Things That Go Crack in the Night

We left Staniel Cay and sailed down the Atlantic Ocean side 24 miles to an anchorage nestled behind Musha Cay. You cross from the Atlantic side westward through Cave Cay Cut to an anchorage that is in the lee of Musha Cay. Cave Cay Cut is important since it's the last cut (heading south) in the Exuma chain of islands where a deep draft sailboat (anything with more than 6 ft. of draft) can pass from Exuma Banks to Exuma Sound. Get's real shallow on the Exuma Banks side south of Musha.

A beach house that's part of David Copperfield's compound at Musha Cay.

Musha is well known as the summer home of the famous magician, David Copperfield. He seems to have somewhat of a dubious reputation locally after an incident with a Seattle woman on the island that ended up going to court. Nevertheless it's a beautiful South Pacific type island with white sand beaches, towering palm trees, and numerous cabanas and other structures for Copperfield's guests. We didn't get invited over to dinner; we hope it wasn't because of the Seattle home port on our boat.

Got up early the next morning and departed for the 26-mile sail to one of our favorite marinas, Emerald Bay. We haven't had a lot of chances to sail the boat downwind and now that we have preventers rigged, we are looking forward to more downwind sailing. A word or two about downwind sailing ... when you sail downwind you typically push the main sail/boom out to about a 75 degree angle to the axis of the boat so the sail presents its full width to the wind. This is great until the wind shifts a little more around and gets "under" the main sail and slams it at full force to the other side of the boat. This is called a gybe. Gybes on sailing dinghies are exciting. Gybes on big boats are dangerous and scary at best. The last time we accidentally gybed the boat we managed to rip the cam cleats off one side of our traveler. That was a $150 mistake. You can easily break the boom or kill someone on deck during an uncontrolled gybe. Gybing is the equivalent of tacking downwind. During a tack the bow of the boat passes through the eye of the wind. During a gybe the stern of the boat passes through the eye of the wind. A controlled gybe involves first bringing in about 90% of the main and then slowly turning the bow of the boat about 60 degrees through the wind and then slowly letting out the main sail.

Now, back to preventers. We've never had a preventer on any boat we've owned. That's not good. A preventer is a line that goes from a cleat on the starboard side of the boat, up to a block on the front of the boat and back to a short line attached to a very heavy pad eye on the back of the boom (there is one short connecting line on each side of the boom). When you are running downwind and the boom is 40 to 80 degrees away from the boat, you attach and tighten down the line to "prevent" the boom from crashing from one side of the boat to the other in a gybe. Having a preventer rigged allows you to sail a more direct downwind course without having to worry about the boom gybing. On a big boat like ours this is a huge deal. In heavier wind we can now run downwind with the main sail out on one side and the genoa sail out on the opposite side (this is called running "wing on wing") which balances the boat well and is very stable if the waves are not too big. If the waves get larger you are safer having both sails on the same side and sailing a little closer to the wind (a broad reach). This is because the boat may start surfing on a wave, gain speed, and fall off the wind, which can get a little hairy at times.

Sorry for the long discourse, but people ask us how ocean sailing is different from the lake and Puget Sound sailing we're used to. The main issue is not the wind speed, but the waves, which can get huge and powerful. When sailing off the wind you need to keep the boat moving at speed and with power. You don't want a boat to wallow in big waves; it's better to sail her fast but this also can get real exciting, real quick. 

As long as we're talking about waves, let's talk about the entrance to Emerald Bay. According to our weather guru, Chris Parker, a huge storm off Newfoundland had been generating a large northwest swell. Those waves are now making their way down to The Bahamas. When you are sailing in a swell it is usually not that big a deal since the swells are spaced so far apart that the boat just rides up one wave and gently down the other. Now back to Emerald Bay. It's a great marina with probably one of the worse designed entrances in The Bahamas. As you approach you see the white tops of breaking waves off to the west. The recommended course is to head straight for the bluff and then take a hard left to enter the limestone walls of the marina proper. The problem is when you take this left you may catch a big wave and start surfing right towards the rocks since you are now broadside to the waves. Like an old surfer we waited until a set of three big waves went through and then went full throttle surfing down one wave while turning hard to the left (remember when you are skiing and doing a big power carving turn at speed?) and hoping we made the protection of the rock walls before the next set of waves came rolling in.

We were lucky since we came in fairly early in the day when the waves weren't so extreme. Later that day a 165 ft. Nordhaven powerboat got broadside to a set of big waves. Apparently one wave ran right up the side of the boat to the bridge deck, which is about 60 ft. in the air. The power of that wave almost pushed the boat into the rocks. This is about a $3 million boat. The highly experienced crew was visibly shaken by the experience. Emerald Bay was formerly a Four Season hotel marina and is plush by Bahamian standards with free Wi-Fi, free laundry, free showers with soap dispensers, free video library, party and snooker room, etc.

The marina facility and club house at Emerald Bay Marina.

We stayed here last season and loved it. Unfortunately, this year we had to finish our varnishing project on the port side cap rail. We thought we'd have free (notice how we like that word "free") power at the dock but they'd changed their policy, so we opted to stay at the "no power" dock that was only $1.00/ft., a real deal for this quality of marina. We dug out the Honda 2000 generator and cranked her up to run the heat gun for removing the old varnish. To our surprise, the varnish was so bad on the port side (this side probably sat facing the sun when the previous owner had the boat) that it pretty much flaked off. I found a couple of very thin pallet knives used for oil painting and we simply slid them under the varnish and flaked off big sheets. Made the job much easier and did less damage to the underlying teak. We did get to use the Honda genset to do the sanding once the varnish was removed. We learned that our purpose in doing all this was to gratify the owners of other sailboats who don't have any teak trim on board. They would typically walk by and say something like "Boy that looks like a lot of work. We're headed up to the bar."

This incredible beach is just south of Emerald Bay where the current Sandals Resort is located.

About one half mile south of the marina is the old Four Seasons Hotel (now a Sandals Resort) that has a beautiful long curving white sand beach. We'd take a break and walk along the beach and stop at the Sandals pool for a quick dip.

This is a wonderful pool to hang out in, especially if you are actually a guest at the hotel.

There is also a beautiful golf course (we never saw anyone playing both times we've been here) and a high end development of multi-million dollar houses out on the point that are mostly vacant. On one the doors on the seaward side had blown open so we went inside and walked around to see if everything was OK. Sad to see such amazing houses just sitting and deteriorating in the tropical sun.

Two negatives during our stay: The big swells hitting the breakwater were making their way into the marina and the boats were surging along on their mooring lines. The trick is to keep them as tight as possible and I would tighten them about four times a day. As we were cooking dinner one night (and surging back and forth) we heard a loud "crack."

It's difficult to imagine the amount of force it would take to split a large dock timber such as this.

I rushed outside and found that we were still tied to the dock cleat but the huge piece of dock wood that the cleat was bolted to had cracked along its length. We ran that line across the dock to the opposite cleat and it held for the night.

The other problem was an errant Frenchman (why is it always the French?). We had watched the 43-ft. sailboat come down the fairway with the husband yelling at top voice in French to his flustered wife who had set up the dock lines on the wrong side of the bow. This tirade kept up for about four days. He got sideways in the slip and I helped him get tied up (no easy task in that surge and wind) and he never said thanks (or maybe he said it in French and I didn't hear). He also let his lines get too lose and at 10 pm I heard another tirade in French (good thing I don't speak French) so I went over and finally tied his lines super tight. He seemed amazed at this concept but had a good night's sleep as a result. Our friends on Moon Shadow had a wonderful solution for these situations. I won't tell you the whole history but they made a "farmer's flag" and after incidents like this they hoisted their Farmers Flag to memorialize the event. We need to get a Farmers Flag.