2015 0116 The End of Eluthera

01/17/15 It’s been a long time since I’ve written my blog and lots to cover.  I’m writing this just prior to midnight on 01/27/15 on the night watch.  It’s the first time it’s been smooth enough to write.  Hopefully I can remember enough to keep this interesting.  I’ve made several mental notes so let’s go through the Post-Its of my mind.

After having passed through the cut, there was nothing stressful on the agenda this day.  A good sailing day again and clear weather.  The winds were out of the east and made close to a beam reach.  It was a comfortable sail and we only ran the motor to go through the channel after passing Rock Sound Harbor.  The channel was at least a mile wide and nothing like the cut.  We could have left the motor off but turned it on for safety.

Choosing anchorages in advance is something of an art.  Sometimes it’s very easy where the chart depicts the anchorage where you want it, the electronic charts match up, and then we find reviews of the spot from sites like ActiveCaptain.com.  We try to plan to sail for almost all of the hours of daylight with the last hour set aside for anchoring.  The well-known anchorages would have left us about 13 miles short of the end of Eluthera Island.  That doesn’t sound like much if you don’t sail, but to a sailor that’s about two hours of travel time which is considerable when you only have 11 hours of daylight to work with.  We did find and anchorage depicted on the charts near the end of the island, but couldn’t find any corroborating sources.  The anchor symbol was a little offshore but they often put the anchorage symbol a little off the mark for clarity.

We arrived at what we thought was our anchorage which seemed to be a tiny bay at a resort.  You never can tell how big a harbor is from the chart, and as we approached the bay it looked tiny.  We made our well-marked approach cautiously.  We went into this spot which had a couple boats tied with the hopes of tying up ourselves.  There was no room or people.  The place seemed abandoned.  This bay was not much bigger than Lady Valkyrie which made Ouida nervous.  I was comforted by the knowledge that we were capable of stopping our boat and backing out if necessary.  Even more comforting is the ability of a catamaran with its twin engines to spin on a dime.  This is what we did and exited without incident.  Ouida was remarkably calm and confident throughout despite the tight quarters.

With the bay not what we expected, we were on our own to find an anchorage.  Everything we own is on Lady Valkyrie and we do our best not to take unnecessary risks.  Anchoring without prior knowledge of how well the anchor would hold through the night is something we try to avoid.  Let CPT Kirk go where no man has gone before.  We’re happy on the beaten path.   If we’re not confident of the holding, we would have to take turns being up all night on anchor watch.    We found a spot and dropped anchor in what we hoped would be deep sand.  The anchor held and I dove on it to confirm its viability.  There were small patches of sand but they were only a couple inches deep covering slab rock.  We did manage to drop our anchor in one of those patches, but it slid and was wedged beautifully under the slab and was holding great in that direction.  I wouldn’t risk it in another direction, but the winds were consistent at 18 knots out of the east.  If the anchor were to drag, there was nothing to hit for 40 miles.  No people or internet, but we would be fine for the night.