Stuck on a sandbar….

It is starting to get dark and somewhere near Compass Cay in the central Exumas and as we were trying to escape a falling tide, we were about half an hour too late and stuck on a sandbar. I have a Shoal draft keel and when we looked with fins and mask, the keel was wedged into a wall of sand. It would be another hour before the tide would begin to shift and with any luck, we would start to float. The tide is about four feet in the Bahamas and my draft is 6 foot 3 inches. There were a few other boats anchored about half a mile away in deeper water but otherwise, we were on our own. The wind was blowing about 15 knots and one of the concerns I had was once we started floating, we could get blown into another sandbar which was shallower than the one we were stuck on.

The week before, Ileana and I left Toronto and flew directly to Nassau. We caught a connecting flight to Freeport, Grand Bahamas and arrived at our sailboat Ileana at around 6:00 PM. I made a quick trip to the local grocery store on my electric bicycle to pick up fresh vegetables and other supplies. Our plan was to leave for Chub Cay on the South end of the Berry islands. It was an 88 mile trip so I wanted to leave very early in the morning. It was absolutely essential that we arrived in daylight hours as the Bahamas is very shallow and it is very easy to run aground. You can tell how deep the water is by the colour of the blue. The deep blue means there is deeper water, but the very light turquoise means you are running into shallow water. Visual view is essential for coming into an unfamailiar port. Unfortunately the wind was blowing directly from the South which was exactly the direction we were planning on going. This created large waves and we had to barrel through these waves using the engine. After about 12 hours of this, we pretty much had enough. We could not eat or drink for fear of seasickness. It was pure misery. Arriving in Chub Cay, the dockmaster directed us to the fuel dock and filled up our fuel tanks and then to our slip. Ileana and I just sat and looked at each other for about an hour trying to determine whether out stomachs were up to going for dinner in the restaurant. Hunger won as our stomachs recovered. We slept well.

Our plan was to leave for Nassau the following day to pick up our friends Shelley and Sam who were arriving from Toronto. The plan was for them to meet us in Atlantis, on Paradise Island as we had a slip booked at the Marina there. We had already prepared them for the eventuality that we would not arrive because when it comes to sailing, it is not always possible to follow a schedule. As I have said before, the most dangerous thing on a sailboat is a schedule. However, we threw caution to the wind and things were looking favorable for a passage to Nassau which would take about five hours from Chub Cay. The following day as we left, the winds were light and we had to motor but the passage was very comfortable. We arrived at the Marina in the early afternoon and Sam and Shelly were there to greet us and help tie up the boat.

The next day we left Paradise Island and headed around the West part of the island. We had to start our navigation from an ominous place called Porgee Rocks. It was a 30 mile passage and again we were going dead into the wind so we had to motor all the way. While sailing in the Bahamas I relied heavily on some charts from Explorer Chartbooks. These were detailed maps of all of the islands in the Bahamas advice how to approach them without ending up running aground. Our first landing in the exumas was a place called Allan’s Cay. This is a deserted place with some iguanas but the island and beach were spectacular. We threw out the anchor and went exploring. Allan’s key is famous for the iguanas but the advice is not to bring them any food for fear of getting bitten. We never actually saw any iguanas but we found a beautiful beach. We spent the afternnoon swimming and snorkelling.

The next stop was Shroud Cay further down the Exuma chain. This is another deserted island but is well known because there are mangrove channels of water that take you to the other side of the island. We pulled up the anchor in Allan’s Cay and headed off to Shroud Cay a short 2 hour sail away. Sam was getting the hang of pulling up the anchor using the windlass without falling off the front of the boat. The windlass is a motorized winch to pull up the anchor. After the anchor is all the way up, Sam would have to crawl to the end of the bow spit to secure the anchor so it would not inadvertently fall in the water. Sometimes it would get difficult because of the waves and it is a lucky thing that Sam has very good sense of balance and strong legs that would wrap around the forestay to keep him on the boat. On Shroud Cay, we were able to find a mooring. Shroud Cay is in a Land and Sea National park. Moorings are permanent floating balls that will hold a boat of my size even when the weather is rough. It is a very secure way to spend a night. We had a great sail there. 12 kts of wind, flat seas. It was paradise.

Using the dingy to go up through the mangroves of Shroud Cay, we saw a lot of turtles and fish. It is quite a special place. There were very few boats there. There was no cellphone coverage, internet or access to news. Maybe we should have stayed longer…..

We set sail for Compass Cay which was about 15 miles further south. We originally were going to try and get a mooring ball in the Exuma park north mooring field at Waderick Wells, but they were all taken. We then made a decision to head out to Compass Cay a little further south. Compass Cay is a unique Island known for tame nurse sharks that you can swim with if you’re crazy. It seems there are a lot of crazy people that come sailing. The place had many people swimming with the sharks. Apparently, very few people get bitten but they do mention that you should enter at your own risk……

I guess you’re wondering at this point how we got stuck on a sandbar as the sun was setting and the tide was going out. We had set the anchor in about 8 feet of water in front of the entrance to Compass Cay Marina planning to spend the night. However, at around 4:30 PM, we started hitting the bottom as the tide was going out. Low tide was around 6:45 PM. Where we had decided to anchor for the night which which was at high tide would leave us high and dry at low tide so we made a decision to leave and head for Staniel Cay before we got permanently stuck. Sam did an underwater survey and confirmed that we would be in trouble if we stayed. As we pulled up the engine on the dingy and got a surprise visitor.

Sam seemed unusually relaxed about the entire encounter. Had I just come out of the water I think I would have freaked out ….. at least a bit. For me it was a second reason for getting out of that anchorage. For Sam he was as concerned if he was walking down Bay street in Toronto. When I asked him if he was worried about getting attacked by a shark (not one of the tame ones) he said no. I guess the old joke about a lawyer and a shark running into each other is true. Something about professional courtesy?

We were able to get off that sandbar but only just in time. Had it been another half hour we would have been stuck. We were congratulating ourselves while following the well marked channel out of Compass Cay into deeper water. We were exactly in the middle of the green and red channel markers when we ran aground. And I mean really ran aground. We could not go backwards or forwards. We got lucky though. One of those powerboats with two 175 horsepower engines on the back offered to try and pull us off. No success. One of his passengers, a young boy, jumped off to look under the boat and said that we were really jammed in. However, deeper water was less than six feet away. They were camping on the beach opposite the channel in tents. There was a group of about 12 and they were with some kind of eco tourist adventure. We decided we would have to wait the rising tide to get us off. We had to wait another 45 minutes for low tide and I estimated that we would be floating by around 9:00 PM at night. Unfortunately, it would be pitch black by then. We saw that there was a good place to anchor on the map about half a mile away if we could reach it in the dark. In the meantime, we had an amazing dinner, had a few laughs and waited for the rising tide. I gently put the engine in reverse with the thought that when we were free we would reverse into the channel. Surprisingly, we drifted free at about 9 PM. I shouted out to my fellow sailors that we were free and received hoots and congratulatory hollers from  the group on the beach! We were able to navigate in pitch blackness to the place where we could anchor in deep enough water and after 3 tries we were secured for the night. Whew!!!

The next morning, Sam and I got up early and planned to set sail while the ladies were still sleeping. We had the system down pat by then and felt pretty confident that we could pull the anchor up and navigate through the narrow channel. However, when we pulled the anchor up, there was a bit of a current and the anchor went underneath the boat. When the anchor finally came up, it was upside down would not rest on the bow spit properly. The jumping around of the anchor caused it to jump off the track at the front of the bow spit. Between Sam and myself, we were able to man handle that anchor back onto the deck of the boat but it was very heavy. We were in grave danger of running aground again as the wind was pushing us back towards a sand bank. When the chain jumped out of the sprocket that is used to winch up the anchor and the anchor plunged freely into the water we knew that we were truly screwed. The chain was free rolling out at an alarming speed and I was not sure how to stop it without severing all of my fingers. Fortunately….. we ran aground again and the boat stopped moving. The chain stopped running free and in that moment I grabbed a loop of the chain and wrapped it around the sprocket. We were then able to winch the chain using the windlass and for some reason in doing this, it pulled us off the sandbank as if the whole fiasco was a carefully orchestrated and brilliant maritime maneuver…… We headed off to Staniel Cay.

Staniel Cay is known for the swimming pigs. No one really knows how the pigs came to the island but it was suspected that someone brought them and planned to raise a pig farm but it was just too difficult as there was no water or enough vegetation to feed them. They were abandoned. Now they are a huge attraction.

We also visited athe amazing grotto where the James Bond movie Thunderball was filmed. Sam went inside…..

For my birthday, Sam and Shelley took us out for dinner at the Staniel Cay Marina.

And of course the amazing sunsets, often the highlight of the day…..

The following day Sam had to fly back to Toronto from Staniel Cay. I took him by Dingy to within 50 feet of the airport terminal where he caught Flamingo Air to Nassau and then Air Canada to Toronto.

Ileana and I are going to make our way to Georgetown….but there is a cold front coming through with strong north winds, so our schedule may have to be altered………