MELTDOWN ON ELEUTHERA!

Magic underway to Eleuthera.
Wonderful sail!

     As I mentioned in my last blog, while still at the beautiful anchorage of Cambridge Cat in the Exumas, we had a difficult decision to make; stay put for another week or more to await another weather window or leave the Exumas and make the 48 mile crossing to Eleuthera. It was a tough decision since we loved the Exumas and particularly the various anchorages of the Exumas Land and Sea Park. Rationalizing we’d be back in a year or two, we decided to set sail and head east. We had another beautiful sail with winds just behind the beam of Magic and made almost 7 knots the whole way across. Yea, I know if you are powerboater, 7 knots is barely steerageway, but for us ragbaggers, that was truly flying! Once again Diane tried her hand at fishing, and ran out two lines with lures she was told were guaranteed to catch a huge fish…I think she needs to read that guarantee again because the only thing we caught was a big piece of seaweed, at least until we were in the shallow water near the southern tip of Eleuthera when a small barracuda took the bait. Since those fish are hard to bone and are pretty fishy tasting, we were not at all disappointed when it threw the hook just as we got it near the boat!

Tim, JL and Patty in the caves
at Rock Sound

Great shot of the root structure leading from
outside the cave all the way down
to the floor. Easily strong enough to climb
to the top.

            Approaching Eleuthera we had a navigation challenge to work our way between some pretty shallow banks into Rock Sound and even though we spied a few coral mounds near our course, found the route relatively easy. The Rock Sound settlement itself is yet another small community of mostly fishermen with only a few stores and restaurants, but they make do pretty well with what they have! Not the most protected anchorage we’ve been in, our short dingy rides to shore proved to be pretty wet but worth the effort. First of all we discovered the Eluetheran version of the “Mall of America” with a small (even by US standards, but huge here!) strip mall complete with a great grocery store, a hardware store, bank, and even a NAPA auto parts store! Easily the best shopping we’ve seen at least since Georgetown. 

I had to include this photo! In Rock Sound, he same guy
sells liquor, coffins and has property (graves?) for sale!
You just can't make this stuff up!!

On our first full day here, the crews of Veritas and Magic went ashore to explore the area on foot since we’d heard of an interesting cave system near town and of a very deep blue hole unusually situated ashore (most blue holes are part of a bay and so named because they are so deep the water is a dark blue). After a fairly short walk we found the caves and spent a lot of time exploring, taking photos and avoiding both some pissed off bats and their “bomblets” of guano. It was amazing to see the root systems of aboveground trees extend right thru small holes right to the floor of the caves. Some of these roots hadn’t yet reached bottom and could be used like rope swings! You could just imagine swashbuckling pirates hiding out here to avoid British warships. Alas, no treasure…unless you count the guano which we were somehow able to avoid! Next came the “Ocean Hole” right in the town, which formed a small park complete with benches and a swimming platform. The water in this pool of water is supposed to be over 600 feet deep (!!) and is refreshed by small holes in the rocks leading to the sound. We were told that someone put a shark in this pool a few years ago as a joke, which the rest of the locals didn’t find very amusing!

            In this blog I’ve mentioned that cruising is the act of fixing your boat in exotic locations, and Rock Sound was no different. There are several absolutely essential items on our boat that just have to work. Among them are our outboard and dingy (otherwise known as the family car and which finally seems to be working well), Magic’s diesel engine, our watermaker, refrigeration and finally our batteries to provide power for just about everything we use or do. 

This is the melted fuse block. Could
have been really bad!

Except for the watermaker, all the others have suffered some sort of failure during this trip!   Almost since leaving Miami we’d noticed that it took longer and longer every day to top off our large storage batteries when relying on our three solar panels. Since I’d sized and installed the solar panels specifically to exceed our everyday battery (power) needs of the boat, this was both perplexing and a growing concern. Finally, during a break in our shore action in Rock Sound, Diane coaxed me into doing a bit of troubleshooting. It didn’t take me long to discover that a required fuse I’d placed near the batteries had somehow overheated (and not blown – ouch) and literally melted both the fuse holder and the top of one of our “house” batteries! In a way, we were lucky since our batteries are not the old “wet cell” style and instead use a gell medium. Had they been the former, we could easily have had a catastrophic battery failure and possible fire…a really bad thing to have on a boat! Luckily, we discovered the problem before it got really bad, replaced the fuse and holder with another and put the system back to work.

If you look closely at the spot
with the "2" on it, you will see
the dime-sized hole in my battery!

The sun is now making electricity just like I’d originally planned. In examining the failed fuse holder and associated wiring, I’m pretty sure the failure was mine. One of the crimps I made to attached a fitting to the wire was not as tight as it should have been and over time a minute amount of moisture allowed corrosion to get in, adding resistance to the wire and converting the influx of power from the panels into heat rather than filling our batteries. Needless to say I’ve inspected just about every crimp I’ve made on the boat to ensure that doesn’t happen again and high on my purchase list is a professional grade crimper to ensure all my future efforts are secure! In short we dodged a bullet here and were lucky.

Narrow entry into Hatchet Bay. Don't see it until
you are literally at the entrance!

            After a couple days in Rock Sound we were anxious to get moving again, especially since yet another frontal system was approaching and we wanted to be in as protected location as possible. On the island of Eleuthera, that means Hatchet Bay, a 7-hour sail north. Our mini-convoy departed Rock Sound early the next morning and had a pleasant motorsail up the island in our quest for good protection. Hatchet Bay is unique in the Bahamas in that it affords literally 360 degree protection from both winds and seas. Located a few miles south of the largest airport on the island, the bay was a created when the government blew a hole in the rocks that separated this large salt water lake from the sea, forming a narrow opening leading into a ½ mile long bay.

This is at Twin Brothers bar and restaurant. Those are the
BEST daiquiris in the Bahamas...and cheap! Almost
like soft serve ice cream with a punch!

You can just add your own
caption here!! This isn't
the only place we
saw signs like this.

Easily the most protected anchorage in the Bahamas, Hatchet Bay was an almost perfect place to hole up for a blow with free, government-maintained moorings, a small grocery and really nice, helpful people.

On the "bad" side, the Hatchet Bay settlement itself was almost depressing. Of the three restaurants, one was closed (Twin Brothers) because of a kitchen fire (!), one was very nice but pretty expensive (Front Porch) and the last (Forget-Me-Not) was open on a spotty schedule (like most places in the Bahamas). The ONLY rental car in town was broken and both internet and cell phone coverage was spotty, with the entire system down for hours or even a day at a time. Finally, and possibly most depressing, unemployment appeared rampant. We found very few people actually working, but a lot of locals just sitting around with apparently nothing to do. Sad. Still, we made the most of it and explored all over the place, including hikes to the Atlantic side of the island in search of sea treasures. It would be unfair of me to totally pan this place where the people were extraordinarily nice, food at the restaurants that were open was really good (especially the smallest, the Forget-Me-Not Café and Bar, which had wonderful food at extremely reasonable prices) and we had a good time meeting fellow cruisers hiding from the weather. 

No blog of this trip would be complete without a photo of a Kalik
beer place! This one at Hatchet Bay had them for just $2.50!

I have to also mention that even though the restaurant closed due to fire did have its bar open serving the BEST and possibly cheapest daiquiri in the world! The forecast weather blew through one night with a vengeance and even though we were on a secure mooring, no one got much sleep as the boats were rocked by 35+ knot gusts. Even though we were in a secure place, Veritas and Magic were definitely ready to leave when another window to sail to our last stop here; Spanish Wells which I’ll detail in my next blog.

            Stay tuned!!!