S/V Geru: We are in the Bahamas!

Tuesday morning we left the marina at West End to head onto the Little Bahama Bank. As we left the harbour (still on the ocean side), we were in a pretty good sea and it was fairly rough as we headed towards Indian Cay Channel, our chosen entrance to the bank. The Little Bahama Bank is a large expanse of shallow water surrounded by reefs and islands (the smaller ones being called "cays" here) with a few passable entrances from the ocean. The pass onto the bank was interesting as the waves initally were quite large, but as soon as we were on the bank it smoothed out to much less than on the ocean side.

Arriving on the Little Bahama Bank was amazing - it is shallow enough to see the bottom as it is generally 10 feet or less in depth, and it extended as far as we could see with no land in sight. Our first night was spent at Mangrove Cay. We went to bed with the boat rocking gently in the small waves. When we woke up in the morning, it was dead calm with only a few ripples on the water - what a neat place to be! We almost whispered when we went out on deck, it was so still. Around us, sea met sky with a few small islands visible in the distance.

We left Mangrove Cay on Wednesday and spent an hour or so calibrating our autopilot. We had carried the autopilot in a box since Ottawa, we finally installed it in Vero Beach, but it needed to be calibrated before we could actually use it. Calibration entails motoring large circles and letting the autopilot take the boat on a zig-zag course of its choosing, and we had not had the calm seas and large space required to do that until now. Once "Auto" was calibrated, we let him steer us for most of the day to Great Sale Cay. What a great change for us - to be able to stand back from the helm and not having to constantly steer the boat by hand.

We had planned on spending an extra day at Great Sale Cay to catch our breath and fix some minor boat things. However, after a rough night with seas starting to roll directly into the anchorage and the wind looking like it would continue to blow from the same unfavourable direction, we decided to head out to find a calmer anchorage to spend the next night. We left Great Sale Cay and were able to sail (not motorsail) for a while - this was a first since we left Ottawa! It was wonderful to turn off the engine and glide quietly over the water. The sailing didn't last very long, though, as the wind was shifting and we ended up with the wind on our nose and bashing into two foot waves with spray on the deck. The day was pretty good as Auto was at the helm so we weren't constantly working to keep on course. We spent the night anchored just off of the town of Fox Town on Little Abaco Island.

On Friday, we checked into one of the cruisers' nets on our SSB radio and had a great chat on the radio with Skip from Isolde II, who is currently up in Brunswick, Georgia. We found out all the latest going-ons about our cruising friends up there. As Ruth says, the Jungle Drums work well. After lunch we headed into shore to see our first Bahamian town. Fox Town has a few colourful houses along the road, a grocery store (7-eleven size with mostly empty shelves) and two gas stations. We found the locals to be very friendly - a young gentleman came up to us and offered us a taste of freshly made banana pie (more like cake). Near the edge of town we found the school and the community clinic, both of which looked very new. The clinic, in particular, looked like an elaborate home with extensive landscaping. One of the locals told us that much of the town has been rebuilt over the last several years after hurricane Floyd destroyed much of the area.

The weather has been hot over the last few days, hitting 30C with lows at night around 26C. We are both finding it a bit too hot at times. There is usually a breeze, though, and when we have our two main hatches open, it keeps the inside of the boat fairly comfortable. We have seen little to no rain here so far. Our last real rains were the heavy thunderstorms in Vero Beach.