Megalops
Wakulla Springs, Fl
Doug, Jen Bryce and Simon
To the ABACOS by Boat
My trawler is a 36' Gulfstar, twin diesels, genset, a steadying sail that doesn't do too much, all the assorted electrical goodies. It's comfortable, heavy, slow, sea worthy and reliable. It will also roll peanut butter out of an unopened jar in a side sea. We love to spend time on the hook. That is what we usually do up here in the mullet republic, there aren't many marinas here, even if we liked them.
Hey Guys,
We are back in the states. We crossed over from OBB to Sailfish Marina today, it was pretty rolly but doable. It took us 7 hours exactly. NOAA said 2' or less, I'd say 3 to 4 on the east side and 3 within about 15 miles. Better than that the last ten or so, it was mostly on our beam/aft quarter which my boat hates, so it probably seemed a little worse to me than it actually was.
Overall we had a good 3 weeks. Man was it windy though, we had about 6 nice days in all that time plus 6 or 7 marginal days and the rest were total blowouts. By my count 4 strong cold fronts and one weak one passed through the Abacos while we were there. I won't go by boat again in April.
Anyway here ya go. I'll have more next week when we finally get home. Wish us luck on crossing the OWW.
4/2, 2007 crossed from Lauderdale to Port Lucaya, hung out there a couple of days until my wife and kids flew in. Easy, beautiful calm crossing. Caught two big dolphin and a wahoo of about 25 lbs. Took the dinghy through The Lucayan Waterway one day and tried to bonefish, but it was blowing like crazy from the north and it was a mess up there. Stayed at Grand Bahama Yacht club. It was very nice, $85 a night (about). Good pool and Laundry.
4/6 Friends fly out, family flies in.
4/7 Take the boat around to the end of the waterway and anchor in the 2nd to last canal. Kind of cool to see that place and amazing that they spent so much money on a total flop. Hopefully this happens to bakers bay.
4/8 The easter bunny delivers eggs to our boat and the kids have a blast running all over it finding them. We cross the banks to Great Sale Cay, our best weather day of the trip, almost lake conditions, not a sign of things to come. Anchor at Sale, go the beach, the boys have a blast playing in the ruins there and we sit on the beach and drink beer.
That night the Generator on the boat stops making power.
4/9 wake up in the morning and decide to push on for Spanish Cay, as they will have power at the dock and (I hoped) a mechanic. It is blowing about 20 from the SW and gusting to 25 by the time we reach Spanish. Luckily get a slip where we are blown away from the dock rather than on to it. Walk over to a pretty little bay beach and go skimboarding. When we get back we fish off the dock and load up on Yellowtail, and Mangrove Snapper. There are a bunch of Sharks and a huge mutton snapper there as well, but they won't eat. Meet a bunch of nice people. Spanish is WAY too expensive for what they have to offer. The most expensive stop on our trip. No mechanic. That night it blows like crazy and rains really hard. 70 (!) knot gusts are reported in Marsh Harbor, I'd say it blew 45 at Spanish.
4/10 Call the diesel mechanic that I work with at home. He gives me some advice, I'm a decent mechanic, but I don't want to spend my vacation in the bulge. We decide to head for Green Turtle. Head out into rough seas, but luckily they are on the nose, which our boat loves. Spray comes over the flybridge but it is not so bad. Pull into Black Sound and call Roberts Marine (come back George) on the VHF. He doesn't answer so I run over there in the dink. He says to leave the boat open and he will get to it in the morning.
4/11 through 4/12. We wait and wait for George, who never shows up, but have a great time on GTC. We take the dink to Bita Bay, White Sound, Coco Bay and fish the town flat. I catch two small bones. These fish are spooky, as they have been fished a lot. Bita Bay is my favorite, the kids love the beach at the SE end.
4/13 I take the generator apart myself. It is a broken main drive belt. I order a new one to be overnighted from next gen in Jacksonville to George's shipping forwarder in Lauderdale, where it will be overnighted to GTC. Freight costs $119. It comes 5 days later. We hang out at the other shore club and have fun with Kevin Macintosh of Gully Roosters fame who is the dockmaster there. We go to Macintoshes for ice cream (kids treat) and the Blue Bee for smashes each day (adult treat). It blows like stink, gusting to 40 for 2 straight days.
I lose track of dates somewhere here. We waste 2 great weather days waiting on the belt.
Circa 4/17 I put the belt in and we finally get a tiny window to get through the Whale. It is not breaking but we have some pretty big swells. A guy on the radio says 3', but in my experience (I used to commercial fish, I've seen some weather) it is more like 5.
We make it through and head to Guana. Nippers amazes us. Probably the best beach I have ever seen. Buy a bunch of t-shirts and have coconut conch for dinner. The boys exhaust themselves playing on the beach and in the waves. Strong SW winds roil the anchorage all night, but we are on a mooring so we sleep OK.
4/18 The cruisers net says the Whale will be impassable by 4/19 so we head out, missing out on most of the things we came to see. Hope Town in particular. Have an easy passage through the whale and go around to White Sound. Anchor in the bay next to it, and are the only boat there even though White Sound is packed with boats.
4/19 Wake up in the morning and bonefish the flats around the edge of the bay, but don't see a single fish, despite the fact that I watched Ronnie Sawyer and one of his customers get a nice fish here the evening before on pretty much the same tide stage. Head over to GTC and fill up with water then make a great passage to Allen's Pensacola in perfect weather. Stop at the fish cays on the way. Wow! Most spectacular flats of the trip. Anchor up at AP, and fish the flat at the back of the anchorage. See a bunch of big cudas and a few bones. Really nice flat, but no joy. Hike over to the signing tree (s) with the boys and leave our sign. It's too bad there is so much litter there, otherwise it would be almost a holy place. Very cool anyway.
That night the wind comes up and we drag an anchor for the first time in nearly 10 years. Luckily the beam seas wake us up and we reset (this time 2 anchors) before we go up onto the rocks. Manage to sleep good nonetheless.
4/20 Wake up and fish the Allen's Pensacola flat again. This time find way more bones and get two nice fish. It is blowing like stink from the NE (again) and we should stay where we are, but the dragging has us a bit shook about the holding, so we decide to get some southing in and head for Fox Town.
The people at Fox Town were very friendly and let us tie up to their dock, but there is not much to see there. There are a bunch of nice kids there though, and our two have a blast playing with the 10 or 12 local kids who congregate around the boat. I don't think many cruising boats stop there. It blows HARD into the bay all night and I have to keep moving the fenders with the tide changes. I regret leaving my fender boards at home.
4/21 On to Great Sale, a 4 hour run in a strengthening wind and (thankfully) a following sea. When we make the northerly turn around the reef toward the Great Sale anchorage we get a good 30 knot gust that heels the boat way over. No sails mind you, just the wind against the flybridge and deckhouse. There are about 15 boats anchored there when we pull in, holed up from the wind, and by evening there are nearly 50. We spend two days there, hanging at the beach, running around in the dinghy and making friends with the other cruisers there. We meet a lot of nice people and there is a constant chat going on via the VHF. The wind has given all the boats there a sense of community and it is one of the nicest parts of the trip for us. When you get away from the more crowded areas everyone is there on their own boats and there is a much higher experience and skill level which promotes more mutual respect than you may get from bareboat people in the BVI or other places we have been.
I fish a soft grass flat there in the anchorage and catch two BIG bones, both of which act as if they have never seen a fly before. Fish around the rocks with the boys for snaps, but can't find any and it is pretty rough in the dinghy. Bryce hooks but loses a cuda.
4/22 Fourty Five miles across the banks in following seas in 18 to 22 knot winds to Old Bahama Bay. I had low expectations for this marina, but I have to say the people here were very nice, service was good and they had cheap fuel. It was a little fancy for us, but that was OK, we had been roughing it for a while and Jen was ready for a little chill time. We check the forecast with three other boats that we met at Great Sale and plan to layover a day and cross the stream on the 24th. Hang at the pool, do a little engine maintenance. Drink some rum and relax.
4/23 First light and someone is banging on the side of boat. We roll out of bed and find it is Jerry from Jewel (one of our GS friends) the weather has changed and it now appears TODAY is the day to make the crossing, he is headed out. We scramble and decide to leave as well as the forecast is for the weather to be a little worse on the 24th.
Unfortunately we don't prep as well as we should, and once we are in the stream it is tough to move around on the boat to get food, drinks, the DVD player for the boys etc. But we tough it out and make it across. The boat runs great. I'm really proud of our 34 year old boat. She is named after our much loved and now departed lab, and this Morgan is exactly the same as her namesake. Sometimes stinky and a pain, but always, always, always faithful.
We pull into Sailfish Marina in West Palm.
A side note here. I know many people like Sailfish, but I have to say it was the worst marina we encountered on the entire trip. The dockmaster, Judy, is one of the rudest service people I have ever given money too. She doesn't like kids, trawlers, small boats or customers in general as far as I can tell. I heard four people trying to talk to them on channel 68 saying they couldn't hear them, and Judy put each one of them down saying it was their radio not hers. When I mentioned that I couldn't hear her on 68 on any of my 3 VHFs she said all 3 must not be working. One dock hand actually stood by our boat waiting for a tip with his hand out after he took our lines.
They put us in huge slip that we didn't want and then tried to charge us extra for it. When I complained they said we weren't maneuverable enough to go anywhere else, despite my twin engines and 100 ton master's licensee. Rude, nasty, arrogant, and overpriced. I won't be back.
4/24 Used as much of Sailfish's water as I could, then returned the 50 amp to 30 amp adaptor at 10:55 (quote "if it is 11:01 I will have to charge the $300 deposit to your credit card). Head north to peck lake. Anchor out. It is nice.
4/25 to 4/27 scrape through the mud across Lake Okeechobee and the OWW. Spend the night at the nice dock in Moore Haven and wait 4 hours for the Franklin Lock.
4/28 drive from Fort Myers to Fort Lauderdale in a rental car. Pick up my truck at the marina, return the rental and head 7 hours home. We are all beat when we get in at midnight last night.
Perfect trip? No. Great adventure? Beautiful scenery? Educational? Good fishing? Nice people? Yes. We will do it again? Well.....ask me in January!
PS - ANYTHING beats the hell out of Disney or Vegas for me, I despise both those places. Have you ever noticed how fat, dumb and ugly most Americans are? No? Go to Disney or Vegas.
It is a funny thing about boat trips. All boats are subject to the weather (some more than others) and the vagaries of mechanical combustion and electricity (some more than others). If you know that going in, then you know you are going to have problems with one or all of these things sooner or later. Probably all of them and at the most inconvenient time possible.
The trick is to to try and appease the worst gremlins as much as you can and beat the others into temporary submission. That and to realize that there is not a darn thing you can do about the weather.
As I tell my customer's all the time, "It's salt water, the wind blows most of the time."
So we fixed what we could, toughed out what we couldn't and enjoyed the rest. When that didn't work we got drunk and the boys played legos.
Maybe not the best philosophy on how to get through life but it is working so far.
"I think I'll sit right here and have another beer in Abaco. Do my best just to waste another day."---------------------
SE End of Green Turtle
On the stoop at the wrecking tree, New Plymouth.
Nipper's Beach.
Nipper's Beach.
White Sound.
Pineapples on G.T. - “We love that dog, (GuessyMae) everybody does, I guess......
She followed my kids around like a magnet.”
Bita Bay is my favorite, the kids love the beach at the SE end.
What we did right, and what we did wrong
Sorry if this bores most of you to tears, I realize that if you aren't on your own boat much of it doesn't apply.
Things we did wrong.
1. I didn't bring enough spares, our whole genset issue would have been solved had I had a spare drive belt.
2. On a related note, we should have never waited on George to try to fix the genset. I ended up doing it myself anyway, and we wasted 2 beautiful weather days waiting on him.
3. The Dodge guide is great, but I expected more random coral heads than I actually found and so for the first week I followed his suggested routes exactly. After a while I gained more confidence and began to work the lees, hugging the islands much closer than he suggests.
4. We tried to keep some food in a cooler on the deck (a really great Frigid Rigid) to augment our fridge space. It was a waste of deck space, the fridge was big enough.
5. Going to Fox Town instead of Morraine Cay or another night at Allen's Pensacola.
6. Not setting a second anchor at Allen's P. We should have taken the Dodge guide more seriously about the poor holding. On that note it is important to look for the "white holes" to drop your hook, as they indicate sand. Also the deeper grass in the Abacos offers better holding than the shallower water grass. This is opposite of home.
7. Stopping at the Lucayan Waterway instead of pushing on to Mangrove Cay. We had a beautiful day, even though it isn't much of an anchorage it would have been fine that night.
8. Didn't spend enough time at Green Turtle Club.
9. Stopped at Sailfish Marina. See my trip report.
10. Crossed the stream one day before we were ready. It was the right weather decision, but we should of packed snacks, movies etc. on the flybridge. It was too rough to move around once we were offshore.
11. Left my fender boards at home.
12. Left my hose at home. None of the marinas have them. I should have bought one of those cloth hoses that stores on a reel.
What we did right:
1. We provisioned really well. After a bunch of cruises we are good at this. Jen pre cooked about 15 meals and we froze them in ziplocks (flat). We hardly ate any dinners out (unless we wanted to) and just had to stick them in the microwave to heat them up.
2. We bought a great new dinghy before we left. The smartest thing we did. It (10'3 caribe light with a 15hp Johnson) is fast (24 mph) dry, and has a ton of range. Our old dinghy was just a sportboat with a 5 hp. Too slow. We used the dinghy EVERY day. It saved us having to rent a golf cart. I thought about towing my flats boat and that would have been a nightmare.
3. Brought wetsuits for the boys. They didn't need them every day, but they were nice when they spent a lot of time in the water. They also add buoyancy.
4. Spent a little more time in marinas than usual. We normally stay "on the hook" but it was nice to be able to get the boys off the boat so easily. Also, some of the marinas in the Abacos are great values. Not Spanish, though. Our two worst weather night we spent at the dock, which was comforting.
5. Fished every flat I could find. I should have done this even more. It is amazing how many small flats hold bones there.
6. Brought frozen squid with us. The best bait for dock snapper. A constant source of fun. Bring enough to chum them and don't use any weight or leader. Let the bait sink at the same rate as the chum.
7. Turned back on the way over. Port Everglades was a mess. We got out then went back and waited for the next day, which was beautiful.
8. Added 45' of 3/8 chain to my primary anchor, a 33 lb bruce. I switched the 15' that was on the bruce to my secondary anchor. A fortress fx-16.
9. Bought the Garmin Blue Chart G3 chip of the Bahamas and the explorer chart book of the near bahamas. They are the same. It is nice to have paper backup and I found the charts to be very accurate, much better than my navionics software.
OK, there are my ramblings. Sorry to bore most of you who are staying in houses, which is probably the smart way.
By the way, fuel, food, boat repair, plane fare for Jen and the boys, drinks in bars etc. we spent about $2,500 in 3 1/2 weeks. Of course we own the boat, it is a big expense.
__________________
"I think I'll sit right here and have another beer in Abaco. Do my best just to waste another day."