Highborne Cay

Highborne Cay
12/24/11
24 43.07 N 76 50.00 W

Our anchor chain crossing debris in Nassau Harbour

As soon as the weather allowed we weighed anchor and headed out for a quieter anchorage. There are two bridges which cross the channel to Paradise Island. The chart shows a clearance of 69 feet – our mast height is about 67 feet, unfortunately we had to go through at high tide to get through the reefs and shallows in daylight – we calculated we may only have 1 foot clearance (cutting it a bit fine !) so we held our breath and crossed our fingers and approached as slow as we could considering the current running – obviously we made it or you would have heard on the news about the sail boat stuck under the bridge in Nassau on Christmas Eve !

Our first choice was Allen's Cay in the Exuma island chain - it has a narrow channel that leads to an internal anchorage - very protected.  We reached Allen's Cay late afternoon only to find a couple of boats anchored inside but blocking the path for deep draft boats (like us) to manoeuvre past them to anchor - we tried to anchor twice but each time ended up too close to other boats or the rocks so pulled anchor and headed down the path to the next anchorage.   It is absolutely necessary to enter an anchorage with the sun behind our backs (ie after midday) so visibility is at its best - the waters here are very shallow and dotted with coral heads and reefs.  I used to panic when I saw the depth sounder indicating there was only 5 metres of water under our keel - this was when we were anchoring - now we are sailing along with only 2.5 under our keel - it is scary.  We are anchoring in 1 metre and keeping a sharp lookout for coral heads and rocks just under the surface.  We reached Highborne Cay just as the sun was setting and laid anchor as soon as possible.

The next morning we took the dinghy for a run to the private beach - what a cheek to make a beach private - in Australia all water lines are public - you may not be able to walk on private land to get down to the tide mark but once there is it public land.  We swam in the refreshing water and basked in the sun.

The following 2 days were terrible, a Norther came through and White Rose bucked and rocked but the anchor held, I was a little concerned when the other 3 boats left before the storm arrived.  We thought it best to stay where we knew our anchor was well dug in and secure.   All we could do was read or watch dvd's, walking around required more hands than we possess and cooking was difficult so we had to put our Christmas Turkey on hold.  The front bought cold weather with it and we had to dig out our winter clothing that I thought we had finished with. At least it was cool enough to enjoy our hot turkey dinner after the wind and seas settled down.