Good Bye Bahamas
23 April 2014 | 52" Mahi-Mahi
Leg 1: Nassau to Cape Canaveral, Florida
We departed from the anchorage at Rose Island early in the morning on Wednesday, April 23. We made a quick stop at the Nassau Harbor Club Marina to top off with diesel fuel and Sara walked across the street to the familiar shopping market for half and half...you need to have good coffee on a long passage!
We headed out and put New Providence island behind us. The fancy Paradise Island resort was in the background and there were lots of tourists on the beach and three or four parasail boats cruising by us, giving the riders a fantastic view of Dream Chaser! The wind was light and variable with barely a ripple on the Tongue of the Ocean and we were motoring without the sails up. Sara made English Muffin Toasting Bread underway and Shane plotted different routes and times, seeing how far we could go before the weather turned sour.
The first delay we faced was midafternoon on the first day. The wind picked up and came out of the west at 13 knots, which of course was the direction we needed to go. It was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride into 3-4 foot waves. Luckily, or the way Shane puts it, "I planned it this way...just in case".... we turned north and motored off our rum line for several hours and ducked in behind Frasier's Hog Cay aka Chub Cay to wait until the winds went light again and the waves to settle down. We made teriyaki chicken skewers on the grill since we were at anchor again and then went to sleep for just a couple of hours. At 11:30pm we checked the wind and it was light and variable again. We hoisted the anchor up for the last time in the Bahamas and we were motoring into the darkness by midnight.
We crossed the shallow Bahama Banks overnight and passed the Great Isaac Light around 11:00 am the next morning. It was just a few miles further and we spilled out into the Atlantic. The wind was still light and running about 5 knots at the most. We put the mainsail up for stability and traded off running one engine at a time at 6-7 knots. The ocean was pretty calm with just a light chop. There were ships everywhere...cargo ships, cruise ships and ships at anchor. A few were in sight, the rest we could see on radar and AIS. There were also many fishing boats fishing along the steep drop off. From the Bahama Banks to the Atlantic Ocean the depth drops several thousand feet in less than half a mile.
Late that afternoon we heard our fishing reel line zipping out, and bingo....FISH ON! It took us about 30 minutes to land and gaff the fish. We needed one of those fancy "fighting " chairs like you see on professional fishing boats! It was a big mahi-mahi measuring 52 inches, the biggest one we have ever caught! Mahi-mahi swim in schools so as were reeling it in, we could see others swimming around at the surface. After Shane cleaned it on the back deck and Sara divided it up, we had 8 bags of huge fillets stuffed into our freezer. It's too bad we didn't catch this about 2 months ago. Unfortunately we won't be able to eat it all by the time we head home but we will try our best and then probably give the rest away.
The rest of the passage was pretty uneventful. We took turns on watch sleeping 3 hours on/3 hours off. We arrived Cape Canaveral, Florida late on Friday afternoon, April 25th just ahead of a cold front pushing off the coast bringing strong north winds. We tucked into a small anchorage just off the ICW to rest up before we begin our next leg.