Little Farmers Cay Bahamas (Part 1)

Dawn at Warderick Wells Cay

Our plan to get far enough south to be able to explore new anchorages in the Exumas made for an early start on Monday 8^thApril.  We left Warderick Wells at dawn and made our way towards Conch Cut about 8 miles to our southeast.   Conch Cut lies between Cambridge Cay and Compass Cay and, like all of the cuts between the islands, the passage needs to be timed carefully because of strong currents and tidal rips.  Our early start worked well for us and we approached Conch Cut at 8am when the current was at minimum.  We fired up the engine to navigate our way through and to help us keep clear of a couple of yachts coming in the opposite direction.  At that point our VHF radio sprang into life; one of the yachts passing us was Cerulean of Penryn and they called us up for a brief chat with some fellow Brits.

Once clear of Conch Cut we switched back to sailing, eventually bowling along with full sail set.  On the more exposed eastern side of the Exumas chain there was more swell than on the inside but we had excellent sailing conditions. Passing through the cut had put us on the correct side of the island chain to get into our planned overnight anchorage and with a 15kts east-southeasterly wind we covered the next 30 miles in 5 hours.

Making our way through Farmer’s Cut

For us, with a 2m draught, the only viable entrance into the anchorage off Little Farmer’s Cay is from the east through Farmer’s Cut.

The southern end of Great Guana Cay

Farmer’s Cay Yacht Club

Once through the cut we had the choice of an anchorage off to our left or of turning right to anchor between Great Guana Cay and Little Farmer’s Cay.  We chose the latter because we knew that the wind would be clocking around with the passage of a weather front and we thought that the anchorage to the left might be more exposed.  From our anchored position, the shallow water ahead of us off great Guana Cay was a beautiful turquoise.  Behind us and to the northwest was Farmer’s Cay Yacht Club and to our south was Little Harbour where we intended to take the dinghy to get ashore.  Our plan was to stay anchored here for a day or two to catch up on some maintenance chores and to sit out the passage of the weather fronts.

Anchored between Great Guana Cay and Little Farmer’s Cay

Having arrived mid-afternoon, there was no reason not to tick off some of the chores and our big concern was the watermaker.  Without the generator running we couldn’t run the watermaker and so we needed to ‘pickle’ it with a solution of sodium metabisulphate.  But, to pickle it we needed to run the watermaker’s low pressure 240V pumps.  We did some calculations and worked out that it might just be possible to run that pump with our 550W inverter which converts 12V DC into 240V AC.  The complication was that the extra start-up power that the pump needs to get going is a little bit more than our inverter is designed for. We connected up some extra wiring to link the inverter to the low pressure pump, crossed our fingers and hit the ON button.  The motor initially turned slowly and then [Ed: happily!] sprang into life at the proper revs. That was a big result for us because if we weren’t able to pickle the watermaker after a couple of weeks the expensive membranes would likely be damaged through lack of use.  With the low pressure pump running, we filled the watermaker pipework with the sodium metabisulphate solution, and circulated it around the system for 15minutes or so.  That done we were happy that the membranes would be protected until we could we get whatever parts we needed to fix the generator.

Coming back on deck to enjoy sundowners we realised that whilst we had been busy we’d been joined in the anchorage by a very large catamaran.  So, we hadn’t quite got the place to ourselves but it wasn’t a bad spot from which to enjoy the sunset.

Little Farmer’s Cay, Bahamas