Transit to Eleuthera

January 25, 2015

We are currently anchored in Rock Sound, Eleuthera after a 4-day trip from Marsh Harbour in the Abacos.

We left Harbour View Marina in Marsh Harbour on Tuesday (1/20) and transited down the Sea of Abaco to Lynyard Cay to stage for an early morning departure to Eleuthera.  The day featured moderate (15 knot) winds from the SE which were fine to motor the torturous route south as you dodge around the many shoals in the southern Sea of Abaco.

As predicted the winds clocked to the west on Wednesday (1/21) giving hope of a good motor-sail/sail across the Northeast Providence Channel.  The wind shift and a near-slack tide also gave a very smooth passage out of Little Harbour Cut into the Atlantic Ocean at first light.  Northeast Providence Channel (often referred to as the 'Hole in the Wall') is the busiest shipping channels in the SE Atlantic as big ships find their way to the SE US and Gulf of Mexico ports.  Fortunately we had no 'close' encounters with the 'big boys'.  We arrived and anchored at Royal Island (near Spanish Wells) in late afternoon.

While we had 5-6 other boats making the passage across the Hole in the Wall on Wednesday, Thursday (1/22) featured a lonely trip across the Bank to Eleuthera.  The beginning of this trip features a transit through the well-named 'Current Cut'.   This time we hit the cut a little before slack at high tide and experienced a mild 1 knot current behind us; last year we had about a 3 knot following current.  Thursday we anchored at Pineapple Cays, before a short trip down to Rock Sound on Friday.

We anchored on the west side of the sound in anticipation of a moderate cold front arriving on Saturday, followed by a stronger front on Monday-Tuesday.  Today (Sunday) we hope to dinghy over to the settlement for lunch and to see our friends at Sammy's Place.

This trip featured a great weather window and was uneventful until we were approaching our anchoring position in Rock Sound.  I had prepared the anchor for deployment; there are four 'restraints' that keep it in place when we are underway so I typically remove all but one (windlass clutch) as we approach an anchorage.  Unfortunately, I did not sufficiently tighten the clutch and as we approached our anchorage at about 4 knots, the anchor deployed into the water.  This could have been disastrous, losing our anchor and chain or worse doing damage to our propeller, rudder or hull. At least I made up for my stupid mistake by a quick reaction - putting the boat in reverse to slow us down and running to the bow to stop the chain from rapidly running out.  Whew!!! I  caught it after only about 1/2 of our 250' of chain had run out.  I am immediately changing our anchoring procedure to leave the easy to remove 'chain-lock' on (in addition to the windlass clutch) until we are actually dropping the anchor!

I don't talk about boat 'problems' much in the blog, but after the above 'true confession',  I thought I would take the opportunity to admit that we certainly have them.  I had to replace (actually rebuild) our leaking fresh water pump after arrival; we have been experiencing a 'salinity probe' failure on our water-maker that I am trying resolve; our knot-meter (speedometer) has been acting erratic; and our shower sump-pump has decided to stop working. All of these have surfaced since we left Harbour View on Tuesday.  There is much truth in the old saying "The definition of cruising is fixing your boat in a series of exotic locations."

Tom
Anchored Rock Sound
Eleuthera