End of the line….. Georgetown

Georgetown is generally the end of the line for many cruisers. The reason for this is that the predominant winds are from the east and to get south to the Caribbean, it is necessary to head east before you can head south. Sailors wishing to do this need to wait for a weather window and it is called the “thorny path” because they are battling the winds and the currents the wrong way. To stay away from the hurricanes, you need to be south of 8° north or north of 40° so there is a push to get to Granada, or head back to North America out of the hurricane belt before hurricane season. We are heading north. Hurricane season begins on June 1 and I plan to be back in Toronto at that time.

Easter Sunday Brunch at the Peace and Plenty Restaurant in Georgetown

Bottomless Mimosas on Easter Sunday with Jeff and Valerie.

When it was time to leave Staniel Cay I checked with my weather router Chris Parker. There was a cold front coming through with brisk winds from the north. Therefore I didn’t want to be with caught out on the open ocean in Exuma Sound in dangerous conditions. Chris sent me an email telling me when was the best time to go. He also told me the best headings given that wind was going to shift part way through the day and with his instructions, we were on beam reach for the entire 60 mile trip to Georgetown. He gave instructions to take a heading of 120° until around noon and then alter course for Georgetown at around 140° which would leave me on a beam reach the whole time. The instructions were perfect. It was a perfect sail in the warm wind.

In my sailor’s guide to the Exuma’s it says “You are now approaching the one cut that so many cruisers dread the most. It is the entrance to Georgetown. Conch Cay cut has one of the worst reputations as it is indeed a dangerous cut because of the reefs.” I entered all of the appropriate waypoints that would have me slaloming through the reefs and miraculously, we missed them all…… My plan was to pick up a mooring ball Stocking Island.

Picking up a mooring ball in 20 kn of wind in a 51 foot sailboat is challenging at best. The plan was to have Ileana grab the mooring ball with a boat hook and I would run up to the bow of the boat and tie this to our mooring lines. However, after three tries, we were not successful. This is when we first met Jeff. He pulled up in his dinghy and offered to help us. He hooked the mooring line around the mooring ball and give it back to us and we were tied up. He then had some good news and some bad news. He gave us the bad news first. These mooring balls were the property of St. Francis resorts. Jeff had been moored about two weeks when in the middle of the night, the attachment of the mooring ball to the anchoring broke free and he found he was drifting aimlessly in the harbour. He smashed into another boat but fortunately the other boat had fenders on their side for such an eventuality and no damage was done to either boat. This was the fifth time this has happened this season for St. Francis moorings and some of the boats that broke free were damaged significantly. But the good news was the harbour master sent divers down to make sure the rest of the Moorings were secure….but Jeff had no confidence…… Shortly afterwards, another dinghy came up to us. He told us he had been anchored out in Elizabeth Harbor for a few months and had seen these five boats break free of these moorings. He suggested we move. With the help of Jeff, we moved to a more secure spot with a different company managing the moorings. In this spot, we were able to tolerate a 43 knot gust without any damage or breaking free of the mooring. We definitely felt more secure.

To explain how we ended up at the Peace and Plenty Restaurant drinking bottomless mimosa while the rest of island was in church for Easter Sunday you have to need to have some background information. Ileana is from Guatemala. Her great, great grandfather was the president of Guatemala. From the website https://www.encyclopedia.com/ “Barrios quickly forged a strong dictatorship, eliminating the Conservative opposition and greatly strengthening the power of the state. He represented the coming to power in Guatemala of the liberal-positivist philosophy that would remain dominant until at least 1944. Barrios promoted strongly anticlerical legislation, suppressed the tithe, abolished the regular orders, expropriated church property, and greatly reduced the number of priests in the country; he also established religious liberty, civil marriage and divorce, and state collection of vital statistics. He launched a public education system at all levels and took the University of San Carlos out of the control of the church, making it the state university and establishing other secondary and normal schools. His educational reforms, however, benefited primarily the upper and middle classes of Guatemala City and Quetzaltenango. Most rural Guatemalans continued to have little access to education and often now lost their village priests, who formerly had provided some education to parishioners. Barrios’s restructuring of the university emphasized professional and technical education at the expense of the humanities and liberal arts, another reflection of positivist thinking.”

Up until Ileana’s great great grandfather took control of Guatemala, the Roman Catholic Church was firmly embedded in the running of the country. They were involved in the school, the laws, and the government. Justo Rufino Barrios separated the church from the state and this greatly upset the pope, Leo XIII. In fact, the Pope was so pissed off, he excommunicated Justo from the Roman Catholic Church. When this did not have the desired effect, Pope Leo XIII went a step further and excommunicated the next seven generations of Justo’s offspring. Ileana is the fourth generation and so she is still under the excommunication order. We are not quite sure exactly what this means or what the deleterious effect might be should we walk into a Roman Catholic Church. We have however, been to Notre Dame in Paris and were not struck by lightning or any such drama but nonetheless, we do not wish to tempt fate. Therefore, having bottomless mimosa with our new found sailor friends Jeff and Valerie seemed like a safer option on Easter Sunday. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

Later that afternoon, Ileana and I caught a flight to Nassau. The flight back to Toronto for Ileana was leaving the next day and I wouldn’t be seen her for at least two or three weeks until I arrived in New York with the sailboat, so I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. When she flew back to Toronto, I flew back to Georgetown. Jeff was kind enough to keep an eye on my boat and recharge the batteries with my generator while I was gone.

The sunsets are always the highlight of the day!

The sailors that are helping me bring my boat back to Toronto, Marlo, Doug, and Auke are arriving later this week and we will wait for our weather window before heading north hopefully around April 28th.