Having already explored Georgetown and the Exumas, we choose to leave our friends on s/v Remedy and s/v SuAn and sail to Cat Island instead…its description in Pavlidis guide and in the Explorer’s Chart Kit sounded interesting. There was very little wind for this stretch of nearly 40 miles and we motored almost all the way.

And here is a little story for those who are wondering about what cruisers are doing the whole time aboard? Well, there are events like those we are about to tell you that we could do without…

Our water pump was giving us continuous problems since we descaled the engine (in Martinique, last year). While the descaling seemed to have been successful, the engine was eating impellers by the month. We repeatedly drained the cooling system, flushed it and replaced with new antifreeze and in doing so we had to remove the water pump numerous times.

Back to our sailing to Conception Island, everything seemed to be working fine…until we saw a steady stream of oil dripping from the connection of the water pump to the crank case . Well, it was dripping a lot, we had no wind, and another 20 miles to go and approaching a reef. \Heiner opened the engine compartment and added more oil to compensate for the loss.

About 20 minutes later and closing to the reef, the oil pressure alarm came on! We shut down the engine immediately. A sprint into the boat and a look under the floor boards showed a black goowey mess staring at us. Heiner worked desperately to pick up the oil before it runs in the lower bilge area…while we had very little wind and the reef was ¼ mile to the starboard and showing its beautiful Bahamian colours.

The engine compartment showed oil every where and our first assumption was that we had a major breakdown ..not a lood place to have something like that, here in the Far Bahamas.

Trying to locate the problem, Heiner happened to see that the oil measuring stick was missing in the crank case! Yep, after refilling the crank case with oil, and checking the oil level, it looked like Heiner had forgotten to reinsert the dip stick! …which was resting in the bilge. Oh boy!

With a half sign of relief and blackened and dirty all over, Heiner refilled the crankcase with new engine oil ( were we happy to have bought plenty of oil in the Virgin Islands). After this unexpected oil change, we dared to start the engine again...after few seconds the oil alarm went off and everything continued to run fine…except for the oil leak of the water pump! So we continued to advance to a crawl and sail whenever it was possible to the New Bight of Cat Island. A day later, we spent the better part of the day cleaning repeatedly the area below the floor boards, the engine and its compartment and replacing the O ring of the water pump. It looks like the engine survived the dramatic loss in oil and the oil leak of the water pump is now over. Heiner’s back is still recovering from this arduous cleaning job.
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Oh! Well there are some days like this...they come with the “cruising” territory.

Upon arrival, we are struck by the vastness of the bay and sail up to the anchorage in front of New Bight, the (supposedly) centre of Cat Island. That night, we get a gift (not from the sea but from two sport fishermen crewing for a mega yacht). They offer their catch (6 mahi-mahis) to the cruisers of the anchorage…wow! They hoist that big fish on board…45 inches long and at least 25 pounds. And I have to cut it up, fast, because the sun is setting is 20 minutes! And the mosquitoes are there too…I am struggling to do a good job on this huge fish as it is my first time handling such a large beast! And at the same time, trying to keep those bugs away…Grr…

That night, we do eat late but the fish is absolutely sumptuous!