Worst Day of Cruising

Some events are so powerful that they can shape and reshape anything that occurs around them. For us, it was when we lost our dingy. 

This day began amazingly. We had a nice sail to a new anchorage where we dinghies a short distance to shore to a beach side bar that served amazing and innexpensive burgers. We made friends and put in our order for a local "Chill and Grill" cookout that was happening at the marina. We went snorkeling, took a dinghy ride into mangrove channels that were full of rays and sea turtles. We even caught a ride with a local to the Chill and Grill where we ate again with our new friends. After dinner, we all went back to our new friends boat for sun-downers and relaxed in the cockpit as we watched the sun set and talked. 

At 11:30pm, we decided to head back to the boat. We said our goodbyes and began the 2 mile walk from the marina to the dinghy. When we got to the beach, our whole world unraveled before our eyes and my heart sank into my stomach. Our dinghy was gone! 

It was not stollen, no, worse. I didn't tie the anchor rode to the dinghy securely and it drifted away at high tide. The anchor was well set and the rode pointed in the direction that our dinghy floated away, pointing down the beach.  

Here we are at midnight with no phones, no flashlights, no radio, and most of all, no dinghy. 

We walked the beach for two miles as we headed back to the marina to see if our new friends could lend us some flashlights or even better, a boat, to find our dinghy that had floated away. 

One person who was rather long winded rambled on about the hopelessness of finding the dinghy as it has been drifting for several hours and the harbor drains into the Atlantic Ocean. He had a dinghy, but it was about a 15 mile journey from the marina to the harbor we were anchored in because of the reefs and island structure. The only way to get there was to head out to sea and circle the island on the North side. At midnight, this was not the time to begin such a trek. He did lend us some flashlights, and we ran back to the beach to begin searching the waters of the harbor in hopes of seeing our dinghy once again. 

We shined our light beams as far as they could go, getting our hopes up every time we spotted a mooring buoy, and then loosing hope when we realized what it was. Then, the light shined on something that wasn't a buoy, and it was rather dim too. Seeing the light reflect off this object felt like hearing an ear piercing scream from miles away. You know it's a scream, but you can't quite make it out, but you know you heard something. 

This floating object was 4 miles away from where we anchored the dinghy. Thankfully we anchored at the extreme end of the harbor so that the dinghy would have to drift the entire length before reaching the inlet. Had we anchored any closer to the inlet, we might not have been so lucky!

We watched as this object was drifting down the beach in the same direction that our dinghy drifted from its anchor, and as time passed, it drew closer to the shore. In time, we were able to make out the sides and front of the dinghy as it would spin around in the waves of the harbor. We found our dinghy! 

The only problem is the dinghy is currently drifting towards an inlet, where it will be swept out to see. The harbor is shallow, and you could easily swim out to it, but the distance is remarkably deceiving. What looks close by is actually very very far to swim, especially in the dark! I tried to swim out to our dinghy, but I was too afraid of what might be lurking in the water in the dark. My friend that was with us "demonstrated" that you could just walk out to the dinghy, and walked out to retrieve the dinghy that was rather far from shore. 

I stood on the beach and shined the flashlight at him and the dinghy, both keeping an eye on him and illuminating the dinghy so that he could see where he was going. He made it out to the boat and brought it back to shore, rescuing our dinghy! 

The lessons we learned that evening are as follows: 

1. Always make sure the anchor rode is securely tied to the dinghy! 

2. Always carry a radio on you. There were other boats in this harbor, but there was no way of contacting them from shore. If we had a radio, we could have contacted them and done a search from the water with the aid of their dinghy. This would have saved us the trouble of swimming out to recover the dinghy and instead allowed us to tow the dinghy back to the boat. 

Thankfully, the kindness of the cruisers we met earlier that day helped us save our dinghy. They also all told us many stories of the times they have lost their dinghies over the years. The couple that lent us flashlights had lost 3 dinghies over the years due to theft and poor knots (which happen to all of us at some point when you tie something in a rush without putting your mind to it). The couple that helped us search and recover the dinghy had lost their dinghy twice. Once when it floated away from their boat in shark infested waters, the second time when their painter chaffed and it drifted away in the strong tidal flow of Nassau harbor. 

Accidents happen, and you never want to experience the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that we experienced that night on the beach. Be sure to check and double check that your dinghy is tied up well every time you leave it or you might have to suffer through the same situation we did. 

West Bay vs. Nassau

Nassau, probably the most well known city in the Bahamas. Cruise ships dock there, and people fly in and out of the airport there. Along with land lubbers vacationing in the Bahamas, many cruisers feel the need to stop in Nassau as well. Provisions are significantly cheaper in Nassau when compared to the prices in other Bahamas islands, but with a big city comes a host of problems as well.

First of all, Nassau Harbor is small and busy! There are cruise ships, cargo ships, and commercial traffic transiting the narrow harbor all the time! Then you have all the pleasure boats that are coming through as well. It is so busy and tight in there that you have to radio Nassau Harbor Control before entering the harbor on CH 09, as well as radio them before moving from one spot to another! If you are anchored, you may need to move if Harbor Control deems it necessary.  

If the tight quarters wasn't bad, the holding is. There is a strong current that rips through the harbor and has swept away all the good sand, leaving behind a hard pack that is difficult for an anchor to penetrate. Your anchor might hold well, but the guy ahead of you might start dragging at any moment! 

Aside from the poor holding and crowded conditions, there is also the problem of crime. In cruising guides, it warns that boat theft is a prevalent problem, and being on your vessel is not a deterrent to the thieves.  

With the strong current, bad holding, crowded conditions, and risk of theft, we decided to approach Nassau from a different angle. We anchored in West Bay, on the western edge of New Providence Island (the island which Nassau is built on). Here, we have plenty of room, little current, and great holding. We are surrounded by a natural park and a golf club, so crime is a distant memory. We can access Nassau by cab or shuttle, without having to risk our boat in the process, and we can also detach ourselves from the busy city by not going there.  

If you need to stop in Nassau, consider anchoring somewhere else and simply traveling a few miles over land to get there instead of risking your floating home. 

Cell Phones in the Bahamas

Cruising in the Bahamas is awesome! The islands are beatiful and the beaches are immaculate. The problem is communicating while you are in the Bahamas with friends and family back at home. While visiting here, you can enroll in a cell phone plan that will allow you to use your same phone number for $10 per day. This will include 500mb of data and a lot of minutes for international calling. $10 per day may seem acceptable for a weeks vacation, costing only $70 for the phone plan, but when you are cruising here for months, $10 per day becomes too expensive. 

The alternative is to get a local SIM card and plug it into your phone! BTC, the local cell phone carrier sells SIM cards that will give you data and minutes with a prepaid plan. The cards cost about $20 to start with a modest plan of several minutes and GB of data. Over the phone, or with the BTC app, you can add minutes and data to your phone as you use it up. 

The system works quite well. Through the BTC app, you can add money to your account from your credit card. After you have added the funds, you can then dial *203# to access the BTC options. The call will take you through several prompts where you can choose to buy minutes or data at various dollar values.  

Since we do a lot of uploading with our YouTube channel, we have opted for the most expensive but also largest data plan, where you can buy 15GB of data for only $35. This data is consumed both in upload as well as in downloads, so use it wisely! As the data gets low, simply add more money and then call *203# to add more data to your phone card. 

All of this is possible only if you have an unlocked phone that you purchased directly from the manufacturer. If your phone came as part of a contract with your carrier, you will not be able to switch out the SIM card with a BTC card. In that case, you can buy a prepaid cell phone here and simply add minutes or data to that phone while you are here. 

The coolest thing about a new SIM card is it gives you a local Bahamas phone number! 

Hatches and Portholes

While proper ventilation is critical to a happy cruising life, it is important to remember that not only air can pass through your hatches and portholes. 

The foredeck hatch is the most important hatch to maintain. This hatch is the furthest from the cockpit, so its situation often goes ignored. This hatch is also the closest to the bow, so it is the most likely to see ocean spray coming up and possibly into the forward cabin! 

As a rule, we always close the forward hatch when raising or lowering headsails. I simply loosen the struts that keep it open and let the lid fall closed. I do this not to keep water out, but to keep the sails and all their control lines from fouling the open hatch and torquing it. Sheets and downhauls have a tendency to loop around the open hatch and present a problem while raising the sail. By simply closing the hatch, all of these problems are minimized. 

Sadly, if you are going out in large seas, simply lowering the hatch will not suffice. A large wave over the bow will push a sheet of water over the deck. When this water reaches the unlocked hatch, it will force it open just enough to let water pour in through the hole. In our case, this pours right in on our V-berth, soaking the mattress and our pillows.  

Now, our rule is to dog the hatch down as well as close it when raising sails. If the weather seems settled and calm, the hatch can always be opened. But if the weather is rough, we don't have to "remember to dog the forward hatch" as we are holding on to the teeter totter motion of the boat in large seas. 

Natural Bottom Cleaning

While in the Bahamas, I noticed that our bottom is staying cleaner than normal. Usually, I need to give our hull a quick scrub down with a soft broom every week, and if I stretch it out, to two weeks, there will be fuzzy growth present.

We have now been in the Bahamas for a few weeks, and anchored for most of it. Being anchored and not sailing in warm tropical waters is a recipe for bottom growth, yet our bottom has maintained itself as clean as the day we launched it! 

I couldn't figure out why we were staying cleaner than usual, until one day I noticed a little friend hanging out under the boat. We had collected four remoras and they were eating the beginnings of bottom growth. These fish which are commonly seen attached to sharks and whales had attached themselves to the bottom of our hull and have been acting like natural vacuum cleaners, scrubbing our hull every day.