We spent a few more boring days stuck at Great Harbour Cay, although we did manage to invite some new friends aboard for drinks, and then they had us over for dinner!

After that, we had an opportunity to move to Chubb Cay. Our next move is an 8 hour trip, 4 hours heading southwest, then 4 hours heading straight east. We had two options: either leave on Wednesday, and have good sailing for the first leg then be dead into the wind for the second leg, or wait until Thursday and have a light downwind sail followed by possibly okay sailing wind for the second leg. Going dead into the wind can bring us down to a 3 knot speed, which really slows down the trip, and we risk running out of daylight. I’m not keen on entering a new harbor in the dark and anchoring when I can’t see the bottom.

1.15 – Wednesday

We woke up and the water was dead calm. It’s rare to see the water so glassy, especially with all the strong wind lately!

The bargain was that we would spend Wednesday figuring out the spinnaker so we could hoist that for the light downwind part of tomorrow’s sail. We’ve never used our spinnaker because we don’t have the right deck hardware for it, and I’ve downloaded info on how to rig it but I’ve never actually read through it. Turns out…it’s not as much of a struggle as I thought. We can do this!

Kyle also took apart the reel of one of our fishing rods, it broke last spring and we’ve never taken it apart. There was a small component that was bent, but he put it back together and it started working again.

1.16 – Thursday

After pulling up anchor and getting on course for the first leg of our trip to Chubb Cay, I noticed that the winds were already way lighter than the 8 kts that were forecast. The guide I’d read said the spinnaker needed at least 5 kt of wind to perform, and we were hovering around there, so we went for it. This is a huge lightwind kite, we hoist the whole thing wrapped in a fabric tube, then we pull a cord and the tube lifts up and lets the sail free. For a better idea of what I’m talking about, check out the time lapse I posted to instagram – it went pretty well!

However, we throttled the engines back to neutral and we were doing 3.5 kt. I wish that was fast enough, but at that speed we’ll arrive at our next anchorage in the middle of the night. We immediately pulled it back down and kept motoring. So far we’ve spent about $80/minute of spinnaker sailing (we bought a new sock for it).

Kyle was at the helm when one of the reels began spooling out, he pulled in a good sized fish! It looked familiar, but we weren’t sure what it was and I couldn’t find my fish ID pdf on my tablet, so it took a while before we identified it as a bar jack, and then took a little more time to identify that it was a ciguatera risk and we had to throw it back. It had been out of the water for quite a while so I didn’t take the time for a photo, instead here’s a photo we took of a school of bar jacks last spring!

After that we pulled in two barracuda! Both of those had to go back. Then one of the reels spooled out all of its line! I reeled it in, it wasn’t fighting but it was heavy, so Kyle took over. We pulled in…a big chunk of seaweed. After that we adjusted the drag on that reel! We also re-broke the reel so there’s no saving that bent piece, we’ll have to try to find a new one.

We made our turn east, which took us off the Bahamas banks (shallow, around 20 ft) and into the Tongue of the Ocean (8000 ft deep, almost 4x as deep as the Gulf Stream!). Here is where we lost three lures, bitten clean off through our 150-lb fishing line. Oh, also, on our last trip across the banks we must’ve been sleep deprived when pulling in the lines, because later we realized that something had bitten through a wire leader! WHAT COULD DO THAT!? So now we’ve lost five lures, which is basically all we had, and we’re down to the bottom-of-the-barrel half-eaten squid lures. Not exactly appetizing.

When we made our turn, we hoisted the main and the genoa and were extremely close-hauled (we were almost pointed directly into the wind). We throttled back to see if we could sail, and again we dropped down to 3.5 kt. We talked about tacking out and back just so we could sail, but that would have had us arriving after dark. So, instead of sailing all day as planned, we’re doing no sailing and being really grumpy about that. We anchored at Chubb Cay at the southern end of the Berry Islands, supposedly a sport fishing paradise located at the north end of the Tongue of the Ocean.

1.17 – Friday

We (again!) have some very strong weather coming in, this morning is our only opportunity for exploring before the wind picks up. The first place we took the dinghy was to Mama Rhoda Rock. We found some pretty purple sea fans here but didn’t see much else.

It wasn’t until the wind picked up the next day and we saw breaking waves just beyond the rock that we realized we’d completely missed the coral reef out there, that was a bummer!

The reviews of the Chubb Cay marina were…not particularly positive. It sounds like it’s a really nice marina, but poorly run. The prices change by the day, and they are not friendly to dinghies at all. We still headed in to see it, it is the first time we’ve seen floating docks in the Bahamas (we only see fixed docks with pilings, which are challenging to fend against on the boat, and challenging to disembark from the dinghy at low tide). It’s a beautiful, new marina. At the fuel dock we inquired about going ashore, it is a private island and apparently they charge a day pass price that also changes daily. Today it cost $15 per person (we had some friends stop by and the day they went in it cost $10/p). We asked about fishing tackle and they only had live bait available, so we didn’t really need to go ashore, although groceries would have been nice. This is a photo of the underside of the fuel dock.

Our dinghy adventure wasn’t over! We headed to the lee side of the island where there was some strong current. At one point, we saw some fish under water and ended up drifting the dinghy over that spot several times to get underwater shots – there was a crack in the rock that was full of reef fish!

Then we pulled onto the banks of Crab Cay, an uninhabited island behind Chubb Cay, and on shore we found this monstrosity!

Some research confirmed our suspicions that this disgusting giant snail is actually a conch. I guess it makes sense, it’s a sea creature that grows in a shell, but now that I see it’s a giant snail it’s kind of killed my appetite for anything conch. We still have to try cracked conch but I have absolutely no desire to hunt them ourselves. Also, FYI, that darker appendage on the right end of the conch is it’s foot. It just has the one. It uses it to hop along the ocean floor? Or maybe I’m misinterpreting the website. But I can’t get that picture out of my head – a conch hopping along on one foot.

Further dinghy explorations towards the mangrove led us to this crazy unique sea star! We hardly ever see yellow/orange stars (they are usually red) and I’ve never come across a four-legged star!

We saw a small mangrove canal and headed in. For the first time since we returned to the Bahamas, we saw some turtles! They are super speedy, after watching sea turtles it’s hard to believe turtle’s big reputation is for being incredibly slow.

And because our days our feast or famine lately (either nothing happens, or EVERYTHING happens), this afternoon we had a spot of rain move through – barely enough to wash off all the salt we’ve accumulated since leaving Florida – and we snapped some good boat shots in the dark weather. It feels so good to have a clean boat again.

The sun came out later and created this truly dramatic scene, the pool-colored water against the dark clouds offset by the bright rays of sunlight!

1.18 – Saturday

I knew the anchor was set really well (because I’m the one who sets it), but it’s still hard to sleep in the strong wind. I think it’s the noise. Anyway, it’s not often that I’m up early enough to see the sunrise but today’s was spectacular. Definitely worth the insomnia!

One of the biggest downsides of the strong winter winds is that when we finally have a calm day, instead of exploring or snorkeling, we use it as an opportunity to move to our next anchorage. We stayed at Chubb until the winds died down, then pulled up anchor to move to a new island chain.