Visit to "Briland"

"If it has tires or testicles, sooner or later it's bound to give you trouble."

Saying taken from hand painted wooden sign amid Uncle Ralph's collective wisdom on the corner of Dunmore and Clarence Streets in Harbour Island, Eleuthera.

Through Saturday, we remained at anchor in a shallow cove between the marinas at Harbour Island. Even though the weather stayed breezy for most of the week, we were situated quite comfortably in the lee of the island. Early in the week we suddenly felt some urgency to attend to the cosmetics of our boat. Thus a pattern for the rest of the week developed in which we would work on some project or another for most of the morning, and then spend the afternoon in town or walking along the ocean side beach. In addition to the normal wear and tear, the tropic sun is especially hard on the exterior wood work. We started a major reworking of some portions of the teak such as the steps on the ladder and the toe-rail. We also have come to learn that stainless steel is anything but, particularly under the constant exposure to salt and more salt. And with a little effort, the rust stains do clean up and a little wax prolongs the effect. The joke around here is you have only to go on deck to get the salt for your margarita. Finally during a rare heavy rain I was able to get rid of the accumulation of salt by giving the boat a thorough bath, the first in a great while.

Otherwise, it was a pleasant week at Harbour Island. Harbour Island is one of the oldest settled islands in the Bahamas. It's occasionally called "Briland" (and it's inhabitants "Brilanders") which is a slurred corruption of Harbour Island. The island is very tourist oriented, the guests focusing on the three mile long pink sand beach. While we didn't see or meet anyone famous personally, many huge megayachts stayed at the marina.

In addition to a couple of small resorts, cute Victorian style cottages line many of the streets. In consideration of the tourist industry, most of the homes are a bit better kept then your typical Bahamian settlement. Oddly enough, it seemed that a grocery store occupied every other street corner. Nine stores, all within easy walking distance and none any larger then a 7-Eleven. But we eventually found most things needed by cruising sailors. We found a inexpensive restaurant that served inexpensive Bahamian fare, the hardware store was well stocked, and when we did laundry, we were the sole users during our mid-morning wash.

Upon seeing signs posted for a spring break street party at the government dock, we decided that we would attend. After all, the party was supposed to start at 6:00 pm. We can stay up that late. Only problem was that apparently, no one else saw the signs. We were just about the only ones there. On Friday night, Valentine's Yacht club hosted a happy hour with live music and we invited the few other cruisers anchored nearby. The music was absolutely awful and the beer prices still a steep $3.5 per bottle. But the evening was warm and calm and the company was enjoyable.

Finally it was time to leave Harbour Island. We made arrangements for Edsel, our pilot, to meet us at 11:00 am on Saturday. He appeared promptly at 11:00 and we raised anchor to get underway. That's when our troubles began. Roots and all, we found our anchor rode to be fouled with a 10 foot submerged tree, apparently blown into the water from the hurricane last fall. Pulling it by one of the roots only seemed to make it wrap around the rode all the worse. Attempting to cut it away proved fruitless as well as the thing was as springy as rubber. I finally had to get into the dinghy and perform a messy unraveling procedure. All the while we were adrift and our pilot just so happened to be in a big hurry. But once free, Edsel climbed aboard and we were away with Starlight in close formation.

Edsel is, without a doubt, one of the more colorful characters that we've met. As we went along, Edsel would often gesture wildly with his hands as he told us many stories of loss during the recent hurricanes. Edsel with his wife, has resided in Spanish Wells for his entire life. For 35 of those years, he has piloted boats back and forth across the Devil's Backbone. We figured that since he could probably recall the route in his sleep, we were in good hands. As it happens, Edsel was in a rather bit of a hurry on this day. After us, he had two more boats to guide through the Devil's Backbone. And, one of the two had radioed ahead to inform that they would be arriving earlier than expected. Doing all we could to help, we pulled out the jib and sailed as best we could in the light breeze. Once we turned downwind, we even considered setting the spinnaker but alas, the breeze was even too light for the kite. So we chugged along making the best speed possible under motor. We soon were in the worst part of the passage; among large shallow coral heads close to port and starboard when it happened; our engine suddenly and irrevocably quit. Edsel, in an obvious state of unease and an edge in his normally steady voice asked "Does this happen often?" "Only at the worst possible times" we both thought to ourselves as we did what we could to get our reliable of late engine going again. But it was to no avail. It just wasn't going to go. Fortunately the wind had picked up just a bit allowing Joyce to work the sails and Edsel to steer us past the worst sections. For the last mile or so, Edsel ended up towing us with his Whaler to safety on a mooring in the harbor of Spanish Wells.

The resolution to our engine problem came easily and cheaply. Turns out that a wire had worked loose on the electric fuel lift pump without which no fuel gets to the engine. Minutes later our problem was solved and all was normal again.

Spanish Wells is an anomaly among the Bahamas, with a population almost entirely white. We're not sure what is going on here but we as we plan to be here for a few days, we'll give a full report in the next update.

On Sunday, the weather turned cloudy, rainy and windy, even feeling a touch cool. Of course to us, anything below 75 degrees feels cool now-a-days. In answer to the question; "How is the weather here?" we would probably answer thus: Up to now anyway, we've had a marvelous winter of weather with rare days of bad weather. The days are neither too warm nor the nights too cool. The variation in temperature between night and day is about 10-15 degrees, the water temperature in the low to mid seventies keeping us protected from extremes. Up north we remember having dreary weather for days on end. But here, it has been rare to have more then few overcast hours before the sun returns. Being in this ocean environment, we are often surprised at the amount of light winds with frequent periods of calm. It's rare to get over 25 knots of wind and more often it's in the 10 to 20 knot range.

An inherently comforting feature of the the weather patterns here are that they are predictable. Joyce's brother Chuck, a meteorologist at the Weather Channel, will probably cringe at my explanation, especially as he's tried his best to coach us on weather. But as I understand it, normally, the high pressure area over the Bermuda region dominates the weather, bringing steady northeast to southeast winds depending on the orientation of the high pressure area. During these periods, we've generally had settled weather. Cold fronts moving off the US continent break up the high pressure area bringing lighter winds that tend to clock around to the southeast, south and then southwest as the front approaches. If the front is strong enough to push this far south, our winds will clock all the way around to the west and northwest before settling back into the northeast as the front moves off and the high pressure rebuilds. The winds associated with the front bring cooler continental air which when mixing with the warm moist tropical air brings cloudy and squally weather for one and maybe two couple of days after the front passes. But more often then not, the fronts stall to the north and our wind backs to the east and the pattern resumes. In addition, the land masses of the Bahamas are too small to have much effect on the weather such as they do along the US coast. It seems that this leads to much more predictable weather patterns. Even though we only get the weather reports twice a day, it has been quite sufficient for our planning purposes.

As we approach our fifth month in the Bahamas, we are beginning to use up the provisions we laid in for the trip. As we mentioned, except for some staples (ex. rice, flour, sugar) Bahamas food prices are double to triple what they are in the states if the product is even available. With visitors coming soon, it might be interesting to note what we are running out of and what we've asked them to bring. First on the list is cat litter. We've used up just about all of the 150 pounds or so that we brought and nowhere do they have the clumping kind here. Rarely have we even seen the traditional clay type which runs $6 for 10 lb bag (and would only last a few days). Some people have suggested using sand but in addition to the likelihood of picking up sand flies, can you imagine the mess sand would make on the inside of the boat?

We've finished the snack foods such as chips and cookies. As these items sell for about the price of gold here, we've asked for a small supply. Peanut butter, pancake mix, non-fat dry milk and cereal we have just about used up as well. Apart from that, most other food supplies are doing well or we find we can do without. Our two portable water containers used to transport water have both developed leaks and it's no fun having them leak all over your shoes as I'm lugging them to the boat. These are collapsible type that store easily, but must be treated gingerly. The salter water here as compared to the Chesapeake has accelerated the wear on the sacrificial zincs such that we've gone through them at almost four times the normal rate. I thought we had an ample supply, but we are in need of more and are having a hard time finding them here. And it turns out that dropping my hanging anchor light is not good for the bulbs; twice it has fallen and broken the little bulbs both times. So Marcy and Ed (Joyce's parents) are bringing 6 more to insure I'll never drop it again.