Incredible Hatchett Bay Cave and a Snorkel in a Pond Full of Sea Horses

Sarah baked some cookies in the morning and took a few to three young kids on the boat next to us.  We’d met them at the grocery store in Governor’s Harbor and they were stuck mending their jib that had blown apart in the squall of March 27th.  Once ashore, we walked to the eastern shore beach and back then hitch-hiked a ride to the Hatchett Bay Cave - an extensive in-land cave with a labyrinth of passages extending for several hundred yards accessed from an opening in the middle of a field. Ignoring advice to hire a cave guide, we entered the cave alone with our flashlight and one head lamp and appeared to be the only ones in the cave. After about15 minutes of working our way deep underground down a ladder and along passageways that would occasionally open to a large rooms with fat stalagmites and stalactites, Sarah lost her nerve wondering how we’d find our way out should our flashlight batteries die, so we turned around before making it to the end of the cave.

We then walked to an inland sea horse pond fellow cruisers had told us about where we snorkeled and saw many 3-4 inch sea horses nestled among the weeds - a new first for us and a nudibranch - an interesting slug like thing with blue antennae. Unfortunately dinner at the Back Porch restaurant, supposedly the best food on the island, never panned out as the restaurant never opened.

For more on Sweetings Pond and what someone can find with more time check out this site.

Water water everywhere, not a drop to drink …

… at least not for less than 60 cents a gallon.

Juno’s water tanks hold 125 gallons.  In New England, where water is freely available at marinas, this amount typically lasts us for two weeks of cruising.  We use it for hand washing dishes, showers, rinsing saltwater off the boat, and for water in the toilets (heads).  Why use fresh water in the heads? Mostly to keep odors down.  The critters in ocean water, when mixed with everything else, boost the odors, especially if the holding tanks can’t be emptied for a while.

On this trip we are in water conservation mode.  The drive to conserve water is both financial and practical.  Refilling our tanks at a marina, when we can find one, costs about $75.  While not a huge sum, there is a principle involved. We can find free water some places but it means filling up 5 gallon containers on shore and transporting the water (42 lbs) back to the dingy then to Juno.

The gin clear water is excellent for extracting nearly pure water from salt water through a reverse osmosis (RO) filtering system. Water is produced on most of the islands this way for the residents, which is one reason water is seldom free.  A couple of islands and a few Bahamian businesses provide spigots of free water, likely in an effort to encourage cruisers to come ashore.  RO systems are available for boats and many full-time cruisers install them. We considered installing one and change out 50 gallons of water storage to double our diesel fuel capacity to 100 gallons. However a modest system costs $4,000.  It also takes a lot of electricity so we would probably need spend another $7,000 on a generator.  You can buy a lot of water for all that.  Finally, an RO system is one more thing that can break down. We regularly hear cruisers on the radio asking for advice or access to parts to repair their broken water makers. If we do this sort of cruise again but to more remote islands where the only water available is what you can collect from rain, it will be a reasonable consideration.

So how do we conserve? Sadly Juno is suffering a bit without a regular wash down. However the fairly frequent rain showers at night give the deck a decent rinse.  Then, using salt water to flush the toilets is a no brainer. Flushing either goes straight overboard if we are not in a harbor, or it goes into a holding tank that we empty in a couple of days.  Full showers are a thing of the past.  Besides, being in the ocean every day, there wasn’t much need for our at-home routine of a shower every other day. At least as far as we could tell.  For the first couple of weeks we didn’t even rinse the salt water off after swimming.  We did notice that the residual salt on our bodies at night seemed to make the bedsheets feel damp, so we afforded ourselves the luxury dribbling enough water on our skin and hair to get the salt water off after swimming.

Dishes are a bit more work. First Sarah (most often) washes them in a bucket of salt water. She then rinses them under a very slow stream of fresh water.  At first she used a a spray bottle for rinsing dishes but that seemed a little extreme. We still use it to get the salt off the metal parts of the boat and the vinyl windows.

How has this conservation worked out?  In the first two weeks in the Bahamas under this regime we only used 10 gallons of fresh water.  We've loosened up some of our restrictions, but even so, our only marina water purchase so far was for 70 gallons. This was after having two more people aboard and not having access to free water for a while.  Even under these water restrictions we are still much better off than the 600 million people around the world without a reliable water supply*. So all-in-all our water conservation lifestyle is quite easy.

* https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-sanitation

Outstanding Pink Sand at French Leave Beach and Epic Elkhorn Coral

Purported to be one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, we walked to French Leave beach on the eastern side of the island from Governor’s Harbor where we snorkeled the southern end (Nix’s point) and saw a most spectacular Elkhorn coral.  Although winds were light, being on the eastern side of the island,  waves were breaking on the reef so conditions were a little cloudy.  The beach was nice with some some pinkish sands that gradually sloped into the crystal clear waters.  A half-dozen lucky home owners had deluxe oceanfront properties that abutted the beach and the remaining quarter mile was undeveloped. Because of the houses and a few pickup trucks that surfers brought in at Nix’s point, we’d rate the beach about an 8/10.

French Leave Beach

One of the most striking and undamaged corals we have seen

We hiked it back over the hill to Governor’s Harbor on the western shore picking up a few supplies and beer and then returned to move the the boat north to Hatchett Bay (a man-made bay cut through the coastal rock that opened into a large anchorage) to seek protection from stronger SE winds that were forecast for the night. Even though we were about a mile away, around dusk we had to close all hatches as we were downwind from the community’s landfill fire - the predominant means of trash disposal in the islands.

A Spotted Ray is Spotted at Ten Bay, Cupid Cay at Governor’s Harbor

Winds calmed down today so we snorkeled around the Pineapple Cays and then at Ten Bay where we saw a huge spotted ray swim right alongside Juno. The spotted ray looks like a leopard with all its spots and it has a really long thin tail - much more interesting than most rays.

A beautiful Spotted Ray, though the picture does not do it justice

After lunch, we motored north to Governor’s Harbor, the capital of Eleuthera and walked around Cupid’s Cay before dinner where we saw many adorable chicks and many chickens and roosters roaming the streets.

Sarah Tastes a Radler and Both Enjoy Conch Pizza

It was pretty windy with winds 15-20 knots out of the east so we sailed north to the Pineapple Cays glad for some new scenery.  As it was a bit cloudy and as Sarah had read that the island’s best pizza could be found at Mate and Jenny’s pizza, we went out to see for ourselves. We were the only ones present, ordered a conch pizza and two beers.  Harry had a Kalik and Sarah discovered the mango infused low alcohol beer called the Radler (also by Kalik). The pizza was ok - neither of us thought it lived up to the hype - and when we got the bill, $42 for two beers and a 12 inch mediocre pizza, we had to explain that we only had $40.50. The cook/waitress let us off and we thanked her and were on our way. 

Hitchhiked a few miles to turtle pond only to find  the gate closed and locked - apparently access was by paid admission only and anyway we had no money so we hitchhiked back and walked to the beach at N. Palmetto.

Chilling on the ocean side of Eleuthera

Windy Rock Harbor Sound

The winds blew out of the NE18-22 knots on Thursday so we couldn’t really get the engine safely onto the dinghy and thus were stranded on the boat all day Thursday. However we re-anchored Juno to the eastern side of the harbor for greater protection from the wind and spent the day reading. The winds were a bit lighter on Friday so we managed to get ashore for some exercise, running to the school where we found about 60 elementary school kids from the nearby towns who’d gathered for two day island track meet.  We saw the girls 8 yrs old and under run in their socks (no shoes) around the track with sand dividing the running lanes on the barren field. We also saw the “ocean hole”, a 600 foot deep inland saltwater that is a couple of hundred feet across. Being that it was Friday, the town was having their weekly“Fish Fry” took the dinghy ashore and joined the other cruisers and a few locals for some DJ music, fried fish, and beers before turning in.  One couple - Emma and Dave on Five Flip Flops have been sailing for 17 years.

Squalls en Route to Rock Sound Harbor, Eleuthera

With strong NW winds forecast, we chose to move on to Rock Sound Harbor Eleurthera as it offers good protection in strong NW winds.  We raised the anchor about 6:45 am just before the sun rose at 7:00 am and motored past Little San Salvador, about 15 miles west of Cat Island where cruise ships stop for the day at their private island. We continued on, now sailing with a nice SW wind along “the bridge” - a shallow that connects Little San Salvador to Eleuthera and which is supposed to be a great fishing spot (no luck here) when we encountered a squall off Powell Point.  Thankfully we’d reduced sail as the winds picked up to about 20 knots and rain fell but 15 minutes later, it was all through and the sun was out again. 

We sailed into Rock Sound Harbor dropping anchor around 4:30 pm having sailed 59.97 miles.  The NW winds finally materialized once we were on anchor and another line of squalls came through around 5:30 pm.

Watching while on anchor, but similar to what we saw while sailing

Sarah produces another fantastic meal on Juno ...

... enjoyed with a beautiful sunset

Sunshine Returns for a Day at Bennett’s Harbor, Cat Island

Glad to see the sun again, we snorkeled some rocks near the shore just after breakfast and decided to walk to the eastern side of the island after lunch.  While it looked to be only about 1.5 miles, our walk took us down an unpaved road so it ended up taking about 60 minutes.  En route we came across an area where cars were left to rust and one fellow was underneath one looking for a spare part.

Used car parts, island style

We had the eastern beach all to ourselves but there was a good easterly breeze and waves were coming in behind the reef so we just relaxed for 45 minutes before heading back.

Walking across the island to ...

... another beautiful beach

A slight diversion on the return walk took us past piles of garbage and a boarded up recycling center with a huge pile of glass bottles. The solid waste management practices on these islands is terrible as we see litter and wastes everywhere spoiling the landscape.  Unfortunately, this is the economics of the situation.

All of the islands have dumps like this.  

An attempt from an earlier time to establish recycling

Exhausted from our long walk, we stayed at Bennett’s Harbor a second night making plans to depart Long Island for Eleuthera first thing in the morning as a strong NW wind is forecast for tomorrow and Cat Island doesn’t afford much protection from NW winds.

Juno Gets a Bath and We Explore The Bat Cave

Woke up to overcast skies so we decided to go for a run on shore.  However, the dinghy had about 3 inches of FRESH water in it from all the rain last night. Normally rain water in a dinghy this is a nuisance but as fresh water isn’t easy to obtain, we seized our first opportunity in 10 weeks of sailing to rinse the salt off the sides of the boat using the fresh water in the dinghy. Our run was uneventful - to a market and back about 2.5 miles total but the $1 avocados made it worthwhile.  We then sailed north 1.5 hours to Ben’s Bluff where just off the side of the Queen’s Highway - the major north south road - about 30 yards from the water’s edge on the side of a hill, we found the Bat Cave. We had to crouch to get into the cave but after about 15 feet, it opened up into a large chamber 60’ x 20’ x 15’ where true to it’s name, there were bats.  We had head lamps and a flashlight to help see as it was very dark and cool in the cave.  As winds were kicking up a swell, we then sailed north dropping anchor at Bennett’s Harbor for the night.

The Bat Cave. No Batman, Robin, or Alfred but a few bats.

Chilled at Fernandez Cay

As strong winds were forecast and overcast skies, we just hung out at Fernandez Cay where there is a small bay and resort.  In the morning, we explored the mangrove creek by dinghy then met one of the four other boaters in the harbor on the beach who offered to give Harry a few extra fishing lures.  Sarah cleaned and polished the starboard chrome and stainless steel after lunch, a labor intense process but Juno’s sparkling for the moment.  Harry made some fresh coconut milk which we later used for Pina Coladas and coconut rice. Yum.

One of about thee days cloudy days so far

Harry mastering fresh coconut milk. All fingers still present.

Climbed the Tallest Peak in the Bahamas and Found a Deal on Ice Cream

Moving at a slower pace, we spent the morning on the boat.  Sarah cleaned and polished dthe stainless steel on the portside of the boat showing signs of rust from all the salt while Harry caught up with life back home.  We then hiked up the tallest peak in the Bahamas  - all 206 feet to a little Hermitage where Father Jerome who built many churches in the Bahamas spent his final years. 

Ready to climb to The Hermitage

The Hermitage

We also stumbled upon a little fair taking place celebrating the 179th year of the Bahama National Defense Force that includes the police.  Families were hanging out, drinking beer, listening to a DJ while the kids got free ice cream and hotdogs and had a piñata. So we joined in, buying a beer from the sailing club which had on it’s wall, a picture of one of their founders -Godfrey Kelly - a Snipe sailor from Nassau we know. We then hit the ice cream hut and indulged in a cone that only set us back $1 a cone, making it perhaps the best bargain in all the Bahamas.

A local policeman running the pinata game

The line for $1 ice cream cones