Day 112: Everyone Knows It’s Windy

Between the Majors, Exumas, Bahamas (anchored)

May 7, 2022

Prevailing winds here are from the east. We have been anchored in a great spot that’s protected by land from those winds. We knew that the winds would be clocking around to blowing from the west (wide open at our anchorage) but weren’t sure how rolly we would get. Comfort depends on how Lailia is moving: rocking side to side can be kind of nice but lots of rolling is not fun.

This morning those west winds picked up. Our dinghy started banging up against Lailia and we were rolling a bit. I woke up to see the dinghy out of the stern portlights and thought we had a runaway dinghy; it was actually John who had moved the dinghy to a better spot. That stopped the banging but we were pretty sure the rolling was going to get worse.

We had discussed moving Lailia to a spot behind Big Majors known as “Between the Majors” because Little Major is on the other side of the channel. This anchorage provides protection from both the east and the west but it does have some go-fast boat traffic through its channel. Those boats in this channel can cause some temporary rolling due to wakes.

John made the call to pull anchor and move to Between the Majors. I am glad he did.

One somewhat harrowing part of moving to the new anchorage is heading through a very narrow cut. We have ridden the little dinghy through there and it can have some strong currents. Captain John was confident and steady so we had no problems (but it’s only 50′ wide there and we have a beam of 13′).

Narrow, swift-moving water can cause a lot of shoaling because sand gets pushed through and then sinks. We got stuck on the sandy bottom for a few minutes and then the current pushed us off. Now we know why we saw another sailboat sitting there for about an hour yesterday! Getting stuck on the sand here isn’t awful especially when we’re going slow. It’s just a soft bump (and lots of cursing).

Once we dropped anchor in the new spot John put on his snorkel gear and followed the chain to make sure our anchor had set deeply.

We have wind scoops over a few deck hatches. These help funnel wind down into our boat. They make a huge difference especially when we’re dealing with the current pushing us in a different direction than the wind. Normally the wind blows from our bow and back to our stern – our hatches open to the bow so we capture a lot of wind. Today the current was pushing harder than the wind so we’re turned about 90° from the wind. Our scoops are facing the port side to catch those westerly winds.

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The rocky Islands here intrigue me (and John indulges me when I want to get nerdy). They’re perforated with holes, caves, and caverns. Sandy beaches are not the norm – most of the time it’s rocks straight down to the water line.

Brown noddies live on a few of the really small islets we pass on our way to Staniel. They seem to hang out in some of the larger holes but I can’t tell if they’re nesting or just chilling. We were able to get pretty close to them on our dinghy.

We’re waiting for some assistance to get our alternator shipped. The Bahamas government has created a website that allows importers and exporters to create accounts. We’ve filled everything out and submitted all of the documents but we haven’t gotten the email confirmation we need. We’ll try calling the helpline tomorrow morning to see if we can get this moving (so we can get moving!)

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