A Day In the Life of a Cruiser's Paradise

Captain Linda Perry Riera

Friday 9 November... a glimpse of a typical day of the glamorous life of a cruising sailor. But I love it!

St. George, Bermuda

0615:  Alarm goes off because I love to watch the sunrise with a cup of coffee; and I'm a morning person and like to start my day early. We often do not have milk so I'm trying to get back used to only a little sugar in my coffee.

I love getting up early and watching the sun rise from the cockpit. My favorite time of day.

0700:  We both jump off stern to bathe (currently tied to a sea wall so it's not nearly as nice as when we are in a pristine anchorage; but that will come later in the cruising; quick fresh water rinse in the cockpit (we are in major water conservation mode both because there is no easy access to potable water, and it's $0.25 / gallon from a hose... for everyday use including washing and flushing).


0730:  Resume lazy jack project that we planned out and began last night; confirmed parts and feeder line; my job is to go up the mast and feed the messenger lines down both port and starboard side of inside the mast; Bob hoists me and retrieves the lines at the base to thread through the pulleys; I then carefully attach the new jack lines to the upper pulleys without dropping the tiny pins or other pieces. We run the engine during this so that there is enough power for the electric winch. When done, we clean up all the tools and lines and admire the finished product. This project takes about 2 1/2 hours. Feels good to have another repair done.

Being hoisted up the mast is becoming a regular occurrence. We did it early in the day before the wind kicked up much and caused more swaying.

Lazy jacks re-rigged and ready to go! (Lazy jacks hold the main sail on top of the boom and keep it from spilling over on to the deck.)

0930:  Bob needs to turn attention to work and preparing for a 1000 teleconference. From the boat, we can only access a public WiFi for an hour at time which means we are constantly re-connecting. I make breakfast (hearty meal this morning to also serve as a lunch: potatoes/hash browns with onions; chicken sausage (only one as we are running low); eggs.

1030:  I go in to the Bermuda Yacht Service (BYS) office to work / day job.WiFi is better in the office and we can keep our lap tops charged up. (The solar panels on the boat are great but are not quite keeping up with our demand at this latitude; they will do better when we are further south.)

1045:  We are informed that we need to move Argon from the where she has been tied up on the seawall to another spot to make room for a cruise boat ferry that will be shuttling passengers. (It is actually a welcome change as we have been banging in to the seawall broadside frequently when the easterly winds kick up (which is most days). Our new location will be more protected (and happens to be where we were tied up in 2016).

1100-1130:  We move Argon off seawall (12kt winds pushing us in to the wall so we plan how to spring back on her stern to kick the bow out in to the wind). Just as we pull away from the wall, a power boat scoops in to our new seawall spot so we have to do a couple of loops outside the fareway waiting for him to leave. We finally dock and re-do all the lines and fenders.

Argon's new tie up spot.

1130-1215:  We carry the 60 foot inner headstay from our old spot on the seawall over to behind BYS along the catwalk. This headstay is awaiting a new inner stainless cable (one of the several repairs in progress from our recent passage from Newport) that has been ordered and should be on the island early next week. We look comical carrying this huge aluminum and steel piece and are kindly offered help by some tourists nearby.

One of Argon's broken head stays. We needed to move this 60 foot long piece of steel and aluminum to another part of the marina.

1230:  Bob returns to work. I try again to get started working in the BYS office.

Linda working in the Bermuda Yacth Services office where there is unlimited electricity, strong WiFi, air conditioning and a bathroom. What more can a working woman want?!

I am keeping my eye on the weather as I happily anticipate some much needed rain… should be coming late this afternoon. If it rains hard enough, I will enthusiastically be out in the rain with a sponge, brush and soap to give Argon a much needed, well overdue scrubbing. She has been caked with salt since our passage. The weather has been beautiful since arriving more than a week ago… but his also means no rain!

The weather has been sunny and comfortably warm. We eagerly await some much needed rain so that we can wash Argon as water is precious here and not readily available for things such as washing a boat.

1400:  I take break from work, return to Argon and makes popcorn as breakfast is wearing off. Return to working at the BYS office.

1500:  BYS office is closing unexpectedly early as the dockmaster is going to a "dropbox party" (aka funeral) so I get kicked out and return to Argon to finish up working the day job for the week. (I am working around 10 hours per week, usually a bit each day, which fits in well with the cruising lifestyle.)

1630:  Finish working on board Argon. Walk to the market to get few items (groceries are quite expensive so choosing carefully). Pop in to a couple of shops just to browse; inquire about a scooter rental for the weekend.The stroll feels good and as we have been here a week, there are several familiar faces. Locals commonly say "beautiful day". There seems to be three groups of people: locals, tourists and sailors. I like guessing who are sailors... I think it's kind of easy. We're not dressed as nicely as the tourists and our hair is, uh, more naturally styled.

1730:  Still waiting for the rain to come and wash away the salt an dirt. Make a gin and tonic but no ice cubes as we cannot get quite enough volts at this latitude to set the fridge/freezer high enough.  I help a huge catamaran with their lines as they dock right behind Argon. Start to feel chill for the evening.  Bob logs back in and works some more.

1830:  Email and message some friends and family. Send an update to the insurance company about our repairs. Draft a blog.

2000:  After going back and forth about whether to have dinner on board or out, we go out for a walk and have a light dinner nearby. Chat with some locals and sailors at the White Horse.

2200:  Finish blog. Watch downloaded Netflix (on the tiny screen).... I recently started Ozark. Bob is probably watching Tosh.0 or something intellectual like that on his phone. Still waiting for rain. Life is good and I am a lucky woman. Good night.

Another Boring Project Blog: New VHF

"Hey, how long has the radio been off?" This was asked more often that we would like aboard Argon when one of us would discover that our VHF Radio had decided to spontaneously turn off at someone unknown time during a passage.  The "fix" was to just reboot it and hope it stayed on this time. It usually did.

Bob Damiano

Argon's instrumentation is almost entirely Raymarine equipment.  Most of it is pretty good, but when it comes to radios, Raymarine has a particularly dismal reputation. Just ask the internet. Tartan equipped Argon with Raymarine's lowest end (at the time) radio - the now discontinued Ray55.  The first issue we had with it was that the remote handset in the cockpit failed. We replaced it ($140) last year. This year, not only did the handset start to get flaky again but the radio started doing this annoying turning-off behavior.

Radios are really important. It's time for a real radio.

iCom and Standard Horizon are generally thought of as the best brands of VHF Radios. We looked at both and the remote handsets that were available for them. The biggest pain was going to be to replace that remote handset wiring out to the cockpit. Not only that, but they seemed to have an equally cheesy connector for the remote set and I couldn't help wonder how long it would be before I'd be replacing those handsets too. I wondered why no one made a wireless remote handset.  Well, they do.

B&G and Simrad (both Navico companies) make a radio and offer a wireless remote handset. They are wireless in the sense that the audio is wireless, but they still sit in a charging cradle which you must get power to.

After reading and researching a bit, we decided to go for the B&G V50 radio and H50 wireless remote. We decided to get a second charging cradle and mount one inside at the nav station and the other out in the cockpit. I found a relatively easy way to get power wiring to both.

IT'S ALIVE - Initial testing phase. Power and antenna connected temporarily

Installation

The hardest part of the installation was getting another power wire out to the cockpit. We decided to place the charging cradle on the port side wheel pod and fortunately, it was not too horrible of a job running power there.  We used one of the spare breakers for the charging cradles and I've ordered a breaker label "VHF2" for it. 

The drill template for the charging cradle

The handset and charging cradle ready to mount

Done, and wired.  Handset is charging

New Blue Sea breaker label (and a spare for when I screw up the first one)

The next hardest task was that the rectangular opening in the nav station panel needed to be enlarged for this radio's footprint. There seems to be two common sizes and this one is the taller one. Normally this would have been easy except my dremel saw tool was in the trunk of Linda's car and Linda's car was in a repair shop seventy miles away in Newport. Luckily I was able to borrow a similar tool from a friend at a nearby marina.

The back side of the panel. I reused the mounting hardware from the old Ray55 radio. Notice the N2K wire connecting to the Seatalk "Tee" connector

And, done. Note the future position of the second charging cradle

Networking

Argon's network is a modern "Seatalk ng" one with all devices happily plugging and playing together. The exception to this was the Ray55 radio. It only supported a legacy NMEA0183 interface. This is connected to the Seatalk net via some sort of 0183/Seatalk interface. The location of this interface is unknown to me. I can see where the wires start but I have no idea where the thing itself is. If I ever find it, I'll rip it out. The new radio (and any decent new radio) has NMEA2000 (N2K) network compatibility. N2K is fully compatible with Raymarine's Seatalk with only an adapter cable needed to plug in.

The old radio's NMEA0183 connections. Think those signal wires are heavy enough gauge?

With the radio connected to the Seatalk network (via N2K adapter cable), you can see GPS position and Time Data on the screens of the base unit and remote handset

Remote Handset

Most reviews of the B&G and Simrad radios said that the wireless remote sound quality was not quite as good as a wired set. I'd have to agree with that. It will remain to be seen if this turns out to be a practical problem. One reviewer said he had terrible interference when the engine was running on his boat. I asked around and this seemed to not be a common problem. It's not a problem on Argon anyway.

Ergonomically, the wireless handset is awesome. It's really solid and heavy feeling. With dual helms on Argon it will be nice to not be on a short leash to one wheel while on the radio. Without having to disconnect a wire (with a really cheesy connector), we will always bring the handset inside for storage when not in use. It will set in another charging cradle at the nav station.

These radios actually support multiple wireless handsets. This can be handy on very large multi-deck boats I guess. Interestingly, you "pair" each handset with the radio similar to setting up a bluetooth pairing. The pairing procedure worked perfectly as soon as I found the article in the manual.

Built In AIS

Most modern VHF radios have built-in AIS receivers. Argon already had a full duplex AIS transceiver (we could see and be seen). I wondered how our systems would behave with two competing sources of AIS data on the network and I asked that question on a few sailing forums. Eveyone who answered essentially said "No Problem".  Well, everyone was wrong.  While the targets still do show up with both AIS data sources running, they are not quite right. Our chartplotter displays BIG BOATS as bigger targets and will differentiate sailboats by drawing them differently from power boats. With AIS enabled on the B&G, these display details were lost.  As soon as I turned off the AIS function of the B&G radio, these issues resolved.

So the good news is that we do have a redundant AIS receiver in case our main system should have a fault. But the radio must be normally kept in non-AIS mode for it not to interfere with the real AIS data from our tranceiver.

What do do with the old Ray55

Normally, we hate throwing things away. In this case however, I really don't want to give this radio to anyone to use on a boat.  Having a radio that just stops working without you noticing can be a pretty unsafe thing aboard.  Maybe I'll put it in my museum at home.

April in the Bahamas

Despite the popularity of the Bahamas to many Americans, we had little knowledge and even less expectation of this expansive stretch of islands just east of the Florida coast. We were pleasantly surprised at the vastness of wonderful anchorages, beautiful waters, and lovely shorelines. Below is a photo summary of the highlights of Argon's travels through some of the Bahamian islands.

Captain Linda Perry Riera 

Bahamas consists of over 700 islands and thousands of cays spanning more than 500 miles northeast of Cuba and east of Florida. We explored a small fraction landing initially at Long Island, then on the the Exumas, New Providence, Berry Islands, and finishing up on Grand Bahama. We are spending our final days in Grand Bahama before we sail back to the US landing in North Carolina in a week or so.

Navigating

The Bahamas has lots of skinny (shallow) water.  Most of the island chains have a "sound side" and a "bank side".  The sound or ocean side quickly drops off to thousands of feet within a couple miles.  The bank side can be 10 or 12 feet deep as far as the eye can see. We did much of our exploration on the banks in the shallower water making careful navigation very important. It is common knowledge among sailors that Navionics Charts, although excellent everywhere else, are just about useless in the Bahamas. The cartography is fine (the islands are where they should be), but the soundings are usually very inaccurate. We always have paper charts for anywhere we sail and here in the Bahamas, we were 100% paper plotting on our NV Charts. The NV Charts also include digital versions of all their charts so we were able to load them into OpenCPN as well. It was fun getting out the rulers and pencils again! And, importantly, eyeball navigation or reading the water colors, will sometimes trump all of the charts. Multi-modal navigation became the norm.

We quickly learned that to successfully sail the shallow waters of Bahamas, we needed to decrease our reliance on our Chartplotter (which uses Navionics) and also leverage Explorer and NV Charts as well as the important visual navigation and reading water colors.  Bob is plotting progress on paper while the electronic version of NV charts is on a laptop next to him. In the foreground is our main charplotter with Navionics charts.

As we explored more areas, we became more adept at reading water colors. And over simplified but helpful saying goes something like “Brown, brown, run aground. White, white, you just might. Blue, blue, sail on through. Green, green, nice and clean.” Green can be the most challenging water to read.

Eyeball navigation is more challenging when it is windy and the water is choppy and definitely when it is overcast. 

Approaching a coral head. Some of these can rise up from the bottom to be within a few feet of the surface. You don't want to hit one doing eight knots!

Long Island

Long Island is not a popular Bahamian destination for cruisers and is considered part of the "Out Islands" (along with Mayaguana, Crooked and Ragged Islands). This area of Bahamas was hit hard in 2015 by hurricane Joaquin and is still recovering. Only a few thousand people live here with the economy based on fishing, farming (bananas, corn and livestock) and just a bit of tourism.

We were happy to leave Turks & Caicos in late March after a longer than planned stay and enjoyed an easy and fast 180nm sail overnight passing Mayaguana and Crooked Islands on the way.

A forecast of very high winds chased us from the anchorage in to a marina as it would have been impossible to dinghy to shore for several days. We tucked in behind a breakwater at Flying Fish Marina in Clarence Town, Long Island.

Long Island land exploration lead us to Dean's Blue Hole... the second largest salt water blue hole in the world plunging to nearly 700 feet deep (and it's only about 80 feet wide at the surface). Some divers were practicing out on the platform. The World Free Diving Competitions are held here each April.

We put aside our vegetarian leaning diets to join a pig roast at the nearby Rowdy Boy's Bar and Restaurant which included a bit of live music. Bob lusted over this guy's original late 1950's Stratocaster. Bob has a '74.

We were able to dinghy over to Strachan Cay to explore the beautiful and empty beaches.

Back out on the hook for the final couple of nights in Clarence Town.

Fun beam reach up the east coast of Long Island.

Anchored in Calabash Bay on the northwest tip of Long Island before leaving for southern Exuma.

Exuma

Exuma consists of a thin chain of nearly 400 islands and cays stretching 130 miles. This is an extremely popular area for cruisers and is well known for the stunning Exuma National Land and Sea Park including Warderick Wells. Anchored at the southern and northern tips by Geroge Town and Highbourne Cay respectively, there are a myriad of spectacular anchorages, endless pristine water, ragged caves to snorkel, and pearly beaches. Exuma proved to be one of my favorite places of this entire sailing trip so far.

First stop for us in Exuma was George Town which is supposedly "the place to be" with many cruisers settling in here for months at a time. It was a perfectly fine logistical stop for provisioning, water (jerry jugs only), disposing of garbage, accessing ATM, etc. but after next seeing the other wonderful places in Exuma, I was puzzled why so many cruisers park it in George Town.

Sailing further north up Exumas on the eastern Bahama Sound side.

Argon anchored in the distance at the secluded Black Cay. Priceless.
We kind of stumbled upon this anchorage as it was not mentioned in the guide books with no other boats anchored in sight.

Our fishing skills (or luck) have most definitely improved. And when we are out of our own fresh mahi mahi, I have gotten better at securing fresh fish from the locals when they bring in their daily catch.

Bob is even trying out a hand line. No luck with this yet but trolling with the pole continues to yield regular catches.

Fresh fish has thankfully become a regular for our on board dining options.

Another spectacular anchorage at Rudder Cay.

Enjoying evening cocktails on a deserted beach at Rudder Cay with John and Melinda (and family) from s/v Amulet. We met John in Clarence Town and enjoyed meeting up at many stops including George Town, Staniel Cay, Cambridge Cay, and Highbourne Cay.

Securing a bit of much needed gasoline for our dinghy at funky and friendly Black Point settlement further up the Exuma chain. We were directed to find Bernard who brings in gasoline by boat for the handful of cars on this tiny settlement. We also scored some fantastic homemade coconut bread.

More good, free R/O (reverse osmosis) drinking water was found at Black Point. We kept our on board water tanks fairly full with regular jerry jug trips when we came upon available water.

Staniel Cay is a popular place to visit and there is a huge anchorage with good holding nearby at Big Major Spot. The many pigs that inhabit this tiny island are a major attraction and they will swim out to your dinghy hoping you have brought any and all variety of table scraps.

No visit to Staniel Cay would be complete with out a snorkeling excursion to the famous Thunderball Grotto. This underwater cave system teems with fish and bright coral. There are two small entrances almost hidden and best explored at low slack tide. It was a bit intimidating to dive down and swim in to this cave but once inside, it is expansive and with small openings up above brightening up the space. The 1965 James Bond movie, Thunderball, was set in the Bahamas and had a major scene filmed here thus giving the cave its name. And this was the site of a later Bond movie in 1983 Never Say Never Again.

Inside Thurderball Grotto.

Outside Thunderball Grotto.

Further north from the busy Staniel Cay we returned to the quiet seclusion of Cambridge Cay, part of the national park waters.

Enjoying another isolated beach in the Cambridge Cay area trying not to think of the limited number of days left here.

Enjoying a relaxing, flat sail up the Bahama Sound of the Exuma chain to Shroud Cay.

Dingy exploration around Shroud Cay. Argon is anchored in the background.

Magical Shroud Cay.

I'm liking Bob's new island look. Hope he keeps it when we are back up north.

We spent a day exploring Highbourne Cay by bicycle discovering side paths and intriguing views.

Crossing Yellow Bank required a bow look out to watch for coral heads in the shallow waters en route to New Providence (Nassau area). Check out our video on Crossing the Yellow Banks.

New Providence (Nassau Area)

New Providence is by far the most populated island in the Bahamas and holds the nation's capital, Nassau. Many equate Nassau generally with the entire island of New Providence. There is a major cruise ship terminal in Nassau between the city and Paradise Island. We opted to stay on the southeast coast of the island outside of the city at Palm Cay Marina but we traveled in to Nassau to sample some local flavor.

Potter's Cay Dock is an eclectic stretch of Bahamian food vendors in the unfortunate location of under the major bridge between Nassau and Paradise Island. I am so glad we stumbled on this area and enjoyed the most delicious spicy conch salad (and even fresh conch penis which is reportedly an aphrodisiac).

Berry Islands

This relatively undeveloped portion of the Bahamas has only a few hundred inhabitants but is often referred to as "the fish bowl of the Bahamas". There is a major fishing tournament based out of Great Harbor each May that attracts sports fishermen from far away. A couple of the major cruise ship companies own cays at the northern part of the Berry's to bring passengers for a secluded island experience. And some of the numerous cays are privately owned and there are a handful of tiny boutique hotels and resorts.

While in a rolly anchorage in Chub Cay, southern part of the Berry Islands, a large fishing boat approached us yelling over "Hey Argon, want some fish?". We did not hesitate to say yes as he threw a 30 pound mahi mahi in to our dinghy.

Enjoying the night skies anchored near Bullocks Harbor.

Exploring eastern beaches of Berry Islands.

I will miss these sunsets at anchor tremendously.

Sunset off Little Stirrup Cay northern Berry Islands and likely our final night at anchor in the Bahamas. From here we sailed to Great Bahama with sparse options for anchoring thus we may be in marinas until we set off on our off-shore passage up to Beaufort, North Carolina sometime around 1 May.

Matthew's Presence 

Last Fall during the first part of our voyage, Hurricane Matthew roared across the Bahamas and up the east coast.  We were in the Chesapeake at the time and only felt the tail end of it (which was enough). The Bahamas were not so lucky. Grand Bahama and the Berrys are still showing signs of damage. Seven months later, much of their infrastructure, services, resorts and restaurants are still closed.

Making Friends

Meeting other cruisers and learning their stories is always fun. We have enjoyed meeting so many people over the miles. Below are a few from the Bahamas.

We enjoyed several meet ups at different harbors with John & Melinda from s/v Amulet starting in Turks & Caicos all the way up through Long Island and Exumas. John is finishing up ten years of around the world cruising and exploring and returning home to northwest of the US.

 

One of the few other Tartans we have seen in the Caribbean was s/v Holiday owned by Zach and Lindy who have just started an extended / open ended cruising life a few months ago. Zach came over early one morning to help us with our SSB receiver.

While walking along a secluded beach on the east side of the Berry Island chain, we saw a beached dinghy and two people way off in the distance. A conversation quickly started and we met up again a couple nights later in the same anchorage. Steve and Cindy are from Michigan sailing Slip Away.

Grand Bahama

This is the northern most island of the Bahamas and a major transit point for the many cruisers going to and from Florida. (Bimini is the other popular landing point from the eastern Florida coast.) Freeport, Luchaya and West End are the main settlements and the major industry is clearly tourism. This is the first Bahamian island where we have seen high rise condos and there is definitely a made for American and Canadian tourist feel. Gone are our enchanting private anchorages. But this will be a good staging point to provision, prepare, and rest up before our off-shore passage to North Carolina.

Until next time..... We AReGONe!