A Quiet Bay

March 14, 2022

We chose to stay in White Sound on Sunday, at anchor, while the winds continued to blow. For the first time in a long time we ventured out into a restaurant. In The Bahamas that is often an outdoor affair anyway, and we went to Pineapples Bar and Grille at Green Turtle Cay. A single plate of chicken fingers and fries, with two beverages was $40. Ouch food here is expensive. A short walk about the town provided more evidence of the destruction caused by Hurricane Dorian. The walk also reminded me that once you get out of our big cities in the first world, people in places like this really live life. There were kids playing in the street and men chatting while leaning up against poles and families hanging out together. All within the space of two miles. Not a single person rushing anywhere (not even our server at Pinapples).

One interesting note, we met John and Sophie from S/V Letitia again. We had introduced ourselves in Nunjack Cay because S/V Letitia was from Goderich, but John and Sophie had no connection to Goderich itself. (My family has a long history in Goderich)

Back on the boat, Jinhee attended to some business and I took the opportunity to rip out a large part of my water pump upgrade to try to get a working water system back.

The details of the loss of prime in the pump is probably not all that interesting to those reading about our adventure, but it was a very simple thing. There was a ‘T-valve’ installed that was letting pressure out of the system. Once removed, things worked marvelously. Of course it wasn’t that easy to find, but it didn’t take too long.

Afterward we ran across the bay to visit another Nordhavn couple. Dell and Carrie have just started their cruise on Elusive, a Nordhavn 41 and we were happy to get a short tour of the boat. As hull #5, it is early in the build cycle. The Nordhavn 41 has only been available for about 2 years and they have already sold about 40 of them, hull #5 was just delivered a couple of months ago. Incidentally we saw her at the dock in North Palm Beach as the commissioning was underway. From what I learned, they are considerably behind schedule due to COVID and various other issues at the yard. Just the same, it is a very interesting and I think well designed boat. Quite a bit smaller than our 47 and much tighter as well, but perfectly appropriate for coastal cruising or the Great Loop.

Overnight our anchor dragged a little bit (just a little bit) but we were visited early by the owner of the mooring balls in the bay as we had migrated to within a dozen feet or so of one of the moorings. While we hadn’t made a firm decision to lift anchor, the complaints of the mooring guy inspired us to simply leave the harbour.

We missed an opportunity to say goodbye to Brad and Lorraine on Adventure, but we hope to run into them again soon.

A quick trip out to Rat Cay (about 3-4 miles away) led us into a nice bay with plenty of room, a lot more quiet and reasonable protection. We barely arrived when another half dozen boats came to the bay, but there is enough room here for 50 boats, so its not an issue.

The weather is overcast and cold (well, not Canada cold, 22C and overcast is cold here!), but we went to the beach and walked the ‘art trail’ (see photos). We met a fellow Canadian, Michael who apparently anchors in this bay for many months of the year and is also an expert on fine china. Really cool!

The art trail mostly contained old garbage that was reformulated into something resembling colorful trinkets, but some of the items were cool. I was far more fascinated by the destruction caused by wind. The tree in the photo on the right was clearly uprooted by a storm, but just as interesting was that many of the mangroves appear to be sprouting on what was a beach. The water is just 15 feet from these trees and there is sand below them, so it is fascinating to see how quickly mother nature has overcome a hardship and completely changed the face of this piece of the landscape.

At high tide we took the dinghy through the inlet to see the turtles (probably a dozen) and quite a few birds (mostly cranes). Unfortunately with high winds, the turtles stayed below the surface but we enjoyed spotting them and watching just how fast they move in the water. If you have never seen one swim, they are super fast under water. The cranes flew away quickly when they heard the noise of the engine. They are majestic birds and there are quite a few here.

We are awaiting good weather to head further south. The water at Whale Cay Cut is currently ‘raging’ and a crossing of the bank is considered foolishly dangerous right now, but we will relax here until Wednesday or Thursday when the water hopefully settles down.