The Royal (Island) Treatment

With the expiration of our cruising permit fast approaching it was time for...another blow! But first we had a great pass through Eleuthera's Current Cut and anchored north of the town of Current for a night. We took a nice walk through this very tidy settlement. Not much to do here in the way of shopping or dining, but the views are great and there is a nice park!

Around Current

From Current it was time to hunker down for a weekend of challenging winds. Why challenging? Strong from the south, clocking to westerly, then strong from the north, then switching back to the south...there are very few anchorages in the Bahamas that are great for that type of forecast given the prevailing easterlies, but as luck would have it we were near a good option--Royal Island! Royal Island is actually where we departed from last year to return to the U.S. so we knew it had good holding and lots of room (a good thing considering 13 boats ended up in there for the excitement!). We edged into the far west end of the harbor and set well in some shallow water--only about 6" under the keel at low tide! But the bottom was soft--sandy and grassy--so we stuck with it. We were also joined by two of our bestest cruising buddy boats who were on their way to the Abacos--so great to see them again and to get to celebrate our friend Ava’s birthday with her!

Just enough room under the keel at low tide, but plenty of room for a party on Kolohe!

Of course, all the excitement started after dark. Rain...20+ knot sustained winds with gusts in the 30's...a 180 degree wind shift...and a swing circle that kept "hopping" toward even shallower water when we had winds over 25 knots. No doubt about it--we were dragging and needed to pull the anchor and reset it...in the dark...in rain...in 20+ knots of wind. The maneuver was expertly executed by Skipper Frank with Katreina as the voice relay when comms between the helm and bow dropped.

Clockwise from upper left: radar of the front; the skipping swing circle as we dragged; the crew; winds when we were dragging; the anchorage as the front passed.

So what happened? A 180 degree wind shift normally isn’t a problem for our anchor, but the bottom is a sticky, sand/mud/thin grass combo and the anchor just got clogged for lack of a better word and didn’t reset. We were doing what we do in these conditions—monitoring our position and anchor alarms and could see what was happening. We pulled it, I had to clean it by hand when our washdown pump couldn’t overcome the goop, and we reset with a smidge more chain for extra security. She set firmly!

This life isn’t without challenges. As we got dried off we heard a Pan Pan call on the VHF from a boat that was anchored nearby, exposed to the north. When the front came through their anchor snubber failed and their windlass ripped off their deck. They had to abandon their ground tackle (including the secondary they had deployed during the emergency) and were safe, but headed out to sea. Talk about freaking terrifying.

We actually had to reset the anchor again around 0500 when the wind shifted 180 degrees again--no problems resetting. We moved after breakfast to a deeper spot with good protection from the day's northerlies and where we could make water in clearer water and with fewer neighbors around to disturb with our generator.

All was pretty calm and we had a great post-storm afternoon with haircuts for the ladies, eight kids jumping off a catamaran to swim with a nurse shark, and one last movie night with the kid boat crews. We are fresh and ready for our final stop in the Bahamas!