currently at:  underway in the Tongue of the Ocean
current date: 4 May 2005

Good morning to all of our virtual stowaways. Although I'm not going to send this until we arrive at the Grassy Creek Cays - Bob the Autopilot gets cranky and steers in circles when we use the HF radio - right now it's about half past one in the morning. I'm writing this underway in the Tongue of the Ocean, en route to Andros at 23° 29.8N 76° 54.8W. We're sliding along at about 4 knots with light wind just over our right shoulder, which makes it nice and comfy, with no real waves to speak of. If it was like this all the time, there would be a lot more people out here! But tonight, all I've seen is a single ship, which passed about 4 miles away headed south. I wonder what it is - military? cargo? - and where it is going. There aren't a lot of passages across the Great Bahama Bank that hems in the Tongue of the Ocean on all sides.

Our own passage was uneventful. We left Flamingo Cay fairly early in the morning, keeping a sharp lookout for coral heads until we were in relatively deep water, which here means about 25 feet. In these light conditions we were not surprised to pass a fishing boat and its skiffs diving the reefs quite some distance from the island chain. We fished as well, reeling in three yellowtail snappers (keeping one) and - a first for us - a small reef shark. I reeled in the shark; Britt released it, using the method he uses for releasing big barracudas:  he gaffs them and lifts them high off the rail, uses pliers to remove the hook, then shakes them off the gaff. (They do end up with a hole in them from the gaff, but still alive and kicking.) It surprised us that the shark's tiny teeth didn't look even half as fearsome as the typical barracuda's.

As we got farther onto the Banks, we noticed the water was losing its clarity, becoming a milky green rather than the brilliant blue-green we had been seeing. We suspect that this area that was too far from the deep water to be affected by tidal currents - that this water just stays on the banks and becomes turbid with sand and other particles. When we approached the deep water on the other side, the clarity improved again.

It was getting close to dusk when we entered the actual Lark Channel, but we could still see a pale green strip off to the east, indicating the sandbar that forms one of the channel boundaries. The channel is certainly wide enough to run using GPS, so we continued through as the sun set. (Of course we cross the Banks at night when we come from Florida, but those routes are well-known and heavily-used; this route we weren't so sure about, but now we feel a lot more confident.) When we left the Banks and sailed into deep water at the channel exit, the current swirled around us like we were going through a river rapid.

We're traveling slowly, reefed sails and the wind nearly behind us, but that's okay with us. Instead of choosing one of Andros's more well-known harbors, which are all farther north, we are headed to a spot on the chart that isn't even mentioned in Pavlidis's guidebook, and gets only a brief sentence in the Yachtsman's guide, and we'll need good light to get in there. So at 4 knots we will arrive around ten a.m. And now it's 0300, and it's time for me to go to sleep.

currently at:  Grassy Creek Cays, Andros, Bahamas
current date: 4 May 2005

Good morning again! It's now 11:15, and we are safely anchored behind one of the Grassy Creek Cays. This is probably the least-visited spot we've ever been - that is, by pleasure boaters, as we can see a Bahamian fishing boat to the south through our binoculars. Not many cruisers come to Andros, and those who do generally stick to the harbors north of South Bight, which is still 40 miles north of us. But as you probably know by now, we have a serious case of off-the-beaten-path syndrome.

For a few tiny dots on the chart, this isn't a bad spot. The entrance was a wide blue highway of deep water between two cays, with the fringing reef clearly visible on both sides. As the tide was going out, against the southeasterly wind, the chop from the current was an additional clue for finding the channel. The ride in on big rollers was rather exciting, though, and I have already told Britt that we will not leave on an outgoing tide - I don't want to be bashing through those rollers! Even though an incoming tide will mean current against us, it will smooth down the waves rather than whipping them up.

Inside the reef we turned south along the chain of islands. The Grassy Creek Cays (named for Grassy Creek on the "mainland" of Andros, still five miles to our west) are small humps of land fairly close together, forming a decent lee anchorage. We could see the shelving bottom in the deeper areas, 25-30 feet, and in between we crossed over 10-15 foot sand flats, eventually picking one behind one of the bigger islands to set our anchor. Around the edges of the channel are tempting-looking reefs, although we'll have to dive them at slack tide so we don't get swept away by the current!

We won't have a lot of time to explore here, though, as a cold front will be coming through later this week, and there's no protection here from a north wind. Also, on the passage our temporary fix to the watermaker failed, so we're anxious to meet up with the Spectra rep - he'll be cruising down Andros from the north, probably beginning Saturday - and get the replacement parts. So we'll be heading north soon.

As a postscript - just in case you didn't see the comment, Roger A. Arrowood, Capt USN (ret) has identified the "mystery trash object" I posted a few days ago as a transportation container for an air-launched sonobuoy.