Captains Log 02/24/07

Located in NW harbor of Manjack Cay, Abaco

Today we ran into our first trouble in paradise. No we didn't hit the bottom and good thing that we didn't because the boat would have definitely suffered serious hull damage. The weather report was calling for SW-W winds which makes it hard for our 7'+ draft to find shelter in this part of Abacos. So the only cove I found was on the NW tip of Manjack Cay. It's a harbor with plenty of water but the guide never mentioned that its exposed to swell from the N, NE. And it was. Coming in we felt 4-6 foot swell bouncing off the razor sharp limestone rocks and coral heads and making the passage to the cove very bouncy. On top of that the afternoon breeze had picked up and we were very uncomfortable. Especially when our depth sounder started reading 10s. These charts are from 2003, and the area might have gotten shoaled up a bit. But in these swells its no time to be seeing shallow water. We dropped the sails immediately, and started motoring. Paper chart was in the cockpi
t and Crystal was plotting our position every 5 minutes. Because of the waves due to wind out of the south and the large swell out of the north, we were barely moving. Everyone says that your best navigation tool in Bahamas is your eyes, and reading the color of the water. I think that does not apply to us. We have to be able to read water of 10' or more. That's hard if the sand was stirred up due to swell and wind. Anyhow charts confirmed that water should be 10' MLW but it soon went up to 11 and 12, and before you know it was 14. Much better. At the end of all the frustration we realized that the cove is not that calm and although it provides good protection from the wind and wind induced waves, the boat was rolling viciously from the NE swell that was coming from atlatnic ocean. So bad that we couldn't do anything, we got no sleep and didn't eat dinner that night. On top of that the swell unhooked the anchor at about 1AM, so I had to re-anchor in the dark. We
somehow managed to do that and we'll reconsider our strategy tomorrow morning. I think the swell will subside in a day or so.
The next day we got up and I added a second anchor, danforth, so that we no loner drift towards a heavy surf over hard sharp limestone. The surf looked very pretty, but not if you are getting closer and closer to it by the minute. Anyway, I got the rode and a danforth anchor into the dinghy and rode out about 100 yards away from the surf. Dropped the anchor which amazingly hooked in pretty well on first try. So I picked up the man 45lbs CQR and decided to rest for a bit. The swell was noticeably dying down and after a sleepless night we got few hours in the morning. By noon Crystal was already making brunch and a pot of coffee, and I was anxious to snorkel and see how the danforth anchor was holding. Since I was already in the water, we decided to get the danforth out and hook the main anchor. That took some work as the sand was reinforced by thick roots of the sea-grass, and was hard. After few tries, we got the anchor to stay in. But it again required my assistanc
e in angling the nose and pressing it into the sand while Crystal was reversing. I went back later on in the day and saw that the nose was digging deeper and deeper into the sand. That's it! But I would hate to see what happens if it blows 30knots. We'll have to reconsider our strategy in stormy weather. Both of our big anchors are CQR, which is having a terrible time hooking into Bahamian seafloor. I hope this changes.