy the area in which we found ourselves rather than double back on the way up. Of course, we'll have to pass these area when we head north again, but we won't have to take time for exploration and hunting. As we arrived close to dark, we settled in to relax for the evening. Bright and early on Easter morning, we went Easter Bean hunting. Cruisers in the Bahamas prize unusual seeds which are difficult to find in general, and of which you may have heard here, if you've followed my log for some time. Heart beans are shaped like hearts, and, when polished, have the glow of rich leather. Hamburger beans, depending on the age and condition in which they are found, are so named because they can be from dark to light tan on both sides, but have a dark strip running around the perimeter (like a hamburger in a bun). Both make nice jewelry pieces, either in necklaces, earrings or bracelets. Generally speaking, it requires huge amounts of digging among the seaweed and detritus found on lee shores to find any at all, but we'd had great reports of much easier hunting in this area. Accordingly, we made plans to take the dinghy to Johnson Island, reputed to have many attractions for visiting there. Because we are truly in the wilderness out here, our supplies are always of concern. If we exhaust our dinghy fuel (we have two 6-gallon tanks, full aboard), we are stuck for local travels, for example. We decided to use our PortaBote, a collapsable, lightweight, dinghy instead of the inflatable. It carries the same load as the inflatable, but isn't much use as a tugboat, with its hard sides. The very strong advantage for this area is that it is virtually indestructible; it would shrug off a grounding on a sharp limestone point. Better yet, it uses a 6HP engine, where the inflatable uses a 15HP. It's therefore much more economical to run at speeds useful for traversing the relatively greater distances out in these waters. We keep the PortaBote, collapsed to about the size of a surfboard, on the port forward rail. We assemble it by hoisting the bow with the spinnaker pole hoist line until the stern is flat on the deck. We last used the Bote in Georgetown last year, making it stiffer than it would be if we'd been using it regularly, so it took perhaps 10 minutes to assemble, rather than the usual 5 or so, due to the additional wrestling needed to overcome the desire for it to turn into a man-eating plant, folding itself back in on the one who's trying to hold the sides apart initially! We start by putting on the transom, and then each seat. Essentially, the seats spread the sides, and the nose comes to the point which provides the tension. Simple clips keep the seats in their receivers, and legs under the seats hold the bottom, which is very flexible, in position. Driving the PortaBote is just like any other dinghy or skiff, other than that, being made of high density polyethelene, the sides and bottom are relatively flexible. As the boat comes up on plane, the bottom flexes in synch with the waves, so it moves under your feet. It's also, being flexible, a bit odd to have it plane perfectly flatly, with the bow sticking to the water. For all that, it's as fast as our 15HP inflatable, so it let us wander a long way at a great deal less fuel consumption. Travel to Johnson Cay was at less than planing speeds, because we had to climb a lot of waves. The wind has persisted during our time in the Jumentos, so, in the open ocean part of our travels, we were seeing 3-4' swells. Not a problem for the PortaBote, it was a very dry ride, and we arrived in due course. As promised, it was a great anchorage for boats with just a LITTLE (like a few inches!) less draft than we had, but there was nobody there when we arrived. Pulling up on the eastern side of the beach, we were able to see the Atlantic side of the island, so we set out on a goat trail to get there, visions of great sea-bean hunting, as described to us by others, in our heads. Sure enough, we got there with no trouble, but before we even started, I'd already picked up a couple of heart beans, and several more along the way. OY! All the seaweed thrashing we'd done to find all of a couple in the last trip to the Bahamas, and, here they were, obvious and unencumbered! Making our way to the ocean side, we were hunting, also, for the "well" from which the goats on the island drank. We'd been told that we follow the path to the well, and, going past the well, the garbage/detritus piles were great hunting. Looking everywhere, we saw neither, until, finally, we went all the way to the south side of the ocean side. Sure enough, here's piles of trash, and, a little further in, a rock wall. Evidently, cruisers, over the years, have built this wall around what looked to be very brackish, or, certainly, very green water, but while we were in that area, well back from the ocean, we heard a kid bleat, and, right after it, his mother. Both had come from the ocean side, headed for the well, and, startled by seeing us, bleated. The kid looked pretty interested, and gamboled our way, but Momma was on VERY high alert, quickly bleating him back to her. We squatted to make ourselves less conspicuous and/or threatening, and, eventually, they went leaping onto the wall, and made their way to drink. After they'd left, we resumed our search, and, indeed, did find many more beans in the trash. Thus sated, we started to make our way back to the beach. We'd thought to bring our chart and our hand-held GPS, along with our handheld radio, in the event we got confused, or, worse, in distress, so that we could call for help (assuming anyone might be listening!). However, once there, we'd left both in the dinghy. Disoriented, we wandered around and climbed the rocks, only to find that we were about 90 degrees off where we needed to be. Once we saw the PortaBote, we of course went immediately to the path we'd taken, and started to explore the beach. Imagine our surprise (and which explained our directions on the well and the trash area) to find, about halfway down, a huge log with "Welcome to Johnson Cay" written on it, and, a little further down, a very obvious path marker which, we presumed, would have led us directly to the well! We've been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to dive for conch and hunt for fish, but the weather has been unseasonably both windy and cold, so neither of us has felt much like getting in the water, and today was no different. It WAS warm enough to go native, but the water was bracing. Thus satisfied that we had, indeed, seen and enjoyed the groundside pleasures (goats up close and personal, the well, the trails, the beans, the ocean and the beach), we set out to go back to Flying Pig. It was a pretty exciting ride, as the waves were now behind us. I continually played the throttle to keep from surfing down the waves and plunging the bow under the other side. It was still a dry ride, just a bit more exciting, and, certainly, faster than the way over. Along the way back, we investigated a couple of the beaches on the south side of Racoon Cay, but it was close to low water, and there were nearly all rocks or reef in the area. In settled weather, it would, no doubt, have been great snorkeling, but with the waves breaking on it, I certainly wouldn't want to be in the water, or even take the boat there, so we gave it a pass after taking a bit of a circumspect look at the realities. Once around the corner, however, we were again able to plane the Bote, and we made quick time back to Flying Pig. When we returned, we found that we were no longer alone. The anchorage just south of ours had a boat which we stopped and chatted up, having been offered a beer and some Easter candy they'd gotten in Duncantown, the only settlement in the Jumentos and Raggeds (our originally planned immediate destination). We traded boat cards, and then went on to our anchorage, where we found TWO more boats (emphasis due to our previous solitude). As it was getting late, we didn't go introduce ourselves, but mused on how quickly our neighborhood had become "crowded." (A fairly typical anchorage might have dozens, or even hundreds of boats, but when you're off in the out islands, even another boat is unusual.) We were pleased to see that our solar panels had again taken up some slack, and our battery deficit was once more reduced. A quick check of our over the ham radio interface, a supper of PBJs (we actually love them, but it's difficult to keep ourselves in bread, so we don't get them all that often), and we rejoiced in our succes in finding Easter Beans - especially since it took so much less effort than anything we'd previously experienced :{)) Monday, April 5th, we did our usual, sleeping in a bit, but getting up in time to hear from Chris Parker, our weather guru. Propagation was pretty good, and so we were able to get a good link to him, as well as provide a couple of relays to him from other cruisers he couldn't hear. Unlike the previous expectations of milder winds, the weather was actually getting a bit more severe, with higher winds than expected, as well as having more northerly component than previously forecast. Not a problem, we're snug here. After breakfast, we, as we have for the last week or so, tried to reach our friends in the Caribbean on one of the channels Chris uses, to no avail. As I'd spent a lot of time on the ham radio, both in conversation, attempts to contact our friends, and email, we decided to run the Honda generator to get our batteries back up to full when we got up, and, sure enough, our batteries were in float mode by the time we were ready to go. Rain had threatened, so we didn't leave immediately, but instead read a bit, but, shortly, the sun was out again, and we were anxious to leave. So, we set out to explore the northern part of Raccoon Cay, but on the way we stopped at the other two boats and dropped off or exchanged boat cards, as well as trading local knowledge. Our target for today was to see the "Blue Hole" on the island, described by others as actually being more of a green hole. Our chart and visual reference had it up perhaps a mile, and, armed with some local knowledge from the catamaran we'd just left, we headed into another deserted beach. As we approached the shore, Lydia pointed out a dark shape in the water, thinking it was a ray. I thought it was a shark... Sure enough, as soon as we got anywhere near, it took off like a shot, not stopping until nearly deep water. Unlike the caricature of sharks, despite it having been in very shallow water, this one's fin and tail never broke the surface. It was a pleasure to see it, as I have not had any opportunity to see any other than nurse sharks, which are the sloth version of sharks, not moving very fast at all.. This one, however, like most we've heard about here, was pretty shy, and couldn't wait to get away from this intruder (us), doing so at great speed. It wasn't all that big, probably only about 4 feet, but I look forward to seeing more of them, as the area is noted for sharks. We found the trail to the blue hole pretty easily, it having been marked by prior cruisers, and found it, indeed, to be green. It had tiny fish swimming around at the edges, apparently eating the grassy stuff on the immediate edge. We also found several immature conch which had died a normal death, leaving their colorful shells behind, so we took those along with several other treasures Lydia'd found. I also picked up many large, older, and thus all faded, natural death conch shells and placed them in a line next to the marker stones that showed the path to the blue hole, and we headed back home. After a brief stop for a late lunch, we headed out to see if we could find the 3-ft deep water supposedly threatening passing vessels off the southern end of the island. All our hunting proved fruitless, as our hand-held depth sounder showed nothing less than 8 feet of depth. That would help us feel better as we went on to our next stop, but wouldn't do us any good in the search for conch, likely in such a spot, based on our prior experience. On the way back, we stopped at the beach on the south end of the island, hoping to find a way across to the area we didn't attempt in the dinghy in the trip home from Johnson. Sure enough, while not marked, there was an obvious path running over to the other side. From the pellets everywhere, it was evident that this was a regular goat run, but we've not seen or heard any since we've been here... The reef area was, apparently, not sufficiently in the lee of the Atlantic, so there was nothing of interest on the beach, but the reef, were it a settled day, looked promising. All the glorious stories of snorkeling and hunting we'd heard have so far been insupportable on our part, as the water's never been suitable to enter... Disappointed, but invigorated from our earlier explorations, we again settled in for a quiet evening, and, after I'd checked the mail and had supper, we turned in, this time, "early." Early turned into late as both of us had real page-turners, and we didn't turn off the light until nearly 11PM, very far past "Cruiser's Midnight" of 8PM. Tuesday was a repeat of Monday in arising, including that, since I'd already gotten out the Honda generator, running it for a little. As we were already pretty high, it floated off pretty quickly, so we turned it off when the batteries were 93% full. The solar gain for the rest of the day should bring it right up. Oops. After Chris, this time with very poor reception (this time I had to use a relay) and an even worse forecast than before, along with our, again, failed attempt to reach our friends on the SSB (the "public" high frequency radio bands, no license needed), rain threatened. So, we read for a while, and, eventually, the sun did come out again. We really didn't have a great deal more to do here, other than that we wanted to explore the ruins in the area, and walk our own beach. So, of course, that's what we did :{)) The anchorage just to our south has a very substantial dry-stacked rock wall on it. There's nothing in any materials we have which indicates its purpose, but given the size of the rocks used, it took some substantial effort to accomplish. Further on, according to our charts, there's a "salt pan" noted. I looked for some path, and found something a bit likely, helped by the mostly- sand terrain there. Sure enough, through the vegetation, I saw what looked likely. Once we got there, it was obvious that this had been commercially used in the past, as there we rows and rows of rocks separating the huge pond into segments. The shoreline was crusty with salt. Like was the case in Long Island, apparently commercial sea salt recovery used to be an industry here, as this was no casual effort to accomplish. We also saw a pretty well preserved ruin, the walls of which, those which had crumbled revealed, had been made from conch shells filled in with concrete. What a marvelous use of local materials - conch shells in profusion, and limestone for the digging, it was easy to accomplish, if labor intensive. As we were coming back from the southernmost part of the beaches, we saw another figure walking toward us. Who but the folks on the boat from Water Cay? They'd anchored (yet ANOTHER boat!) in our anchorage just before we went exploring, and had the same idea we did. More lovely shells and another notable piece of driftwood in hand, we set off across the little sand bar between Racoon and the rock just off our anchorage. A local fisherman uses it as his lobster trap storage, apparently, as there were many of them stacked up there. When we got down from there, we got back in the dinghy to see if we saw any reason to get in the water to explore the area cut out from under the rock (many rocks in the Bahamas have been undercut by the waves, yielding reefs right under the shelf-overhang so made), but a tour of the area didn't look interesting enough to jump in, especially since it was still very windy and not at all hot (though very comfortable, lest folks think it's cold here; it was about 75*F), so we headed back to Flying Pig, in preparation for our trip to Double Breasted Cay. We'd learned that the tides in this area were similar to those of Nassau, only a few minutes apart, so we were able to time our departure to arrive at nearly high water. That would be important in that we had to cross a few areas which, at the lowest tides, would be likely to touch our keel. However, the moon state at the moment is such that low tide is well over a foot higher than the lowest, so we weren't worried about it. And, much to our pleasure, the sun, despite playing peek-a-boo (and occasionally spitting on us, to boot), had brought our batteries up to 97%. Stowing the generator in the cockpit again, we secured the below and above decks for an expected rock-and-roll trip, as we had to cross the area where we'd been surfing the PortaBote so recently. Prudent as always, we took the charts at face value, and made the detour around the water we found not less than 8' deep. Sure enough, we never found less than 3+ feet under our keel, which would have been more like a 10' depth, and turned toward the open ocean. As it was an extremely short trip, most of which would be directly into the wind, unlike our usual mode of travel, this time we motored. Surprisingly, the portion where we were beam-to on the waves was quite smooth. We figured that the wind velocity, 20 knots or more, had pushed hard enough against the rigging (also known as sailing under bare poles, if we'd not been motoring), that we assumed a slight heel all the time, making the boat more stiff. We reached the anchorage right at the presumed high tide, and went "shopping for water" - wandering around seeing how deep it was. As we are starting to expect in the Bahamas, our charts showed much less water than we actually found, but there were still plenty of areas way too shallow for us, so we threw out the hook well offshore. With all the wind, anchoring was actually easier, as the anchor bit, and on each chain length added, bit again. Like the many recent anchorings we've done, this one, too, was very solid. With the expected higher winds, however, I'd let out 100 feet of chain for our 8-9' depth. Oops. We're pretty close to the top of the island, and it's subject to "surge" - waves which come around the corner, and aren't in line with the wind. We got some rock and roll... The solution to that is normally to use a bridle - a line connected to a snubber but connected to either the stern or midships, and then to let out more chain, causing the nose to go to one side, rather than directly into the wind. Despite letting out enough that we were actually beam-to on the wind, the rolling actually got worse with that, so we decided to let it be as it was originally, using our normal snubber. The amount of rolling we were experiencing wasn't uncomfortable, so we'd just deal with it. We'd arrived in plenty of time to go exploring, so, off we went, again, to see if we could see the ocean side. Sure enough, there was a trail marked at the beginning with a stake and several benches, and, as the path through the vegetation gave way to mostly rock, flip-flops and plastic bottles were hung on low-lying branches of the ground-hugging vegetation, leading the way. The ocean side was impressive, to say the least. The waves were crashing onto the rocks, throwing spumes high in the air. Off to the north, we could see a beach area, and, fortunately for us, the ground wasn't the spiky limestone stuff usually found at this kind of shore, but fairly flat. A hike of a quarter mile or so put us on the beach, again. This was more like the others we've seen, in that there were huge branches or tree trunks thrown against the rocky cliff areas, and the sand areas were strewn with mostly plastic debris. I found a lovely float with a very substantial stainless steel fitting on it. I believe I'll use it to mark my anchor, something seen occasionally, particularly in crowded situations, so that someone doesn't accidentally drop theirs on yours or foul your chain when they anchor. It will also, should (very unlikely here) the anchor foul for some reason, immediately allow you to find it to dive down and free it. Lydia found a few more sea beans, and another couple of immature, natural death, conch shells to add to the collection to take home to family and friends. Thus encumbered, and, still, not finding the weather warm enough for any other than au naturel ambling, we returned home. The rock-and-roll had increased enough that Lydia wasn't all that enthusiastic about cooking dinner, so I headed below for one of my "boat dinners" - a concoction, in this case, of frozen veggies, Lipton/Knorr side dishes, added cheese and spices, all cooked together in a "bowl meal." Bowl meals are simplest and safest aboard a moving boat as they're less likely to find on the deck (typical would be to hold it in your hand rather than on a table), and eaten with a spoon. This evening's was pasta alfredo mixed with broccoli rotini stroganoff, supplemented by cheddar and swiss cheeses and some spices, including some grown-on-board basil. Delicious, filling and "comfort food" for the howling winds outside, I topped it off with one of my rare treats, some oreos for dessert. A quick check-in to the Maritime Mobile Service Net, logging our travels and position report for the "ShipTrak" service they offer, and I was off to The Flying Pig Log. We'll do some more exploration in the next couple of days before we move on, but until then, Stay Tuned! L8R Skip and crew, lying 22* 18.929'N/75* 16.033'W in 20+ knots of wind Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however." (and) "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hand (Richard Bach) |
#2
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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Raccoon to Double Breasted Cay, Jumentos Bahamas 4-3 to 4-6-10
I don't know what you're doing different, Skip, but in your last two
posts, your margins have been all screwed up. Please go back to whatever you were doing before. Stephen |
#3
posted to rec.boats.cruising
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Raccoon to Double Breasted Cay, Jumentos Bahamas 4-3 to 4-6-10
Sorry about that - I had no control over them, as they were being remailed
for me by my son through my gmail web account. Those are copies of winlink mail I sent to him, so it's probably a problem with gmail's web formatting of text. For the next few, we'll return you to your regular programming. L8R Skip, back in internet range -- Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog "You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it however." (and) "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hand (Richard Bach) "Stephen Trapani" wrote in message ... I don't know what you're doing different, Skip, but in your last two posts, your margins have been all screwed up. Please go back to whatever you were doing before. Stephen |
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