A Decision to Make

Marsh Harbour – 0 miles

With the south-east winds howling outside, a storm on the way tomorrow, and the prospect of north winds for the foreseeable future, we had a decision to make. We are in the south Abacos and to get to the north Abacos, which include Green Turtle Cay and Manjack Cay, we must pass through the Whale Cut, a passage that can only be made with calm seas or southerly winds. Any wind from the north builds up swell and makes it treacherous.

Today, we could have made it through the Whale Cut and into the north, but the problem was there are few good anchoring options for the storm winds which were due to clock from the south east all the way to the north over the period of a few hours on Monday, then blow in hard from the northwest then north all the way until at least Saturday. Of the two 360 degree anchorages, all the mooring balls were already booked and the cost of dockage was more than we were willing to spend, leaving nothing but very poor anchoring options. I was tempted to go anyway, as we’ve been leaning more and more towards getting back to the US as soon as possible to avoid any potential border closures, and many of the wind predictions we’ve seen previously have not turned out as bad as expected. But it would be taking a risk, and we decided that staying put in Marsh Harbour with our good anchorage was the better option.

This continual weather monitoring and scenario planning is not something we had much understood or appreciated before getting down to the Bahamas. Finding yourself in a situation where there are storm winds coming and you have nowhere to hide is both scary and dangerous - sometimes life-threatening dangerous. On this trip we have taken many calculated risks in the pursuit of covering as much ground as possible, seeing everything there is to see, and avoiding lengthy stops at a single location (except for Annapolis and Fort Lauderdale, which were planned and deliberate). We haven’t typically been “playing it safe”, but today we did. The bright side is that once the winds shift north we should be able to leave Marsh Harbour and spend a couple of nights at Great Guana Cay and wait for south winds to make the Whale Cut.

We did not leave the boat and I don’t know where the time went. Made some calls, did some reading, did some writing. It felt like a wasted day, and if had done this on a Sunday before a back-to-work Monday, I would have hung my head in shame after lashing myself with a studded belt. I didn’t even do any boat jobs.