Rock Sound

3/29: Early in the morning I weighed anchor for our departure from Little San Salvador for Eleuthera. The night before I had looked at the charts and put in the waypoints for the trip up to Cape Eleuthera via East End Point, Bamboo Point and Powell Point. Little San Salvador is shown on the same page of the chartbook as Eleuthera only on a single small scale chart that includes everything from Great Abaco to Cuba, so I never really looked at it. In any event, I set out from Little San Salvador, looked at the GPS, checked the wind direction, and then decided that it would be a much easier point of sail to head directly for Powell Point. Wrong!

About 11 AM Christopher came up on deck and asked about our location. As I looked at the chart and the landmass before us I got the uneasy feeling that there was something terribly wrong. The world seemed backwards. At that point I looked at the small scale chart and realized that by skipping the intermediate waypoints I had brought us up on the wrong side of Eleuthera. Now we had a hard beat in order to get back around on the right side of East End Point. My error added an hour or so to our trip for the day, but taught me some good lessons. First, check your navigation route carefully, then check it again. Don't make hasty gross decisions without the correct chart in front of you. Second, even in settled weather, capes can be pretty nasty business. My navigational error took us across the shallow portion washed by the open ocean between Little San Salvador and Eleuthera. The sea state was very nasty and confused. This should have been an early tip that the route I was taking wasn't too prudent.

In spite of the error, we had a great day of sailing. Early in the day I wasn't able to keep both the main and genoa full on a broad reach, too much rolling from the confused seas, so we proceeded under the genoa alone. We made more than 6 knots over the ground for the entire day. By the time we got past Powell Point to make the turn toward Rock Sound the day had turned cloudy and gray. Lots of pre-frontal ugliness was staring at us. Besides that, the leg over to Rock Sound was dead into the wind through narrow, unmarked channels. The weather and the wind made up our minds for us. We turned around to go to the Cape Eleuthera Marina at Powell Point and would head for Rock Sound the next day.

Marina is a slight exaggeration for Cape Eleuthera. It does offer good protection. There is good well water at some slips. There is electricity at some slips. But there are no showers, no store, no laundry, and no way to get to those things without hiring a car. Another location of unfulfilled potential.

At one time Cape Eleuthera was a first class resort catering to the beautiful people. There was a club house, pool, tennis courts, golf course, housing for 400 guests, and restaurant. Prior to its sale to Amway in 1980 the resort had been closed for a year or two. For the last 20 years nothing was done by Amway to reopen, and over time the storms and fires have levelled just about everything.

3/30: They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The weather report this morning belied that aphorism. Another cold front is approaching. Folks on the BASRA weather net reported this morning that during the night four or five boats were driven ashore at Allens-Pensacola Cay. In the Berry's and Abacos boats reported wind gusts of 50-70 knots. The high gusts elesewhere were in the 30-40 knot range. With that weather coming our way we decided to sit tight for a day. And a good decision it was. In the middle of the day we were hit by a squall that brought 40 knots of wind into the marina. The wind driven rain came down so hard that it turned the marina basin into boiling cauldron. This went on for a couple of hours.

3/31 - 4/1: The weather forecast was much better now that the pre-frontal turbulence has gone by us. After fueling and watering we started off for Rock Sound. Once we turned the corner into Davis Channel we made 7 - 8.5 knots over the ground on a beam reach. Yes, I know you've heard it before, but this had to be the best sailing to date.

Rock Sound is both a bay and a town. The bay is oval shape with north - south orientation. The opening to the bay from the west is down in the southern end on the west side. Because of its size and orientation it is possible to find protection from any wind. You just have to be prepared to move around. This is the most crowded place we've been since George Town. There are 17 boats here. Since the bay is 2 miles by four miles, there is essentially no one here.

Rock Sound is prosperous enough and close enough to the small, upscale resorts that it can support a fair number of boutiques, two of which are shown here: Luna-Sea and Footprints. Both have art, knick-knacks for tourists and a small selection of clothing.

This house is of the traditional architecture seen on Eleuthera. It is now being restored. You can see the red roofed kitchen with chimney out behind the house.
The Haven Bakery doesn't look like much from the outside, but be prepared for an olfactory feast upon entering. The present proprietor weighs about 300 lbs and has a sense of humor to match.

The town is very prosperous, as is most of Eleuthera. There is some agriculture here, as well as some upscale resorts. Spanish Wells and Harbor Island, further on in our journey, also add to the prosperity. The local economy is strong enough to support 4 grocery stores (there were only two in George Town), one of which is almost large enough to rival a small U.S. grocery.

The big tourist attraction in town is Ocean Hole. The ocean hole is a body of water a couple of miles from the bay and even further from the ocean. The water is salty and rises and falls with the tide. There are ocean fish swimming in the hole. It is said that divers have never been able to find the bottom. Another tale is that one of the locals put a shark in the hole for a prank. The town fathers made him stay at the hole with rod and reel until he landed the shark. The town has turned the site into a park. We joined some of the local kids for a swim in the hole.

	The new sign suggests that their heart is in the right place. Maybe there wasn't enough money in the budget to build a proper mount.
	The masonry work leading down to the hole is rather will done. As a public works project this is among the best we have seen in the Bahamas.

There were a few people fishing in Rock Sound, but we didn't give it a try. Our dinghy is too slow to go further afield in search of good fishing and snorkeling, although there are places on the chart that are suggestive.