Bimini to Gun Cay
Somehow, whenever we head to the Bahamas, I think we are THERE once we reach Bimini. And yes, we are in the Bahamas, but my brain, apparently, chooses to forget that we must make another big hop to get to the other islands. Dave and I have visited the Bahamas on three separate occasions. Each time we traveled from Florida to Bimini to The Berry Islands. The jump from Bimini to The Berry Islands, is actually longer than the hop from Miami to Bimini, approximately 90nm. And while we had intially planned on spending two nights in Bimini, the winds were favorable for us to make our way deeper into the Bahamas. However, our route requires that we cross Mackie Shoal. This is an area that is very shallow, and as such, we prefer to not cross after dark; although, many sailors report that it is safe to do so. In addition, we prefer to go into anchorages during daylight hours too, if possible. The crossing from Bimini to our preferred anchorage in The Berry Islands would be approximately 16 hours. There is no way we would be able to drop anchor in daylight if we left straight from Bimini. Plus, the channel leaving Bimini is a little tight, and we prefer to travel it in daylight. WOW! What a nice little conundrum we created for ourselves! Fortunately, when we visited the Bahamas with our friend Rick he showed us another anchorage that we could use to provide a stopover point, Gun Cay.
We were both fairly tired after our crossing from Florida to Bimini, so we had a slow start to the day on March 12. We knew it was a short hop from Bimini to Gun Cay, only about 9 nm, and that would take us less than two hours. We drank coffee, lots of coffee. We ate breakfast. We did some cleaning and organizing, chatted with a few of our neighbors, and at around 12:30 we slipped the dock lines and headed toward Gun Cay. Gun Cay is a popular destination with tourists, particularly the area of the island known as Honeymoon Harbor. Gun Cay offers beautiful white sand beaches, crystal blue water, and lovely snorkeling spots. It also has lots of stingrays that tour operators have fed for years. Now whenever someone enters the water at a particular location the rays come over to investigate. They aren’t scary in any way and it is really interesting to have them so close to you. We try to make a habit of not feeding wildlife, so the rays would have been disappointed if we had visited.
We had an easy trip to Gun Cay. While we weren’t able to turn off the engines and just sail, we were able to make use of our genoa (the headsail) while we motor-sailed the nine miles. Once we arrived, I readied the anchor and moved forward to help locate a good spot to anchor. The beautiful Bahamian water makes spotting possible locations to anchor really easy. We want to anchor in sandy areas that are free of rocks and turtle grass (sea grass). These sandy patches are the prettiest iridescent blue that you have ever seen. I spotted a nice spot and directed Dave to the location. The one downside was that it was a little further away from shore than we would like. This meant that we weren’t as protected from the swell and had a bit of a rolly night. However, it only took us one drop of the anchor to get a nice set. I dropped the anchor along with about 50 ft of chain, Dave put Away to Me in reverse, and slowly increased our RPMs. We feel confident that we won’t drag in most conditions if the boat doesn’t move when we are backing down at 1700 RPMs. Having said that, if we find ourselves in a storm with potentially high winds we start the engines so that we can use the motors to take pressure off of the anchor. Dave revved the engines, the boat didn’t budge, and we were set for the night.
Before we really settle in for the night though, the pups want to go for a run on the beach. Like us, they had been on the boat for too long, and they needed to stretch their legs. We loaded them up in the dinghy…yes, yes, we really do need to make a video of this foolishness…and off we went. WOW! That sand felt really good on my feet, and the water wasn’t cold at all…big exhale! I had forgotten how much I love it here. We took the pups for a bit of a walk and then used the Chuckit to throw the ball for them. Moss almost always comes up with the ball, but Beau and Reece thoroughly enjoy giving chase. We then took them for a swim to try to remove as much sand from their fur as possible and then headed back to the big boat.
As I mentioned earlier, it is a long trip from this area of the Bahamas to The Berry Islands, so it was early to bed and early to rise for us. We were expecting it to take us 13 hours to travel from Gun Cay to Bimini, so we were wanting to raise the anchor by 5:30 am, at the latest. Yes, we would be leaving before sunrise, but I will tell you about that in the next post.
