Crossing the Wild Pacific - Captain's Log of the Yacht Argo

Tom took the overnight watch, and I relieved him at 07:00. It was a nice clear morning, and we were still on the Mackie Bank about 20 miles east of Chub Cay. We put the fishing lines out as we neared the bank at Fleeming Channel. Apparently, no one was in the mood for breakfast even though I served up a beautiful cedar plug. About 10:30 we raised Chub Cay Marina on VHF 68 and made our way into the channel toward the docks. Chub Cay is a little limestone island that rises about 3 feet above sea level. The island is beautiful: white limestone beaches, pine trees and palms all around, and fancy homes built by the marina’s developer. The homes are done in a sort of American colonial style, with brightly painted pastel colors, steel roofs, and Adirondack chairs on the porches. The marina was carved out of solid limestone rock. I can only imagine what it cost to build! Despite being beautifully equipped, it didn’t seem to be doing well financially.

The marina caters mostly to the sport fishing crowd, and there were a number of them in the harbor as we pulled in. These boats are very expensive—certainly millions of dollars—with most of them having several crew members. While at the dock, crew members spend most of their time washing and polishing their boats or stringing fishing lines and preparing for the next day’s expedition. The docking fees are extremely high here: $4.35/foot in season and $2.50/foot off season plus 40 cents/gallon for water and $30/night for electricity. One night at dock was $225. Because the high season began February 17, we should have paid the higher rate (about $400), but they let us off “easy.”

After checking in with the dock master, Rebecca took our papers to customs and immigration located a few miles away at the dirt airstrip and paid the Bahamian $300 cruising fee. Meanwhile Tom cleaned the salt off Argo while I de-pickled the watermaker and got it up and running. That afternoon we went to the beach for a little while, but the ocean was only 78 degrees, a little cold for Rebecca and Tom. On our way back to the boat, an owner of a sport-fish stopped Rebecca and asked her to taste his ceviche. What a come-on! I was standing right there. Anyway, I commented on the raft of fancy reels and fishing poles bristling off the back of his boat. There must have been $50,000 worth of reels and poles, some electric and some manual, all bright and shining gold masterpieces of the sport fishing culture. To distract him from focusing on my wife, I asked him what he had to buy his wife in order to invest so much in all this fishing gear. That’s when I heard the biggest whopper of them all: he told us that his wife doesn’t particularly like jewelry, so he buys her a fishing rod or reel for Mother’s Days, anniversaries, and the like. Boy, that’s a fish story if ever I heard one; either that, or he has the most understanding and unselfish wife in the world!

After a delicious dinner, a la Rebecca, we all fell into bed tired and glad to have started on our voyage.

We got underway about 06:45 and started for a lagoon between Allen and Leaf Cay about 10 hours away. These two islands are clustered together and form one of the most beautiful places that we have been to in our travels. They are home to two species of indigenous iguanas. First, we had to cross Fleeming Channel, which is a notorious piece of water; it is often windblown and rough because the ocean breeze is channeled between the Great Abaco and Eleuthera Islands to the north and the New Providence Island to the south. Today we had 30 knots of wind and 4 to 6-foot box-wave seas, which didn’t subside until we rounded the western tip of New Providence Island and moved onto the Great Bahama Bank. The depth of the water changes rapidly from the channel to the bank, going from about 1,000 feet to 20 feet or less in a very short distance. Argo bounced around a bit in the deep water taking the waves broadside: just a little taste of what is to come when we cross the Caribbean Sea in a couple of weeks. We made it to the bank in a couple of hours and then on to Allen and Leaf Cays, arriving around 17:14; a good run in sunny, warm weather. We anchored in sand in 15 feet of water just in time to enjoy a lovely sunset.

The next morning, we awoke to a clear, sunny day, though breezy. Waves in the anchorage were a little rough, so we decided to pull the anchor and enjoy a 5-hour cruise down the coast to Big Major. This is one of two places where boaters congregate in large numbers to socialize and enjoy a tiny speck of civilization on Staniel Cay. Last winter we spent about 2 weeks here.

We arrived in the early afternoon and found about 50 yachts at anchor. We put out the tender and cruised around the islands, stopping in at the club for a libation. Since many cruisers come here year after year, sort of like visiting the same campground, on the way back we decided to look around for people we met last year. As we tooled about in our tender we noticed Exodus, a Fleming 65 with Texans Susan and Arnie on board. We met them last year and spent a fair amount of time in their delightful company. Later that evening we stopped by for cocktails and watched the sun go down. We asked about a couple (best to remain nameless) that we had met last year, and Susan told us that they had to sell their boat because neither of their mothers, both of whom are in their 90s, had died yet, so they couldn’t afford to keep up the cruising lifestyle. The couple tells everyone this story and refers to themselves as trust-fund babies, so we are not really talking out of school. Apparently, the nameless couple tried to sell their boat, had a buyer, and needed to take the boat south from its location to consummate the sale. On the way, the boat unfortunately developed an engine room fire at sea. Having been aboard the boat last year, I am not sure if the fire wasn’t a blessing in disguise. But, instead of letting it burn and sink, the fire was extinguished, the boat was saved and ultimately towed to shore. The buyer, of course, lost interest, and our acquaintances are now watching their mothers spend their inheritances.

The Bahamas are spectacular: blue sky, gorgeous aqua blue water, white sand, and beautiful palm trees. The air temperature is about 80 degrees, and the water is just a few degrees less. I couldn’t wait to go swimming, so we headed over to the grotto where the movie Thunderball was filmed. You remember the scene that drove everyone wild: Sean Connery and a voluptuous young woman diving under the rock and finding themselves all wet in a beautiful, underwater cave. Well, this was the place, and it is spectacular. There is a buoy near the underwater entrance to the grotto so visitors can tie up their dinghies. We jumped in and swam about 15 feet in aqua blue water to the edge of a small rocky island, dove under the rocks, and swam under them until we could see light from above. We came up into a domed cave about 500 feet wide with a ceiling rising about 30 feet above the water. At its azimuth were several large holes through which sunlight illuminated the grotto’s interior. Across from the grotto’s entrance was a second room, but it was illuminated by light from underwater reflected off the adjacent coral reef. The grotto is 20 or so feet deep, so other tourists didn’t stay very long because they had to paddle with their feet to stay afloat. We had fins and snorkeling equipment, so we stayed perhaps 20 minutes. The shimmering aqua blues, golden sunlight reflecting off the lichen-colored rocky surfaces, the white sand below, and the reflected colors of the reef made our visit to the grotto among our most beautiful memories.

That afternoon Tom and I thought we should clean Argo’s bottom. She had been sitting in the Saint Lucie River in Stuart, Florida, for several weeks, and a grassy alga had taken up residence. Growth of any kind should be removed from a vessel’s bottom as it will slow the boat and decrease fuel efficiency. I had never done this sort of work before, as usually I hire a diver to clean her, but one of my boating friends does it himself, so I thought I would give it a try. In this case, we just used a washcloth and wiped the bottom as far down as we could reach, which was adequate. It can be a little unsettling to enter the water from the boat in the Bahamas as nurse sharks up to 10 feet long rest on the sandy bottom in the shadow of the boat.

That evening we took the tender on the 20-minute trip to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. Fancy this place ain’t; it’s a Bahamian bar offering booze and food (mostly fried) to passing sailors. It’s a fun place full of cast-off hats, flags, and other nautical and team sports memorabilia from around the world. Fishing boats and tenders are tied up at the little dock, and under the boats are a dozen or so nurse sharks milling about. They are attracted by the fishermen’s fish-cleaning station, hoping to snatch an easy meal.

The next day we got up early and set out for Georgetown, about 80 miles south of Big Major. It was a...