Mary Beth and I usually look forward to our nights at anchor. For most of our sailing experience, being nestled in an anchorage with the gentle sound and feel of the water against the hull, an occasional call from a bird or small animal and the view of stars drifting across our open hatch is a daily highlight. The Bahamas, at least so far on this trip, no longer have this offering in the menu. In most of the Bahamas, boats anchor in a small “horseshoe” shaped bay a quarter mile or so from the land if they are lucky. This provides good protection from wind and seas coming across the island toward the boat. However, if the wind decides to come from a different direction, there is often open water to the horizon so even a moderate wind will kick up an unpleasant rolling and “hobby horsing” motion aboard the boat. A strong wind, common in this area at this time of year, can make the anchorage untenable and even dangerous. Dangerous or not, I (David) find this motion really annoying and a sure prescription for a very poor night’s sleep and a grumpy crew the next day.
What do we do about this? Step one is to get the best forecast possible, but some days that is no forecast at all. If we have no internet, or can’t get a weather report on the VHF or SSB radio, we do still have the satellite phone (a new "add" this year). That has been helpful, but it turns out the satellite weather people are no more accurate than the others. MB will probably put a comment in here, but my guess is that nearly 75% of the time at least two of these sources will have very different forecasts, and almost never do all the sources agree.
What do we do? We look at the info we have, the distances to travel, the land formations to anchor near and are deep enough for us, and we pick a destination. Last night, off Alders Cay in The Berry Islands, the forecasts pretty much agreed on what would happen (a cold front would pass by 20-30 miles north of us and we would not be impacted) and we picked our spot accordingly.
Unfortunately, the front did not stay as far north as the forecasters predicted so we had blowing rainy weather for quite some time. The wind did indeed “clock” around as predicted but not as quickly as predicted. We were rocked and rolled and bounced all night long. What looked like a good place for the night was actually a truly terrible place to anchor in the actual conditions as they really developed. The frustrating part is that we really can’t learn from that because based on the information we had, we made a good choice. Ah well, you win some, you lose some…
Front is finally blowing through and skies are beginning to clear and wind has settled:
Thanks for reading!
David and Mary Beth
S/V Regina Maris