Spanish Wells Bahamas

An awful picture of the line of cruise ships in the Northwest Providence Channel

After diving off North Bimini in the morning, at 1430hrs on Sunday 17 March we set off on an overnight passage to Spanish Wells on St George’s Cay (essentially Eleuthera). The trip was entirely uneventful other than our having to motor the whole way (24hr 35mins!) as the wind never got above 7kts from directly behind us.  We’d rather not have motored so far but with our commitment to meet friends on 25 March we wanted to get a lot closer to Nassau than Bimini and we also wanted protection from a cold front that was forecast to be on the way.  At the time that we were motoring southeast along the Northwest Providence Channel, our friends were on a cruise ship enjoying the delights of the Lesser Antilles.  To get there their ship would also have sailed along the Northwest Providence Channel and the night we were on the move we saw a long line of cruise ships making their way east, just like lorries on a motorway, albeit a bit slower.

Land ho!

At 0630 Nicky tuned in to listen to Chris Parker’s daily weather forecast for the Bahamas and, once again, could barely hear him, let alone make out what he was saying. It was most odd.  All along the south coast of Cuba, in fact since before reaching the Turks and Caicos, we had heard the forecasts as clear as a bell and now that we were actually in the middle of the area for which he was forecasting we couldn’t hear him at all.  Whilst we hadn’t heard him well in Key West, we had assumed that that was due to being close to a built-up area with interference from radars, telephone masts etc.  But none of that applied here or had done for the past few days.  Some investigation was clearly required.

Egg Island Cut – narrow and shallow with charted rocks, not great with poor light for seeing through the water

We raised Egg Island to the east of Eleuthera late in the morning and made our way to Egg Island Cut which runs between Egg Island and Little Egg Island.  It’s a narrow, shallow channel and both our Navionics charts which run on the chart plotter and the paper ‘Explorer’ chartbook for the area show a large number of rocks or coral heads in and around it.  With overcast skies the light was poor for reading the water and seeing the hard stuff (and for differentiating the coral from the sea grass) and, with a maximum of 2m under the keel throughout since we were arriving at low water, it was a somewhat tense time.

Off Spanish Wells – the water’s all rather shallow round here and it’s also very clear but the light wasn’t great for reading it

We breathed easier when we were well clear of the cut and the coral heads.  However, the remaining 6nm to Spanish Wells were similarly shallow (though with fewer charted rocks) so we took it slowly and carefully, 4kts or under throughout.  The Bahamas are notoriously shallow and we wondered if we would be doing these sort of speeds all the way around them.  The answer, of course, was no.  We just hadn’t got used to the shallow waters, the charting and what you can or cannot see.  As we approached Spanish Wells we passed Royal Harbour, an almost enclosed bay in which we had considered anchoring for the frontal passage.  There’s not a lot there though so we had decided to take a mooring in Spanish Wells harbour itself so that we could enjoy the splendours of the town.  Outside the harbour at Spanish Wells there was a good number of yachts at anchor and we wondered if they would stay there as the front rolled through.  We had thought about doing so but, with several miles of water, admittedly shallow water, to the south of them and the wind forecast to blow strongly from that direction prior to the front reaching the island, we had decided against.

Entering Spanish Wells harbour

We had booked a mooring at the eastern end of Spanish Wells harbour (which is more of a narrow, protected channel past the town between St George’s Cay and Charles Island).  At the eastern end the channel opens out onto a shallow sound, about a mile across, on the other side of which is Eleuthera.

A cosy mooring field; the other yachts felt veryclose to.  Top left: St George’s Cay to our right and Charles Island to our left. The sound (bottom pic) is behind us. Bottom: Looking across a sand bar to the sound and then Eleuthera

The moorings are in a small pool just before the sound, and Elizabeth, who runs the moorings and to whom Nicky had spoken, had been very specific about which buoy we should pick up.  When we arrived, however, there was already a motoryacht on that mooring and the others were all taken apart from one as far in as it was possible to go.  The mooring field is best described as ‘cosy’ and it was an interesting manoeuvre to get to the unoccupied mooring, reversing our way between the yachts and the shallows on either side.  But we made it, picked it up and called the Elizabeth.  She was adamant that we couldn’t take that mooring. It was too tight to the shallows for a yacht our size she said [Ed: agreed!] and probably wasn’t rated for a boat of our weight.  We explained about the unattended French motoryacht on ‘our’ mooring but there seemed little option than to go and anchor either outside or at Royal Harbour.

As we left we saw the crew of the motoryacht return so we stopped and explained that we had booked that mooring.  Had they spoken to anyone (perhaps Elizabeth’s husband who works as a harbour pilot) about taking it?  They said that they had just picked the mooring up on spec, not knowing to whom it belonged and had rather hoping that the owner would come out to them.  Given the situation, however, they said that they would move off it and head somewhere else.  Quite frankly, we were amazed, but very pleased, and we were soon settled in place.

By this time the afternoon was disappearing fast so we inflated the dinghy and took the opportunity to go ashore. Unfortunately, we were so keen to have a look at Spanish Wells that I forgot to take my camera, so there are no photos of the place.  There’s not a lot to say about the town.  It’s a small place, laid out on a couple of long streets that run parallel to the shorelines of the narrow island, with cross streets running between them.  The houses are commensurately small and neat and quite brightly coloured and there are a few shops and restaurants, an all-ages school and, best of all for us, a BTC store, which we had not expected.  It seems a nice enough place but not somewhere to write home about particularly.

The following day, Tuesday 19 March, we spent tackling a whole list of jobs, primarily oil changes (main engine, engine gearbox, generator, watermaker high pressure pump) as well as a full service on the main engine and anode changes on the fridge.  With those tasks more or less complete, Nicky headed ashore to the BTC office and discovered that the issue with the sim card was that whilst the credit for voice calls remains active on the card for 3 months, the credit for data expires after a month.  That’s not really what we had been briefed in Great Inagua when we bought the card, but it was a bit too late to argue that point now.  Nicky looked big and brave and bought another month’s worth of data and we were back in business for emails and the like.

Storm clouds coming

All day the signs of the impending frontal passage had been there.  The clouds had built, the cloud base had lowered and the wind had swung round from the east through south to the southwest.  In the middle of the afternoon the wind suddenly veered from southwest to north and the clouds on the northern horizon grew very dark.  This was the front passing through and it looked to have at least one very unpleasant cell in it which was going to pass right over us.

In the middle of the storm cell. Torrential rain, very poor visibility and 38kts sustained gusting to 45kts

We battened down all the hatches, grabbed some foul weather clothing and, as the first gusts of the cell hit BV, switched on the engine and instruments, just in case the mooring should fail (the line looked thinner than I would have liked for a yacht of our weight).  With the shallows so close there would be little time to react so at least one of us stayed on deck, near the wheel, throughout. None of the other crews did this so perhaps we were over-cautious but you never really know what’s at the bottom of a mooring, whereas you do know about your own anchor.  It was truly unpleasant.  There was torrential rain and sustained winds of 38kts gusting to 45kts, perhaps a little higher.  The sea was whipped up a surprising amount despite the short fetch and the damping effect of the rain, and the visibility was truly dreadful.  Part way through, the ensign staff gave up the ghost and snapped at its base but, happily, we always tie the end of the ensign halyard to the pushpit so we didn’t lose either the ensign or the top of the flagstaff.

Sunshine after rain

It took about an hour for the storm cell to pass through, after which the wind reduced to about 15kts and the sun came out.  Much better! Overnight a couple more rain cells passed close by bringing with them some stronger winds but nothing remotely as bad as the afternoon’s storm cell.  Later, we discussed whether we would have been better off anchored outside the harbour. In many respects, yes, it would have been better with the wind in that storm cell coming from the north, over the island, and with no shallows close behind us.  But prior to the front moving through, the wind had been pretty strong from the southwest and the anchorage is wide open in that direction, though with the shallow waters the waves were not too sizeable.  The place we probably really should have been was Royal Harbour, which we had passed on our way to Spanish Wells, though reports on the place talk about variable holding in some areas.

Leaving Spanish Wells harbour for the anchorage outside

In the morning, before we moved to the anchorage outside the harbour, I went ashore to try to find bits for a repair job on ensign staff.  There was no chance of finding a wooden xft long replacement flagstaff in Spanish Wells, or indeed most of the Bahamas, so it was repair job. I had a plan and we had the resin for the job but I needed a tube that would fit over the broken flagstaff; an exact sized one too.  Amazingly, a boat-workshop chap found I exactly what I was after on a pile of offcuts at one of the boatyards; it was so grubby that he just gave it to me.  It clearly needed some cleaning up but it was the perfect size.  We also had another stroke of luck when it came to fixing the problem with the HF radio reception.  I was tracing the route of the aerial cable in the starboard lazarette, looking to see if there was a problem with any of the connections, when I noticed that the aerial was touching the pushpit earthing cable.  Both are insulated but even so this was enough to cause a problem with the radio reception.  When I moved the 2 apart, reception was immediately restored.  The 2 wires must have been moved so that they touched when we replaced the GPS antenna in Key West as the aerial cable for that runs close to the HF aerial and earthing cable.  Great that we eventually found the source of the problem; not so great that it took us so long to work out what the problem was.  One to file away for the future.

Anchored off Spanish Wells

Once outside Spanish Wells and settled at anchor we attacked some of the rest of the list of jobs.

The flagstaff repaired and curing in the sun

I repaired the flagstaff and then resealed one of the handles on the forepeak hatch which had started to leak.  I also had a go at polishing some of the stainless steel whilst Nicky flushed through and lubricated all the blocks and clutches.

Looking into the binnacle through the top
where the compass normally sits

On Thursday Nicky continued with the polishing.  Meanwhile, I removed the compass and worked to adjust and lubricate the throttle lever linkages inside the binnacle which were becoming rather stiff.  And once all the ‘high technical merit’ jobs were complete, we set to the mammoth backlog of blog entries – completing those will take a VERY long time.

Thursday – another day of sunshine and showers but we also saw a full rainbow

Moonrise over the anchorage

By evening we were thoroughly fed up of boat chores and, with a good sailing forecast for the next day (Friday 22 March) we decided to head 35nm southwest to Bottom Harbour on Rose Island, a small anchorage about 6nm east of Nassau.  It meant that we’d be well-placed to arrive at the marina where we’d reserved a berth bright and early on Sunday, giving us maximum time for sorting out food shopping, laundry and other chores before Nici and Neil arrived on the Monday evening. So, with that decided we enjoyed the moonrise over the anchorage and the views of the anchorage under its incredibly bright light in a sky now almost clear of clouds.

Spanish Wells, Bahamas