Snubber

Moss has the pictures but I’ll give the details. A few days ago I noticed that the eye in our snubber was working itself loose. I forgot all about it until yesterday when I saw the mess it created. The eye had slipped off the line allowing the shackle to chafe nearly all the way through.

Ellen and I swapped in the old, too-short snubber while I rigged a permanent replacement. All this snubbery took place while the sun was setting and the wind was blowing pretty briskly.

Because of the new direction the wind was blowing from (a cold front was roaring through), we had swung into fairly shallow water…just 5’ 2” at low tide. All this anchor-related excitement had us on edge. The wind was gusting into the high 20s, then a boat came by yesterday morning and mentioned that the holding in this bay is poor. That information spooked us even though we know better. Anyway, we had a somewhat sleepless night.

This morning the wind is a little more calm, the sun is out, it is a gorgeous day, and we are formulating our plans for moving on. We anticipate a day or two of reasonable winds from the northeast, then the wind will start to clock around to the south and west and really start to howl. We would like to be somewhere both safe and interesting for the coming week and a half.

We realize that we need to realign our expectations of what normal winds are around here. After months of predominantly calm winds and seas on the ICW, the Bahamian trades and cold fronts with their 20-30 knot gusts and steady 18-20 breezes take a little getting used to. Cupcake and Pablo don’t care about 25 or 30 knots of wind, but the crew gets plenty edgy.

So tomorrow morning we will head to Fowl Cay/White Cay at the northern end of Hoffmans Cay. If the holding and protection look good, we will probably stay in that neighborhood until we head to Nassau to collect Simon and nephew Zachary on the 18th. If prospects don’t look good, we will either scurry back up here or see if we can get our boat with its 4.5’ draft into a harbor with only 3’ of water. That’s a tricky business, but we are up to the challenge. (At high tide.)

Food update: Ellen tried her hand at fried okra last night and the results were fabulous. Unfortunately, we don’t foresee a whole lot more okra in our future because Bahamian fresh vegetables don’t tend to be particularly exotic. Ellen says, “I think it’s: Bahamian markets don’t tend to stock vegetables.”

Update disclaimer: we don’t know if we will have cell service for the next week. If you don’t hear from us, don’t panic.