The weatherman calls for; garbage weather.

We left Hawksbill Cay to try to find anchorage that would better accommodate the southern winds we’d been having. We spent our last couple nights at Hawksbill in a nearly unbearable rolling.

We made it to the southern tip of Warderick, only to find that we still weren’t sheltered from the swell. Luckily, a second anchorage right around the corner on the same island had some mooring balls available. The inside mooring field in Warderick Wells is like something out of a dream. Swirls of blues and sands spiraling in the middle of a nearly 360 degree sheltered cove.

Once again, we had found that half our time there was dealing with rain and overcast. We spent as much time as we could in the water, but not as much as we would have hoped.

We finally got a little batch of calmer seas, and decided to push on to Staniel Cay. This is the island where the old James Bond 007 movie, Thunderball, was partially filmed (Sean Connery).  It’s an amazing grotto; a cave that has, overtime, had holes worn through the ceiling of the rock to allow beams of sunlight to pierce through. This enables moss to grow on the walls, and coral to grow in the water. Long viney roots dangle from the ceiling. It feels like something more out of India Jones than James Bond.  Large schools of fish hang out inside, adding blues, yellows, pinks, purples and greens to the already impressive show. To enter, you have to dive below to find the entrance to the cave – swimming through an underground hole towards the light.

Staniel Cay Yacht Club dock houses dozens of Nurse sharks and Sting rays. They’re everywhere. The Nurse sharks range in colors from black to gun-metal grey to red. They were gorgeous!

We anchored on the island just north of Staniel, called Big Major. This is home to domesticated pigs (and goats and chickens) that freely roam the island. The pigs spend their time lounging on the beach and swimming in the ocean. They eagerly await handouts from visitors, often swimming out to your approaching dinghy hoping to be the first for the meal.

We managed to cram all this into a small period, because, once again we were haunted with bad weather. We had overcast and rain all week. We had heard that a strong system would be pushing its way towards us, so we had intended on leaving to safer harbors. We re-provisioned of fuel and water, food and got the boat set. We desperately wanted some fresh baked bread. The only place in Staniel Cay to get any bread was at a little yellow house in the middle of town that you could place an order with.

This was our blessing and curse. We placed an order for two loaves, finding out that it wouldn’t be ready until later that day, so our plans to leave would have to wait until first thing the next morning. No big deal, we thought. We had still given ourselves several days grace before the storm was supposed to roll in.

That evening, we watched the sky darken from our anchorage which was terribly exposed to the south. We tucked the boat up as best we could, then called it a night. Sometime shortly after we fell asleep, the wind picked up to about 35-40 knots. Roaring outside, we scooped up a few more odds and ends from the cockpit we didn’t want to lose. That’s when Dave noticed the 55’ double-decker ‘motor yacht’ rapidly thrashing towards us. The funny thing, is that earlier in the evening we had joked about the obnoxious lights on it’s hull that made the water around it glow neon blue – this was probably the exact same reason that we quickly saw it dragging towards us, recklessly out of control. Dave promptly started the motor, and I grabbed the blow horn and started to blare it at them in hopes of getting their attention. I ran to the bow, thinking we were going to hoist up our anchor to move, when I finally saw the passengers on the other boat. They were scrambling to get oriented, I saw this because, despite it being a pitch black night, they were only 15 feet from crashing into our bow. They got the engine turned on and cranked the motor into forward, right as their prop was over our anchor line. Once again, those hideous blue lights illuminated all this easily for me.  We missed being hit by maybe a few more seconds. We also, luckily, didn’t get our anchor line sliced through by their propellers.

They pulled away from our boat, slightly, only to continue being rocked and pushed sideways alongside us, heading directly for another boat just off our starboard stern. Dave began blowing the standard 5-blast signal towards the other boat, hoping to alarm them of impending impact. I got onto the radio to inform the other boats in the harbor (there were about 15 boats) that there was an out of control powerboat careening through.  I think, crazily, there was only one other boat in the harbor with their VHF on as he was the only one who asked about the dangerous drifting boat.  We couldn’t tell exactly what happened, we don’t think there was an impact, though he may have cut the other guys anchor line or maybe he let go of it himself for a quick escape. We saw the previously anchored boat drop anchor twenty feet west, but that’s about it. The next morning we saw him retrieving the anchor that he had abandoned (or had cut) the night before.

It took a good 15 minutes for the drifting powerboat to seem to get anchored again, we watched it struggling to make any forward headway in the wind and surge we were all against. Dismally, this thought only forced us to realize that our little engine wouldn’t stand a chance. If we drag anchor or get hit by another boat, we won’t be able to power against the winds and waves and we’d be headed straight for the large sections of iron shore (extremely sharp eroded limestone), a guaranteed hull smasher.

It felt like our boat was a teeter-totter, doing its best to cut through 4-5 foot swells that were crashing towards us. Praying our anchor would hold up, ready to deploy more if it didn’t and hope that it would at the very least slow us down.  Dave let out an additional 20 feet of anchor rode to help counter the height of the waves and prevent the anchor from dragging.

Once the immediate threat had been avoided, we each took a seat outside to watch for any other dragging boats. Naturally, we were at the back of the line, in sight for any kamikaze boats that could be heading straight for us. Yet again, we watched another massive powerboat come towards us. This time at least, it was a slowed movement. We watched it get closer and closer, first being able to make out the name of the boat, then close enough that we could see the basketball game they were watching on satellite TV inside. We hailed them over and over, hoping to reach someone on board to inform them they were heading our way. Nothing. We shined lights on our boat, once again hoping they’d notice. Nope.

We sat for about an hour, watching them slowly approach. Waiting for them to be close enough to blow horn them. Finally, the wind started to fade and it looks like they were no longer dragging. We managed to get a couple hours of sleep. Must have been nice to watch a basketball game instead. Ignorance is bliss.

We woke up early the next day, only to find out that wasn’t the storm we were expecting, just a squall that came out of the blue. Not wanting to face another night like before, we decided to seek better anchorage elsewhere before the next one, which is supposed to be worse, rolls in. We had dodged a seriously close bullet, and prayed to avoid another one. We were quick on our feet with our appropriate responses, but nonetheless we realized there wasn’t much we could do given the violence of the storm. We were just really lucky our anchor held.

The next morning, we didn’t get so much as a glance from the guy on the powerboat that nearly came crashing into us, as he motored by. We’ve been finding this is typical ‘wealthy motor yacht’ behavior.  

We’re a little alarmed by the early tropical storm potential that seems to be occurring around us. We’ve seen there’s already been a named storm in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific, and just recently saw there was a chance of one forming off of Honduras. We had been suspecting that all this moisture and storm activity might be an indication to an early hurricane season, we were either right or lucky (maybe I wouldn’t use the term lucky). Nonetheless, we don’t want to get caught between a rock and a hard place (again).

We made it back up to Warderick yesterday, and got caught up in squalls. Lightning, rain, high winds - it wasn't a fun few hours. It was supposed to be decent, but we got caught in a very unexpected northern storm about halfway through our sail. We made it safe and sound to Warderick, but wet, cold and a little nerve fried (at least I did, Dave seemed alright). 

We're headed up to Shroud today, and hopefully we'll be making our long crossing to Nassua tomorrow. We're just trying to get out of the Bahamas in one piece, at this point. Wish us luck for good weather tomorrow, it'll be a long day and a large area to cross!