Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Jan 30th Gulf Stream, Bahamas and Quarantine Flags

Sunset at Great Sale Cay, Bahamas

From Shelly:

We left Lake Worth, Florida at the crack of dawn last Wednesday and crossed a rolling gulf stream. Mark turned a little green but no lunches were tossed. We opted to motor sail which means the winds were less than 15 knots so you combine motor and sails to get enough speed so that you don’t go too far north in the Gulf Stream and miss the Bahamas altogether. By late afternoon we arrived on “the banks.”

The depth of the ocean literally goes from hundreds of feet to 25 feet in a matter of 30 minutes. You can see the sand flying underneath you. That’s very disconcerting because you could hit a stray rock. But we have tons of radios and a life raft. And seriously, how much trouble can you really get into in 30 feet of water. Not much hopefully, because the next step was to anchor at night at Mangrove Cay after continuing our crossing in the dark for another hour or so until we got there. We didn’t hit anyone else and the anchor dug first try. Actually, Bahamas is weirdly well charted and the ocean floor uniformly flat more or less and unless you try, it’s kind of hard to hit rocks.

The next day we still didn’t have much wind so we motor sailed to Great Sale Cay about 25 miles away. Mark was excited to try out his new snorkel gear although the water was super cold. It will warm up as we move south and we get through winter a bit more. We did not go ashore.

On Friday, we did a big push to Powell Cay and were able to sail much of that route. Yippie! Finally, sailing along in good wind with great weather and scenery and no schedule. We set anchor and Mark did his nightly routine of sending out a spot beacon and email “to the mothers” so people know we’re not dead. Mark, our communications specialist has programmed the SSB radio to send small emails out. But more importantly, he can pull down weather “grib” files so we know what’s in store. What turned out to be in store was a bit of a front with 20 to 30 knot winds by Sunday or Monday.

Armed with that knowledge we didn’t go ashore on Powell Cay on Saturday. Instead we high tailed it farther south, back out into the Atlantic for a mile or so, skirted around Whale Cay, back into the sea of Abaco and anchored at Treasure Cay. Otherwise we would have probably been stuck north of the Whale for days. Around the Whale, the conditions can be rough and the currents strong if wind is blowing water into the inlets since as with much of the Bahamas the water is being pushed up onto a much shallower area. There’s even a dedicated Whale weather report every day, it’s so notorious around here.

On Sunday we got our predicted 25 knot winds – a few hours early. Our plan was to go to the government dock at Marsh Harbor and check in through customs. The rules are that you fly your yellow quarantine flag until you check into a country and that you can anchor but not go on shore until you officially go through customs.

Most people go to a marina to check in but none of those marinas are ones I want to go to anyway so marching to our own tune – as usual – here we are on day 5 still flying the quarantine flag. It’s fairly difficult to dock in high wind plus it started to rain.  Marsh Harbor is exposed to the wind blowing from this particular front so we bagged on that idea and went around behind March Harbor to a protected anchorage where we now sit. On the bright side – we were able to get a better feel for how Good Karma sails in 20 knots with only a reefed main up. It worked great. We were the only people with a sail up out there today, in the pelting rain. Whatever, we had a good time.

The weather is supposed to worsen tonight and then be same for tomorrow so we’re just chillin’ instead of going ashore. Nor will we tomorrow because doing a sloppy dash in the dingy in high wind and rain is not my idea of a good time. You should be starting to see a theme here… our feet have not been off the boat in days. The scenery is however, lovely.

Since we haven’t gone ashore yet, we don’t have SIM cards for our phones so no internet. 5 days without internet. Reminds me of camping on our mountaineering adventures except we’re dry and we have a toilet and fresh bread. We’re reading our books and Mark is getting intimately familiar with his SSB radio. I am not missing news about politics. We’ve been listening to “Missed in History” podcasts. We listened to one about the founder of Montessori recently and now I’ve decided I should be referred to as “The Directress.”

Once the weather clears up a bit and we get our checkin and communications life in order, we’ll go over to Hope Town at Elbow Cay, grab a mooring ball, walk around the little town and check out the various bars. Then it’s hopefully some snorkeling south of here and then staging for Eleuthera.

[Editor’s Note: The weather was great today and we were able to get internet connected. Thus the status post today]

Posted in Sailing by Mark with 1 comment.