A little bit of ugly

Kintala departed Marsh Harbor five days ago, in the afternoon after the unexpected rain and wind. It had calmed down considerably so I didn't need my grown up sailor pants. The short day meant we spent the night off of Tiloo Cay. The next day we made it to Lynyard Cay to stage for the trip to the Berry Islands. When the weather forecast went sour we put the Berry Islands off for a couple of days and backtracked a couple of miles to a place called Pelican Point. It looked like an okay place to sit, waiting for the next weather window. I got out my grown up sailor pants again, figuring we could handle a little weather anchored up in a pretty place.

Underway from Tilloo to Lynard cay

After two nights and one long day of an ugly swell, constant rolling, and winds gusting in the high 20s (again), I put my grown up sailor pants back in the bin and we got out of there. Just getting the hook back on board was a challenge. Deb constantly fought the winds to drive us up over the rode. Right after I got the snubber unhooked and stowed, the wind pushed us off to the side enough that I called for idle to get lined up again. Pushed back by the wind Kintala hit the end of her chain so hard that the clutch on the windlass couldn't hold, stripping chain out of the locker at a scary pace. That fire drill was quelled by prodding the Beast, the chain went slack, the bow dipped and swung in the swell, and the chain jumped the roller. Cue fire drill number two.

Sunrise this morning at Pelican Point

Anchor safely on board with all toes and fingers accounted for, we motored south out of Pelican Bay looking for refuge. Little Harbor Bay was even worse than Pelican Point, with a huge swell running through the cut. Little Harbor itself looked very crowded. We are unsure of the entrance and, truth to tell, I'm getting tired of paying someone $20-30 / day for the privilege of walking across their parking lot after I drop my anchor on the bottom of the ocean. (I don't need their parking lot, can't use their parking lot and, in fact, wish their parking lot was a stand of palm trees instead.) Sometimes the charge is for a mooring ball. I don't really need their mooring ball either and, in most places, would trust my ground tackle more than whatever it is they tossed into the water a couple of years ago and haven't looked at since. (I know, I know, mooring balls are supposed to mean you can pack more boats in there. Something I might believe if I had never been to Back Creek.)

Heading back north Lynyard Cay looked ugly and bumpy, in addition to being a lee shore. Tiloo was also a lee shore, looked crowded, and is exposed to west winds. We could see waves breaking on the rocks from two miles out.

Sunset last night at Pelican Point

Five hours after leaving Pelican bay we anchored less than a mile from where we were five days ago in Marsh Harbor, though we are on the other side of the Island. It was a bit of a long and unexpected day, but we are glad to be settled in protected from the winds (still blowing) and swell. (There is no cut immediately to the east of us.) The only poor decision that we made was staying in Pelican Bay as long as we did. My hope was that the wind switch to the west and north west would dampen out the swell, but it didn't work out that way. We thought we could stick it out, no matter how bad, until tomorrow. But 24 hours of motion sickness will be among the longest 24 hours in memory.

There were a lot of boats on the move in the southern Abaco Sea today. Several looked to be doing the exact same thing we were, northbound and looking for a place to be. A couple were headed south; it would be interesting to know where they end up tonight.

Tonight Kintala will be sitting pretty, with her crew well fed and catching up on some much needed sleep. If the weather turns better as forecast, we will head back to Lynyard Cay in the morning, gliding along on a modest north wind rather than motor-bashing into it. Friday – Saturday will be the run to Great Harbor in the Berry Islands. From there we will start the official trek back toward the States, next season's job, and time with friends and family.

But there is no telling how long it will take to get there; with or without my grown up sailor pants.

 The shore from the anchorage at Lynard Cay

 The anchorage at Lynard Cay - a good place to learn about shallow water having different color

 The Atlantic side of Lynard Cay. This little opening was funneling all sorts of trash onto the beach.

 Kintala is out there in the middle of the anchorage

 I never tire of staring at this water. All water should look like this. It looks like melted glass.

Big Sailor pants...

So we checked the weather yesterday and, with the exception of a few rain showers, it looked good for leaving in the morning. This morning we checked the weather again - same forecast. The sky, however, suggested that maybe someone didn't have the weather picture completely in focus. The big puffies building to our north and east sure looked to me like something that might ride along the edge of an incoming cold front. But I have been feeling like a real weather weenie lately, hiding while part timers are out galloping around. There were big patches of blue sky and, well, there was the forecast. Time to put my grown up sailor pants on and go sailing.

Red in the morning...

We did need fuel and water. The fuel dock opens at 0900. We got there around 0830 to start filling up the water tanks while waiting on the fuel guy. Crew from a charter company had one of their boats on the dock as well, getting it tanked up for the next customer. They caught our lines and we stood around talking for a few minutes. As usual they made fun of the madman in the White House, subtly suggesting that America looks a bit like the largest collection of fools in the civilized world. And, as usual, we really did try to explain that the man isn't all that popular, that most of us didn't vote for him, that we were all hoping he wouldn't be as bad as we feared, and we are pretty disappointed (though some of us not very surprised) that he is even worse. But, what are you going to do?  (Well, you could get on a boat and go visit some place that hasn't lost its collective mind yet. Something the dock guys all agreed sounded like a pretty good idea.)

They went to start pumping fuel into their big cat while we started filling the water tanks. I kept looking at the sky, something I had been doing since we had pulled up the anchor. The blue patches of sky were filling in rapidly, and the big puffies were crowding together pushing a clear wall of lower clouds out ahead of them. Rain shafts fell in the not-too-distant distance.

The wind, which had been calm and made for an easy docking, picked up and pushed Kintala hard against the pilings. Then she healed over as the wind gust hit and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in half as many minutes. Every monohull in the harbor slewed through 100+ degrees of heading, then leaned back hard against their rodes. The cats all sailed about a bit, apparently confused as to just which way the wind was blowing, but eventually figured it out, got twisted bows into the wind, and leaned back hard against their rodes.

If it looks like a cold front...

With the first gusts fading we muscled our way off the dock. Deb headed us out into the harbor. I took off my grown up sailor pants and put on my foulies. The anchor went overboard and pretty much landed in the same hole it left when we pulled it up this morning. Sixty feet of chain went out as well, none of it piling up as the wind blew us backward. I locked the gypsy, Kintala leaned back and set her own hook without any help from the Beast. I played out a few more feet of chain and set the snubber, which  stretched out all of its own and then sprung us back in a little. Welcome to auto-anchoring.

As I type this, the visibility is a mile or so in rain and the wind is moaning through the rigging.
We will check the weather again tomorrow.

Exploring Bahamas Communication

Long Disclaimer: Communication and connectivity while cruising the Bahamas is a challenge at best. Before we left to come over here I spent a lot of time trying to collect information, and while I was able to get a good bit from the Women Who Sail Facebook group through various posts, there was some information not included so I decided to do this post on our own experience. Your communication and connectivity needs might be different so please understand that this is what works for us and while you might glean some useful information from it, it also largely depends on who your US carrier is. We have Verizon, and before you groan, we have been with Verizon since the very first cell phones came out and have never had a complaint. We have found their tech and customer service to be of the highest quality, although to be fair, we have attained VIP status on their customer list since we've been with them continuously for so long so we tend to get a little more prioritized service. While I have had varying degrees of satisfaction with certain physical equipment, that's a manufacturer issue. The Verizon network has been good for us with excellent coverage and speed. As a result, the information in this post is geared toward having a Verizon account and I have no idea how that differs with any other carrier. If you do have first hand information, please comment.

Being "off the grid" is a highly modified term in our cruising dictionary. If we didn't have 7-soon-to-be-8 grand kids back in the States it would be a non-issue, but since we do, we like our connectivity. What can I say? If I'm less of a cruiser for that, then so be it, but the expression on my grandson's face when we Skyped with him while going under a bridge on the ICW ("Dema you're going to hit the bridge!! No way are you going to fit!") was worth it all. So the communications challenges here in the Bahamas are a very personal thing to this grandma. After two months we've sort of made peace with it and here's what we found out.

If you're going to cruise the Bahamas with Verizon and you want internet, the first thing to find out is whether your phone is 1) global ready and 2) if it's unlocked and 3) if it has a sim card. My Droid Razr Maxx HD was all of those three, butTim's Droid X was not so we've been using only my phone. If you have a global ready phone that's not unlocked, you can get an unlock code from a lot of websites that are out there expressly for that purpose. Buyer beware though: a lot of times they'll sell you a code for a phone that can't be unlocked, and Verizon has very few unlocked phones. Needless to say, there's no refund. If you have a Verizon locked phone, the chance of getting it unlocked is pretty slim. If you don't have a global ready phone at all, you either have to get a new one via the internet or wait till you get to the Bahamas and buy one from them. Their prices are quite reasonable so I would recommend the latter. I saw a good selection of smart phones for under $100 outright in their display case.

Given that we had a global ready phone that was already unlocked, we were able to move onto the next choice in our journey toward connectivity which was the choice of 1) just continuing to pay our normal bill while we were gone even though we weren't using it 2) suspending the account for the two months and continuing to pay or 3) suspending the account for the two months and not receiving a bill to pay. We chose to just continue to pay our normal bill because I still have a contract on my phone and it would have extended two months if we had suspended the account without payment. We were also worried about Tim's phone if we suspended the account because he's grandfathered into the unlimited internet and we didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize that. Verizon assured us that it would not affect it, but I lost my grandfathered unlimited over a communication snafu and we didn't want to risk that.

We used my phone even 30 miles offshore sometimes for weather. Verizon's coverage is pretty amazing. We did have a dead zone between that offshore limit and acquiring a sim in the Bahamas but as soon as we got to a place that had a Batelco, we bought a Bahamian sim card. If you see a Batelco tower on an island, there is an office either directly beneath it or very near by. All of them have sims, but if your phone takes the micro sim (which mine does) it will have to be cut. The Bahamian cards are the SD size. Most but not all Batelco offices in the Bahamas have the sim card cutter which is like a hole punch, but the one we went to in Green Turtle Cay did not. You can get a template to cut the card online and it might be a good idea to print one out before you leave just in case. I had to cut mine, which I did with a good, sharp pair of scissors and then sanded the edges to fit with an emery board. It's not difficult but you do need to be precise and if you screw it up you're out the $15 for the sim. Be sure to keep your original Verizon sim in a safe place free of moisture so you can reinstall it when approaching the US. With your sim card you will be assigned a Bahamian phone number which will be yours as long as you have that sim. Once you get the sim installed, you're on to the next step.

This next step was the most confusing part of the whole Bahamian phone/internet thing for me because no one explained it to me and I had to figure it out by trial and error. If you want actual phone voice capabilities other than Skype, you have to buy a separate card for phone time. I bought just a $5.00 card so if I wanted to call a Bahamian business I could. We sometimes call ahead for mooring reservations. If you're calling in the Bahamas to another Bahama number the prices are reasonable, I believe it's $.27 per minute but don't be tempted to use this for calls to the US because it's expensive, I think somewhere around $.47 a minute. It's less than using Verizon ($2.00 per minute for calls originating from the Bahamas), but it's still better to use Skype for voice calls. I found that I can buy a monthly subscription on Skype for voice calls to land line phones and mobiles for $6.99 per month. Since my daughters are most easily reached on land line or mobile phones, I did that. One caveat: I did find that I can't call them on Skype when I'm using my phone as a USB internet tether. I have to do it on wifi. I can use Skype to do voice calls to other Skype users or video calls to other Skype users while tethered, just not voice to landlines or mobiles. As a point of information, we use the PdaNet Android app for tethering because it works with Tim's unlimited data plan. It works really well, well enough in fact to stream Netflix.

Another feature we recently discovered works well here in the Bahamas, once you get your internet card up and working, is the Facebook Messenger app. You can text through it as well as voice calls if the person on the other end is also on a smart phone with the app installed. Just look for the small phone icon in the window where you write the message. If it's there then you can call that person. The quality is good and it's free the same as Skype.

For internet access on your phone, you have to purchase separate internet datacards at a Batelco office or a designated outlet, of which there are many all over the islands. A lot of grocery store and gift shops and even some restaurants have them. Just look for the ever so visible “Top it Up” banners at your favorite retailer. During the season they cost $30 for 2 gigs, a price that is even lower than a lot of data in the US. In March we got them for $20 for 2 gigs, and now in April they're $15 for 2 gigs. As long as you don't activate them, they last till the expiration date printed on the cards. As an example, our cards purchased in April of 2014 had a July 2015 expiration date on them. Stock up at the end of the season, and bring them back the following year. If you register on their site for an account you can also top up online, although the two times I tried to do it the system was down and the outlets for the cards are so ubiquitous that it's really not difficult to buy another card.

Activating these cards is a two-fold process. You first must apply them to your account by dialing *202# and hitting send and following the menu. You will have to choose the Data option and then input your pin number which is under a scratch-off strip on the back of the data card you're activating. After you finish that portion, it will show you have $30 applied to your account and they will send you a text to let you know it was successful. OK here's the part no one seemed to find necessary to mention. After you have applied the $30 to your account, that total amount is good for 90 days, but you must put all or part of that into your “data wallet” to actually use it. You dial *205# and follow the menu to apply however much of the 2 gigs you want to use. Whatever you apply is only good for 30 days so if you're nearing the end of your time in the Bahamas but you're going to be back within the 90 days, you might only want to activate 1 gig or even less. Once it's in your data wallet it expires within 30 days. You can dial *201# to check your balance, but it will only show the balance on your account that you haven't applied to your data wallet, not the balance of what you've already put in your data wallet. They will send you a text to let you know when you have used 75% of your data in your data wallet, but they will not tell you when you've used it all so you have to keep track of it in your settings on your phone. If you run out of data but have phone time in your account, you'll see a strong phone signal in your status bar but no internet icon. That's one way you can know if you're out of data. Are you confused yet? Good because I was and I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. If you have any trouble with your phone accepting the data balance (which I did), you may have to manually set your Mobile Network settings to Global and you may have to manually enter the Access Point Name which is internet.btcbahamas.com (which I did). You will also have to have the Mobile Data checked as on and roaming as off. If you need any help with this, find the nearest 8-year old or go to the nearest Batelco store and hope you get a good customer service rep.

In the beginning we were trying to find good wifi and were even paying mooring fees or going to restaurants and coffee shops and buying things just so we could be online. I generally find that the connectivity is at least as good and available on the Batelco card as it is on most wifi here, if not much faster. Most of the wifi in public places is slower than mud because there are so many people trying to use it at the same time. Here are a just a few of the wifi providers we used and our evaluation of them. Keep in mind that we don't have a wifi extender, but even without it we have rarely not been able to get online. There have been times we can't upoad a lot of pictures or video or Skype, but we were almost always able to get our emails and weather. The only main frustration was not being able to download new gribs on the iPads, but I understand if you can find someone to unlock your iPad you can get another Bahamian sim to put in there.
Marsh Harbour:

We found we had the fastest wifi at the Java Coffee Shop in Marsh Harbour, as well as the best quality, most reasonably priced coffee anywhere. The wifi there is fast enough that at one point we had 3 people on Skype at the same time with no problem. The owner, Kim, is very agreeable and supportive of cruisers.

We tried the internet at the Lofty Fig, at Snappa's Bar, at Mangoe's, all of which were too slow to be useful.

Batelco was good in the harbor as long as you were in the cockpit. With an extender and router it would have been fine inside the boat.
Treasure Cay:
We tried the internet at the resort at the main dinghy dock and it was only fair strength when it came in at all, and it was “down” more than it was up. It was extremely frustrating until we discovered that the internet at La Florance Cafe and Bakery in the strip right by the dock was exceedingly fast and you could eat a cinnamon roll that feeds a family of 4 for $5 and tastes much better than Cinnabon. Florence also makes a fantastic sandwich that was big enough for us to split. She has shaded seating outside the cafe and small tables inside. She also sells the best ice cream of anywhere in the islands and the socio-political discussions with her husband, the Captain, are not to be missed. Connectivity in the islands is often a social event like this because everywhere you go to get wifi there are people sitting around engaging in something that the US has lost – the ability to have long, intelligent, non-threatening discussions about issues with people who have differing opinions.
Green Turtle Cay:
Batelco was OK in the harbour, but not great. You had to be out in the cockpit to use it.

Royal Harbour:
I was really surprised with the remoteness of this harbour that we got such a strong Batelco signal. I think maybe they had installed the tower for the development that was supposed to go in there and left the tower even though the development failed.
Spanish Wells:

You can get free wifi with no password at the smoothie shop on the main drag. The speed varies with the time of day and how many customers but it's almost always fast enough to Skype.

Batelco is very strong on the mooring field.Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera:Wifi at the Spot bar is very good and free. The bartender will put the password on your device for you. The only difficulty is that it's usually too loud to Skype unless you get there very early in the day.

Batelco is very strong in the bay.

The Long and Short of It:

It's a lot to digest, but for us the Batelco data cards are our primary source of online connectivity along with whatever free wifi we can come across at bars and restaurants. I find that I use the Facebook Messenger app the most, but that's because I tended to text in the US more than talk, and the Messenger texting is exactly like texting on Verizon in the States. It has a good, loud chime to notify you that a message has arrived, so it's easy to hear pretty much anywhere on the boat. It also allows attached pictures. Probably the biggest issue for us has been the lack of video capabilities. Video just uses too much data to indulge, and Tim is suffering because he can't watch his Moto GP races. We do miss the occasional Netflix movie on rainy days as well, but it just means we read more on our Kindles. The Kindles require wifi to download, but we just tend to download a bunch of books when we're on strong signal so that we have them later.

Hope this has been helpful. If you have any specific questions or experiences that are relevant, don't hesitate to post them here.

Abacos picture catchup

I managed to find some decent wifi for just a brief period so here's some pictures from the past week or so. Enjoy!

Treasure Sands Resort

$7 beers are savored

The parade leaving Treasure Cay

We were in the middle of the parade leaving Treasure Cay

A bad panorama of Marsh Harbour. The panorama is not very good on this camera...

The world's shortest St. Patrick's Day parade in Marsh Harbour sponsored by Snappa's Bar and Grill