Fowl Cay Abacos Bahamas

The western end of Man-O-War Cay

Our morning passage on the 21 April started at 0910 which gave us enough time to head up to and west along the southern side of Man-O-War Cay, stop at a SCUBA diving site and then move on to an overnight night anchorage.  As we got closer it was clear that the west end of Man-O-War Cay has some really rather exclusive looking holiday retreats.

Corn Bay at the western end of Man-O-War Cay

We passed Corn Bay on our right and then turned at West Point to make our way between Man-O-War Cay and Fish Hawk Cay.

The north side of Fish Hawk Cay ahead and Fish Hawk Reef out to our right

The mooring buoy for ‘The Wall’ dive site

To the northeast of Fish Hawk Cay are Fish Hawk and Fowl Cay Reefs and between the 2 reefs, at the eastern end of Fowl Cay, is a mooring buoy where we hoped to tie up our dinghy to do some diving.  We anchored BV in the shelter of Fowl Cay just a few hundred metres from the buoy and prepared our kit.  The conditions were benign which would make diving on the outside of the reef safe for us and it was reassuring to know that our dinghy would be securely tied to a mooring buoy throughout our dive.

‘The Wall’ dive sort of lived up to its name with a drop off on the outside of the cay of about 12 metres.  We spent about 45 minutes underwater, diving to a maximum depth of 14.5 metres.

As you can see from the photos it wasn’t a ‘proper’ wall drop off; more of an edge to the coral.  Out to our right, out to seaward, the bottom was flat and sandy again as far as we could see.

Nicky’s ‘friend’, a Nassau Grouper

As seems to be normal on our dives, Nicky picked up a ‘friend’ on the way.  To date she seems to have attracted barracuda but today she was sought out by a large Nassau grouper.

Nassau Grouper can grow up to about  4ft long so this wasn’t one of the largest specimens, but at about 3ft long it’s the largest fish that we have had swimming this close to us.  We are not sure quite why but he seemed to be really inquisitive, initially swimming a metre or so back from Nicky….

…. but then deciding that it was safe to get much closer.

And then much closer still!  He stayed with us for about 15 minutes and the experience of having such a large fish so close to us was quite special.  There was clearly no fear of divers in this grouper’s outlook on life.

A large shoal of Blue tang swimming along the edge of the reef

We continued swimming west along the edge of the reef, eventually leaving our friendly grouper behind us.  But we were then spoilt by a ‘swimpast’ from a large shoal of Blue tang…

Nurse shark

… and nestled in under one of the ledges Nicky spotted a Nurse shark resting on the seabed.

Top left: Sea fans and Sea rod soft corals.  Top right: A shoal of Blue chromis.  Bottom right: Grey angelfish along with several colourful Fairy basslet

There was reasonable amount of soft coral too plus some colour from a shoal of Blue chromis and some purple and yellow Fairy basslet zipping past a large Grey angelfish.

Top: Barracuda.  Bottom left and right: Male and female Stoplight parrotfish

No dive in this area would be complete without spotting a few Stoplight parrotfish with their distinctive and bright colouring and lurking about 10 metres away from us we also saw the distinctive shape of a barracuda.

So all in all there was quite a lot to see but the highlight of the dive was really our friendly Nassau grouper swimming right beside us for the first 15 minutes of the dive.

Retracing our route, we got another glimpse of most of the fish that we had seen on the way out and the clear edge of the reef made navigating back to our dinghy very easy.

Back aboard BV we upped anchor at 1320 and motored a few miles west along the inside edge of Fowl Cay to its western end.  Here we re-anchored and then took the dinghy north of the cay to a shallow snorkelling site. Nicky snorkelled for longer than I did but eventually we had both had our fill so, after a longish dinghy ride back to BV, it was time to wash all of our dive gear and make ready to move on.

Fowl Cay, Abacos, Bahamas

George Town to various anchorages near Marsh Harbour Abacos Bahamas

We left George Town at 1120hrs on Wednesday 17 April for an overnight passage of over 200 miles towards the Abacos Islands at the northern end of the Bahamas.

It would have been fabulous to stay in George Town a bit longer but we needed to start to make progress north for a rendezvous with friends near Charleston in the USA.  To achieve that mileage we had to take the good sailing weather opportunities as they were dealt and, unfortunately for us, there were a series of fronts coming down over the Bahamas which really messed up our plans to mosey north stopping at several anchorages enroute.

Instead, we planned this longer passage towards the Abacos to make the time to still have some fun in our last few days in the Bahamas before the longer passage north towards the USA.  Leaving George Town when we did meant that the sailing conditions were excellent with an easterly 15 knot wind.  Our only real issue was deciding upon a routing.

Sunset on Wednesday 17 April heading towards Little San Salvador

The Eleuthera Islands lay on our direct course to the Abacos and so we needed to decide if we went east or west of them.  Going west would be a slightly shorter passage but we would need to negotiate some pretty shallow channels to the east of Nassau. Far easier we concluded, especially as we were sailing overnight, was to go east and pick a route though the passage between Little San Salvador and Eleuthera Island.

The overnight passage was completely uneventful.  It was just as we like it, easy fast sailing with a steady 15 knot wind on our starboard beam.  Those conditions continued all the way through until 1300hrs when we were around 25 miles short of our destination.  At that point, as forecast, the wind veered to become more from the southeast so we poled out the genoa to starboard to keep our speed up.

The Abacos were just about becoming visible on the horizon when a welcoming committee arrived to check on our progress.

We’ve seen a lot of dolphins in our travels but they still bring a smile to our faces whenever they play in our bow wave.

Turning north after passing through North Bar Channel

A couple of hours later we were through the North Bar Channel on the eastern side of Great Abaco Island and it was time to find a suitable anchorage to sit out the impeding frontal weather.

Pelican Cays

The 2 complications were that it is quite shallow here and we couldn’t make it up to Marsh Harbour before nightfall.  We weren’t the only one with those difficulties; we passed a beautiful yacht anchored to the west of Pelican Cays which was probably just too large to get much further through the shallow channels.

Approaching the anchorage off Tilloo Cay

Lubbers Quarters

Our 2 metre draft afforded us more options and, with an eye to the depth gauge, we managed to get into the edge of the anchorage off Tilloo Cay.  We scouted around but eventually dropped anchor between Tilloo Cay and the southern end of Lubbers Quarter.  It would have been nice to have been further north to get some shelter from the west but it was just too shallow for us.  However, it was a good anchorage for the time being and perfect to allow us some rest after our 30 hour passage from George Town.

The reason for wanting shelter from the west was that, with the passage of the front, the wind was going to clock around and blow strongly from the west and northwest.  We had a lazy start to Friday but when we were up we started to monitor the forecast wind closely.  On balance we decided that the anchorage off Tilloo Cay might get a little uncomfortable if the wind was as strong as expected and to complicate things moving to a more sheltered spot would need to be timed carefully to fit in with the tides.

Later than we wanted to, at 1730hrs on 19March we finally moved when there was just enough tide rise for BV to get over the shallow bar into the channel which leads around to the Marsh Harbour area.  It was too late to get into Marsh Harbour before nightfall and with the weather forecast we expected the harbour to be crammed full of yachts so a night anchoring exercise was not a sensible option.

Off Sandy Cay near Man-o-War Cay. 1000hrs on Sat just before we left

Instead we hid behind Sandy Cay, near the southern end of Man-o-War Cay, for the night of 19^th.  It’s not really a normal anchorage but it did provide enough shelter for us.  It was a bit more exposed to the south than we really wanted but it was one of the few places where we could get some shelter from the forecast westerly winds and squalls which would arrive in the early hours of the morning.  In cases like this, neither of us sleeps well during a blow unless one of us is up and so we ran anchor watches overnight which gave us few extra hours awake for some blog writing.

In morning it was thoroughly wet and miserable.  We spent a short time writing some more blog entries and I also got out the sewing kit out to mend our burgees and ensign which had taken a bit of a battering in the strong winds and were now looking a little raggedy.  But by mid-morning the wind had dropped off and the rain eased to next to nothing so it was time to look for a better anchorage with more protection from the northwest which is where the wind was moving around to.  For the first time since we were in North Carolina in December, we donned full oilskins and moved 4 miles around to the southern side of Marsh Harbour.  The afternoon remained overcast and grey (hence I took no photographs) so we did some more blog writing and plotted our move north to Charleston.  Tuesday looked to be the best day to set off north towards the USA but before we left the Bahamas we wanted to try to get in some more SCUBA diving.  That was now possible for us with the generator running again so that we were able to make lots of fresh water to rinse the SCUBA gear afterwards.  But we needed to work out where to go, so there was bit more planning needed.

Heading north past Sugar Loaf Cay and Matt Lowe’s Cay on our way up to Man-o-War Cay

An extra night sitting out the weather made a big difference and in the morning we were back to beautiful clear blue skies.  Our planning the previous evening had highlighted that there were some reasonable looking dive sites on the outside of Man-o-War Cay and the smaller cays to its northwest. So, at 0910 on Sunday 21March we lifted the anchor and, for the third time, headed up the eastern side of Sugar Loaf Cay and Matt Lowe’s Cay but this time we were going further north, to the vicinity of Fowl Cay Reef.

Anchorages near Marsh Harbour, Bahamas

George Town Bahamas 3

On Tue 16 April we went SCUBA diving with Lars & Susanne.  They arrived on board BV with all of their diving gear at 0930 and by 1000hrs we had raised the anchor and set off for a short passage to the dive site.  It was just 5 miles, east past Fowl Cay and then north through Welk Harbour to an anchorage by Puppy Cay and Dog Cays.

Lars and Suzanne

From there, a very short dinghy ride took us to a reef just to the south of Puppy Cay where we all leapt over the side and set about exploring the reef.

Left:  Juvenile bluehead wrasse (we think!) beside a massive leaf coral head (Our marker for where the dinghies were anchored).  Right:  Nicky and me diving.  Not a picture we get very often

The dive, like many in the Bahamas, was not particularly deep.  The chart showed a max depth of 9 metres but we never went deeper than 8 metres.  The bonus of that being that our air tanks lasted for ages…..

Fairy basslets

….which gave us lots of time to look at all of the sea life.

Stoplight parrotfish

Left:  Superb close up photos of Christmas tree worms by Lars.  Top right:  Sea rod and sea fan soft corals

Lars has a more conventional underwater camera than me and it takes much better macro close-up photos than my wide angle GoPro style camera.  [Ed: Camera envy?!?]  The Christmas tree worms photos he took (above) are particularly good…

A shoal of blue chromis brightened up the scene

Spotfin butterflyfish

… and then he did it again with a great photo of a spotfin butterfly fish and some of the coral.  [Ed: Competition underwater photography?!?]

Top right:  Possibly Ivory tree coral.  Bottom left:  Brain coral. Bottom right:  Spotfin butterflyfish

Both of us glued to our dive computers
 – it must be about time to surface

Our dive took us part of the way around a circuit of an oval reef.  When we finally decided that it was time to return to the dinghies, they were on the other side of the oval.  Nicky and Lars led the way and were spot on with the navigation taking us directly to our distinctive massive leaf coral head which was close to the dinghy anchors.

We had surfaced on the first dive because we were starting to feel cold after 70 minutes under water, so it was time for a lunchbreak back aboard BV to warm up.  It’s not often that you see us wandering around in thick fleeces, drinking hot cups of cocoa in the Bahamas, but we did need to do both to help get properly warm again.

After a good break we set off for a second dive.  This was slightly shallower still on another reef close by.  Because we had only dived to 8 metres in the morning, we still had a lot of air left in our tanks. So, we used the same tanks again and dived for another 36 minutes.  One hour and 45 minutes diving on one SCUBA tank is a pretty good result.  It was a reasonable second dive but nothing like as photogenic as the morning one.  Surprisingly, despite being shallower, the coral was less colourful and the few photos I took tuned out a bit drab.  But it had been great fun diving with friends and the first time that we had done that off BV.  Hopefully we’ll be able to do more in the future.

After a fab day’s diving we made our way back into the main harbour and dropped our anchor in almost exactly the spot we had left at around1800hrs.  Having washed all the SCUBA kit, we met up again on Sea Wind for dinner. Lars and Suzanne are excellent hosts and dinner on board Sea Wind was the perfect way to end our short reunion. Sadly, some imminently arriving weather fronts were going to make our trip north awkward if we dallied too long in George Town.  We had a deadline to make to meet friends flying over to the USA so it looked like we would need to head off in the morning, a day earlier than expected.  Our dive tanks still needed to be refilled so we completed that task first thing in the morning and then, after hugs and farewells, it was time for us to raise the anchor again.  Lars and Suzanne were intending to go north too but later than us, so perhaps we’ll meet up again in the USA.

George Town, Bahamas

George Town Bahamas 2

Sea Wind at anchor off George Town

On the Monday (15 April) we took the dinghy ashore to run a number of errands.  The most important of these was to visit the immigration office to get our visas extended, but we also needed to leave a propane bottle at one of the stores for refilling.

The dinghy dock at George Town. It’s a good-sized dock and, usefully, has a fresh water tap part way down it (alongside the water bottles in the photo above)

George Town is a pleasant little town with some good facilities for cruisers including an excellent, well-protected dinghy dock with a freely accessible water supply; reasonable food shopping; a convenient dive shop; a laundry; a couple of places where one can arrange to have propane bottles refilled; good comms links by sea and air with other islands and the USA; and a Bahamas customs and immigration office. The latter is a 5-10 minute walk from the dinghy dock, quite close to the laundry, and the officers are quite used to providing visa extensions to visitors who need them.  Visa extensions are only done in the morning but the process is quite quick and surprisingly painless though, according to the rules, you can only apply for a visa extension within about a week of your visa expiry date.

George Town view

Extensions granted, Nicky negotiated with the laundry for a couple of loads to go through the machines and I returned to BV to work on the electrical circuits on the generator.  Fischer Panda had been very efficient at arranging for the spare parts that we wanted to be sent to our home address but our request for advice from the technical team had gone unanswered, despite repeated requests and nudges from the sales team.  But, looking closely at the limited information in the manual, plus with a bit of thinking, I had a theory on where the fault might be.  There seemed to be a key relay that, when energised, switched on the fuel valve, water cooling pump and nearly everything else significant on the generator to make it work.  If the fault sensors detected a fault (or failed) they switched this relay off.  A faulty relay would shut down the engine and might be the cause of our issues but it would have to be an intermittent fault. I was also slightly puzzled that if this relay was working, why was the cooling pump not running?  Time for some more testing.

George Town view

Anchorage off George Town.  Restless is the nearest yacht to us with Sea Wind the next one further back

Amazingly, my work on the generator was successful.  The relays tested out as functioning correctly and the cooling pump worked but wasn’t getting any power.  It was looking like a wiring loom problem but checking that carefully showed up no obvious problems until I wiggled the wires where they went into the main connection box. Ta-dah!  The cooling pump and relay chattered on and off.  I’d finally found the main source of our intermittent faults!  Pushing all of the connections together properly did the trick and the generator started first time and ran for over an hour whilst under high load, running the water-maker [Ed: so much for our morning’s water run to and from the dinghy dock!].  What a relief to have finally solved the mystery generator problem.

Good times.  Crews of Blue Velvet of Sark, Sea Wind and Restless aboard Sea Wind enjoying drinks and Susanne’s fabulous focaccia

In the evening we celebrated our success with Lars and Susanne and the crew of Restless.  It was one of several get-togethers that we had over the time that we spent in George Town but we were so lax in taking photos that the picture above (c/o Susanne) is the only one we have of all of us together.

George Town, Bahamas