Poor decision — Cupcake Afloat

Wow was that a mistake. The South Staniel Cay anchorage looked like it had everything: solitude, great wind protection, lovely scenery. But were we ever wrong. The solitude was shared with jet skis, airplanes, and gnat boats. The protection from the wind was, at best, adequate. The protection from swell and surge and wakes was abysmal. Just before bed on our first night, a squall roared through with heavy rain and winds of at least 40 knots. It was the very definition of a dark and stormy night. Even once the squall passed, we were rocking and rolling pretty much non-stop. Yesterday was really windy, really uncomfortable. And we had rain squalls off and on all day to boot.

After sunset, when it was far too late to do anything about it, the combination of the wind shift to the north (which made us swing on anchor over a shallower spot), low tide, and waves from the Sound had us thumping into the sand periodically. At first we pretended it was just the sound of the occasional oddball wave hitting the hull, but pretty soon it became clear we were bouncing off the bottom. Instead of counting sheep to fall asleep last night, Moss counted how many times we have touched bottom since leaving Maine. She says she remembers eight times. That sounds optimistically low to me. (She wants to know if that is good or bad. I say it’s good since nothing was broken.)

Last night was a windy uncomfortable one (a matched set with the night before). So this morning just before 8am we upped anchor in 18 knots of wind, picked our way over the shallows, and raced another squall on our way to the great protection over at Big Majors Spot. We didn’t win the race.

Low tide was around 10am and as much as we do not like to do our shallow-water-work when the tide is past half and falling, or when the skies are cloudy and we can’t see the bottom, or when the wind and tide could push us off our narrow course, nobody wanted to wait at South Staniel until afternoon for the rising tide.

Now we are safe and sound once again. The wind is still pretty healthy and is not predicted to settle for another day and a half. So we will stick around here, hunt for our last lobster, and sleep soundly before heading north up the Exuma chain again. Ellen may even swim with the pigs. (She is such a tourist.)

This morning after we were securely anchored in our new spot, Moss and I worked on a math problem that involved pendulums and graphing. We had fun working with different length pendulums to time how long each took to complete ten swings. It was so windy we couldn’t finish the graph because there is nowhere inside the boat where we can swing a 200cm pendulum, and on deck the wind just tangled the thing in all the rigging.

Speaking of data-points, the solar panels are working beautifully, particularly as the sun is at a higher angle above the horizon these days. Yesterday we saw peak output of 15.8 amps. That’s a lot, certainly more than enough to run the refrigerator and the water maker and still have extra power to feed the batteries. Carbon neutral, baby.

Yesterday I got moving on the first half of installing a gauge in the forward tank. (Thanks Jim, Sherry, and Eliot for bringing it down here.) The way we check the water level currently is to pull back the mattress in the v-berth, open the inspection port for the tank, and peer inside with a flashlight. But now I’ve gotten the gauge wired up and just need to use up all the water in that forward tank so I can drill a hole (in the top…) to install the float and rheostat. Then we will be a more civilized cruising vessel.

Half way done. (Note the toggle switches…ooh they are so nice. The one on the right controls the fan in the v-berth.)

Cruising tip of the day: lubricate the zippers on your backpack (and anything else that has a zipper) so you don’t find yourself with stuck zippers. I got to our backpack just in time last week. Used a tube of teflon-based zipper goo that came with the boat. Initially I thought that stuff was a gimmick, but now I am a believer.

That’s right, the bob for our pendulum is a zinc. I will need to drill it out and install it on the centerboard pin before we leave the Abacos next month because I doubt I’ll want to do that task once we are back on the ICW.