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 ;-)

 

Arrival in Matthew Town, Great Inagua, Bahamas

After all the lighting storms and motoring through light conditions off the coast of Haiti, we arrived at the Windward Passage. New coastal fronts had been building from the early morning on. The first one had ones of those scary looking clouds like a pillar to the sky. We had no choice but to go through so we switched our VHF and AIS off, removed the antenna connectors, battened down the hatches and motored through the heavy rain, lightning and only 20 knots of wind. 

The second system was not developed as far and we only had light rain.Thirty minutes later we hear thunder behind us and the system was black down to the water. The 3rd and 4th systems were in stages of forming and never bothered us. Next issue was that wee found ourselves motoring into a NE wind that was increasing, as was the waves. This greatly slowed us down so you either have to go full out with the diesel or start sailing. We decided the latter and started tacking (!!) up to the Windward Passage. Looking at the GPS tracking page, it's only updated once per hour, but you can see the tacking in there.

When we could clear the east point of Cuba and almost the TSS (traffic separation system) right in front of it with many freighters rounding the point, we went for it. The wind angle did improve some but the equatorial current absorbs any advantage you think you have and we found ourselves fighting for easting once again. Halfway up to Great Inagua, the current was just west setting instead of south-west (into the passage) we got more speed which helped. When the wind angle improved more, we used it to easy the sails a bit for speed and comfort instead of more easting because one just can't point into those waves and expect to come out undamaged. The weather forecasted 5 feet waves but they were 8 feet with many 10 footers and just for fun some 12+ foot waves thrown in. Those wreaked havoc aboard and we will need to re-organize most cabinets because everything was thrown about like in a tumble dryer.

Arrival in Great Inagua was smooth. We had reports about improvements done in the government basin and found them to be great so we're tied to a dock right now for $10/day including wifi access. Good deal :-)

This is a Far East as we go this year so from her on it's all downhill easy sailing!