The entrance channel to Little Harbour has one spot which charts show as less than four feet at mean low tide. We came to Little Harbour at mid tide and the least water we saw was a bit under six feet. Bob checked the tide tables for Sunday morning and we decided to leave at 7:30 am. This was getting close to low tide but would give us a foot under the keel, we draw 4.5 feet. Sunrise is slowly getting earlier so it was pretty much light before 7am. I was looking at the ladders at the dock as they provided a good guide of where the tide was, the more rungs you could see, the lower the tide. It looked to me that the tide was pretty low so Bob checked the tables one more time and said let’s go right now. It was 7am. Bob drove slowly into the channel and a little ways in the depth sounder started beeping and we bumped. The depth gauge showed 3.9 feet!! After some high rev reversing, Bob decided to try one more time but steered about 10 feet to the left of the bump – success, we were almost immediately in six feet of water. If we hadn’t made it out it would have meant waiting at least until noon for the tide to change, to try again.
We saw quite a few boats heading south as we headed north, this was a good day for a crossing to Spanish Wells or other points south. The winds were light and of course on our nose from the north – as stated before, the stories of prevailing easterlies have proven to be a myth, at least for us. We went through some pretty shallow water but nothing less than seven feet. Once we turned west as we got closer to Marsh Harbour, we were able to put up the jib and do a bit of sailing. There is more water traffic in the Marsh Harbour area than we’ve seen since Bob arrived in the Bahamas with the exception of Nassau Harbour.
Marsh Harbour is a large harbour with a lot of boats at anchor. Our marina is full much larger boats than us. Many catamarans which we think are charter boats. I had a shower as soon as we got here, my first real shower since Spanish Wells. We do commando type showers on the boat once we really start to smell so it’s a real luxury to let the water run for more than 15 seconds.
We had a very nice dinner at Mangoes, the marina next door and arrived back at the dock to the sound of our depth alarm beeping away. It was close to low tide. Bob used his hand held digital depth sounder to measure the depth off the stern and got 5.9 feet. The boat’s depth sounder is about a quarter way from the bow so it may be that the bottom in the slip tapers up a bit. Bob is going to recalibrate the depth sounder when we go out.
Monday was chores day. We walked to the grocery store which was the biggest we’ve been to, excellent selection and we were able to fit everything into our back packs and carry a couple of lighter bags. Lunch was on the covered patio at Wally’s, the lovely restaurant across the street from the Marina.
We went for a bit of a walk in the hopes of finding a shop that had some artwork of the Bahamas but still no luck. Laundry was partially successful. You get tokens from the office vs putting in coins. I was doing a single load and when I took out the laundry from the washing machine the load had obviously not been spun very well. I had only one token for the dryer and by now the office was closed. When I went to pick up the load from the dryer, the clothes were warm but definitely not dry, some not even close. Some creative clothes hanging in the cabin ensued. Meanwhile the winds by now were really howling and the boat was rocking, good to be at the dock.