Keep on Movin’ – Sailing Windara

Before work on Wednesday morning, we made our way down to Current Settlement, at the infamous Current Cut. Current Cut is a small break in the northwestern side of Eleuthera that allows boats safe passage into the Bight of Eleuthera and access to the main part of the island. Currents rip through here at speeds of up to 10kts at full ebb/flood during king tides. Adding to the fun are shifting sandbanks to either side of the two routes you can take once on the eastern side of the cut, requiring visual navigation.

The anchorage off of Current Settlement is stunning – crystal blue water that remains deep pretty close to shore and a beautiful shoreline peppered with small homes. The settlement of Current itself is very small, but we didn’t get much time to explore. We made one quick walk into town over lunch and otherwise spent our mornings walking the beach. Our friends on Here and Now ended up anchored beside us, and we met them on the beach for sundowners and to chat through sailing plans.

Conventional wisdom recommends transiting Current Cut at slack tide, which is a very short period as the tides switch. Unlike in the US, tide gauges don’t exist in most places in the Bahamas. Instead, you base the timing off of Nassau, at least in Eleuthera. Tides at Current Cut are approximately 90 minutes after Nassau, so we planned to enter the cut at 1:15 after high tide at Nassau. That strategy worked perfectly – we had a slight favorable current running with us as we entered the cut and a slight foul current setting up as we exited the passage through the bars. The passage was relatively easy (although a little less cloud cover would have been nice), except where we encountered a westbound vessel as we neared the narrowest part of the channel. We never saw less than 10′ of water and once we were clear, we raised our sails.

Unfortunately the wind was blowing directly from Governor’s Harbour away to the southeast, which is where we were trying to go. We had a couple hours of beautiful sailing before we realized if we were going to make it in before dark, we were going to need to motorsail into 20kts. We had a couple passing rain showers, but we also got a pretty rainbow as we approached the harbor.

We got in well before sunset and found a spot to anchor. It took a while to get the anchor to bite – the harbor is noted for poor holding. Once we were settled in, the wind faded back and we had a beautiful evening on the hook. We also took some time to talk through our plans.

I was starting to feel like we’d just been running through the Bahamas without really getting to experience anything. I enjoy being on anchor, but between having hopped from West End to Lucaya where we didn’t really have anywhere we could get to to explore and then anchoring out in the Spanish Wells area, anchoring off Current and then making the run down Eleuthera, it felt like we were pushing and making all these moves but not seeing anything but anchorages. We couldn’t stay in Governor’s Harbour due to westerly winds (there’s no protection from the west there), so we had to press on to Rock Sound, but I wanted to make sure we slowed it down after that. Our original plan had been to make small hops down Eleuthera, but that just didn’t pan out because of the westerly winds in the forecast. And Chris had been trying to get to Eleuthera as fast as possible, because he thought that was what I wanted to do. I was pushing because he’d been talking about the Exumas (which we ruled out, but then sort of put back on the table) and I thought that was what he really wanted to do. So lesson learned – we need to do a better job of talking about what we’re hoping for!

Governor’s Harbour is definitely on our list to explore as we head north. We stopped at the well-stocked grocery store to provision for the week and took a quick walk around town. St. Patrick’s Anglican Church and its cemetery face out over the harbor, and next door is what looks like a well-maintained library. There’s a Friday night fish fry in town, and in the other direction is the grocery store and gas station. Apparently at the French Leave Resort, there’s a really nice restaurant that we’d love to try when we have time, and if you walk across the island, there’s a pink sand beach and a restaurant with a nice view over the Atlantic.

We had a wonderful sail to Rock Sound. We started out about 15 minutes behind another boat, and with a reef in the Genoa, we managed to pass them on the first tack, about 6 miles out from Governors Harbour. As the breeze faded off, we shook the reef and found ourselves making between 6-7kts as we beat into 10-15 kts of breeze. It was one of those made-to-order sailing days (although not being on a beat would have been nice). By the time we reached Rock Sound, we had left the other boat 7 miles behind us.

Until now, I’ve had very little experience with visual navigation and was not excited by the fact that there were several rocks/bommies along our route as we approached Rock Sound, so we rolled up the sails and motored in. It was hard to see very well heading south with the sun sitting so far south at this time of year, but eventually I started to recognize the bommies and the rest of the trip in was easy.

We’re anchored on the west side of Rock Sound in a beautiful spot with one other boat. The land is completely undeveloped on this side, and there are beautiful stretches of beach that are completely empty. Once we were settled on anchor, we launched the dinghy and went ashore to explore. The beach in front of us has mangroves and a tidal river winding farther inshore. In the tide pools, we saw starfish, jellyfish, tulip snails, small fish and a baby lemon shark. We only have one neighbor, as everyone else is anchored on the east side or farther north.