Passing Through the Abacos

We are making a quick pass through the Abacos, revisiting our favorite spots from last year.

Pete's Pub and Gallery

New paint on Hope Town Lighthouse

Weather Forecasting

In the US there are so many weather resources readily available. For the mariner it is as easy as tuning the VHF radio to nearest NOAA weather station. NOAA continuously broadcast marine and other weather products. Once you leave the US it is a whole different story. Our principal means of getting good reliable weather information is our SSB radio. Chris Parker provides weather and routing information each morning (except Sundays) for the Bahamas and the entire Caribbean. Chris is a sailor and broadcast from his Morgan 34 'Bel Ami' in Florida. Equally important to us are our GRIB (Gridded Binary Data) files which we download daily for our geographic area. These are data files from forecasting models. We use the GFS (Global Forecasting System) which is NOAA's forecasting model. There are other models that we sometimes use such as WW3, which is a forecast of ocean wave dynamics. We view this data with GRIB Explorer from OCENS. A GRIB file contains a lot of data and presentation is important for the analysis. We download barometric pressure, wind, wave and precipitation at 6 hours intervals for the next few days, usually five. There are longer forecast times frames, but the accuracy deteriorates significantly. With Chris Parker's forecast, particularity his synoptic forecast, and the GRIB files we usually have a high confidence levels in the forecast for the next 2 - 3 days. The nice benefit of weather forecasting is that you can evaluate the forecast accuracy fairly quickly.


The screen print of a recent GRIB file shows the Abacos, outlined in white. Our position is the red cross. Wind barbs show the wind direction and speed at 2 pm. The solid lines are barometric pressure and the dashed lines are wave height.


Double click on the picture to get a better view

Visiting Eleuthera

We returned to Warderick Wells, moving about 28 miles south of Normans Cay after saying farewell to Warren and Karen. With the forecast wind direction we wanted to improve our wind angle for the crossing to Eleuthera. The move paid off big time. We turned the engine off as soon as we cleared the cut and had a wonderful sail all the way over until we were on the bank at Eleuthera. Every place we visit is unique. Eleuthera gets far fewer visiting cruisers and therefore it is not really part of their economy as is with many of the islands. We made three overnight stops on Eleuthera. Our plan was to stop at Spanish Wells which is just north of Eleuthera, but with a forecast for approaching high winds we did not want to get pinned down. Near Spanish Wells is Royal Island with a great anchorage, but the island is private. There really are not good anchorages in the crowded harbor at Spanish Wells. Not wanting to spend a week on the boat waiting on weather at Royal Island, we pushed on, and at that we were cutting it close. The winds were forecast to build in the afternoon and to be almost directly on our nose. We left early and pushed hard and the winds came in exactly as predicted, but we arrived at Little Harbour at our planned time which was near high tide. The passage into Little Harbour can be challenging and for us the waves were breaking about one half way across the cut but we did not have any difficulty. We wanted high tide so we could enter the protected harbour just inside the cut. We saw a low reading of 5'7" which isn't too bad for us. We will have to leave on a high tide as well. It is great to come back to familiar territory. Pete's Pub is at Little Harbour and one of our favorites. This is a great place to wait for fairer winds.

McDuffs on Normans Cay  (Warren)

I made friends with this little guy on my arm.

Not everyone wanted to be so close.

As it turned out he didn't want to visit with anyone else anyway

(at Pirates Lair, Warderick Wells)

Every town of any size in the Bahamas has a BaTelCo tower for communications. Rock Sound, Eleuthera

Methodist Church - Rock Sound, Eleuthera 

very friendly

Last Days In Exumas

Picking up plastic - the ocean side of all the cays are awash in plastic - this is on Shroud Cay in the Exuma Land and Sea Park

Trash accumulated for park rangers to haul away

The entire center of Shroud Cay is mangroves with some channels accessible by dinghy during high tide - Karen stepping over mangrove roots while returning to dinghy

Plane wreck at Normans Cay

Starting The Return Trip

We are working our way back up the Exuma chain. Our plan is to cross to Eleuthera, explore there and then go on north to the Abacos to revisit the places where we spent time last season. We stopped one more time at Black Point Settlement, our favorite destination in the Exumas. On Saturday the primary school held a fund raising fair, with food, music and games. Karen from Sand Castle and Norm partnered up in the egg throwing contest and did quite well, but were no match for the Bahamians. Sunday morning we attended church services at a Baptist church. While the congregation was small, you would never know it from the beautiful sound they generate. We felt so welcomed there. Absolutely everyone made point to greet us with either a handshake or a hug.

Ariel at Exuma Land and Sea Park