Trip to Staniel Cay & Staniel Cay March 8-
In the morning, after a quick consultation with the gang, we decided to head off to Staniel Cay, in the hopes that we would be able to make the full distance in one hop. Rotop was joining us, but Renaissance decided that they’d stay behind for a day or two, and that they would make a stop at Wardrick Wells in the Exuma Land and Sea park on their way to Staniel. As per the norm, we discovered that the winds had not shifted around as far to the North as predicted, so we were sailing upwind for most of our journey, and not able to make the kind of speed that we had hoped. We attempted to hail Rotop to let him know that we were adjusting our plans and would be anchoring in at Pipe Cay for the night, but he was out of range. Oh well, we thought, we’ll meet up with him at Staniel tomorrow, and we slipped into the peaceful anchorage at Pipe Cay and dropped the anchor for the night.
The next morning, we arose around 8 and once the first pot of coffee was brewed, we pulled up anchor and made the short 10nm hop down to the Big Major’s anchorage right off of Staniel Cay. We pulled into Staniel just before 11AM, and were able to drop anchor in a lovely and protected spot where we quickly got our dinghy set up and got settled in. We’d planned to stay in Staniel for a few days, as this was a location that Brian had been to on his last trip to the Bahamas, and had really enjoyed the location and the social life that this small settlement offers. We made a trip ashore to see the pigs that live on the island (aparently domestic pigs that were abandoned on the island at some point that now roam freely). The pigs are really quite friendly and cute, and will eat lettuce or bread that you bring to them, and love to be scratched behind the ears. I dubbed Brian the Pig Whisperer, since he actually got the momma pig to lie down at his feet for scratching! In fact, we were so popular with the pigs that one of the little brown spotted pigs climbed into our dinghy!! We then went back to the boat before heading around the point and into town where we dinghied around a bit, and then went for a quick snorkel around one of the little island reefs before going to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, where we changed into dry clothes and availed ourselves of their weekend happy hour, where the Kaliks are $3 and rum punches are 2 for 1, and they serve a buffet of delicious snacks for their guests. We headed back to the boat after a couple of Kaliks and some snacks, hoping that we’d arrive to see either Rotop or Renaissance had joined us. Unfortunately, no sign of either, so we decided to lay low for the evening and watch a movie before turning in for the night.
In the morning Brian decided that we should tackle one of the projects that had been on the list for a while - one we’d needed a calm anchorage to take care of - climbing the mast to replace the batteries on the wind gauge, and to do an overall check while he was aloft. We got the climber rigged up, and a secondary spotting line rigged, and up Brian went. What a good thing that he did! No sooner had Brian reached the top when he hollered down to me, “Oh boy honey, we’ve got a problem! Our forestay is in BAD shape!” Uh-oh! Fortunately he’d taken the camera up with him, so in addition to snapping the pictures he’d planned to take of the fantastic view from the top of our mast, he was also able to take pictures of the forestay “issue”… which turned out to be that four of the outer strands of our forestay were unravelling at the terminal. NOT good! For those of you who are not sailors who are reading this, the very short version of this is that had we not caught this problem, we could have had that forestay snap without any warning, which would likely result in a dismasting of the boat - i.e. the mast snapps off - very dangerous in every imaginable way. Fortunately, we caught the problem… now how to solve it?! Despite having EVERYTHING imaginable on the boat, a replacement stay wasn’t one of the items we’d had the foresight to provision with.
Shortly after Brian got back on deck, we heard the familiar voice of Michael hailing us on the VHF, and caught sight of Renaissance approaching the anchorage. They pulled in and anchored behind us and shortly thereafter Michael popped over in his dinghy. We apprised him of our forestay situation, not good, and he offered up that he had a spare stay. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be long enough, but it gave us the idea to do some asking around in the anchorage to see if any other boats might have a spare stay. We were all wondering what had happened with Martijn, whether given how the wind had been, he had continued on straight to George Town, and we’d not been able to hail him on the radio. We were all glumly contemplating what our next steps could be to deal with this problem, and decided that rather than sit on the boat and fret, we’d make another trip into visit the piggies, which Michael and Cate wanted to see. While we were in visiting with the pigs, a really nice couple from Montreal came in to walk their dog Soscio - an adorable yellow lab. In talking with them, we learned that Rene had worked in George Town and he gave us the advice that our best tactic for getting the parts would be to order the proper cabling and Norseman swages from the US, and to ship them to George Town via an air freight service called Reggie Air who he had used numerous times and found to be extremely reliable. Grateful for the information, we went back to the boat and began to do some research about the parts. Fortunately, we were able to buy some wi-fi access to do that, although the wi-fi situation in Staniel Cay was quite poor, and was extremely intermittent. After some preliminary research, we put our cares on hold and went over to Staniel Cay Yacht Club with Michael and Cate for a Kalik, and then Brian treated me to an extraordinary dinner there, wonderful rack of lamb for me and amazing pork roast for him. We had a wonderful and romantic evening, relaxing at Staniel Cay before we headed back to the anchorage and turned in for the evening.
The next morning, we woke up to an extremely welcome sight… Martijn sailing into the Big Majors anchorage! We’re always really happy to see Martijn joining us, but were especially so given the situation with our stay! If anyone could help us with fixing this problem, it would be him! When he kayaked over we told him about our problem 
Ever the one for action, Martijn and Brian formulated a plan for the next morning to take the stay down and replace it with a couple of halyards if we were unable to locate a replacement forestay amongst the boats in the harbor. Given that the wind was gusty, we made the decision to all pile into the dinghies and go over to dive at Thunderball, where some of the James Bond movie of the same name was filmed. It’s a natural cave that you can dive in at low slack tide, and it is incredible! It is truly like diving in an aquarium. We saw tons of beautiful fish, snappers, blueheads, starfish, pipefish, and schools of little neon gobies, who flock around you as you’re swimming around. It was an absolutely amazing and beautiful experience. We floated lazily around in the grotto and Cate and Mike took pictures (which we hope to be able to post at some point when we get them) of all of the beautiful fish. We swam in and out, and the most amazing part is that the hole in the top of the island allows a lot of light to come in so even in the center of the cave the visibility is incredible. While we were there we met the folks sailing on the two double masted steel boats that had been anchored behind us for the past couple of days, Free Spirit and P’tit Louis who, it turns out, have a full machine shop on board. They suggested that we come by the next day in the morning so that we could talk about our stay issue and we could see if there was anything that they could do to assist us with our problem.
The next morning, we availed ourselves of their offer, and after about an hour of trying to sort out whether they had the appropriate parts, and determining not, we went back to our boat and began the process of dealing with removing our stay and rigging temporary stays so that we could measure our stay and place our order for replacement parts. We took the Genny down and flaked it, and then rigged up our genny halyard and our spare staysail halyard as supports. Brian climbed the mast and we rigged an additional halyard from the top as a support to help us with guiding the heavy stay and roller furler down to the deck. While I spotted Brian on our original spare halyard (he was rigged on the climber to the main halyard), Martijn worked with Brian to get the forestay secured at a mid point, and then Brian detached the top of the stay and used the spotting halyard we’d been using to hold the top of the forestay once it had been detached from the mast. To say that the few minutes that it took Brian to get back to the deck were nerve wracking for me is an understatement. Although I know that the Main halyard and climbing line are strong and well attached, I was definitely fretting about him coming down the mast without a spotting line as back up. Needless to say, he made it down without incedent, and we then went through the painstaking process of lowering the forestay with roller furler still on it to the deck. Thankfully we had Martijn’s help with this process, because it took all three of us to carefully lower it down - as it was imperative to get it down without bending any of the sections of the furler. Once we had the stay and furler safely on deck, the guys began the slow process of disassembling the 7′ sections of furler track. Lots of little pieces and a half dozen big sections of track later, we had the furler off of the stay. During this process, we also discovered that the forward bolt that holds the stay on the boat had had the threading mangled, and once we’d gotten the stay down and all of the parts stored so that they were out of the way and wouldn’t be damaged, Brian hopped in the dingy and went back over to the double masters to see if they could help us out, either with a replacement pin or, as they ultimately did, by re-machining the threads on their lathe. They were so wonderful to us with all of their help, and refused any kind of payment for it - so we gave them some coffee and some paper towels, which were items that they needed on their boat. Brian and I took the stay ashore and laid it out on the beach so that we could get an accurate measurement, and then proceeded to contact a company in the States to get replacement 9/32″ cable and Norseman terminals so that we could reconstruct the stay.
By the time we were able to get a connection to place the order it was Thursday morning. We tried to Skype the company, and finally had to resort to breaking out the Satellite phone to call it in and to get the shipping sorted out with Reggie Express. We had found another supplier who had the items in stock, so instead of using our usual (and reliable) vendor Defender, we placed the order with this other company, who I had used for getting some of the parts we needed for the winches way back in the summer (with great success). Secure in the knowledge that we’d have our parts by the end of the following week, we made the decision to spend one last day enjoying Staniel Cay.
We decided that Friday to hike across the island to a wreck we’d seen after we’d been to Thunderball so that we could take some pictures. What a disaster that turned out to be! We found what looked to be some trails crossing the island, but about 15 minutes into our walk, we some how managed to lose the trail, and what had started out as a pleasant hike turned into a bushwacking expedition through the scrubby brush of Big Major. We were more than half way across, so we made the decision to keep going, with the thought that we’d try to catch a ride back with one of the many dinghies that are constantly zipping about. Unfortunately, the fates were not with us, and once we’d taken our pictures, Martijn offered to hike back to the beach where we’d left our dinghy and come back to pick us up. Imagine our surprise, and relief, when he returned about 45 minutes later in a huge tender driven by the nice owner of Legacy, Ron, who had seen Martijn emerge from the brush on the island by the anchorage, but not close to the beach, and begin to pick his way along the rocky shore! Gratefully we hopped into his tender and he zipped us back at an incredible pace to the beach where we’d left our dinghies. We’ve all vowed that from now on any wreck photos will be done via dinghy ride! No more hiking through the scrub for us!!
The next morning we all pulled up anchor and moved down to Black Point, where we’d heard that there was free wi-fi to be had, and where we thought we’d be able to take care of a few errands. Again, a short hop, and given the situation with our forestay, we decided that we’d motor rather than attempt any type of sailing. We pulled into Black Point and dropped anchor, and then once we were all situated, we went ashore to check out the little town. A short walk took us to Lorraine’s where we had some delicious french fries, cold Kaliks, and raided her book swap for more reading materials. We returned to the boats for a relaxed evening of dinner and a movie with the crew.
The next day Brian went to help our new friends Janet and John, a Scottish couple on a boat named Ventoso with a GPS/computer problem that had been happening since we’d first met them in Big Majors. We had a lovely relaxing day at Black Point, wandered around the small settlement a little more, availed ourselves of the free RO water, and made plans to travel down to Little Farmer’s Cay the next day, as that was another location that Brian had fond memories of as a good place to visit.
The next morning we all pulled anchor and continued down the Exuma chain the short distance to Little Farmers. We dropped anchor in a beautiful spot facing a beach, and we all dinghied ashore for a walk around the town. Unfortunately, on our ride over to the beach, the rear seat of our trusty little Portabote gave way, and poor Brian found himself driving the boat low rider style… what a bummer. We made the best of it, and joined the gang for a great walk around the small town, stopping at Ali’s bar (about the size of a large closet) where we got cold Kaliks wrapped in paper bags, and then continued our walk around the town. We walked up to JR’s where a local wood carving artist was hard at work carving a 3′ long sculpture of a barracuda and had a nice visit with him and met his new puppy (a tiny little mixed breed about 6 weeks old), and continued on down the road which dead ended at a property where one of the folks was in the process of building one of the famous Bahamian racing boats. We turned back and walked back to the central intersection, taking the road leading out to the beach on the other side of the island, and stopped for an impromptu game of HORSE at the park on our way to the beach. It was a lovely walk and felt wonderful to get out and really stretch our legs after a couple of days on the boat with very little walking around.
The next day we decided to go snorkeling around some of the coral reefs nearby, and after much dinghying around we settled on a spot around the corner from Little Farmers. The guys decided to do some spear fishing, while I just swam around and enjoyed the beautiful water and all of the colorful fish. Mike was able to catch some really good sized snappers, which we had on the grill that evening for a delightful dinner. We shared a bottle of wine, and some of Nunnie’s famous baked beans and some rice to round out the meal. Based on the weather, we made the decision that we would all move on the next day, with our target being a straight trip to George Town, so we turned in for the evening relatively early, so that we could get a good start in the AM.
Lynne | 
03 31st, 2009| 
