MV Simple Life – Summer 2019

We ended last winter season in the Abacos, Bahamas. It was an amazing experience to be able to spend so much time exploring the Abacos. When we heard that category-5 hurricane Dorian had made landfall on Elbow Cay in the Abacos we feared for the safety and well-being of the Bahamian people. Worse yet… Dorian seemed to stall out over Freeport in Grand Bahama Island.

Category 5 Hurricane Dorian over Freeport, Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas

Treasure Cay was our favorite spot in the Abacos and we were stunned to see that little more than the concrete bar top where we sat was left standing.

Destruction of all but the Concrete Bartop at Treasure Cay in the Abacos, Bahamas

Condos lining the shores of Treasure Cay, Abacos

I have been reading all the Bahamas Facebook group posts and find it inspiring to see how many US boaters are making their way back to the Abacos to help with the reconstruction efforts. If it works out, I would be proud to join the Abacos support group.

This summer was very busy for me and I only got to take the boat out for a couple of weekend trips to Newport, RI. Thanks Preppy for convincing me to stop working on projects and get out there. The rest of the summer was spent on boat projects and family matters.

My sister got married to her boyfriend of many decades, Michael. They were kind enough to let me officiate their marriage. Just call me Father Mahty 😉

Seeing my family after being away all winter is something I look forward to.

Spending the summer on the docks means lots of nights spent with friends.

Preparing to spend all winter cruising somewhere warm means having the boat hauled and put on the hard for new bottom paint, zincs, and hull waxing. This year I was managed to get all that done is only 4 long days. Each night after the working long days under the boat, it was time to walk over to the marina fire pit and relax.

After being under the boat all day a fire & IPAs are just perfect

There is nothing like a clean bottom.

Now it was time to use the marine travel lift and splash her back in the water.

Fall 2019 Splash Down

I got back into my slip just in time for a nor’easter that blew three moored boats in my marina ashore.

I will start off this winter’s cruise with friends and fellow cruisers, Buddy & Renee. They are long-time sailors and just fun to have aboard. They put their beautiful Tartan 44 on the hard and came aboard but before casting off. … we set out to celebrate!

Now the time has come to cast off the lines so stay tuned for the next post detailing the first leg of our odyssey.

Bahama Love

Marsh Harbour

Kelly & I spent some time in Marsh Harbour (3rd largest city in the Bahamas behind Freeport & Nassau). Marsh Harbour is every cruiser’s reprovisioning stop in the Abacos. We stocked up on the items that we needed and frequented the local restaurants by dinghy.

Enter Susan

Kelly’s sister Susan was nice enough to plan some time off and fly into Marsh Harbour to join us for the week. It’s so nice to have visitors aboard. We picked her up in the dinghy at the Union Jack Public dock on Marsh Harbour and the sisters were all smiles.

We wasted no time setting out for as many islands and cays as we could hit in a week. First stop …

Treasure Cay

It was coming up on high tide and we made the trip over at 8.5 – 9 knots with the hopes of finding a mooring ball inside the harbour.

TC harbour actually locks the boats in with a cable at night so be careful if you attempt to enter after 10PM!

Success. We grabbed one of the dozen or so mooring balls.

Anchored in TC with Toys still on fly deck

The water is so clear you can see the mooring block on the bottom.

Be careful not to ding a prop on the mooring blocks

We craned down the toys.

Kayaks were a new addition for the Bahamas

The girls wasted no time in trying out both kayaks.

Kayaking is hard work bring a cold drink
Paddling Susan
Sea turtle head

Treasure Cay Beach Marina & Golf Resort

A beautiful location and it’s for sale!

TC Marina
TC Homes
TC Marina Resort $59M

Tipsy Seagull

Frozen Drinks & Margaritas
A local IPA!
Morgan Freeman’s Brother

Kelly swears this is a baby Godzilla

Treasure Cay Beach

Treasure Cay has one of the top 10 beaches in the world so just a 1/4 mile walk and we had our toes in the sand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTI2z0rATwU

TC Beach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOzy0oiGKVE

360 Beach Selfies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yivhxnt8shk

Gentle waves

Coco Beach Bar

Coco Beach Bar is here to serve you frozen drinks while you lounge under tiki huts.

Coco Beach Bar
CBB View

We spent two nights in Treasure Cay and I know why many spend their whole winters here. We had places to go so out the harbor’s entrance channel we went.

Sea of Abaco

Once in the Sea of Abaco you are just blown away by its beauty.

SoA View from Pilothouse
Brody likes the breeze when the PH doors are open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhLevVKM__0

Sea of Abaco

No Name Cay – AKA Piggyville

The seas were calm and we made our way through Whale Cay Cut and anchored off No Name Cay. Here we found others like us wanting to spend some time with the piggies.

No Name Cay beach is beautiful and home to some friendly pigs and roosters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k1HgCYwDzA

Piggyville Shelter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-JVqrEFx0

Feeding the Sow

Green Turtle Cay

We weighed anchor and headed right next door to GTC. We passed many boats anchored off GTC and proceeded into White Sound. The narrow channel opens up and there are moorings inside if you call Donny.

However, looking around the harbour it seemed a bit quiet and with a little investigation we quickly learned why all the boats were anchored outside the harbor next to the town of New Plymouth. Out we went, dropped the hook with the rest of them and dinghed our way into the public dock in New Plymouth. We walked the narrow streets following the sound of a saxophone humming out some jazz.

Sundowners Bar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9v0CR0Tyxo

https://youtu.be/tslDWLKYSbQ

Sax at Sundowners

Next up Nippers Beach Bar…

Bahamas Crossing

We weighed anchor in North Palm Beach at 4AM. It was dark as we made our way down the ICW and out of Lake Worth inlet.

Ambient light from shore makes navigation easier

We welcomed first light but soon our due East direction had us seeing spots as we stared into the sun.

Crossing over the West edge of the Gulf Stream.

Position of the West wall of the Gulf Stream, about 18NM off the coast.

Here is a video while underway in the Gulf Stream.

https://youtu.be/q3tygH5uI2o

The ocean temp was a tropical 78 degrees.

While it would take us about 8 hours to arrive at our custom clear in location in West End on Grand Bahama Island, others would pass us along the way.

https://youtu.be/lOPwU5z2GUw

Soon we tucked between the rock jetties of West End, hailed Old Bahama Bay Marina for temporary dockage while we cleared in through customs.

The water inside West End Harbour was cloudy but had a beautiful green color.

There was a 10 foot long shark in this photo but I snapped it a moment too late as he swam beneath the murky green

Things appear from the green as the come up to the surface.

We had our yellow quarantine flag & Bahamas courtesy flag flying when we arrived in Bahamian waters. Now docked, only the captain is allowed to leave the boat to checkin at customs. The customs officers were very friendly and helped me sort through the required paperwork & $300 USD yacht entrance fee.

I first got the desire to sail after graduating college. I had dreams of dropping out of life, buying a sailboat, filling it with beer & Campbell’s soup and sailing away. Some 23 years, 3 sailboats and a trawler later we are finally realizing a dream. Time for some selfies in West End.

Yellow building behind us in the West End customs office

Old Bahama Bay marina is the only dockage in West End and a private party bought many of their slips. They were not able to offer us dockage so we had to use the remaining daylight to run to out the breakwaters of West End, around Indian Rock and use VPR (Visual Piloting Rules) to navigate to Mangrove Cay for the night’s anchorage.

Out of West End, around Indian Rock and onto the Little Bahama Bank.

Crossing the Little Bahama Bank is like nothing I’d ever experienced.

https://youtu.be/iYyyT84eqOA

The water is so clear you can see everything on the bottom. Where the blue sky meets the green ocean is captivating.

When you pay for your cruising permit it include a Bahamas fishing license so we wasted no time in trolling lines. Kelly caught this amberjack and was quick to return it’s freedom by throwing it back in the water.

Soon we arrived at Mangrove Cay.

We anchored for the night as the sun was setting over Mangrove Cay.

Underwater lights work great in the clear waters

We slept late and made the short trip to great Sale Cay the next afternoon.

Great Sale Cay anchorage on the Little Bahama Bank

Then it was on to Crab Cay for another night on anchor.

Crab Cay Anchorage near Little Abaco Island

Our last trip was to Marsh Harbour where we will await a guest who is flying in for a week visit aboard MV Simple Life.

Arriving in Marsh Harbour we found the anchorage to be quite full and had to squeeze into a spot that was just deep enough for our 4’10” draft.

https://youtu.be/6ZY3WkrDIDI

You can now choose “Current Location” from our blogs menu and see where MV Simple Life is in real-time.

Waccamaw River

We had spent a fun two nights at St. James Marina with friends. Kelly & Wende got to compare charity bracelets made by their niece, Michaela over drinks.

Ladies were both wearing their favorite bracelets

While we were at the dock I watched a sailboat snap a piling off. I felt bad for the captain as there was some mis-communication that had the sailboat backing out of a fairway in the marina and then incorrectly tying up to a T-dock that was reserved for a similar sized sailboat that had just entered the marina’s entrance. The captain quickly untied from the T-dock and attempted to back up but while he must have thought he had shifted from reverse into neutral, was clearly still accelerating in reverse. He hit the piling and snapped it off without putting a single scratch in his boat. I don’t know what the manufacturer of this sailboat is but that’s a solid boat.

https://youtu.be/iYRLxAPCWGA

After that excitement, I spent some time finding an iPad app that would give me detailed charts of the Bahamas. I settled on the Aqua Map app. I had been using Charts & Tides by Navionics.

I was not happy that when Garmin bought ActiveCaptain.com they killed the integration with other iPad navigation apps in favor of integration with their own chartplotters.

I had been using Charts & Tides for the last 15 months because it was not very expensive to purchase the Navionics charts for the US & Canada ($30 or so) and the app gave me ActiveCaptain integration. ActiveCaptain.com was a web page that had a live map and a database of crowd sourced data and reviews of marinas, anchorages, local knowledge and hazards to navigation. Better yet iPad navigation apps could download the ActiveCaptain database of information for offline display in any compatible iPad navigation app. ActiveCaptain integration is a must for cruising the ICW. It puts small icons right on your navigation screen that show you marinas, places to anchor, hazards to navigation and local knowledge of inlets and difficult areas. Charts alone don’t list the nearest place to anchor when it’s dark and you need to stop for the night. Knowing there is a shoal around the next bend in the ICW and the only way to safely get past it is to hug the red daymark to within 30 ft is knowledge that active captain gives to you right on the navigation app’s screen (if the app has active captain integration). The Charts & Tides app which is extremely easy to use and very intuitive had ActiveCaptain integration until Garmin bought them and they seem very slow to fix the broken integration. You can however buy a Garmin Chartplotter and get ActiveCaptain. hmmmm?

Before the Garmin acquisition, ActiveCaptain used to be Open and Free

I did not want to be forced to buy an expensive Garmin chartplotter. When we purchased MV Simple Life we chose to outfit our trawler with Raymarine electronics for navigation. Expensive navigation electronics like chartplotters, radar, depth and AIS are essential but when cruising the ICW you need to use an iPad with a navigation app that supports ActiveCaptain.

Aqua Map has ActiveCaptain integration and also allows you to purchase the very detailed Explorer charts for the Bahamas. I have never sailed around the Bahamas so step one was to purchase the charts and start studying the different islands and cays to plot my own safe routes to anchor locations of interest.

Green Turtle Cay, Off Little Abaco Island, Bahamas
Abacos, Exumas, Eluthra

When we awoke our friends Jim & Wende had left squid wings and fishing tackle on our swim platform. I had been asking Jim for tips on catching fish in this area of the Atlantic and advice from someone who fishes the area is exactly what we need.

Soon we were making our way past ICW MM 325

Statute Mile 325 on the ICW – Southern NC

We made it through the Lockwood Folly section of the ICW without touching bottom near low tide.

View from the ICW out Lockwood Folly Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean

We passed many amusing sights along the ICW shore.

it’s a boat
It’s a dock
Boats docked along ICW
Crew working on the Fishing Vessel
Fishing Vessel inside Little River Inlet
FV Wesley’s Pride
Little sunken boat
This is the M Casino Ship
Giant XMAS ornaments on the lawn

We passed this sailing catamaran that must have just gotten to tired to continue or find a place to anchor off the ICW so they just dropped anchor on the edge of the ICW. They used both a bow & stern anchor to prevent swinging into the channel but I would not be comfortable with the fog that another boat would not hit us.