Long Island: Little Harbour

Thursday, April 19, 2007

022-58.440 N
074-51.120 W

Ahoy from the BlueJacket!

We're currently underway from Long Island to Crooked Island in the Bahamas. I'm in the cockpit writing this and it's a perfect sailing day. We've got 15 kts of wind on the beam and we're cruising along at 7 kts. The seas are nice and low and this should be a spectacular run. Just the kind of day that you dream of, but rarely see when you're sailing to a destination.

Yesterday we made the 52 mile passage from Conception Island to Little Harbour on Long Island. Believe me, there was no sailing to be done yesterday. We motored along on nearly glassy seas with only enough wind to ripple the surface of the water. There storms that have wrecked havoc with the east coast of the US have generated big long period swells, but they were following us from behind. They were fine to motor in, but raised a lot of concern about finding an anchorage that was protected from the NE swells. We had just finished night of rolling around and we all wanted a good nights sleep.

I decided to pull out our fishing reel and to see what I could catch. About 45 minutes after I dropped the hook over the side, the reel starting running out quickly. As I was reeling in the lire, it suddenly got easy. When I got it back to the boat, half of the 6" lure was gone. I put a new lure on and tried again. A little while later the line started running again. When the fish was about half back back to the boat, I felt another strike and then it got a bit easier. When I finally reeled in the fish, all that was left was about 6" of a Cero. I'd guess that the Cero was 2-3' long when it was intact. Nothing else struck before we got the Little Harbour. Oh well, there's always tomorrow!

At about 4:30 we pulled into Little Harbour, which is on the S end of Long Island. The southern cut has 12+ feet going through it and with the swell it was easy to see where it got shallow. There are 2 cuts with an island in between. If you look at the MapTech charts, it looks like you can go through the N cut. Don't believe it. There's coral reef. We tried to anchor behind the island between the cuts and between the swell and not being able to get the anchor to hold, we gave up on that. We headed for a little bay on the S end and were able to anchor in 12' in sand over mud. The angle closed kept the swell from getting through and we were able to have a wonderful nights sleep. The locals have their boats down there, so that must be the safest location in the harbor (including one aground, so clearly it's not that safe.) There are nice sand beaches littered with the carcasses of huge lobsters discarded by fishermen.

Today we're headed 35 miles SE to Long Cay on Crooked Island. It looks like it's going to be a great sail.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 952