s/v Jedi

Cruising Eleuthera and the Abacos

We enjoyed Rock Sound with it's protected anchorage, nice bars, restaurants etc. but we were the only boat there so when the weather forecast looked good, it was time to move on. We first sailed to Hatchet Bay then the next day early to Current Cut where we needed slack tide to make it through this famous cut. I read that you can do the world's most famous drift dive here. We made it through the cut without any trouble and found a beautiful anchorage off the beach on the other side.

Here we waited for a weather window as we had a lot of thunderstorms around, which became the norm we found out later. When the weather looked good, we set off for the offshore passage to the Abacos. We had a glorious sail and anchored at Lynyard Cay. Here we watched thunderstorms passing us on their way to Marsh Harbour where we wanted to go as well.  couple days later, when the worst was over, we pulled the anchor up and motored to Marsh Harbour where we anchored just in time before the thunderstorms arrived. This is a very nice place as well, with waterside bars/restaurants with dinghy docks, nice people but also daily thunderstorms. We never needed to run the watermaker anymore as we could collect as much rainwater as we needed.

A couple days later we sailed to Great Guana Cay. While approaching the anchorage, we noticed the offshore conditions were really good for the next leg which forces all boats with a draft of more than a couple feet to go around the offshore side of Whale Cay. So we decided to sail on, did the easiest mini offshore passage ever and continued to our next anchorage in between Manjack and Crab Cays. This is a great anchorage and as always there is a catch and we found out it was the mosquitos here. They went away with a little more wind and we hope that they stay away in the colder winter months when we plan to come back here for sure.

At that time we had a first possible tropical depression approaching the Bahamas and although nothing came of it, it did bring a lot of rain and thunderstorms with high winds from wildly changing directions. As we were anchored really well, we decided to stay put and let it all blow over. Today there's just some remnants so we brought the anchor up and are now motorsailing to Allans-Pensacola Cay. The plan is to sail to Great Sale Cay tomorrow, which is our staging point for the passage across the Gulf Stream to Port Canaveral in Florida, where our marina slip awaits us. That's when the works begins as we have a thousand refitting projects for Jedi as well as for our house in nearby Titusville before visiting Holland and then sailing back into the Bahamas again ;-)

 

Passage to Eleuthera

After a quiet night in Little San Salvador, we went anchor up early. There was very little wind but we had 50nm ahead of which the last 20 among rocks and shifting sand banks that required good light to navigate so we had to keep a schedule and decided to use the engine to keep a 6 knot average. The sea was very confused as the swell from the east came around the island from both sides, creating cross swells that resembled a washing machine. After 10 miles we approached the east point of Eleuthera where we would get rid of the cross swell so we prepped for hoisting sails. This is where a huge cruise ship from Princess was shuttling passengers ashore to their Princess Cay resort. We must say that this looked much better than the Carnival resort so if you ever need to choose, go for Princess Cruise ;-)

When the sails were set we had a glorious 20 nm of broad reaching of which we posted a small video clip on Facebook. Then we approached the shallows and we furled the jib and started the engine. We loaded the route into the iSailor app of an iPad and gave it control of the autopilot. Once again we were in awe of the performance of this app. The second leg took us straight into the wind so we lowered the main sail and had to go straight into 15-20 knot winds in 2' chop with foam stripes on the sea in between alien looking sand banks. We're so lucky to have a boat that cuts through all that with ease and comfort, even though we hate to use the engine.

Next up was the approach of Rock Sound. This is where it gets really shallow, with the charts showing 6' depth and our draft being 6'2" that promised to get exciting, especially with our timing to get there at low tide. For a while I had been monitoring our depth sounder and it worried me to see less water than the charts indicated. If that would keep up into the harbour with it's 6' depth, we would not be able to get in. We double checked the tides and it showed that at low water we would have more than 2" more than charted depths and with the tide going up, we should in theory be able to make it. But is the chart still right since the last hurricane came by that moved sand everywhere?

It did not take long before we were way slowed down, the depth sounder showing less than 6' and I told Josie to brace for impact. But the impact didn't come. By the time the depth sounder indicated 5.5' it hit me that we had all new electronics and I did not yet calibrate the depth sounder. It is showing depth below transducer and it obviously is 14" or more under our waterline because we didn't even touch bottom when it showed 5.0' depth. By this time we had reached the anchorage and were settled in quickly.

Today we had a rest day (charge batteries, make water, do laundry, hair cut, launch dinghy, combine trash run with lunch ashore etc.) and if weather keeps up we'll be on the move again tomorrow. We have plans for Hatchet Bay Harbour... which is where you're supposed to navigate through a narrow cut that was dynamited to open up :-)