Hiding Out

Marsh Harbor
N 26 32.845 W 077 03.485

Marsh Harbor is the biggest town we're likely to encounter in the Bahamas. We were in no hurry to get here. However, there's a blow scheduled for Tuesday/Wednesday and Marsh Harbor is a secure place to sit for several days. Besides, we can go ashore and explore. There is also a slim chance that our friends Reggie and Terry may still be here. If so, we'd like to see them.

We had a great sail today. The winds were about 15 knots and the weather was warm and mostly sunny. Boy this is a nice place.

One tough part of today's passage was going through "The Whale" "The Whale" is a bit of complicated navigation that leads one around some shoal waters. Using a GPS, the navigation is not hard, but in the days before GPS, it would have been a real challenge in coastal piloting. For us, the hard part was a 2.2 mile leg that took us up in to the wind, and out toward the open sea. The seas were 4-5 feet hight and right on our nose. Tarwathie doesn't do well motoring in to a stiff wind on the
nose, especially against waves. She porpoises too much (meaning that she rocks forward and aft). As she rocks forward, the propeller lifts out of the water and cavitates. It took us a whole hour at full throttle to motor those 2.2 miles.

After that tough passage, the rest was easy. We rolled along doing 6.5 knots or better most of the time. A few places we crossed have pure white sand bottoms, which makes the water appear to be extra shallow. That was scary, but in reality, we never saw any depth less than 9 feet the whole passage.

We entered the harbor on Man O War Cay, but it was too crowded and we left. Our second choice was Marsh Harbor, and we arrived here just in time for sunset.