NASSAU HERE WE COME!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!           

  Bimini was great and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves with the crews of Peaceful Easy Feeling and Veritas, but it was truly time to go and on New Year’s Day, we decided to forgo the traditional Rose Bowl Parade and college football games on TV (amazing, all the Miami networks have repeaters in Bimini and reception was better there than in Coconut Grove!) and head east. Following Veritas out the now-benign channel, we turned north, then east into a dwindling breeze and almost flat seas…finally! Within a couple hours, we found ourselves on the “Great Bahama Bank,” a vast expanse of water east of Bimini where depths vary from 9-20 feet. Words simply cannot describe the scene. Absolutely crystal clear water with visibility so good you can see the bottom with depths greater than 40 feet! While we didn’t see much in the way of fish (Diane was disappointed since she had two fishing lines out, hoping to catch that elusive marlin!), the bottom itself was covered with conch shells, sand dollars, starfish, etc…and it was all there to view from the deck of Magic as we motored along at 6 knots! That was WAY better than the Rose Bowl Parade!

  Mid-afternoon, our little convoy were a little more than half way across “the bank” and instead of sailing through the night to Nassau, and with seas rapidly dropping to just about flat, we decided to anchor for the night. Here’s the picture, two boats, anchored about 100 yards apart, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN! Absolutely incredible. There just aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to describe the scene, but in a word, it was breathtaking. Even Diane, who had some concerns about anchoring because of other boat’s experiences with choppy seas and wind, was ecstatic as we moved along and along with the rest of us kept pointing at interesting things on the bottom some 20 feet below. After a group dinner on Veritas we sat in the cockpit or on deck (the girls abandoned us since we were smoking cigars!) marveling at the night sky, brilliantly lit by stars and planets. Other than our anchor lights, not another light on the ocean. Well, maybe not quite. A glance over at Magic caused all to chuckle since, as assurance against another boat crossing the bank at night hitting us, not only had I turned our anchor light on but plugged in all our Christmas lights as well!  It was an interesting sight seeing the reflection of a big string of multi-colored Christmas lights reflecting off the glassy ocean surface! Unfortunately, we forgot to take a photo!

  After a sound sleep I arose well before dawn early the next morning. I glanced out and to my surprise, saw what I thought was an anchor light of another sailboat, reflecting it’s light on the glassy smooth water very close by. Figuring that boat had seen our lights (with my Christmas lights who could have missed us!) and decided to anchor near us I went below, made coffee and then came back up only to find that boat’s anchor light had gotten MUCH closer since it had gotten quite higher. OOPS! As thousands of other sailor’s have done in the past, I’d mistaken the rising planet Venus for a ship’s anchor light!

   Since departing this magical anchorage (by the way, we were really lucky, lots of others who anchor on “the bank” have far less enjoyable experiences!) we have made our way to Nassau, the capitol of the Bahamas. Here, we are resting up in a nice marina, doing some boat work (you may recall in a past blog that I described cruising as “fixing your boat in exotic places!), and reprovisioning. This is the last place for us to easily obtain fresh veggies, and other groceries at anywhere a reasonable price, so we are making the best of it! We also discovered a great restaurant/bar where they have happy hour with free conch fritters!

  As I have done in just about every blog for a while, I apologize for the few of you who are reading this for the delay in submissions. One, internet service is really hard to find, expensive, and there is just so darn much to do I have trouble finding time to get to this. Still, please stay tuned as we head for the Exuma chain and beyond.

  FYI, bandwidth down here is extremely limited and until I figure out both where the photos I transferred to this laptop are and then how to upload them effeciently (less bytes!) to this blog, you won't see many photos. Please bear with me!