Settlement Point, Grand Bahama to The Abacos

I shouted to one 30-40' heavy cruising sailboat about how he was holding.  "Eighty feet of heavy chain!" came the reply.

I yelled, "What type of anchor?"

"Doesn't matter, anchor's just lying there.  It's the chain that's holding us!",  he shouted back as I dragged on by.

After dragging for about a 1/8 mile or more on each of two attempts to snag something down there, I began to loose confidence in this anchorage as a likely place to get a good night's sleep.  The stong tidal current was due to switch during the night.  Any boat which dragged after the current change would be headed towards more shallow water (as opposed to being swept out to sea in the current running at the time).

In the fading light of late evening, I grimly motored on towards Indian Cay Channel.  Using GPS waypoints, I made it up Indian Cay Channel to Baracuda Shoal light in the darkness.  I anchored in 8' of water just south of there for the night without any land to shelter me.  But it was OK, there was good holding ground, and the wave action wasn't bothersome.

The rest of the day I sailed slowly across the Little Bahama Bank in 10' to 20' of crystal clear water.  The bottom was mostly bare sand, but where there was grass or brain coral, I could see every detail.  I trolled a lure for a while.  At one point, as I passed a brain coral head, I could see a huge black and grey spotted grouper.  "Wow!", I thought, "That's a lot of meals there."  As my lure passed that spot, the line went tight, and the drag started slipping.  I grabbed the pole from the rod holder, and felt a fish struggling on the other end.  A few seconds later, the line suddenly felt more like there were 50 lbs. of weeds on the other end.  I could pull or ease line against slow steady resistance, but felt no fight.  With sails still up in very light air, I started the motor and backed down on the line.  As I got to the coral head, I figured out that the fish had wrapped my line around it.  I got as far as poking around under water with the tip of the pole before my 30# line finally had enough of the sharp coral.  I guess that's how groupers get to be that big -- by being resourceful.

As the day progressed, it looked like I'd only make it as far as Mangrove Cay by sundown.  Just as I got to that island, another of those small, sudden, violent storms caught me.  I switched to sailing under double reefed main alone, and was getting soaked to the skin with sea spray from each passing wave.  Everything in the cockpit was soaked with sea water.  Even a lot of stuff inside the boat got wet.  Eventually, I made it into the so called lee of Mangrove Cay near its marker pole, and anchored.  This is a poor excuse for an anchorage, but with a small slow boat, I think there's no skipping it when transiting from Settlement Point to the Abacos.