Rat Cay to Farmers Cay – 27 nautical miles sailed, 4 miles in dinghy, 2 kilometres walked, 200 metres snorkelled, 1 lionfishI am still not sure if we made the right move, but it took well over an hour for my nerves to stop firing and heart to stop racing after a brutal and frightening passage through the Galliot Cut to escape the raging seas.
But first, a bit about life on the boat. We’ve become mostly accustomed to living full time on a sailboat in the Bahamas. The fresh water rationing now goes without saying, and at total usage of about 9 gallons per day I think we’re doing okay. I take nearly all my baths in the ocean, and the shampoo lathers up nicely as I massage it into my head, watching the hungry sharks prowling beneath the boat. The body does get used to the salt water. At first it feels sticky and gross, but after a while that feeling goes away and you feel normal. There is one advantage too. We are saving a ton of money on salt, as whenever we’re cooking and some seasoning is required, I just lean over the pan, shake my head a bit, and a small shower of salt crystals fall out of my hair into the filet mignons, fois gras, bluefin tuna steaks, Hamburger Helper, or whatever gourmet cuisine we happen to be making.
Both the boat and dinghy take regular beatings on the water and are suffering perpetual deterioration from constant use. SeaLight’s hull is full of nicks and scratches now and the dinghy, new in March, looks like it was rescued from a scrapyard. And every piece of stainless steel now shows signs of rusting, which is unheard of on the Great Lakes. And I’ll admit we don’t keep either of them as clean as we normally would at home, now both having been demoted to status of mini-van instead of Sunday drive Bentleys. The interior of SeaLight, however, is a different story. Ana still vacuums four times a day and I collect strings of luscious Portuguese hair from the ground, wrapped around the ketchup bottle, stuck on the walls, ensnaring my toes, wound around the fans, and fished from the various sink drain holes. But the one thing that is a major challenge is the humidity. Everything is damp, all the time. The big fluffy pillows we keep in the cockpit are constantly moist, as are the cushions we sit on. Some days we put swimming towels out to dry on the lifelines, and they are blown around all day with fifteen knot winds and baked with hot sunshine, but never get fully dry. The humidity in the boat collects constantly and mould appears nearly as fast as we can remove it, so it’s a daily struggle, but we do our best to keep the interior as clean as possible.
Power consumption and preservation are always top of mind and we do very well with it, with the batteries rarely dropping below 73%. With the combination of the large solar array, the regular motoring and alternator charging, the new AGM batteries we purchased, and the backup portable generator tucked away securely in the cockpit locker, energy has not been an issue for us.

Our meals and diets have changed a bit, as we go without many things we’d regularly eat because of the high cost or simple unavailability, but we find substitutes. I have my regular breakfast of cereal and toast every morning and have not run out, thanks to the dozens of bags of granola and cereal boxes we picked up at Aldi over the months on the ICW, plus the UHT milk I have stashed away in various boat compartments for when we can’t get fresh milk. The girls typically have toast and yogurt, and both have been readily available in shops on the islands. Lunch and dinner are a variety of foods, whatever we can get, whatever we feel like that day.Our schedule has changed slightly. I go to bed earlier, often by 9 and get up between 5 and 6, providing me with more sleep (but often of a reduced quality) than I usually get at home. Ana sometimes goes to bed earlier, but has not gotten any relief from her menopausal insomnia which often keeps her up to ungodly hours, but she does sleep in later than she would at home, so I think she’s probably getting more sleep than normal. Afternoon napping has become more frequent, especially during the sailing passages, and I find myself having little cockpit naps during moments of quiet, something I never do at home.
Exercise was one thing I had been a little concerned about before we began the trip, as I imagined endless hours sailing, lying around in the cockpit, being lazy. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We have been getting more exercise that we normally do, just in different forms. We’ve made a point of spending much time on land, with the help of an anchor alarm we’re able to monitor when we are away to know if the boat anchor lets loose so we can hurry back. During these times we do a lot of walking, hiking, and climbing. While at anchor we snorkel as much as possible, which provides great exercise that doesn't feel like exercise. For strength training, I’m getting all I need through carrying around water jugs and fuel tanks, moving gear around the boat, doing twisty bendy boat jobs, sets of pullups using playground equipment or whatever I can find During sailing passages I spend time doing stretching, push ups, tricep dips, planks, crunches, leg lifts, squats, and whatever else I can think of using the surfaces and spaces available. I don't do a lot of them and I don't do it every passage - just enough to keep from feeling sluggish.
Overall, we’ve been eating well, getting ample sleep, living in slightly deteriorated conditions, but feeling pretty damn healthy.
Back to our day. It was a very rolly and uncomfortable night at anchor so I was happy when day broke and we could get out of there, despite it being an absolutely gorgeous location. I went for an early snorkelling session to see two sunken vehicle wrecks which were just a short distance from the boat and had turned into a perfect home for fish with hundreds of them swimming in the cabin, the engine compartment, through the steering wheel, and around the wreckage of vehicle parts scattered around the bottom. How two vehicles ended up in anchorage beside a deserted island is anybody's guess.
The weather forecast looked very similar to yesterday so we motored through the Rat Cay cut and back out into the ocean. We noticed the swell was considerably larger than yesterday, but still manageable. I deployed the fishing line and switched lures every 30 minutes to absolutely no effect, making me wonder if I maybe had the wrong type of lure as we moved over many different depths from 50 feet to 500. Or maybe I’ve just lost the fishing touch.
The winds and sea continued to build as we sailed and we pulled in most of the jib, leaving just enough of it out for stabilizing the boat, but not so much that it would be impossible to take in if we were hit by a squall, which looked likely from the banks of dark clouds thickening on the horizon. When the gusts started clocking at over 20 knots, we got concerned. Within minutes the ocean waves had grown substantially, likely in the 7 – 8 foot range, and there were lashings of white foam being torn off the tops of them. We noticed two boats ahead of us who had changed course and headed into Galliot Cut to seek shelter so we decided to do the same. The only problem was that the outgoing tidal currents were at or close to their maximum and the east wind was directly opposted to these, creating very hazardous conditions. The one thing you are not supposed to do is sail through ocean cuts where a strong wind is blowing against the current, and that’s exactly what we were going to do. The other option was to keep sailing and hope the gusts subsided for our planned entrance into Farmers Cay Cut, but I knew the current through that cut was very strong, probably worse than this one, and the tidal currents would not be subsiding for several hours, which would put us much further north than we wanted to be, so we decided to chance it and go in.
It was horrible. My guts were sinking as I watched the wind gusts escalating on my wind gauge and the white-capped standing waves growing ever larger. Ana was with me in the cockpit and Stella was thankfully down below as we hit the worst of it. Some of the waves looked to be at my eye level and I was scared a big one was going to hit us from behind and fill the dinghy with water which could have ripped my entire arch off the boat.
SeaLight was tossed around like a toy as we made painfully slow progress against the raging current, being rocked back and forth, rails hitting the water on both sides as we heard things crashing and smashing down below in the cabin, knocked free of their homes from the violent movements of the boat. I was scared, but Ana reassured me we were going to be fine, and I knew deep down the boat could take it, but all it would take is a stalled engine to put us on the rocks or coral on either side of the channel, destroying the boat and maybe us with it.
At one point in the mayhem there was a huge crash and Ana opened the companionway door to see the fridge door lock was off and it had swung open. All the stuff inside had been thrown out and was sliding all over the floor. She yelled at Stella to stay in her cabin, then went down to ram things back in the fridge as the boat continued to be pounded. I was watching the shoreline, counting the metres of progress as we slowly made it through the worst of it and were finally in manageable and protected water.
The anchor was dropped near the Farmers Cay Yacht Club around 2pm, in a less than ideal location with fairly swift tidal currents, but quite well protected from the east winds. I exhaled all the wind from my lungs, every square millimetre of it, then drew in a fresh volume of ocean air and repeated a few times until calm returned. That was a tough passage.

After riding the girls into the yacht club to do laundry, but finding out the water was again out to the entire island, we returned to the boat, dropped off Ana, then Stella and I went out to try and find a nearby cave we saw on the Noforeignland app, near the Oven Rock anchorage. The tide was completely out so we anchored the dinghy just off the rocks in the shallows, walked north along the beach until we found a path, and followed it into the interior of Great Guana Cay. We walked along it for what seemed like too long, then it turned uphill, giving us a spectacular view of the island and the Atlantic coast, took a corner, then went downhill and into the cave. The cave was very large, and as we arrived, four other cruisers were just leaving, giving the entire cave to us. As we waited for them to leave we spotted several small hermit crabs crawling around in the leaves by our feet.

We walked in and across the rock floor of the main chamber, admiring the stalactites brandished by the cave ceiling like deadly spears, poised to strike. We found a small pool of water and I stepped into it then walked across it to a much deeper pool, further back in the cave where it was completely dark. I had read this cave was diveable and some parts were 60 feet deep, but for that you needed underwater lights and preferably a guide. As I was admiring the pool I felt a nibbling on my calf and looked down to see a small shimp clinging onto my leg hair munching on something. Upon closer inspection, the pond was loaded with shrimp, some crawling on the rocky floor, others skimming along the surface. I tried to grab one to show Stella, but it was far too fast for me and besides, Stella had already discovered them and was eye to eye with one in the water.
After returning to the boat, I took off again on my own to see if I could catch any sea creatures. The reef where I had done battle with the original lobsters was far too rough so I went to a different coral reef that was situated right in the main channel. Surprisingly, it was amazing. The coral was brightly coloured with many different varieties and covered a large area. As I snorkelled through I saw fish of all shapes and sizes and many of them. This reef was even better than the original one; the only problem was the strong current. In this particular cay there is not much of a slack tide – it seems that as soon as we reach low or high tide, the current stops only briefly then starts flowing in the opposite direction. I did not spot any lobsters, but I did find a single lionfish and put a spear through him on the first shot. As the sun had nearly already dropped, I had to stop there, but was happy I didn’t get skunked.

Back at SeaLight I cut the poisonous spines off the lionfish then took two small fillets off the creature and tossed the remains into the water for the lobsters to snack on. My onboard inventory of fresh frozen fish now consists of meat from one little squirrelfish and one little lionfish, nearly enough for a single fish taco.
We had a late dinner, and a strange one – freshly made chocolate cupcakes, fried sweet plantain, and breakfast cereal. No rules apply for boat dinners – anything goes.