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 :-)
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