Late yesterday afternoon a few more boats came into the small Spanish Wells mooring field. A large catamaran picked up the mooring directly behind us. The couple on the catamaran quickly put their dinghy in the water and left. A little while later we noticed that the four monohull boats in the mooring field were all lined up but the catamaran behind us was perpendicular to us. Not only that, at times it seemed to be edging sideways closer to us. Later on it turned even more so it looked as if it would be pointing the opposite direction and right up beside us. Much to my surprise George didn’t seem at all worried about it. He joked about putting some fenders out, but ended up going to bed without putting fenders out and didn’t even get up during the night to check on the catamaran. At 7 am this morning Bandit, the manager of the mooring field, was out in his boat asking the people in the catamaran to move to a mooring that is meant for larger boats. Then he stopped by our boat to say he normally doesn’t like to come out this early but he saw a squall on the horizon and was worried what might happen between us and the catamaran if the wind picked up. Bandit likes for people to call him either on the VHF radio or telephone before picking up a mooring. Not surprisingly, the people on the catamaran had not called ahead. I also noticed that the last boat to arrive had already left, presumably without paying for the mooring. We think that is so sleazy.
We left Spanish Wells by 8:15 with a plan to get to Current Cut around 10:30. We had written down in our log 2 years ago that we went through the cut 1 1/2 hours after low tide in Spanish Wells. Last year we went through the cut about 2 hours after high tide in Nassau. The idea is to time it for slack tide since the current can really rip through the cut. It was more convenient for us to go after low tide so that’s what we were aiming for. We must not have timed it right because we had a current of almost 2 1/2 knots against us through the cut. We are thinking that timing it about 1 1/2 hours later would have been better. That would make it 2 hours after Nassau low tide. So it makes sense to go either 2 hours after Nassau low tide or 2 hours after Nassau high tide.
After exiting the cut we aimed for an anchorage near the Coco di Mama resort. We plan to spend just one night here so haven’t bothered to go ashore. So far it is not one of our favorite anchorages. It was difficult to get the anchor to set and it is a bit rolly. The rolly conditions may be because the wind has been from the southwest (forecasted to be from the southeast) all day. There really isn’t much protection from southwest winds along the western coast of Eleuthera.
One thing worth noting that I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post. A couple of dolphins came through the mooring field!
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