Florida Bound
15 March 2011 | New Providence Island
Doug and Connie
3/15 - This morning was bright and sunny, but the winds were only about 10 knots and directly behind us. We motored and motor sailed to the west end of New Providence Island (the island on which Nassau in located). Tonight we are anchored in West Bay off of Lyford Cay Resort - a very high end residential community. Tomorrow we will head for Florida and will arrive there on Thursday.
3/14 - We lifted the anchor about 8 AM and headed north this morning on another cloudy and cool day. The winds were from the east at about 15 knots and that put it right on the beam - our best point of sail. We really had a great day of sailing - at one point we saw a speed over the ground of 8.7 knots and there were a lot of 8+ knot periods. Before 2 PM we had the anchor down at Norman's Cay. Then Mystic and Runaway came over and we discussed the options for the crossing back to Florida.
3/13 - We have decided the potential weather window this week looks too good to pass up, so we are going to head back to Florida. But instead of heading north, we will head south (and west) down into the Keys for a few weeks. We have never been there by boat and are looking forward to it. So this morning was spent checking the boat over for the trip - checking fluid levels, cotter pins, etc. At noon we joined Mystic and Runaway at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for lunch. The day was kind of cool and cloudy - but no snow.
3/12 - Wow, we woke to 68 degrees in the cabin which is much too cold for the Bahama's. After a very fretful night of Doug envisioning not being able to get both anchors up, they came up without a problem although both were snagged around rocks. After checking the bow pulpit for snakes (one of our friends recently anchored in Pipe Creek found a 5' snake on the bow pulpit when they were weighing anchor) everything was good to go. We arrived in Staniel Cay (Big Majors area) to a harbor of trawlers and large sailing vessels (70-100' in length and one of the dinghies was a small 36' with four - 200 horse power engines on back). We found our old favorite anchor spot empty so dumped the anchor overboard, set it, turned the engine off and leaned back to enjoy the scenery. At one time a newbee came behind our boat and it took him over 6 times to set and reset his anchor. At one time Doug mentioned to him that 'over there was an excellent spot' and the answer was 'I'm just trying to make up my mind'. Eventually he anchored just behind us which required already anchored boats to up-anchor as the boat was too close to them. Later on we went over to Mystic for sundowners and to say a farewell to their visiting family of New York.