David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Monday, December 8, 2008
Location:   Cat Cay, Bahamas
Coordinates:   25° 33.579′ N  79° 16.610′ W

I’m learning that it’s important to be flexible when cruising. Tonight’s anchorage is the epitome of flexibility. Let me explain.

Tomorrow we plan to cross the Great Bahama Bank, moving from Bimini toward New Providence (Nassau) and Eleuthera. Because we travel at essentially sailboat speeds (6-7 kts), and because it’s mid-December, there’s not enough daylight for us to get from here to there in one day.  And because the Bahama Bank is shallow and ever-shifting, we can’t really cruise at night (we need to be able to see the color of the water), so we can only move during the ~10 hours of daylight.  So, tomorrow night we will be anchoring out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near the east side of the Great Bahamas Bank, and then we’ll continue to New Providence the next day.

To get that far tomorrow, however, we needed to be positioned tonight so that we can set out across the Bank first thing in the morning. There was an anchorage on the chart that looked pretty good to us because it was right near the beginning of the Bahama Bank transit route, so we decided to move from North Bimini to that anchorage, on the east side of Cat Cay this evening. This was Plan A.

When we arrived at this relatively unprotected anchorage, the wind was blowing 15-20mph out of the east, and it looked like it would be a pretty bumpy night if we anchored. On our way in, we saw a Grand Banks trawler anchored on the other side of Cat Cay, which would be protected from the wind, so we decided to go back to the other side of the island and see if we could anchor nearby. This was Plan B.

When we got over to the other side (the ocean side), we were able to nestle up near the beach to get some protection from the wind. Unfortunately, while we were milling around trying to evaluate where to drop the anchor, we began to roll around like a cork bobbing in a stream. The ocean swell coming in from the Straights of Florida would be unbearable in this location, so we had to try something else. The chart showed an anchorage a little south of our location, and it looked like it might have some protection from the ocean swell because of some small islands. We decided to try it.  This was Plan C. By now it’s getting a little late in the day, so we’re starting to worry about finding an anchorage in daylight.

When we got down to this other ocean-side anchorage, the swell was just as bad. And while we were trying to figure out whether to anchor or not, the Grand Banks that we saw earlier came cruising by and radioed us. They too decided the swell was too much, and they were heading for an anchorage a little further south called Dollar Harbour. It was supposed to be protected from the ocean swell, although it didn’t have much protection from the east, where the wind was comign from. But by now the sun was starting to get low, so we decided to follow them in to what should be a “sure thing”. This was Plan D.

My main concern with Plan D was that we would not be very well-positioned for our morning departure. We would have about one hour back to our Plan A staging point, and we would also have to transit a dicey inlet with the sun just coming up (making it difficult to read the water). Further, Dollar Harbour didn’t look like it was much more protected from the wind than our Plan A anchorage. Kathryn and I figured we had about an hour of daylight left, and that would be about enough to get back to Plan A, which I will now call Plan E. We high-tailed it out of Dollar Harbour and back to our original anchorage on the east side of Cat Cay. We got there with the sun below the horizon, but with enough light to see a sandy patch on which to drop the anchor. The hook dug in and set immediately, and we were soon enveloped in darkness, but comfortable that we had a solid anchorage. Plan E.