Our Travels

Great news! The technicians came and facilitated the repairs to the generator. Heck, even the refrigerator, with its untold story, is working again. (Thank you, Herbie, Greg, and Ryan!) Fist bumps all around, and a shared Yippee! We can get moving.

On Wednesday, our last evening in Spanish Wells, a squall came through, and along with the rain, brought the 80-foot Knot a Horse to our dock. Cute, right?

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Friday the 13th

Crossing the Northeast Providence Channel of the Atlantic to get from Eleuthera to the Abacos, while not as long as the final step of crossing from the Abacos to the U.S., is a long one – about eight hours for us. Friday began cloudy and grey, but the seas averaged a quite tolerable 4 ft / 8 second period, with the occasional 5-6 foot roller thrown in for good measure. Nothing the ‘Mare couldn’t easily handle. We cruised through the edges of a few of the squalls, but for the most part managed to keep the lightning and the heaviest rains off in the distance, which allowed us to enjoy rainbows and tankers appearing from, and seemingly disappearing into, the mist.

We weaved through the squalls until we reached the North Bar Channel above Lynyard Cay. As we turned into the inlet to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Sea of Abaco, our main engine made a terrible noise. While engine trouble is never a good thing, the timing could have been worse. Rather than being out in the ocean somewhere, we were approaching the inlet and able to fire up the “get home” engine, a small Yanmar, to, now, very slowly, steer through the inlet and around to where we could safely drop anchor in approximately 30′ of water to assess the situation.

The original plan for the day had been to anchor off Lynyard Cay, but after taking stock – and a few calming breaths – we knew we needed to get closer to population and the possibility of diesel mechanics. We used the “get home” engine and the few remaining hours of daylight to slowly limp further north toward Great Abaco. Other than being seriously waked by a steady stream of sport fishers (just where did all these guys come from???), all went well, and we managed to get anchored near Boat Harbour Marina, just south of Marsh Harbour, right before the evening squall.

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Early yesterday, the 30 or so tournament boats roared past us, heading back out for another day of fishing. After the “rocking” show, we used our ‘little engine that could’ to move safely, albeit slowly, around the point into the protection of Marsh Harbour.

We reached the shallow section of the entrance channel to Marsh Harbour at low tide, which we knew we would, but that was preferable to staying at anchor out in the open near Boat Harbour, being rocked by the tour boats, charters, and sport fishers zipping by. All we had to do now was drop the “lunch anchor,” as dear Uncle Bill calls it, and wait a couple of hours.

We ate lunch while the tide brought the necessary depth, then weighed anchor and headed for the Conch Inn Marina. Steerage using the little engine is not the best, and backing up is nearly impossible, so using binoculars while communicating with the dockmaster, Terrell, to see where he planned to put us, we were hesitant about his original choice. Terrell quickly came up with a Plan B. Unfortunately, that involved three turns to port (left), another thing the little engine doesn’t do well, but with enough dockhands and the assistance of a very nice couple docked on the other side of the short finger pier, we were able to get her nose up in there without incident. Whew. Another calm performance by captain and crew.

Now. How bad is it? Unfortunately, it’s like checking into the hospital on a weekend. You can’t talk to anyone until Monday. All we know is we won’t be crossing back to the states next week.

At this point, it would be easy to focus on the negative, but we prefer to look at the blessings:

• no bodily injuries
• other than a hurt engine, no crashes or damage to the boat
• we were near the inlet rather than out in the ocean
• we are now safely docked in a small, protected harbor
• we have a network of cruising friends and a great family to help us weather the storm