Captain's Choice blog: Ahhh....Mother Nature and back in the US

The two rules when boating are #1 never have a schedule and #2 always follow rule #1. This is especially true when dealing with mother nature. From Tuesday - Thursday we think we had more rain than we've had in 3 months.

Wednesday morning it was still raining from Tuesday and we were worried Allison's flight would be cancelled again. The problem with the airports here (Marsh Harbour and Treasure Cay) is that they do not have the technology to land planes at night or low ceiling circumstances, they have to be able to land manually by sight. Luckily the rain let up by 10 am, giving Allison & I a chance to walk the beach one more time before she left. When she got to the airport she was delayed by about an hour, we commented that she could just work from the boat and head back to the states with us and fly home from Florida...she was tempted. Her flight finally left and she arrived home safe and sound.
We had made arrangements to head down to Treasure Sands for a late lunch with Jim & Mandy on Shell Belle. We brought umbrellas, they brought rain jackets, the skies didn't look great but we had high hopes we could walk the beach to get there. Nope, not happening as we started out we had sprinkles and you could see the heavy rain moving in. We grabbed a taxi and headed down for a delicious lunch and good conversation. During the taxi ride I mentioned to our driver that I didn't see any retail stores for the Bahamians to buy clothes or shoes and inquired where they go shopping. He told us that they go to Florida for vacation and purchase everything there. The government lets them bring back $400 each duty free. If there are family or friends that can't afford to go to Florida they shop for them.
The skies cleared as we were eating and just as I was going to say we could walk back the skies opened up again and it poured. We contacted Lucky, our taxi driver, and he came back to get us. Funny thing is when I texted Allison to make sure she got to Florida ok she said they had no rain leaving Treasure Cay and it was right during our rain storm.

The storm that moved through has brought winds and waves, so we are stuck again in paradise. For the next leg of the trip we have to go in the ocean for a few miles at Whale Cay Passage, locally known as "the whale". Thursday we headed to the beach with the binoculars to get a visual and our hand held radio to call and see if anyone had current knowledge about "the whale". We were told it was "doable, 6-8' waves". Like we have said before "doable" is relative to the comfort of the crew, this crew is not comfortable with 6-8 foot waves on the beam. We headed back to the boat, thought we'd spend the afternoon at the beach club but mother nature had other ideas as the skies opened up again, another free boat wash.
All of our weather forecasts say Friday is about the same at "the whale". We listened to the chatter on the radio, everyone wants information on "the whale", what we heard was "don't go" & "it's better than yesterday" & "I saw my life pass before me". We decided it was a no go for us, Saturday was looking much better.

With one more day at Treasure Cay we headed to lunch Friday at the Bahama Beach Club with Roy & Rhonda from Parker Blue. We met them in the Berry's and it was nice to catch up and see where they had been this past month. Friday night we had docktails with 4 other boaters, most everyone was planning on leaving Saturday morning with the weather window and everyone was going in different directions.

Saturday ended up being a beautiful morning and allowed us to get past "the whale" with just a little roll. All of the raging seas were gone for now, until the next wind storm kicks it up. We traveled 25 miles to Green Turtle Cay and stayed at Leeward Yacht Club. We had the afternoon to explore and on the advice of the office staff we got in the dinghy and headed to Coco Bay to see the turtles. We brought along some squid that we had in the freezer for fishing to try and attract the turtles but they didn't seem interested. We did end up seeing a couple sharks and rays along with some turtles.
Our next stop was No Name Cay. Never say never...we really had no intention of going to see "swimming pigs" but they were on the next cay over from us and we were in the dinghy and the weather was perfect so we went. They were not swimming, one walked into the water, They were eating the food that all the people were throwing at them...if you've ever been at a farm and seen pigs it was the same thing except there was sand and a beach. Later we were told by a local that those pigs don't really swim like the ones in the Exumas. We enjoyed watching the people that were throwing food at them and trying to avoid the pigs nudging at them looking for more food than watching the pigs.

Saturday night Mark poured over the weather reports and said we had 2 options. We could rent a golf cart Sunday morning and explore the island then leave around 2 and head to an anchorage so we could cross back to the states on Monday or we could stay in the Bahamas and it would be at least 7 days before we could leave and head to the states. Ahhh mother nature, we only wanted a couple more days, a week was just more than we wanted and there was no guarantee we could cross in a week. We ended up renting the golf cart Sunday morning and exploring the island. It's definitely a cute cay and the Leeward Marina was a great place to stay.
We toured the whole island and were back on the boat and underway by 12:30, we headed to Great Sale Cay (67 miles) and anchored in 10' of water with great holding. There was 5 other power boats anchored there, we think the sail boats probably left to do an overnight sail back to the states. Great Sale Cay is uninhabited and it was so dark that we had an amazing view of the stars. We just wish we knew the constellations or had the app on our phone to tell us what we were looking at!

Sunday we were up and underway before first light, actually the moon and stars guided us out of the anchorage. One boat left in the middle of the night and another was underway as we were leaving. It ended up being a long day, 11 hours on the water as we traveled 137 miles to Ft. Pierce, Florida where we anchored in Faber Cove, 9' of water with good holding. Mark tried his luck at fishing on the way over and caught a barracuda that we released right away. Yikes their teeth look sharp! A little later he caught a king mackerel that we also released. The crossing wasn't as smooth as when we went to the Bahamas but as crossings go it was probably considered good. We had "confused seas" with waves going in 2 different directions but most of the time they were on the stern (back) which gave us a little push.
Just like that, here we are back in the states, our Bahamian adventure over. We never say goodbye...instead it's "see you later"!