March 21st, 2014

We bit the bullet and decided to leave Green Turtle on Wednesday the 19th for Great Sale Cay which is 56NMs to the West. Our intention was to head to Great Sale Cay then Mangrove Cay then West on Grand Bahamas with a plan to cross the gulf Stream on Sunday.

First leg was a motor sail and we were able to maintain between 6.5 and 7 knots with a gentle South wind. We dropped our mooring buoy at 8:00 and hoping that we would have enough water under the keel to allow us to leave the harbour. Well there was but always a bit tense when you are the deepest keel of the fleet.

We decided to take a shortcut go South of Great Sale and therefore shortening our trip by an hour but, there is always a catch we had to go through the girl Jane Cut, a 1 .5 mile shoal with shallow water and coral heads. By the way our buddy boat Mara-A-Lago is aptly named Jane and Brian from EYC. Given that my Blue Charts are very detailed with rum lines well identified, I was lead boat through that cut. As you can guess I draw 5.6 and Mar-A-Lago draws 5'. If I hit bottom then.......

Everything went according to plan, we knew we would get there at mid tide ebbing and chart data showed no less than 5.6 and we never saw less than 8 feet of water. Shortly after we dropped anchor on the West side of Great Sale Cay well ahead of the boats that left hours ahead of us - nice short cut. It was a fantastic evening, wind less than 5 knots out of the South well protected from the East and North and nothing but water on the other sides. Then an amazing sunset as we enjoyed a great dinner of steak and potatoes, a rare event here.

The next morning many of the boats left at 6 or so while I listened to Chris Parker to get a better grasp on the crossing weather forecast. One model called Windfinder said that Sunday would be the better day while Parker said that Sunday may not be pleasant. Go figure, one of them is wrong for sure but which one. So our original plan flew off the table because of that discrepancy and we decided to do another 50 mile plus day and head straight to West End.

The trip went well and we wanted to make sure that we would hit the Indian Shoal at, again, mid tide ebbing) high and low tides shift forward in time by about 45 minutes a day so you have to plan that the high tides will be in your favour so as to not get stuck in harbours with shallow channels or entering at low tide.

We were a tad dubious at being able to cross the 3 miles of the Indian cut to reach West end. Again my Blue Charts were fantastic but we had the threat of a squall which followed us for 2 hours and clearly we did not want to cross the Indian during a squall or heavy rain. Claude has to be on the bow for the duration of those miles looking out for coral heads. Again we were fortunate, we were all nervous when we saw spots at 6.6 feet and having to move the boats erratically through the shallows but again compliments to Blue Charts fro their rum lines.

We are now nicely at dock at the Old Bahama Yacht (pricey at $2 per foot) but it is our last stop in the Bahamas and good to have departing options from the closest spot to the Florida coast while winding down from 100 miles and 8 hours of sailing.

We look forward to Florida but we are prepared for nasty weather when we get there, we fully expect to be stopped for at least 3 to 4 days.

Then we will work our way North by way of Stuart, Vero Beach San Augustine and finally Fernandina where the boat will be placed on a truck and we will hit Toronto around the 15th.

See you soon