Governor's Harbour

09 January 2006
N 25 degrees 11.751 minutes
W 076 degrees 14.851 minutes

We left yesterday morning for a short sail to Mutton Fish Point, a trip that necessitates motoring through Current Cut. Current Cut, as the name implies, is a narrow passage through the western side of Eleuthera into the Bight of Eleuthera. We are told currents can exceed 6 knots, so we timed our arrival for slack water (when the tide is about to shift direction). Even so, when we got there we were motoring into 2 knots of current. Not so bad, right? However, the fiendish aspect of the Cut is that, once through, one has to make an immediate, sharp, right-hand turn or one risks running aground. Just to spice it up, a string of rocks lies deceptively close to the turn. Guidebooks warn against straying too far from the rocks and not turning quickly enough. The astute reader knows exactly where this is headed. For the denser reader, I'll spell it out: we ran aground. Not hard aground, as it was sand, but hard enough to scrape yet more bottom paint off the good ship Delilah.

The good news is that Jill was able to see a number of starfish and stingrays swimming below the boat.

After that adventure we were able to raise the sails and race along toward Mutton Fish Point at a glorious speed of 6 knots. It's been a long time since we had the sails up! We were getting ready to trade Delilah in for a trawler.

Because the sailing was so good, and the sun was out, and the wind was brisk, we decided to alter course and head further south, to Hatchet Bay. This Bay is actually a pond with a VERY narrow passage to the ocean blasted out of the bluffs. We arrived at about noon, dropped our sails, and motored into the pond.

Blech. The pond water is thick and dark, and we have become accustomed to being able to see the bottom, even in twenty feet of water. There were a few boats in the anchorage, but some of them looked like they'd been left behind, and the town was empty. We had also read that a few cruising boats had problems with petty theft. We changed our minds again.

Governor's Harbour is another 15 miles south of Hatchet Bay, so we raced down there to arrive before dusk. With about two miles to go, one of the two fishing lines we'd been trolling behind the boat started to zip out. Fish on! Dean started reeling in, fearing we'd caught the hook on a bit of submerged net--again--but there was actually a fish on the end. Thanks to our new fish guide, we were able to identify him as a cero mackeral, about two feet long and beautiful. Tasty, too, though I fear that I'm going to run out of recipes before I run out of mackeral. I made the mistake of cooking the whole thing before realizing that it had enough meat to feed six. Tonight we are having fish loaf, which works well with precooked, oily fish. I expect that it will taste better than it sounds.

We are staying in Governor's Harbour today to explore, check email, etc. We have been having trouble receiving mail through pocketmail, however, so be patient. We will try to fix it today, but we may lose some messages.

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