Morgan's Bluff, Andros

Friday, June 9, 2006

025-10.500 N
078-1.680 W

Ahoy from Morgan's Bluff!

We actually made it here without any issues, although "here" isn't much of anything. The only thing that's here is a dock where the water barges dock to pick up water for Nassau. The barges transport more than six million gallons of water a day. Wow, that's amazing! Andros has huge underwater aquafiers which are pumped to feed the demand from Nassau. I've also read that Andros's water makes up less than 50% of the water usage in Nassau and the rest is produced by reverse osmosis.

Anyhow, we motored from the Bethel Channel and dropped our hook during yet another thunderstorm. Our first attempt didn't work as the bottom had about 1" of sand over rock. Based upon where everyone else was anchored, we figured out that we needed to be as far forward as we could get and in the SE corner. After we got anchored in about 10' of water, the guy in the boat next to us told us that he had 100' of anchor line out...Now I'm very conservative with the amount of chain that I put out and I had 70'. Everyone needs to have about the same amount out so that when the wind switches, everyone swings the same. So, we put out another 30'. I guess that this is the difference between someone who spends 3 weeks aboard their boat per year and someone who's on the boat for 7+ months.

We did get to meet Jules and Sandy from M/V Movin' Up as well as Dennis and Hal from M/V Patriot and went out to dinner with them. We asked the taxi driver for a recommendation and she took us to a beach-side shack where we had a good meal, but the taxi ride was priced out of the world. All that I'll say is that you really need to negotiate the price well in advance and be sure that you're not getting ripped off.

There hasn't been any wind to speak of since we arrived on the Bahamas. As a result we've been motoring a lot and we've been going through our fuel. We were down to less than 10 gallons. I had figured that we would pull up to the fuel dock and top off the tanks...Well, they were so low on fuel that they couldn't pump it to the fuel dock and as a result I had to haul 84 gallons of fuel from a gas station to the dock in 6 gallon fuel cans and then transfer that into the tanks. That took a good part of the day. Gas was $4.85/gallon and diesel was $4/gallon. Double ouch!

We did manage to get to dive the wreck of the Lady Moore. The Lady Moore was a passenger ferry that I have to assume was sunk nearby as a dive attraction. The top of the wreck is in about 50' of water and it rests in about 80'. A GPS waypoint for the wreck is 25-11.606N 78-00.684W. It was a nice dive, but nothing spectacular. There were lots of large fish hanging out there and I must also say that I saw a larger variety of fish than I've seen elsewhere.

Today we're headed to the Berry Islands, which are about 15-20 miles from here. The biggest problem is that it's heavily overcast and we need to work ourselves into a narrow channel to anchor. Oh joy...where's the sun?!?

-- Geoff & Sue
Log ID: 865