7:30am

We are motoring along the E coast of great Inagua (SW of Caicos) about 15 nm offshore. It's 7:40 now and full daylight but we can't see the damn thing. No wonder the Bahamas are filled with shipwrecks (the oldest wreck, 1515 I think) is actually on the Turks and Caicos. Those poor guys with no charts and no longitude, must have been totally nerve wrecking to sail these waters.
Incredible: the propeller on our water generator I have been so proud of, got chewed up!!!!!!! I pulled it up this morning because I had to recalibrate the compass. and right there in front of me was a once proud bright orange propeller looking miserable now with a blade missing, sheared off at the base. I Strongly suspect a fish. Yesterday I was thinking that in these fish infested waters it might be prudent to pull in the generators, oh well... I have a spare blade but it's not as strong and big so it'll generate less current. We'll see.
We're in for a couple days of essentially calm winds and then some strong stuff from the North as we transit the Windward passage. The passage is about 80nm away and I'd like to get there by Sunday evening... again we'll see.
Maybe I'll make pancakes this morning. It's going to be a hot one!

Our magnetic heading had been badly off since we left: the compass direction given to the autopilot by the electronic compass located under our birth. As much as 30 degrees off the actual direction. It was not dangerous since we have the old-fashioned compasses as well and the electronics compute our course over ground (actual course referenced to the true north) but it is a pain because it's an extra mental calculation to make plus on the chart plotter the boat icon points in a crazy direction, which can be unnerving when you see the boat on the chart headed directly to a reef with dangerous surf a mile away! Then a few days ago I remembered that we had changed the stowing arrangement and put a lot of vegie cans under the aft berth. Ah HA! Those things are not steel but the have enough iron to screw up the magnetic field: so yesterday I remove three bags of cans from there and put snacks and pasta instead in that area.... and of course it made a change but not nearly enough to get rid of the huge error...drrratts! But then I thought, wait a second the calibration we did back in the Tangier sound was done with the cans in place (calibration= make the boat do 3 circles and the compass runs an algorithm to try and correct deviation errors). SO this morning I did a new calibration run with the compass in its new pasta/snacks environment, and lo-and-behold it worked: the heading now is right on the dot!
Please savor small victories.

3:50 pm

We should be in Panama next Sunday (800nm from where we are now roughly). The canal official, the Admeasurer, visits boats on Monday and Tuesdays for transits on Thursdays and Fridays. .... If all goes well and we transit the 10th of April, that would put us in French Polynesia the 3rd week of May. Nathaniel and I are thinking more and more that once we get there (FP) we shouldn't rush and thus plan to leave the boat in Raiatea for the winter. Which would give us a couple months to put around in FP this year: little island hops and idyllic anchorages; at least one hopes.

Today I try and replaced the destroyed prop by the even cheaper spare I had but the output was dismal. 1 amp or less, so I pulled Mad Max out of the water. He had a brilliant 24hr career! We probably are going to have to forego refrigeration soon. The fridge is pretty much always on and doing most of the batteries drain.

We had a swim this morning, after stopping the boat in calm winds. Small dolphins visited us a couple times. The sea is very calm except for a long southeasterly swell. Wind is light and on the nose with our Code 0 up we going between 4 and 5 kts though. We spend some time tweaking the sails and managed to gain both some speed and improve our heading. Our course is 160 which is only about 30 degrees from the desired course of 190d.

I love to walk around in commercial harbors, like Baltimore, because of the freighters coming from faraway places. They feed that child's awe for the mystery of far and exotic places. And somehow I get the same feeling when after a long passage we sail through islands without actually calling there. I know that for people there this small speck of land is their whole life, yet we'll be over the horizon by morning and their mystery will remain intact. We've come a long way to get within a stone's throw of discovering a new culture, yet we sail on and the mystery remains intact. In a way I wish we could call there and meet people, but somehow I am also moved by the chance missed and the continuing mystery. That's how it was sailing yesterday and today through the Turks and Caicos. And I've had that same feeling sailing without stopping, through the Azores. Passing by a busy life, and sailing on.