The north mooring field at Warderick Wells, Jascat is the left most boat

We are now back in Nassau at the Harbor Club Marina. Our assessment of the damage to the starboard bow, which we have come here to fix, has improved dramatically. It turns out that our original evaluation, that the damage was relatively superficial, may be correct after all. Two days ago, while we were in Warderick Wells waiting out a night and day of rain and thundershowers, Ann made the discovery that what we thought was a vertical crack in the hull was actually just a cut line made when the carpet lining the forward locker was cut to fit. Moreover, she is pretty sure that she can see the small crack in the deck to hull joint that is causing the leak into the forward locker. If that's true, we can make a temporary fix to stop the leak and wait to do the final repair when Jascat is laid up for hurricane season. We'll be working on that tomorrow.

Just to catch up with the past several days travels here is where we have been. In Black Point, where the previous blog was written, we heard that north winds were bringing squalls and thunderstorms in a couple of days. Deciding that if we had to hunker down for a day or two, the best place to do so on the way back to Nassau was Warderick Wells. So that became our first stop and just as forecast, thundershowers came rumbling in late that night along with gusty north winds. We stayed there the next day as storm clouds continued to roll through.

Leaving Warderick Wells, we moved on to the anchorage on the west side of Norman Island. This turned out to be a not so good choice since we rocked and rolled all night to small waves surging through the anchorage. We are, however, getting used to rolly anchorages as most of the anchorages in the Exumas seem to be that way. Thus, after a good night's sleep, we set out early the next morning on a direct crossing of the Great Bahama Bank to Nassau, 37 nm away.

This turned out to be the best sail so far in the Bahamas. The northeast winds stayed moderate at 8 to 13 knots all day long and right on the beam. That along with seas no more than about one foot made for near perfect sailing conditions.

So now we are back in Nassau. We originally thought that repairs to the bow might keep us here for several days. Now it looks as though the repair might take only a day but we are still going to be trapped here by that nemesis that has dogged this entire cruise, weather. High pressure is filling in over the Bahamas bringing in strong winds out of the east. The winds are forecast to be in the upper 20's and seas up to 6 feet for the next five days.