End of the line ... June 12

Wednesday, June 8

Day 1 of our exit strategy was perfect! After spending Tuesday night at the lovely anchorage at Manjack Cay, we left after the morning weather forecast (~7:15am) for the 50 mile run to Great Sale Cay, our final stop in the Bahamas.

The weather predictions were right on – the morning wind of 10knots ENE, grew to 15-17 knots by noon, and we sailed the entire day under all 4 sails, cruising at a comfortable 6 knots (and once saw 7.1 knots! That’s flying in our boat!).

By 5:00pm when we were approaching the anchorage at Great Sale Cay, the wind was blowing 20-25 knots….and let me tell you, it is a BIG difference to go from 15-17 knots to 20-25 knots! The wind continued to howl all night, again confirming the prediction that we are in a diurnal wind pattern, meaning that instead of dying down at night, the winds are actually increasing in speed ~5 knots. Both the high winds and the diurnal wind patterns are making us question a departure weather window on Thursday or Friday… as it’s one thing to have high winds for 10 hours in the daylight, and something else all together to have them for 30 hours, including the dark of night.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

We considered it an omen that it started to rain just as the morning weather forecast came on the SSB radio at 6:30! The same weather pattern is predicted for Thursday and Friday … ENE winds, 17-20, gusting to 25 knots. Seas in the Gulf Stream could be 6-8 ft when the wind hit 20 knots. While we’d really like to sail back to Florida, 30 hours of those conditions is outside of our comfort range (ideal for us is 12-15 knots of wind, 3-4 ft seas ... and from the south, not the north).  However, half the boats in our anchorage took off this morning... making you wonder What do they know that I don’t???.

Funny weather here in the tropcs ... the sky can fill with dark, stormy clouds and then the next time you check, it's clear, blue and sunny.  Go figure!  So, here we are, reading our books in the cockpit, under a beautiful blue sky, monitoring the wind as it picks up from 10 knots (at 10 am) to 17 knots (at 1pm), and utlimately 25 knots around 6pm (until around 4am).

We are between a rock and a hard place b/c Friday brings too much wind (and predicted squalls), and on Saturday, the wind is predicted to drop off completely and stay that way for several days … “light and variable” usually means ~5 knots, which is hardly enough to even cool us off when underway.  As Chris Parker said, Thursday and Friday are good sailing days, although uncomfortable. Saturday is a motor day. Which of two evils do we take?

Since we have plenty of fuel, we’ll probably go on Saturday b/c 30 hrs of uncomfortable sailing is not my cup of tea … and we may still catch some residual wind during the morning on Saturday as the low passes over us. Added to the confusing mix is the fact that it’s an ENE wind ... Conventional wisdom says to never cross the GS with any northerly component in the wind because it can result in a rough and chopping passage across a rough and chopping Gulf Stream.... however, Dan thinks our NW route will give us a nice beam reach with a ENE wind ... esp. if the winds are light on Saturday.

For now, it’s just a good thing to be in the middle of a Clive Cussler novel!

Counting down to our final bahama sunsets :(

Friday, June 10

Choosing a departure window is a lot of shoulda-woulda-coulda …. And it’s hard not to second guess every step of your decision-making process as the reality of the weather you get unfolds. Should we have left yesterday along with everyone else?? Even with the high winds, the sky was clear and sunny. However, the wind was howling 25 knots well before dawn, so I wouldn’t have wanted the midnight to 4a.m. shift at the helm.

It was some comfort to see all 6 boats in the anchorage still here as the 6:30 weather forecast got started.  Today is predicted to be a day of squalls across the entire Bahamas, and the weather on Saturday is still up in the air. All we are hearing about Saturday is that it's "a day of transition" ... which is not much of a forecast in my humble opinion … and into next week, the winds are predicted to stay light and variable, which isn't much of an improvement.

Around 1pm, the squalls arrived in earnest, with lots of rain and wind over 30knots, which at least reassured us that we’d rather be at a secure anchorage in this weather than 60 miles out into the Gulf Stream! We still have the refrigerator to empty before we leave the boat, so we started on that project as soon as the rain stopped our progress on cleaning the deckwork …. Time to finish off the cheese and crackers, oranges, and the wide variety of fruit juices we have on hand for rum punch (hey…even the rum got to be empty before we leave Maja in Jacksonville!!).

Wowie zowie … the rain lasted for several hours, but the winds, a steady 20 knots and frequently gusting over 30 knots, lasted until well past midnight! At 4:00 am, it was still howling outside, leaving us to wonder what Saturday morning will look like.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Up at 6:00 am, and not a breath of wind anywhere. The anchorage was like glass, after being a sea of white caps for the last 3 days. It never ceases to amaze me that the wind can just disappear after blowing hard for several days in a row.

There wasn't much useful info in today's forecast:  light and variable winds coming from any direction.  Chris Parker provides the weather forecast for the Bahamas, Caribbean and coastal Atlantic, but leaves a big void over the water of the Florida Straits unless you are a subscribing member, and then you get a customized forecast.  (We'll be a subscribing member next time, for sure!) For the most part, on this trip, we've been able to find another boater who was taking our same route and we'd get useful information that way ... unfortunately for us now, no one seems to be crossing to north Florida, so we can only extrapolate from what we hear about people making the passage to Miami.  And to complicate matters, we are at a remote anchorage and cannot get NOAA weather on our VHF radio either.  So our most detailed information is about 4 days old .... ancient!
WhattodoWhattodoWhattodo ... we decided to get underway at 7:00 am and take advantage of the settled weather that will follow the low pressure system that just passed through.  At least the rain was done and the wind will be light, 10 knots ENE (and we hope more east than north!).  We'll head across the Little Bahama Bank for 50 miles, then northwest across the Gulf Stream for 50 miles, and then 50 miles into Port Canaveral. It will be a motor-sail trip that we expect to take 24-30 hours. The sky is overcast which is good in terms of keeping us from baking in the cockpit, and we are running parallel to a massive bank of thunderheads which "should" stay off to the east as we head west.

By 10:30 am, the clouds had cleared and the beautiful blue skies were back with us. Even though the winds are light, we put up some sails that boosted our cruising speed to 7 knots on a beam reach. Yahoo!

Goodbye Bahamaland! We should arrive in FL around 7am tomorrow after 1000 miles and just over 3.5 months of cruising in these wonderful turquoise waters.

Sunday June 12

Well, ya know the ole saying, all good things can't last ... and that certainly held true on our crossing yesterday.  We thought we had a cake-walk charted out, but by 1:30pm, all bets were off.

At about 1:30pm, we got the first clue that something was amiss.  We had about 12 miles to go on the Bahama bank before hitting the wide, open ocean, when the flat sea started to build 3-4 ft swells, and then those swells started to break over the bow.  Hey, WTF .. we're getting wet here!  We should have been enjoying calm conditions, but instead we had to put up the cockpit enclosure and lock down the hatches just to keep seawater out. 

Dan figured it was just the swell from the ocean piling up as it reached the shallow banks, so I watched the clock in anticipation of a change in sea conditions in another couple of hours.  No such luck.  Out on the ocean, the seas were building, and the 5-10 knots of ENE wind we were expecting was more like 15 knots directly from the dreaded north, hitting us smack on the bow.  As the seas climbed to 6 feet, crashing over our boat on every 6-8th swell, I assured the Captain that he was, in fact, reading my facial expressions correctly (e.g. OMG ...get me the hell out of here!). Walking thru the cabin was impossible because of the violent motion (not to mention everything that wasn't locked in a cabinet was now on the floor ...books, CD, placemats, plastic water bottles ...) and sitting in the cockpit was uncomfortable b/c the rolling action tended to pitch you off the seat.

Responsive Captain that he is, Dan settled on a bail out route around 4:30pm that would take us to Ft Pierce FL instead of Pt Canaveral.  This put the waves/swells on our beam instead of our bow ... which meant we weren't bashing into them and no more breaking water over the boat ... instead, we were running parallel with the swells which gave us a roller-coaster ride as we heeled over 40 degrees as we rode up and down the 6 ft swells off our side.  The good news is that we continue to find that we don't get seasick and that Capt Dan can stay at the helm for hours without a break under these conditions (aided by our trusty autopilot).  The bad news is that I'm of no help in these conditions because I cannot pry my hands from their death-like grip on the cockpit railing!

As sunset was approaching, I again asked Dan why we couldn't just return to the Bahamas in lieu of putting up with these conditons for another 10-12 hours ... live to try again another day, that sort of thing ... but since we were 60miles from Florida, Dan really didn't want to backtrack over the progress we had managed to make, so instead, he put us on southernly course towards West Palm Beach which put the swells behind us, giving us a much gentler ride as the waves buillt at the stern and then rolled away under the bow (plus, it's easier to take to what you cannot see coming at you!).  There was still a lot of tossing and thrashing, but at a much gentler pace.  I was able to take a 2-hr watch while Dan got some sleep, but other than that, it was Captn Dan and 5-hr energy drink that got us through my worst night on this boat.

At the helm, especially on a tempestuous night Dan is reminded of the Breton Fisherman's Prayer.  
                             "Oh Lord, Thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."

What a dissapointing way to end such a wonderful time in the Bahamas!  Fortunately, we arrived back in at the Lake Worth inlet at sunrise and dropped the anchor close to the spot where we left here almost 4 months ago. Unfortunately, we're about 100 miles south of where we wanted to make landfall in Florida, so it will take us 3 days or so to work our way up to Jacksonville where we plan to leave Maja for the summer, but at least the worst part is behind us.  And we arrrived safe and sound!

Lake Worth. West Palm Beach, FL

 

As they say, All good trips must come to an end.  Ah but to be back in the USA and now ready for the final leg that will bring us back home to Minnesota.