Long Island March 10

Sunday, March 07, 2010 - 10 AM Thompson Bay, Long Island, Bahamas Water temperature 67 F

We had a fine sail to Long Island yesterday averaging 6 K for 37 miles with one hour total on the engine for leaving and entering harbor. The top speed we hit was 7.6 K and we ran at 7 K for a couple of hours. We were flying a full jenny, staysail and the main with one reef. I kept trying to talk Patti into shaking the reef out but then the wind would gust to 20 K again and prove that we needed to keep the reef in the main. Later in the day the wind moved more behind us and when the staysail blanketed the jenny, we rolled the staysail up. As we approached Thompson Bay the wind dropped some and our speed got down below 4 K but only having a couple more miles to go, we weren't in a hurry and just poked along. Once we cleared Indian Head Point at the northwest corner of Thompson Bay, our course turned almost 90 degrees to port. As we made the turn into Thompson Bay we went from an almost downwind run to a reach and at the same time the wind picked back up to 20 K. Our speed went from 3.5 K to 6.5 K and we came charging into the anchorage with a bone in our teeth. When we got to the outer boats in the anchorage, we finally rounded up and dropped the sails. The wind was blowing a steady 20 K at this point which made things lively as we rolled up the jenny and dropped the main. I'm sure our insurance agent was pleased that we didn't decide to practice anchoring under sail in a crowded harbor under those conditions.

Thompson Bay, Long Island is a popular destination and there are over 40 cruising boats anchored here with room for hundreds more. We know many of the boats here having been with them at various ports from South Carolina to Florida to anchorages throughout the Bahamas. We had heard on the radio while still out on the banks that many crews were going to dinner at Club Thompson Bay that evening so we called in our reservations also. It's very common for shore side businesses on the Family Islands to monitor channel16 on marine VHF radio and use it like an old time party line telephone system. Once we were anchored and settled in, we launched the dinghy (which was a lot of fun in 15 to 20 K wind) and then headed to the dinghy landing on the beach when it was time to go to dinner.

There were 40 cruisers at dinner which was buffet style. When dinner was over, there was a string of flashlights as the crews walked down the road, along the trail thru the bush and onto the beach where the dinghies were beached. The tide had gone out while we were at dinner and we all had to drag our dinghies across the sand to get them back in the water. Then the water stayed shallow for a long ways out so someone (guess who) had to walk in the water until it was deep enough to float two people and to partly lower the outboard. By the time we had the outboard cranked up, there was a flotilla of dinghies heading out to the boats anchored in the bay. Of course then the challenge was to find our boat in the dark with 40 anchor lights all the same. Our handful of multi-colored LED's in a peanut butter jar, hung above the boom from the lazy jacks, allowed us to ID our boat from a quarter mile away and made the search easy. We were ready to call it a day.