Friday, February 17, 2012 Back to the Berry Island Club Has it really been 4 years.

Devils Hoffman Cays to the Berry Island Club, Frazer’s Hog Cay

We up-anchored at 9am under mostly sunny skies and headed out to Frazers Hog Cay. The Seabirds were fishing and diving at schools of small fish that were leaping out of the water. Their small bodies looked shiny silver and glistened as they leapt out of the water avoiding some predator from below. Areas in the surface portion of the water churned up little pools of dancing tiny fish that skimmed the surface and then would disappear. I watched one little dark colored fishing trawler going back and forth in the mouth of Little Harbor Cay and wondered if he was catching anything. The currents that run through there are swift with the changing tides but I never saw them bring anything up.

I sat on the bow of the boat for about an hour while Wayne had the helm. I watched Azaya tacking further away as they had their sails up, enjoying the nice day. For some reason our roller furling didn’t want to cooperate with us. The distance was such and the winds almost on the nose so we were content to motor up and into the anchorage of the Berry Island Club. We’d heard on an earlier radio transmission that the place was now under new management so I had to wonder if Hilda was still there. 4 years ago when we were first here – I had my first cracked conch and traditional type Bahamian meal here. It felt pretty good running up the channel. The currents were with us and even as I slowed further down, I noticed we were doing 6.3 knots. 

Berry Island Club fuel dock


We’d radioed to see if there were any specific things we needed to look out for and if there were moorings available. Just stay in the deeper water and pick up any of the large white balls with a blue stripe. The other smaller ones might not be too dependable. Roger that. We told them that there were 3 of us and didn’t know if all 3 were picking up moorings but thought that we were. No problem.

We circled a couple of the moorings and then set on the one closest to the dock and channel and started forward towards it. I nosed closer and set the throttle low and shifted into neutral, then backed up then back to neutral so Wayne could pick up the mooring. He signaled to stop so I went back into reverse. Something was wrong. The lever went into reverse way to easy. It usually gives me a pull from reverse, to neutral, to forward. I went back to neutral and reverse. It was like waving a spoon through the air. There was no resistance at all. The control levers weren’t answering my shifting motions. Wayne looked at me like “what are you doing”??? We ran over the mooring ball and it disappeared under us. I could hear and feel a clunk, clunk, then the engine stopped running and our alarm sounded (it always sounds when you turn the key to start the boat, or hit the kill switch to stop the engine). Oh my! I had the feeling that the mooring painter got tangled in our propeller and immediately felt sick… I yelled to Wayne at the bow of the boat what I thought happened and ran below to turn on the windlass so we could drop anchor. Then I hailed the guys at the dock (Harry is the guy now in charge) and told them what happened and Harry radioed back not to worry about it. They’d be out as soon as they finished gassing up the boat at the dock. Don’t worry about it? Our boat had lost forward and reverse control, we may have destroyed their new mooring balls and fouled our prop with their mooring lines. I was worried… no doubt about it.

I hailed Azaya as they came in, and Wind Quest brought up the rear, and told them what had happened. After they picked up a mooring ball they asked if we’d like assistance. Yes. Please. Wayne was zombie like (he’s been feeling kind of ill like he’s catching a cold) and running a fever. We were hoping that the aspirin substitute would kick in soon and it did, thank goodness. Mary & Axel did a once around in their dinghy to see if they could see the mooring ball under us or a rope around our rudder or propeller. They didn’t see anything. Then they used the lookie-bucket (a bucket with a glass bottom). Still nothing. Axel got his diving mask and fins out and dove into the water and said that there was nothing there. No mooring ball or line. A little wisp of seaweed was on our prop but that was all. Could we have drifted away from the mooring ball? We started looking at the mooring balls… there was one we’d passed by with no painter on it but I was pretty sure that wasn’t one that we’d gone to pick up. Ours was one without a lot of blue stripe on it.

When Harry got here, he said he’d have his master mechanic come by when he arrived at the Berry Island Club, but that wouldn’t be until right after dark. Then they went back to the Berry Island Club after telling me to relax, it’d be okay, don’t worry, you’re in the Bahamas ma’am… He has a wonderfully calming smile. Unfortunately I couldn’t calm down. We tried to figure out if the cable had broken or come undone. We couldn’t see that it was broken at either end, and had to surmise that it had broken somewhere in the housing. Axel tried helping us get the top of the binnacle off so we could remove the wire but the middle bolt wouldn’t budge. I could get the cotter pin out from inside the housing where the control lever was but we couldn’t get the fittings through the opening without getting the top section off. All we could do was wait for the mechanic. We dinghied over to shore and tied up to the dock.

Mary & Axel were chatting with a familiar looking young man. The no-see-ums were feasting on me and he said that they were all over the place. It was just too calm. He and his buddy were on the dock fishing. He mentioned that he had a Pacific Seacraft – an Orion named Arturus… It rang a bell in my memory. He looked so familiar. He said we did too and that he thought he knew our boat – Kolibrie…He was from North Carolina. He knew Deatons. He had to go home in a month to work. Last year he’d been in Ft. Lauderdale. It all clicked into place for me. We’d met in Ft. Lauderdale around Christmas. He’d been traveling with friends and we’d met them on the docks. We were going to invite them to have Christmas dinner with the 4 of us since one of them was going home for Christmas. They were going to head to the Keys until their friend got back. It all came back. I had to laugh all while slapping the gnats that were drawing blood from all over my body.

We walked up to the main house and chatted briefly with Harry (the new management). He’s youngish, good looking with short military cropped, blond hair and blue eyes. He looks like he could be a Navy Seal – quite muscular. He’s a very nice and personable fellow and said his mechanic was very good. I’d found the codes on the wire and also matched up diagrams with what we were looking for in our Yanmar book. We were trying to figure out what cable we needed when the mechanic pulled up. He asked if the cable came apart at the connections. No. We didn’t think so. Was it broke near the ends. No. We didn’t think so. He shook his head and said oh no… very bad… We shook our heads and said.. Oh oh… verrrry bad…This didn’t look well at all.

He wanted to know if we wanted a tow to one of the mooring balls but we decided we could wait until morning at this point. He’d come take a look at our situation in the morning too… Sigh… We need to figure out how to get the cable out and where to get one ordered from…

Seems like last year, Azaya was jinxed…this year it’s looking like Kolibrie may be the problem boat…

Oh, while I remembered that we could get wifi here 4 years ago? There’s no wifi. It appears to be down all over the island and has been since Thanksgiving… Gotta love BeTelCo…