we don't know where we're going to be tomorrow you okay with that we could be
in any one of three places
Yeah
it's day seven and we are planning on a landfall
tomorrow but we're not sure where we've got three options right now the initial
option was flying fish marina on the southeast side of Long Island that would
involve us stalling around midnight and sailing at about three knots keeping the
boat speed low so we arrived there in the morning it's probably not our
preferred option we would rather keep proceeding north to Stella Maris which
is on the north end of Long Island about another 60 miles further on but we'd
have to round Cape Santa Maria and our arrival time across the banks would put
us there in the late afternoon which is not ideal if we want to be able to see
any hazards in the water at the moment it's totally touch-and-go on either of
those two options if we can keep a boat speed of around five and a half knots
all night then Stella Maris is definitely on the table if this wind
dies out then we'll probably end up the stalling around the south end of Long
Island and hopping in the flying fish but there's a third option to go into
Rum Cay towards the north end of Long Island and although there's no customs
and immigration clearance there apparently was wiped out in the last
hurricane so such of the vagaries of the weather and navigation
so it's sort of 11th hour three options we don't know where we're gonna be tomorrow
Some things haven't changed much and 500 years
Long Island was Christopher Columbus's third stop in the Caribbean
after San Salvador and Rum Cay
he mistakenly thought he had arrived in Southeast Asia
or the East Indies as it was known
it's an insight into how little was known about the size of the world
he had traveled only 4,000 miles
it was another 30 years before Magellan's voyage
established the actual sailing distance
which is some five times greater
On Luckyfish we were discussing navigation problems of a more
contemporary nature
What are you reading Zaya?
Learning about Bahamas
Learning about the Bahamas. You've got the Waterways Guide. Ahhh, ok
It's been a tough book to get into that's the first waterways guide we've seen and it seems
to start off at a level where they've been going 40 years and all their readers
understand their way of doing things but to be honest I found it really difficult
as a newbie beginning to understand that book.
A lot of the maps
don't have the place names that are referred to in the text
which i think is an absolute flaw in any guidebook
It's full of advertising, full of self-promotion
and really not
it's losing sight of newbies like us who just wanted the basics
where to get weather for all forecasts easily
entrances and exits from harbors
all the salient information should be at your fingertips in a good guidebook
so yeah a little bit disappointed with the waterways guide but perhaps once we get
to know it better we all grow to love it
Our recommendation for cruising guides
to the Bahamas are the books by Steven Pavlidis
and the Explorer charts available in hard copy and
digital for your chart plotter.
Coral Sea cruising
Lovely flat seas in behind the reef of Turks and Caicos
hard to believe it's the North Atlantic
So pleasant to be here on this beautiful flat sea
good stiff wind of 17 knots
blowing us exactly where we want to go
Any fish?
Dont ask.
[LAUGHS]
[MUSIC]
Well it's 1:30 in the morning on the seventh night out
and as luck would have it, the wind did pipe up this evening
it got up to 17, 18 knots and held that for a
good five or six hours just after the sunset
so we've managed to make some good speeds sitting at about
6 or 7 knots sometimes more
and that's allowed us to continue on towards Cape Santa Maria and
arrive at Stella Maris in the morning or sometime tomorrow
The winds dropped back to around 10 to 13 knots at the moment
The boats still going along very nicely at five to six knots
but there's probably the largest ship we've encountered so far coming up on our port
side in about an hour. It's a 335 meter long cargo ship
bound for New York, and errr at 335 meters long
it's virtually like a small island
and you do have to make a decision about with you gonna pass in
front or behind these things.
This one at the moment looks like our
closest point of approach will be around a mile or so
however with the vagaries of the wind and the fact that we're running wing and wing
with the foresail and the main at the moment
we're rather restricted in our maneuverability
and we don't have any control over our speed that's purely up for the wind so
we're monitoring that one pretty closely and
we will see in about 30 minutes or so what decision we will make
At the moment it looks like we'll pass in front which isn't ideal
and we're also down below our layline for Cape Santa Maria, so
it's probable we'll just gybe the main across and
that'll have both sails set on the starboard side, the boat will be on port tack
and allow us to head up into the wind and either stall the boat, let him pass
or simply sail by his stern.
Looking forward to arriving in the turquoise
waters of the Bahamas tomorrow. Cape Santa Maria down western tip of Long
Island and then back east again across the banks as they call them, these shallow
reef flats with coral bommies and rocks and so forth
it promises to be a really interesting morning and errrr,
[SIGH]
That's Zaya making noises while she's sleeping
I better make sure she's ok.
Anyway I'll sign off now. Chat soon.
Good morning. Good morning.
How good is this? finally off Cape Santa Maria we're off the northern tip
of Long Island after what?
Yeah, it's there
Yeah
about an hour away and then a bit of a beat down the
other side probably end up motoring.
We'll see what the conditions look like and
then turn in across the banks come back towards where we are now
on the other side of the island
So honey what can you tell us about our pod it's looking very homey
after a week at sea. It does, it develops quite a comfortable feel all the things
you need are all close at hand.
In fact you barely have to move your feet to reach anything
it's very convenient
Chart plotter, sunscreen
Shorts
Ohhh, the shorts are always yeah
women's things hanging from various parts
which is very nice
safety harnesses on hand
What's that? a pair of knickers on a winch
or a candlestick holder as
Simon would call them
We actually had a guy come on the boat and sit on the pod and look at our
four winches and say that they were really pretty candlestick holders
Is that what they're for?
he didn't have a lot of boating background
It's probably one of the funniest things I've ever heard anyone say about a boat
He was very innocent and he was fine with his own lack of knowledge about boats
[MUSIC]
We are coming to Bahama....
Yay.
"When I was a young boy
I wanted to sail round the world
That's the life for me
living on the sea
the spirit of the sailor
circumnavigates the globe
the lust of the pioneer
will acknowledge no frontiers
I remember you by
thunder clap in the sky
lightning flash
tempers flare
round the Horn, if you dare
I just spent six months in a leaky boat
Lucky just to keep afloat
Aotearoa
rugged individual
glisten like a pearl
at the bottom of the world
The tyranny of distance
didnt stop the Cavalier
so why should it stop me
We'll conquer and sail free"
Almost there?
We're zig-zagging our way along a channel at the moment
Sort of a channel
The place where we are going, the marina,
is virtually behind us now, but we are having to go around a
coral cay where the water is only a metre deep
so we cant even squeeze through.
Beautiful Bahama.
[MUSIC]
Slow the boat down
Do you think it's gonna be a nice place to stop or ?
looks like it
looks really peculiar doesn't it?
tiny little entry
Well we chatted to them on the radio
and they seem to think they've got some place for us to stop
We'll see
[MUSIC]
We came up from Sth Africa
We sailed across the Atlantic on that boat
and errr
sort of share our journey with people who are interested
Our mission to make it to the Hui in Florida was off to a good start
1237 miles since leaving Grenada
in seven days 20 hours at an average speed
of 6.6 knots
but we were unclear about the next leg
A tricky passage between the reefs
to Georgetown.
We needed to find some sailors
Here we are at the Stella Maris resort.
On the plus side we still haven't cleared in so they are pretty casual about
immigration and customs. That's a plus.
... yeah, so are you a collector?
Well I had 11, I Ieft 8 of them
Really?
I had 8, but we are moving down here
and, so, I had to re-home some of them
because I could not bring them all
that's fantastic
so I brought these
I love it, I love it
on the negative side it probably wasn't the most
ideal place to begin an Exumas cruise
if you want to gather information about where to go
We bombed out on two counts.
One there's no sailors here
and 2. the internet doesn't work
[LAUGHS]
so, as far as getting some local knowledge goes
I don't know. We are going to have to push on to the next port and
hopefully find some other boaties there you know the area.
We're gonna stay in the marina tonight
push on tomorrow - probably Georgetown, we'll see
Are you enjoying Stella Maris?
Oh yeah, very much.
after our journey
It's a welcome break isn't it?
Yeah, a welcome break.
Great.
Are we going to go out and meet our friends at the bar?
Are we going to the bar or the beach?
Bar!
Because that bar...
Good answer!
... has a lot of kids..
ahhh, yeah, no we dont want that, no..
cool
we want to go to the adults one...
The bar it is.
What are you up to? What are you writing?
Just keeping a record of our last couple of days
time of arrival, weather conditions
sort of decisions we had to make in order to get here on time
which worked out very well
before you forget them all
Oh yeah, absolutely
forget the names
yeah, that's the thing, when you have these experiences washing by
it doesnt take too many days before it all becomes a blur
Cheers
The bar with no barman
[LAUGHS]
You've heard of the pub with no beer
This is the bar with no barman
Plenty of drink. It's a tantric bar
[LAUGHS]
mmmm I can feel the alcohol
it great,
but give me one
They just dont want anyone getting free drinks for their best hour....
Oii! Yeah, Happy Hour!
Yeah, can you believe that? This is Happy Hour and there is no barman
This is the Unhappy Hour. Their Unhappy Hour.
[LAUGHS]
With landfall it was time to liberate lizard
we chose night time to give him the best chance
after catching him in a towel he
lept out as I was passing it to Zaya
For a heart-stopping few seconds he
scampered across the aft deck
before plunging straight into the water
and straight into the mouth of a lurking fish
it was heartbreaking
and we thought about him for months after
So I started this Ode to Lizard
but I'm no poet, so fair warning
Ode to Lizard
Well it went from ode to limerick a bit there at the end
Yeah it definitely needs some work
Can any of you help?
Leave your suggestions in the comments
Next week on Luckyfish
I do some surgery on Stewart
We navigate a tricky passage
Arrive in Georgetown
and run into engine problems