The faxes finally agreed:the cold front would come through sometime on Monday. With the frontal passage we'd get winds out of the southwest, becoming north, great for sailing southeast down the coast, but when we woke Monday morning it was nearly windless. We had time for a bike ride before we got our sailing wind to take us out of Morgan's Bluff.
We dinghied the bikes in to the commercial harbor and set out for Nicholl's Town, a few miles south. The Bahamas are pancake-flat, good for getting us lazy cruisers back in shape, and although the road is narrow there is little traffic. The one thing it is going to take us a while to get used to is driving on the left!
Many years back, Britt and some friends had vacationed at the Andros Beach Resort in Nicholl's town. He remembered it as a picturesque resort, but we found it a long-defunct ruin: the swimming pool is full of coconuts, the room fixtures have been stripped, and half the dock is missing. The dive shop is a shambles and looks like a fallen-down chicken coop. It seems a shame, since it's a beautiful location, but we guess they just didn't get the tourist traffic they needed to make it pay.
We could feel the wind picking up as we headed back to Morgan's Bluff, and by the time we dinked back to the boat the wind was already freshening out of the west, and two other boats were just heading out. We quickly put everything away and lifted anchor. When we reached open water at the end of the channel, the wind was up in the 15-20 knot range and climbing higher, so we left our sails slightly reefed as we headed downwind under sail.
What a ride we had! The bulk of Andros blocked the waves until the wind came around to due north, so it was pretty smooth until late in the afternoon, but with 20-30 knots behind us we zoomed like a sports car on high-octane. One of the other boats was also going south, and we rapidly caught it and left it "eating spray". (Ok, it was a smaller boat, only flying its headsail, while we were wing-on-wing with our jib poled out.) We hit 8 knots a few times, and averaged over 7 knots, even though we had to slow down when we...
...hooked a fish! Actually, before we hooked the fish, we caught our wind generator (for the third time, aiee!) We'd just gone through a few big patches of seaweed and Britt wanted to reel in the lines to check the hooks and clean off any seaweed. The starboard line jumped a little and got caught in the wind generator, snapping the line. Britt cussed a little, then went for the port line, but just as he started to reel it in, a mahi-mahi struck.
We were going over 7 knots, and with three feet of fish muscle fighting back, Britt wasn't making much headway. I rolled in the main, which slowed us to under 6, but with the pole out I couldn't do much about the jib. Fortunately, the fish was getting tired just from being dragged around behind our speedboat, and we got it up to the boat, gaffed, and flipped into the dinghy. As a bonus, we recovered the lure we thought we'd lost when the wind generator snapped the line; the fish had somehow fouled our two fishing lines and brought the second half of the other line, including the lure, back on board with it.
We pulled in to Fresh Creek around 4:30, our prize dangling by its tail from our stern rail, and putted through the anchorage. Fresh Creek truly is a creek, running out to the sea from the interior, and between the shallows on the south and the mailboat channel on the north there is not much room for cruising boats to anchor. Five boats were anchored bow-and-stern in a diagonal swath, and it looked to us like five boats was about the limit of the anchorage. We turned around, bummed, figuring we'd have to pay to stay at the little government-run marina. Then we heard a shout.
"Hey! Windom!" A man waved to us from one of the anchored boats. "You can raft to us."
A big fat fish hanging from your rail certainly wins friends and influences people! Quickly rigging lines and fenders, we pulled alongside Ch'i and made fast, then introduced ourselves. It turned out that Scott and Joyce were oceanographers, and we knew a lot of the same people in oceanography and meteorology. Plus they have a very nice kittycat who helped clean up our fish-cleaning scraps. Our long and busy day ended with a seafood feast, grouper and mahi-mahi and a whole lot of wine. As much fun as it is to catch a fish, it's even more fun to share the bounty with friends.