Harbour Island - Departure

Harbour Island Marina was nice enough to let us stay on the dock for the day. We normally would have had to get off and go on the hook by 1000. We planned to get off the dock by 1600.

The wind has clocked completely around to the west making today an excellent beach day. We still have the golf cart so once we got work that we could stay on the dock we had some lunch and then packed up a day bag to go to the famous pink sand beach.

I can see why it’s famous. Of course the day was perfect for beaching but this is one of the nicest beaches I have ever been on. Not a spec of trash or tar and the water was so crystal clear you could through the waves, just like you would read about in a book or possibly see in a movie. We took some pics and then went swimming.

Just up the beach from us a couple was taking some pictures. She got in unusual poses and he took pictures. I swam that way, much to Jane’s chagrin.

There was just enough of a swell to create nice soft rolling waves that broke far enough away from the beach to make for perfect body surfing. I did that until it felt like my face was frying from the sun and then we all grabbed a drink from the cooler. Jane took a nice long walk on the beach but I cannot as my left foot has been aching since we were in Nassau. I am not sure what it is but it really hurts to walk.

We finally met back at the golf cart after Jane and I walked through the Coral Sands Hotel that sits right on the beach. There is another hotel next door that looks even fancier called the Pink Sands.

Back on the boat it was the usual frantic work to get everything put away and locked down. We had decided to do a night passage to get to our next location, Little Harbour in the Abacos, as this would be cooler and would also save a day of day light.

After we got a little fuel, the marina was out of fuel but we eked 8 gallons so that we had enough of a reserve for the crossing to Little Harbour. Little Harbour is an island that stretches from north to south and the beach faces east. There is an inlet on the southern end that we planned to use to leave for the passage. We had originally come to Harbour Island from the North via Devil’s Backbone passage with Old Pot.

Now we had to leave via this southern inlet because the tide was high and part of the channel is too shallow for us at low tide. The only problem was that we did not want to begin our passage to Little Harbour until 2000 (8 pm) as we needed to arrive in daylight so that we could see the channel entrance. The passage was planned to take about 10 hours.

Our solution was easy based on the way the wind was blowing. Anchor off of the pink sand beach. We headed out of the inlet and went north to the area where we were swimming. We were in about 30 feet of water and the bottom was all coral. As we were going along I spotted a huge tall sponge coral and decided to anchor there and check it out.

We needed to use the grapple anchor which is an anchor with metal hooks like fish hooks that are spread out in a circular fashion so that any one of the hooks can grab onto something. We also used a chain so that it would not rub and chafe on the coral. After we dropped the anchor and the boat was secure I free dove down with my mask and fins and adjusted the anchor rode so that the rope was not rubbing on any coral.

We stayed anchored there for several hours and cooked burgers on the grill and watched the sunset. There was a little bit of swell (slow smooth waves) coming in from the southwest so that the boat was rocking a bit, but not too bad. There was a nice breeze.

Eventually our time to leave rolled around and I again free dove down to the anchor and swam back up with it. Elizabeth pulled up the rode while Jane drove the boat. Getting back on board I was pretty stoked…

Empty bottle of rum

As we motor sailed north along the beach we made a message in a bottle. On a piece of paper we used a Sharpie to record our Latitude and Longitude, names, boat name, address and email address. We all signed it. We put that, one of our business cards and a Bahamian dollar bill into the bottle. We planned to drop it into the sea at midnight but at 0130 I realized we hadn’t done it yet so that’s when it went in.

Back in Harbour Island at Valentine’s Dive shop the owner’s daughter had found a message in a bottle that had been floating for six years! There was a picture with her and the note that was in the bottle.