12 December 2008
On Friday, December 5th, we moved down to Key Biscayne to be closer to the ocean for our crossing over to the Bahamas the next day. On Saturday we left for our fifth crossing of the Gulf Stream. Thankfully, it was uneventful and we were back in turquoise waters on the Great Bahama Bank at Bimini just before sunset. As we continued on through the night, Ruth, who was on watch, had an unnerving experience. As we were approaching Mackie Shoal, which is a very shallow area on the bank, there were two boats anchored close to the lit shoal marker in a way that forced us to pass between them and the marker. Because it was night and depth perception is poor in the dark, Ruth had very little feel for how close we were to those boats, so she motored along, anxiously keeping an eye on them. When we finally passed them, she could see the hulls in the ambient light, and we ended up motoring just a few boat length in front of one of them.
The next morning, just after we left the bank, we were approached by a large motor boat of the Bahamian Defence Force who asked to board us. After one of their officers stepped onto our boat (not a small feat in the rolling seas!), we were informed that we should have cleared in at Bimini, our first possible port of call. After informing them that this was not mentioned in any of our guide books and that we were planning to go straight through to Cat Island, the officer said it was okay - this time. Later on that evening (we were now on our second night of non-stop travelling), as we were passing south of New Providence Island, Ruth was sitting in the salon when the whole boat was lit up by a strong search light - another Bahamian Defence Force vessel! This time they did not board us, but took the paperwork from our last boarding and copied it. Papers were passed back and forth between our boat and theirs, again in rolling seas and with their boat coming dangerously close to hitting ours. Most people never even see the Bahamian Defence Force, and we had them visit us twice - we guess this is what happens when you travel at night where most innocent cruising boats don't!
We were pushing to get to Cat Island but the weather started deteriorating. We ended up stopping at Highbourne Cay on Monday morning, and we immediately went to bed as we hadn't slept well during our night passages due to the waves rocking the boat in a rather uncomfortable manner. We spent four days in the Highbourne/Allens Cay area waiting for weather to cross over the Cat Island. The night before we left Allens Cay, a squall came through at about 4am. Just before the squall hit, Geoff had woken up because the boat started moving differently in the changing winds. He looked outside and saw that we had rotated 180 degrees on our anchor with the veering wind and that we were getting quite close to two other anchored boats. There was still enough distance so Geoff wasn't concerned. Then the squall hit and we tugged on our anchor, extending our rode to its full length. Geoff checked outside again and was a little alarmed - we had slid backwards to sit exactly between the two boats, each one being only a boat length away! It was really lucky that we didn't run into one of them. The boat to our right was swinging a lot at its anchor (some boats have a tendency to do that - it's called "sailing at anchor") and was getting awfully close. Ruth awoke to shouting on deck in French, as the boat did get close enough that they would have hit us from the side had Geoff and the other owner (who only spoke French) not physically pushed the two boats apart. Because we were the boat in the middle and were too close to both, we started our engine, picked up anchor and re-anchored a few hundred yards away for a rough rest of the night as we were closer to the inlet now and the waves were much larger. All of this happened in howling wind and pounding rain in total darkness! Two hours later at dawn, we left for Cat Island. Our trip over was a smooth but fairly long one - we arrived at 8pm in the evening, anchoring in the dark to the lights of some houses on shore.
