The anchorage the day after the front passed through

When you are in the Bahamas, weather is critical. Plus, you need to have your own weather source. There are no VHF weather stations like the US. Some of the cruiser's nets have weather sections, BUT it is someone else's opinion usually. It's best if you find a weather source and get familiar with it...and understand its accuracy.

For the last 10 years I've been using OCENS' WeatherNet product. I know it well and have great confidence in it. The weather Guru for the Bahamas is Chris Parker on SSB. Chris, in fact, helped me design my system 10 years ago. I don't use SSB, but can still get Chris' weather summary via OCENS in text form.

So...we were sitting in Nassau and left before the front to go to Bonds Cay in the Berry Islands. The problem with fronts is the west wind component. Most anchorages in the Bahamas are open to the west...not good. Bonds Cay is open, but the depth of that water to the west is about 2 ft. at low tide. That keeps the waves down a little. Even though we saw 25-33 kts of wind for over 18 hours, we only had 2-3 ft. waves...not too bad. The best part is that we had great holding and no other boats.

So now we appear to have a good window for heading to the US mainland. It looks like we'll take off Friday (tomorrow). We're not sure where we'll stop. We'd like to make it to Charleston, SC, but may end up in N. FL somewhere. We'll get a great push from the Gulfstream and the winds look like they'll be on our beam. That would be nice...if it happens.

So this may be our last post from the Bahamas for 2014...sorta sad. But then...all good things do come to an end.

We will post again...maybe at sea...