A Bahama Welcome

Bluff House Marina slips

After our first night’s anchorage in the Bahamas at Great Sale Cay (pro. key) we sailed to our intended location in order to go through Customs at our first available point.  It was another ten hour day's journey.  We chose to clear in at Green Turtle Cay for two reasons:  it’s a fairly common place for cruisers to go through Customs and we are planning to have guests visit us there in a few weeks so we wanted to go there and get the lay of the land beforehand, so to speak.   Our guests would be staying at a place called Bluff House Marina and Resort on Green Turtle Cay, so we made plans to spend the night there and Carl would go through Customs next morning.

One of the "first-responder" dinghies

We entered the narrow channel leading to White Sound, where Bluff House and Green Turtle Cay Marinas are located.  It was a beautiful late afternoon with calm seas.  We were looking forward to some food and Jax was studying some potential trees on shore.  Then wham……we were aground.  Our boat was clearly within the marked channel.   We saw depths of 6’8” as we were coming in and with a boat that draws 6’5” we were apprehensive, but were told that the channel was dredged to 7 feet.  Our depth sounder now read 5’5”.  We were definitely aground….HARD aground.  

NORTHERN STAR aground in the channel to Black Sound

Nothing brings out the best in sailors than seeing a fellow cruiser in some sort of plight on the water.  Within a minute we had attracted the attention of a power boater that threw us a line and gave a very determined try to pull us off the sand, where we were so firmly seated.  I think the boat might have budged a bit.  Hard to be certain but it seemed that we were no longer in the middle of the channel, which seemed like a good thing.  On VHF 16 we heard those around us talking about the sailboat stuck in the channel—the marina attendant, two passing sailboats, other sailboats on mooring balls nearby and soon we had three isolated dinghies surrounding us.  We heard the marina assure another sailboat passing us that "the sailboat aground must be out of the channel" and that they should not be concerned.  “Just pass on port.”  They did.  The next sailboat, however, passed us to starboard.  No, we were definitely dead center of the channel.

One of the dinghies tried to weight down the starboard side with 5 gal water jugs.

Our plan was to try something which had worked in the past.  Of course, we have never been aground in this boat before, and certainly never to this degree on Lake Superior.  We raised our sails and tried to get the wind to help us by heeling and therefore giving us a shorter draft.  The wind was frankly not all that helpful on such a calm day.  The three dinghies tied off onto our bow and working together, tried to pull the boat to starboard along with the weight of the mains’l on starboard.  I think we did move a little…..briefly anyway.  It was promising for a moment or two.  We thanked the helpers and told them we would wait for the tide to rise in a few hours when we could then slide off the sand.  Clearly disappointed that they had not rescued us from our little predicament, we were alone once again, now significantly heeling to starboard.  

The coordination of the dinghy crews

Not to be outdone, we were then approached by three different dinghies with a new coordinated plan in mind.  They were courteous to be sure, this being our boat and all, but they definitely wanted a shot at the title of “those guys that got the sailboat out of the channel.”  It would be coveted notoriety, to be sure and we hated to deny them the opportunity.   Sailors love a good story as much as the next guy.  

Halyard is attached to dinghy.  Now to back up, back up.  

Our rescuers asked for a halyard* and proceeded to attach it to the dinghy with the most powerful motor.  They took the halyard wa-a-y out to starboard and gunned the engine.  Another dinghy tied on to the first and two other dinghy’s occupants pushed against the bow in an attempt to get the boat to heel further, and thereby slide off the sand.  We were assured that the depth in the channel would increase significantly once we got past that one point.  The boat continued to heel farther to starboard.  Yes, definitely leaning more now than before, maybe as much as 30 degrees, but no forward progress.   “Are you sure you don’t have a wing keel**?” one of them asked……twice.  “No, it’s a fin keel.”  A helpful sailor carried a smaller anchor out off to port for us and dropped it, so we wouldn’t drift more to starboard when the tide did come in.

Paired dinghies powering backward to heel the boat.

From shore, it must have been a great photo opportunity.  Not like those pesky sailboats that sail away from you while you are trying to capture a good shot.  Nope, we weren’t going anywhere.  One of the  boaters in a dinghy pointed out jovially that this would be a great opportunity to scrub the port side of the hull.  Heh heh.  Truthfully I wasn’t feeling very jovial.   Once again, we assured our helpers that “that’s okay, we’ll just wait for the tide to rise in a few hours when we can slide off the sand.”  Granted, it would be dark by then, but we would latch onto a mooring ball for the night and go into the marina tomorrow.  

Jax said "thank you" 

Sailors hate to give up but at last they did.  Two of the helpers that showed up were our old friends from S/V Radio Waves, that we’d met coming down the ICW.  They joined us for a beer in our heeling cockpit.  Almost like sailing….but not.

*Halyard — A Mains’l halyard is a line that comes out of the top of the mast and when attached to the sail, will raise the mains’l to the top of the mast.

A helper took this BxW photo of two dinghies coming to our aid.  

**Wing-keel — There are several different shapes of keels on sailboats.  The keel is the heavy lead weight that keeps the boat upright.  Ours is a simple fin keel which is shaped kind of like a pectoral fin on a dolphin.  A wing-keel, however, is shaped like an upside down “T” which means that if one runs aground, the boat is sitting as if on a platform.  Very difficult to pull a wing-keel sideways off of the sand or mud.

Later that night, from across the mooring field, we could see a lit up Bluff House.