Story - Acklins Position approx 22N 74W
Kalandia Web Diary
Bill Peach
Fri 14 May 2010 18:21
We are all on our own here at Salina Point and there is a lovely long white beach with some rocky sections with lots of beachcombing possibilities. We haven’t seen a soul only a few distant passing ships. We know there is a settlement of fishermen on the other (windward) side of the narrow island but can’t see a way of getting there. Otherwise there is no development. We sometimes hear a distant motor but never see anything.
We are stuck here for a few days as the strong winds are set to go on till the weekend. We find the local weather forecast much better than downloading grib files or even Navtex. The latter are good for ocean passages but there are too many other influences here.
We have beachcombed twice and collected some amazing formations from the shingle thrown up at the back of the beach. These must be old fossilised coral – if they are rocks then the patterns on them are most strange. Many of them are patterned like a brain so I think they must be coral but feel and weigh like rocks. We have also found more typical and younger looking coral which has obviously broken off and been washed on shore – these are either fine purple coloured filaments in a fan shape or purple and white sticks and are very light. Needless to say we do not and would not pick coral from the sea and only take what has been washed way up on the shore.
14 May
The wind blows with gusto and has veered slightly more north of east. Tomorrow (Saturday) also sounds blowy. So what do you do to pass the time?
We are lucky, we have diesel so we can run a generator which will allow us to make water if we need to but I think we can wait until we are in deeper seas to replenish our tanks. One is half full and we have switched to the starboard one and have used the washing machine today. Bill has tried to fix the Watch Commander, a gizmo that bleeps at you if you don’t manually turn it off every so often, thus proving that you haven’t slept on watch. He is now on his computer writing a computer programme. I have read several books, one I recommend is called The Other Hand by Chris Cleve and I have read up on how to set the fishing reel so might give it another go if I can get some more line on at the correct tension.
It also gives us time to plan our passages. Bert and Marlene (Heimkher) are in Georgetown in the Exumas. To reach them we would need to go round Long Island as the shallows won’t allow us to cut through. They plan to be there till Monday or Tuesday so we want to go for it on Sunday. We then need to head north as I think they do. Bill thinks he can see a passage through a cut and very shallow water through the Bahamas Banks and we would have to keep a visual lookout for coral heads at all times. Sounds exhausting. We will call up Heimkher on SSB and hear what they plan. We have similar draughts. In any case, time is moving on and we must get past Cape Hateras in the US before June has seen many days – that is about 750 miles but we must first get some charts (which we don’t have, not even electronic) for the US coast as we have nothing beyond Palm Beach, Florida, so a slight detour will be necessary and we will have to clear into the States there if we plan to put a foot ashore.
We have provisions enough even though we may need to break into the canned stuff so we won’t go thirsty or hungry.