Full Circle

Here at last, we passed by the waypoint for Stocking Island which we put on in Cape Town at 4.00PM yesterday. We all had mixed feelings as we motored up the channel on the last mile to the St Francis Resort. While we felt a real sense of pride and acheivement at taking TS over 8,600 miles to her final destination with no damage to her or injury to us, we were sad that the challenge had come to an end. But what a boat, she has done everything we had asked her to and never once did any of us feel that she couldn't handle the wide variety of wind and weather that we encountered. She is seaworthy, seakindly, safe fast and lots of fun to sail, in fact yesterday we were competing for a few last moments at the wheel. Nick put out his lure as we left Rum Cay and between there and the northern tip of Long Island we caught a baracuda, a long fin tuna and a female dorado. The barracuda we released and the other two were kept. We had some of the tuna raw for lunch, it had a red m at which was quite chewy and mild flavoured. Great sailing with little or no swell because we were sheltered from the Altlantic once we passed Long Island. The St Francis Resort is lovely and straddles the Island, it can only be reached by boat. There are eight units and they overlook the Eastern side of the Island which is a one and half mile long beach with no other houses or resorts on it. Lynda, Steve and I went for a walk along the beach this morning we didn't see anhyone for the hour we were there and the colours were spectacular with the Caribbean blue contrasting with the dark storm clouds blowing in form the North east. The resort is owned and run by George and Gillian Godfrey and their son Greg. They have been so hospitable to us, they had us for a braai yesterday and for Thanksgiving Dinner today. The Resort would be really lovely for a quiet week or so away from it all and has rave reviews on Trip Advisor.

TS will now be run as a charter out of here by Sandy and his wife Elinor (www.tequilasunrisecharters.com and email tequilasunrisecharters@gamil.com) it will also be available for prospective customers of St Francis yachts to come and see.

Thanks to all of you for your comments which we have really enjoyed reading, it was fun to know that you were following us along the way. If you have never been to sea and get a chance to do so take it because until you have spent some time out of sight of land on the ocean you have only experienced half this world.

Goodbye its been so much fun and a a great experience.

"....deciding that I had come to the end of the road. I wrote a note to the boatyard, putting my boat up for sale. I said I was, "coming off the water". But as I typed the sentence, I doubted that I meant a word of it. If no buyer turns up, I know what will happen. I will instruct the yard to put her in again - "just till somebody comes along". And then there will be the old uneasiness, the old uncertainty, as the mild south-east breeze ruffles the cove, a gentle steady morning breeze, bringing the taint of the distant wet world .....There will be the sloop, there will blow the wind, once more I will get under way."

E.B. White (1899-1985)

Well here we are at Rum Cay, this is most likely our last stop before the final destination of Stocking Island just oppoosite Georgetown on Great Exuma.

Yesterday we had a delicious lunch of raw Wahoo Tashimi freshly caught by Nick and accompanied by pickled ginger and wasabi, the meat was firm and amild flavoured then for supper Nick caught us a Dorado which Sandy cooked on the braai and Lynda made a delicious potato saled to accompany. the dorado was similar to tuna, quite a dark coloured meat.

For the last twenty rfour hours we've been rocking an rolling in a strong north east wind. Top speed under a reefed main and full genoa, we hit 15 knots and under only a one third genoa last night we were averaging 10 knots. When I took over from Nick at 2.00 Am we were in the middle of torential rain storm and then ten minutes into my watch I was drenched by a wave breaking over the starboard hull. Then half an hour later, I was thrown off the helm seat by a particularly heavy wave knock. We don't know what it is with Steve and fish but he left his head (bathroom) port hole open last night and when seated on the throne he was deluged by sea water, as he was cleaning up we found a fish flopipng on the floor, it was either the light shining through the port or his obvious attractiveness to fish. that lured the poor thing in. We prefer the latter.

We came in here at day break and are anchored at the south west end of a fairly large low lying coral and sand isalnd. We are sheltered in behind a coral reef in about 2 metres of water. There is a lot of fish life around the coral heads here and the water is lovely and warm.. Sandy has gone to shore to see if ther are any customs etc here and if not we'll all go for a recce as there appears to be a small community at the head of the bay.

We have started encountering more cruise ships as we move closer to Florida where so many of the cruises start. They look like floating electric birthday cakes and can be detected over the horizon by the glow in the night sky. Last night I spotted one on the AIS system, but we can only get the AIS details at about 5 Nautical miles out. This one, a Celebrity cruise ship was 978 feet long and 167 feet wide and was travelling at 22 Knots. When it first showed up, we were travelling at eight knots and the AIS showed that we would pass under it's bow one (1) NM in front, but we were converging on each other at a speed of nearly 30 knots and at that speed this would occur in approximately ten (10) minutes, so discretion being the name of the game I headed up nearly forty degrees so that we would pass port to port. When she came abeam she was only about 2 miles off and quite literally looked a floating amusement park with bright gaudy multi-coloured lights all over her. Nick tells us that on the private yachts he crews they generally make radio contact on channel 16 changing to 68 or 69 and confirm their presence and then tell them what actions that they are taking. This is then recorded on most large ships. Also the radio officers are usually quite interested in whoyou are and where you are going and can give you the latest weather etc.

Nick had some luck fishing this morning, and caught a 10 lb Wahoo, which is a member of the mackeral family. We were sailing along at 10 to 12 knots so that gives you an idea as to how fast they can swim.

We are only about 200 nms from Stocking Island our destination in the Bahamas and so we have been making good time. The Islands up here are much flatter than those in the Lesser Antilles and their geology appears to be to be more coral and sand than high volcanic hills. Mayaguana is only five miles off and we still can't see it, no wonder there were shipwrecks before GPS chartplotters were commonly available, in fact at the moment we are passing a wreck a les than a mile to port showing a funnel and a foredeck!