Conception Island

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

023-49.020 N
075-6.540 W

Ahoy from Conception Island in the Bahamas!

You may notice that the phrase "Exumas" didn't appear in the salutation. We're out of the Exumas and are now in the "Far Bahamas". This is where the crowds thin out and you find a lot less of everything. The vast majority of cruisers never see anything past George Town (which is just S of Emerald Bay). Going forward we're heading S. Actually we pretty much headed due E yesterday, but today we're going to head almost due S, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday's plan was to head to Long Island and anchor in Calabash Bay on the NW end. Just before we left I was reading my notes from Art on s/v Margaritaville and he said DON'T anchor there. I called him and asked why and he said that there was a big swell that enters there and it's shallow enough that you'll bump on the bottom. So, minutes before departure we're looking at the charts and deciding where to go. The problem is that there are very few anchorages on Long Island's east side and all of those were too far away to make in daylight. Conception Island was about 12 miles east of the N tip of Long Island and there was a bay that offered good protection from the NW winds that we were experiencing. We decided to head to that and after some delays at the fuel dock, we were finally underway at about 9:30.

The winds were out of the NW, but were too light to sail. The true winds were 8-12 kts and when you subtract off our forward speed of 6 kts, the apparent wind speed was 2-6 kts. We had 4-6 foot waves from the NW that rolled the boat and causes the boom to swing which made for a noisy and rolly ride. We made good time and arrived at Conception Island at about 4:30 which provided good light to make is through the wide cut in the surrounding reef.

Conception Island is part of the Bahamas National Trust and is being preserved in it's natural state. No one lives on the island and the draw of the island is the crystalline water and crescent white sand beaches. It's a Mecca for diving and I plan to stop back here on our way N, but right now we need to take advantage of the NW winds and head a long way S and E before the winds switch back to their normal SE direction. Today we're headed 48 miles S to Little Harbor on the SE end of Long Island.

I'm happy to report that my laptop memory and camera polarizer made it here. I had the parts shipped to Ft. Lauderdale where they were placed aboard a small plane and then flown to George Town. From there they had to clear Customs and take a taxi ride to the marina. Amazingly they actually made it and all for the low sum of $60. When you add in the shipping in the US, my $200 worth of parts took $100 worth of shipping and handling...Sigh, but I've got my polarizer and the laptop is running fast again!

On Monday BJ, Diane (from s/v Unicorn), Sue and I took the public bus from Emerald Bay to George Town. Sue and I had to jump off early at the hardware store so that we could get some R-22 refrigerant to get our A/C running again (you know the one that I just spent $3000 replacing the compressor on (that didn't need a new compressor!)) We then hitch-hiked the rest of the way into George Town. The Exumas are very hitch-hiker friendly and it certainly didn't hurt to have Sue along!

George Town is a magnet for cruisers. During the winter there are literally hundreds of boats there. The town itself doesn't have much to talk about. But they have a marine store where BJ was able to get some connectors for his VHF and some fuel filters. It was a productive trip, but it made me realize that I have no reason to go back to George Town.

It's 6:30 AM and I need to get moving. We've got 48 miles to today. I always plan on doing 5 kts, so if we leave at 7:30 AM we'll be in by 5:30 PM. We'll probably do a lot better, but I'm always conservative.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser:

We anchored on the SE end of Conception. We went to Wedge Point (23-48.1N, 75-06.8W) and turned to a course of 45 magnetic and went through the cut. The reef to the SE was obvious and once inside we had 12-20' over sand. We anchored along the beach in 12'. We ended up rolling a lot during the night as the NW swells bounced off South Rocks.

Log ID: 951