Page 49 - Yachter Autumn/Winter 2022

“oh” he said,“you are on the wrong pump, the next one is the diesel pump” so we untied, pulled along to the next one and again tied up.As I was undoing the tank filler caps he again asked if we required diesel as we were now on the diesel pump, we said yes and he asked us what we wanted, we said to fill the tanks which should be somewhere in the region of 300 gallons, he said he could notdothis,wenaturallyaskedWhy?“Oh”he said “this is the diesel pump but we do not have any fuel but there is some coming in next week”.All we could do was to look at each other and laugh.We knew we were in the Bahamas.
This altered our plans in that we would have to get fuel from another island on the way and also made up our minds to follow Route B, the shortest one.
We cast off and made our way out of
Port Lucaya through the reef by way of
the Bell Channel whose marker buoys had long ceased to be, then followed an easterly course outside the reef for some six miles, before heading north through the reef
into the entrance of the Grand Lucayan Waterway. One small hitch occurred here, as we could not use the Raytheon GPS display to acquire a Fix, and once again the buoys that should have marked the passage through the reef were not there, we had to use Dead Reckoning to know when to turn into the Waterway entrance, it was not very distinctive from a couple of miles out, but our DR enabled us to spot a distinct gap in the beach, which was indeed the Waterway entrance.
The waterway had been constructed by cutting through the coral from the south to the north of Grand Bahamas, some nine miles long with numerous man-made waterway complexes leading from it, together with connecting roads which would eventually cater for a large boating community. Due to
a political decision some years back foreign investors were not welcomed, this is borne
out by the skeletons of hotels, houses and bridge approach roads that have no tops.
We motored gently through this at about five knots, and Eureka!, we found another switch that enabled the GPS to lock onto satellites, which then gave us a great view of exactly where we were.
Another consideration for using the waterway is that it carries a reasonable depth ofwateruntilitsnorthernexitwhichisvery shallow, it is marked by posts but has to be traversed with care.
Although we had been advised against this route we calculated that if we were at the north end ‘on the tide’ we would get through, also a clear view was obtained by using Google Earth, there was no time to waste if we were to arrive at the top (north) end at high slack water.We made it, slowly and with an ever pinging depth sounder and stirring
up the sandy bottom occasionally, we went through, the marked channel into deep water, a whole 7 or 8 ft, towards our next waypoint at Mangrove Cay, where we stopped the boat for a quick swim.
As we altered course on a more easterly track we were confronted by a horizon that looked like the night sky, very black with lightning zig zagging down and distant thunder.The way forward was through the middle of it.
Our approach was greeted by rain which gradually became harder and harder with
the visibility closing in rapidly. Jo and I
were very pleased that Peter was with us,
his experience in the RAF as a fighter pilot involved him being able to ‘fly blind’ using only instruments. This he was now doing using GPS, Radar and his experience of the area.There were times when the visibility
was down to 50 yards but still the boat
forged forward at 22 knots with Jo and I as additional lookouts to make sure we didn’t hit someone under the radar going the other way.
We obviously had all the screens down and
were fortunate that there was air conditioning on the bridge, as this assisted by keeping down the condensation that started to mist up what visibility we did have.
After 23nm we cleared the southern point of Great Sale Cay reef, which we could
not see and were heading towards our next waypoint some 20nm further on. Suddenly the sun came through a large hole in the clouds,wasthisendofit? No,itwasthe middle of it, so we had another 20nm to go.
We were aiming for Spanish Cay where there is a marina and fuel dock but it started to look as if we might only just make it, as the port fuel tank was going below a quarter full.We were unable to make radio contact, so Peter used his mobile phone to call Trish in Hopetown and asked her to call the Spanish Cay marina and the nearer fuel dock at Fox Town to see if not only did they sell fuel,
but did they have any to sell, as we had been reminded in the Bahamas sometimes you only get an answer to a specific question and cannot take anything for granted.
Fox Town, a very small settlement at the north on Little Abaco Island had some fuel and said they could spare us 75 gallons and they were open until 8pm, so with the port fuel gauge dropping to very low, we decided to abandon making it another 25 miles to Spanish Cay in favour of buying some at Fox Town.
As we headed to Fox Town the storm eased and we were able to see and negotiate our way between the coral heads on the approach. The time was around 5pm and although the tide was on the make, the final 200 yards to the dock were very tricky, we found that we did not have enough water to approach the dock so kicking up sand, we turned around, went out to deeper water and dropped
anchor for a couple of hours, waited for the tide and had something to eat.
It was now fuel time so radio contact was established which resulted in a collection of
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