17 May The Nassau anchor challenge

While we were waiting for our US Consulate interview we walked around downtown Nassau, mingled with the large cruise ship crowds, took a look at the historic buildings and re-anchored twice. A shift in the wind on day three had our keel kissing sand at low water. Nassau harbour has a deeper channel on the north side separating the main island from Atlantis resort island. South of this channel is a ridge with less than 2m at low water and south of the ridge is a narrow channel of 3-4m depth. Following a couple of bumps we moved to a different section of the eastern anchorage and we still couldn't find enough room to swing and to be away from an underwater cable. It was frustrating. Our next cunning plan was to move to the north side of the ridge in deeper water and allowing the prevalent south wind to keep our stern in deeper water. It was late afternoon, the wind was blowing a chop on the surface and the current was flowing. This time we'd got it right; depth and room to swing.

At dusk the next day after we'd had a change of tide the boat didn't feel to be moving quite right. David looked over the bow and was aghast to discover he could see the hull of a wreck below us with our chain draped over and under it. It was too late to move, slack tide tomorrow would be better. Next morning using the solar fish finder aka glass bottom bucket, we could clearly see a length of anchor chain snicked under the bow of the upturned wreck and a length laying over the keel. David took the helm on Jackster and I was in the dinghy with solar fish finder and a two way radio suggesting which way to move to pull the chain free. There were a number of attempts which didn't free us and all the time we were racing against the building flow of current. We decided to try David reversing Jackster and me in the dinghy pushing the bow around. There seemed to be movement. I was in the process of finding the anchor chain and found the anchor, following the chain back it went straight to Jackster. We were free! We are able to retrieve the anchor from the helm which David did and once I saw it break the surface I zipped back to the stern and climbed on board, hot, sweaty and much relieved. To have had to dive in these conditions would have been dangerous.

We didn't like the east anchorage anymore. We were moving to the west anchorage on the other side of the two road bridges – mean high water clearance stated at 21m and our air draft is 20m. We gained an extra couple of feet because it was low water, but looking up as we went under was not a comfortable sight. I felt confident – we went under 11 years ago and unless the bridges had sagged we'd do it again.

tallest span

The west anchorage was far better: a more comfortable 6m and wider though it is more prone to swirling currents causing the boats to swing in different directions.  A bonus of this spot was a free dinghy dock at the Rubis diesel station with a two minute walk to Starbucks free WiFI and the supermarket.  All in all a better place for waiting.

getting closer, bottoms twitching

cleaning the girders