Great Sale cay

Great Sale Cay
26 58.832 N
78 12.914 W

We are anchored at Great Sale Cay. It offers great protection from the North, West and East, however, the wind is coming from the South. I have put Tide Hiker where the holding is best and away from the lee shore.  When we arrived at about 2 PM the water was aqua, clear and as flat as a millpond. The wind is up a bit now, the water not so flat, but we set the anchor with both engines so we are not too concerned.

This morning we were up early, wanting to be on our way at first light. We planned to take the “Indian Cay Pass” onto the Little Bahama Bank to continue our trek East and South. The wind had got up during the night, enough to wake us. In this area the ocean goes from 2500’ deep to 12’ deep, and so a small wave in the ocean becomes a big wave when it arrived on The Bank.

The Indian Passage is an area of deeper water thru the edge of the “reef” onto the Bank. The pass is about 2 miles long. The cruising guides indicate about 8’ of depth in the passage at low water. We need about 5’ in flat water. Tide here is about 3’ and Hi tide was at 5 AM which was why we wanted to leave as early as possible. There are no markers or official soundings, it’s all “accumulated public knowledge”. I had entered the recommended waypoints into our chart plotter and planned to stick like glue to the resulting course.

We had another boat with us (“Swede Dreams”) and they drew a foot less than us so I asked them to go first! J We approached the entrance is breaking waves, which is a bit spooky. But from afar we had seen a sailing boat go thru and we had Swede Dreams ahead of us. Tide Hiker was a bit squirrelly but we never saw less than 4’ under us as we went in. As soon as we were into the passage the water settled down.  Two miles later we were on The Bank.

From then on the passage was pretty routine. The Bank was a steady 10’ to 15’ deep. The water was a beautiful aqua and we could see the bottom. The waves settled down to less than a foot. Tide Hiker plowed on. At 10 AM I fired up the water maker. It seemed to be working OK and set up a routine to check  it every 15 minutes. It ran without issues for 4 hours – 28 gallons! I tested the water occasionally and it scored about 300 PPM. OK!

We were joined by a third (faster) boat, all heading for the same place. Lots of chatting on the radio about the weather forecast and the best place to anchor. Not very conclusive. We continued to our original target, Great Sale Cay.   

We arrived at Great Sale Cay at about 3 PM. The water was dead calm. We anchored in anticipation of a southerly change arriving that night. When we dropped the anchor I watched it hit the bottom. We backed down on the anchor with both engines and it did not budge. There is no protection from the south, so I gave the boat lots of room. The other boats anchored up in the top of the bay, I could not see the point. We dropped the dinghy and headed over to the other boats for a social hour. On the way we picked up a “lone sailor” on a trawler (“Billie from Texas”) On the way back to Tide Hiker it was quite choppy.

The good news is that the sat TV worked fine. Otherwise there is no radio or lights, just this deserted little island. We watched an old “Law and Order” (with “Lenny”) but were in bed by 9 PM. We were to be up at first light