Bottom Harbour Rose Island Bahamas

Dawn in the Spanish Wells anchorage

We made a reasonably prompt start on Friday 22 March.  For the first hour or so the wind was too light to sail but it built to 12-15kts from the north-northwest and for the next 5 hours we had a good sail southwest.

Nassau on the horizon (it’s only about 6nm away).  The Paradise Island hotels stand out clearly being the highest objects around

Sandy Cay, just north of Rose Island

Rose Island is about 6nm east of Nassau but it feels a lot further away as the islands are so low lying.  The most prominent features on Nassau that we could see as we made our approach to Rose Island were the hotels on Paradise Island, which seemed to be the highest structures, manmade or natural, around for miles.

Left: Rose Island to port and… Right: Rose Island Rocks to starboard (with Nassau in the distance)

The entry to Bottom Harbour, and Rose Island in general, is shallow, strewn with coral heads and littered with narrow passages between cays and rocky outcrops.  It looks rather unnerving on the chart and, given that it was blowing quite hard from the north by the time we arrived and we needed to head south to get into the lee of the island, it wasn’t the most comfortable place at which we’ve arrived.  However, once we were through the relatively narrow gap between the island and an offlying reef and had shimmied around several charted rocks/coral heads we arrived in calmer seas with the island providing a good windbreak so life became a lot easier.

Feeling our way into Bottom Harbour and trying to spot the difference between a dark patch of water due to sea grass (it’s OK to motor or sail over this) and a dark patch of water due to a coral head (best not to go over these!)

Sandy Toes beach bar

There were already several boats at anchor in Bottom Harbour when we arrived.  However, we managed to sneak in past the majority and anchor in 2.5m over sand, in a space where we had protection from the reef to the south of Rose Island, which meant that we were much less affected by swell than the yachts further out.  There’s a daytime only beach bar, Sandy Toes, which overlooks the anchorage and conveniently the staff leave the excellent open wifi on all the time.  We took advantage of it to update all our electronic charts and computer software, long overdue tasks from our time Cuba.  We also spent time planning a tour of the Exumas for our 10 days with Nici and Strevs (by this time we had a good idea of what the weather was likely to hold in store for the first part of their time with us) and made a menu plan and a shopping list to make the tasks in Nassau that much easier.

The reefs looked tempting to snorkel on but we had chores to do

The next day (Saturday 23 March) Sat 23^rdwe spent the morning scrubbing BV’s bottom. It wasn’t too bad a job probably a couple of hours in total and we used our hooker system (compressor with 2 regulators on 10m hoses) to make the job easier for us.  The generator powers the compressor which provides us with breathing air so that we can stay underwater rather than have to keep surfacing to breathe; this cuts down the time to do the job by at least half.  The generator ran the hooker system without a problem but when we had finished with that we loaded up the generator by running the watermaker, whereupon it started to falter and ran down.  There were no warning lights and the symptoms suggested that the fuel supply issue that we had experienced in Cuba was back again.  We shelved our plans to enjoy the afternoon snorkelling on a nearby reef…..

It looked like we had a fuel supply issue to the generator again.  These photos are fromLas Coloradas in Cuba but the view of the saloon was exactly the same

… and got to work tearing the cabin apart, again!!.  We wondered whether shock treating the tanks with strong diesel-bug killer, as we had done when we had refuelled at Key West, had created some debris which had blocked the one-way valve or fuel supply pipe.  As we had done many times before, we removed the saloon table and lifted the floorboards to check the supply line.  There was no problem with the one-way valve, although its rubber seal was showing signs of age, so we rebuilt the cabin and took the wet-locker and machinery space to pieces and changed the 2 fuel filters on the generator.  Again, there was no obvious debris.  Priming the generator fuel lines has always been a messy business and so I resolved to replace the tired one-way valve with a low-pressure fuel pump when we got back to the USA in the summer.  That might also help provide a better head of fuel pressure when the generator was under high load.  Previously we had not had a problem with that but the symptoms were of fuel starvation.  The only logical conclusion was that air was getting into the fuel supply line at one of the connections.  The generator is quite good and can self-bleed a certain amount of air in the fuel supply, which is handy for when you change filters but if there were a proper, long-term air leak maybe too much air was getting in for the self-bleeding system to cope with when the generator was working at high loads. It’s a classic diesel engine problem, and the symptoms matched, even though I couldn’t see any sign of air bubbles in the fuel sight glass.  So, I re-checked and, in places, resealed all of the connections in the fuel supply line, then we primed the fuel lines.…… and the generator fired up, quite happy once more.  The nagging question is, of course, – for how long?

The sun setting behind the hotels on Nassau’s Paradise Island

A busy day of jobs completed we enjoyed a splendid sunset and looked forward to moving on to Nassau in the morning.  Only 2 more sleeps and Nici and Strevs would be with us!

Bottom Harbour, Rose Island, Bahamas