Now that I have recovered from the Exuma trip and a little time to do so, here is my write up about my return adventure.
First off I want to say a big THANK YOU to
@robert843 and his wife Vicki for helping coordinate things from the states, your help provided comfort to Cindy and I.
@1948Isaac made offers to come back from Fort Lauderdale to my location to help, thank you. And, thanks to
@Ramblin Wreck and his wife Brittany for checking on us to make sure we were safe.
A quick equipment plug, my Garmin InReach was an extremely valuable piece of communication equipment, even better than my 25W VHF with an 8' antenna mounted on my tower. When I left Staniel Cay at 7 am the InReach had a 95% charge and after nearly 50 communications and running continuous for 43 hours the charge was at 30%. If necessary I had to ability to charge the InReach while on the boat. One thing if you have an InReach I high recommend downloading on your phone the Earthmate app which allows you to pair your phone and InReach. The key to this is that you can use your phone as a keyboard to send and receive message through your InReach which is much easier than just using the InReach keyboard to send messages.
VHF comments. From the time I became stuck on the sandbar and every 15 minutes for the next couple of hours I made calls out to the other boaters in my group with no response. They all had 4' to 6' antennas mounted on their hardtops but I believe why they couldn't hear my calls when the pass nearby was due the fact they didn't have an external amplified VHF speaker. Only using the VHF units speaker, the sound volume and quality is very poor and while the boat is running it is near impossible to hear anything unless you have your ear to the speaker. I have an amplified VHF external speaker and while running can easily hear and understand the communication.
Now for my story.
On the return trip from Staniel Cay, Exuma to Fort Lauderdale, FL the weather and sea conditions couldn't have been more ideal, just like being on the lake during the week, nice and calm. Even with the ideal conditions I knew I couldn't run with the go fast center consoles, especially with
@1948Isaac at the helm with his heavy throttle hand, so I left at 7am to get a head start and let them run me down, they had to get fuel and the fuel dock didn't open until 8 am so I had a good head start. I got the Palm Cay, New Providence dropped of part my crew that were flying back home, refueled the boat, and departed without seeing the remaining group, I assumed the fuel dock in Staniel Cay was busy and they would run me down on the next leg. On the run from Palm Cay to Bimini, I was carrying enough extra fuel to easily make the run without having to stop a Chub Cay to refuel. I saw on my GPS a path with plenty of depth to make a short cut run through the northern out islands of Andros and decided to take it because the wife and I were get a little bored of just open water running, also I knew it was very close to high tide so the water depth shouldn't be an issue. The first couple of miles of zigging and zagging through the out islands at 30 to 35 mph my depth finder matched what the GPS showed the depth to be. At about 12:30 pm all of a sudden the boat came to a sudden stop, from prior experience running aground in soft sand I immediately put the throttle in neutral and turn off the engine, I didn't want the extremely soft powder like sand to get into my cooling system. I did a quick assessment on why I ran aground, I checked my GPS and I was on the right track and the water was a little darker than other areas which I thought was depth but turned out to be a short grass coverage on the bottom. When I jump out of the boat the water level was just below my knee, so I guess the sandbar shifted and I miss-read the color of the water. While in the water I checked the boat and outdrive and thankfully everything seemed fine other than being stuck in the sand. The one thing I don't like about my boat is that the outdrive even while in the full up position hangs below the keel of the boat, something jet boats and outboard powered boats don't have to worry about.
After realizing the boat was physically ok the next thing was to try and figure out which direction we wanted push the boat to get off the sandbar. Right after we got stuck 6 to 8 small nurse sharks (about 3 footers) started playing in the water and slowly approaching the boat, thankfully the young sharks were not aggressive, just curious and easily scared off. I walked off various directions; go back the way we came in, continue on the course we were headed (west) or turn left and head south. The shortest/deepest route was to continue west and then turn left and head south, so the pushing began. The pain in the tail was that besides pushing through soft sand (hard to get good traction), we had to lift the stern of the boat to minimize the trench the outdrive was plowing. I wish I had a drone to take an overhead shot of how long and deep the trench we plowed on the sandbar. Unfortunately while pushing the sun was at full strength and we could only push for a few minutes before taking a break in the shade under the bimini top. With not being able to continually lift and push we were not able to get the boat off the sandbar before the tide went out far, we pushed the boat about 440 feet.
@Bruce your suggestion of using an anchor as a pulling device wouldn't work in the soft sand, the anchor couldn't take a strong enough bite to hold while pulling. I fully believe that if I had a jet boat or an outboard motor Cindy and I could have pushed off the sandbar before the tide went out, that outdrive hampered our pushing, the only way to move my boat faster was to have a few more pushers.
My GPS has tide charts built into it and the next high tide in our area wasn't until 1 am, so now we sit and wait until the tide comes back in. As mentioned above, I tried via VHF radio to get in touch with the other boats in our group to no avail. I also sent
@robert843 a message from my InReach to his InReach hoping he would notice the message. After not hearing from anyone, I sent messages from my InReach to
@robert843 and
@1948Isaac cellphone hoping they would be near an island and get the message. It wasn't until the other boats reached Fort Lauderdale around 6 pm that they saw the messages I sent and immediately got in touch with me.
@1948Isaac sent me a message that if I wanted he could be run back to me and be there is about 3 hours. I told him not to come because high tide wasn't until 1 am and even at 9 pm it would be too dark making it to dangerous for him to navigate the shallow waters. Later on
@1948Isaac said he was staying overnight in Fort Lauderdale instead of heading home, so that if needed he could run back in the morning to help, that is a good friend.
@robert843 was in contact with me asking numerous time asking what he could do to help and should he contact the US Coast Guard to notify them of my situation which I said no, I was going to contact them in the morning if at the 1 am high tide I was still stuck on the sandbar. Based on my GPS tide charts I thought by 8 or 9 pm there would be enough water to float my boat again to allow us to start pushing the boat off the sandbar. As time progressed the tide seemed to be coming in slower than what my GPS tide chart showed. Later in the night
@robert843 on his own contacted the US Coast Guard to inform them of my situation. Shortly afterwards through my InReach I was contacted by the US Coast Guard representative in the Bahamas. He told me that due to the difficulty of navigating shallow waters at night there was nothing they could do until day light. I informed him my plan was to continue to attempt to push off the sandbar during the upcoming high tide and if I get clear I was going to make my way to Chub Cay to spend the night and refuel before heading to Bimini. Being optimistic that at the high tide we would get off the sandbar, at one point I asked
@robert843 if they could check on room availability at Chub Cay, which he did and there were rooms available. The thought getting a shower and sleeping on a bed sounded pretty good, wasn't thrilled of the possibility of sleeping on the boat.
While waiting on the tide to come back in Cindy and I did what most couples married 29 years do, we did a lot of talking, chilling, and watching the wildlife, we didn't want to rock the boat and get is further settled in the soft sand. The wildlife in the area was very interesting, it seems the different species groups had worked out a time schedule for using the sandbar. While there was a foot or more of water on the sandbar the nurse sharks where there swimming around, once the water level dropped and the sharks left the crabs and the starfish came out. The crabs where hilarious to watch, some where very territorial and aggressive towards the other crabs and me. When I would get in the water near a crab, it would rear back on its hind legs, raise it pinchers at me, and kick sand towards me. I would kick sand back at the crab and the crab would then take a few quick steps towards me before retreating. This was a lot of fun and gave us a good laugh, simple things for simple minds. After it got dark the bone fish came out to play, the were splashing and jumping around, shining a flashing light on them made them even more active. At the lowest part of the tide the water was barely above my ankle.
Finally around 1 am the tide came in enough to allow us to move the boat again, hopefully this was going to be the final push. After pushing 330' we were clear of the sandbar, being night time this allow us to continuously push without getting burned out by the suns heat. The relief of getting off the sandbar was immense but we quickly came back to the reality that we now had to navigate a couple of miles of shallow water in the dark before getting back to consistently deeper water. On my GPS I always have the tracks turned on, so I knew where I ran aground and I could stay clear of that track until we passed that spot. Once we got far enough past the location we got stuck I followed the track back to deeper water. In the dark and in shallow water I wasn't comfortable run any faster than no wake speed, if I got stuck again I didn't want to be to far on the sandbar. The wife was on the bow with a flashlight and I had the running lights on so she could help spot any potential shallow spots. After back tracking for a couple of miles we finally got to consistently deeper water and that is when I picked up the speed and headed to Chub Cay. At 3 am we arrived at Chub Cay, docked in an empty slip (which there were plenty), went up to the resort to reserve a room but as our luck would have it even though the doors were unlocked no one was to be found. Something we really didn't want to do was spend the night on the boat but now we didn't have any choice and made the best of the situation. Before going to sleep I let everyone that had contacted my on my InReach that we were safely off the sandbar and in Chubb Cay marina.
At 6:50 am there were some guys a couple of slips away that must have been deaf because they were talking extremely load to each other which woke both Cindy and I. Since we were up we decided to boat over to the fuel dock and wait until they opened. To our surprise, at 7:05 am, someone showed up to the fuel dock and we top off the tank. By 7:20 am we were heading towards Bimini and we were very grateful to see the seas hadn't changed, still very smooth, so we ran at or near 40 mph the complete trip to Bimini. To our delight the rest of the trip was very uneventful, even the drive home was smooth. After arriving home around 1 am, I figured after spending 12+ hours on the sandbar it only delayed our arrival home by about 4 to 6 hours. The original plan was after arriving in Fort Lauderdale late Saturday afternoon was to drive north for an hour or so, spend the night in a hotel and mid-morning on Sunday we would drive home figured to be there around 8 pm'ish.
During this whole experience the one thing that shocked me the most is that my wife, Cindy, didn't fly of the handle, she was surprising calm and cooperative which doesn't always happen even during less stressful situations. I think what also helped her stay calm was once
@robert843,
@1948Isaac ,
@Ramblin Wreck and a Coast Guard representative contacted us, she felt comfort knowing people knew where we were and what our situation was.
To me the keys to our successful adventure was having good communications equipment, patients, and very good friends willing to do almost anything to help us out.
Here is a picture right after we couldn't push anymore. As a reference Cindy is 5' 2" and the water was just below her knees.
View attachment 97925
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