Ahoy from Little San Salvador, Bahamas!
We've been moving the boat N and are now at an island named Little San Salvador. On Sunday we left Cat Island and had a great sail to Little San Salvador island, which is about 22 miles to the west. We had 20-25 kts of wind from the east, so we had a fantastic downwind with a double reefed main sail. We did 7 kts most of the time and hit 8.8 kts! That was wonderful.
Right after we raised the sails and headed towards Little San Salvador, the autopilot system went completely blank. Power cycling the unit didn't help. I guessed that a fuse had blown on the course computer, so I needed to replace it. Unfortunately it's located in lazarette (deep lockers in the stern) which is full of all of the dock lines. Sue emptied the lines and then took over steering. She was a bit reluctant as we were running dead down wind (which is a very difficult point of sail to maintain) and we had strong winds. Once she got behind the wheel she got the hang of handling the boat in the wind and seas. I disappeared into the lazarette and quickly figured out that there was a short in one of the Autohelm SeaTalk busses. All of the instruments connect to a common electrical bus to transmit their information, and one of the devices was shorting the bus. I've been having problems with my wind instrument and disconnected it. That solved the problem, so we were back in business.
I ended up hand-steering the rest of the way to Little San Salvador due to wind and seas which kept trying to yaw us around. Little San Salvador is a private island owned by the Holland America cruise line. They've built a facility here where their cruise ships stop. It has beautiful bleaches and lots of water sports. While I'm sure that it's a wonderful place to stop for the day, it certainly doesn't provide any exposure to the Bahamian culture. We've heard mixed stories about whether or not you can go ashore, so we didn't explore the facility.
Tomorrow it's a 42 mile trek to the S end of Eleuthera. We'll end up in a place called Rock Sound which is supposed to have lots of facilities.
-- Geoff & Sue
For the cruiser:
We're anchored at 24-34.83N 075-57.40W in about 14' MLW in sand. There are coral heads that you need to avoid when anchoring. The Explorer charts talk about the perpetual roll here and we would agree...
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