David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009
Location: Nassau, Bahamas

Our dear friend Bob Olliver (“Bobby O”) visited us on our boat last week. We had a great time, and we think he had a good time too. He was our first cruising guest, and we wanted to give him a full taste the Bahamas that we have come to know during the last six weeks. The plan was to pick him up in Georgetown, cruise north through the Exumas (giving him our highlight tour), and then drop him off in Nassau. It was going to be a GREAT week!

We have been told many times that when friends come to visit we should plan to stay in one place because the weather will probably not cooperate. When we were planning Bobby’s visit we decided to completely ignore this advice, which we knew was a silly decision at the time, but we did it anyway. This decision led to the title of this blog entry.

The first indication that we were in trouble was when we picked Bobby up from the beach in Georgetown: The wind was blowing 30 knots, and the temperature had dropped to about 68 degrees. We bashed through 2-foot waves in the dingy getting back to the boat, soaking Bobby and everything else on board. It was an appropriate baptism into the cruising life, I suppose.

The next evening we had several friends over for a “Nice to meet you; See you soon” party. We were scheduled to leave the next morning to head north,  and we wanted to say goodbye to some good friends, and we also wanted them to meet Bobby. (When we tried to label it a “Hi and Goodbye” party, I was told that cruisers never say “goodbye”, but prefer “see you soon”.) The wind was still blowing about 20-25 knots during the party, and there was no sign it was going to let up anytime soon.

The prevailing wind in the Exumas in the winter is slightly north of east. When fronts move through, the wind clocks around quite regularly, going southeast, south, southwest, west, northwest, north, northeast, and back to east. It has been quite predictable since we arrived in the Bahamas in December, and we thought we could count on it. But coinciding with Bobby’s arrival there was apparently a strong high-pressure system that parked itself north of the Bahamas, and it wasn’t going to move for about a week. The wind was coming out of the northwest to north, and it was going to stay there for the duration of Bobby’s visit. Rats!

We decided to execute the plan anyway, as the wind direction didn’t pose any danger to our cruising — it would just be a bit uncomfortable. Everything went fine, and we were able to visit all of our Exumas highlights with Bobby. Several of them weren’t quite the same with strong north winds and cool temperatures, but it was still fun. In retrospect, though, it probably would have been better to stay in Georgetown, play volleyball, drink Kalik, and just let it blow without having to move each day. Of course, we knew this before the high-pressure system formed, and before Bobby got on an airplane, but we had to execute our ambitious plan to learn what we already knew.