Roger’s review of the long range weather forecasts for the continental US made us reconsider our plans and decide to return to Florida in the weather window opening tomorrow. We have 11 days left in our cruising permit here, but are concerned that the next window will not open until after the permit expires. While we probably could overstay it without paying and not get caught, we decided it is not worth the risk, nor is it worth the $500 to extend the permit. So, it is off to Great Sale Cay, roughly 50 NM. It was a beautiful sail, much of it wing on wing. For our non-sailing friends, that means that one sail is off to one side while the other is off to the other side and the wind is directly behind the boat (or close to that). It is a little bit of a challenge to helm that as you can easily do something called an unintentional gybe which is dangerous for crew and rig. Since I figured out to let my hips move with the boat and my hands with the helm though, it is just plain fun!

Leaving Powell Cay, we were not sure if we would be heading on to Florida at 9 pm that night for a shorter sail to Fort Pierce or would leave the next morning at dawn heading to New Smyrna. Roger would be downloading weather along the way to help with the decision. We were not sure if we would have data at the next anchorage though. Ultimately, we figured that we would be doing more than 30 hrs. without a good sleep either way and opted to ride the gulf stream and land further north. We arrived at Great Sale before sunset and got ready for the jump across and a good night’s sleep. Oh and luckily we had data from the western anchorage there!

April 7- Roger’s weather routing showed about a 30 hr crossing time regardless of the model he used so that was encouraging. We would be in deep ocean and use the Gulf Stream current to help us move. I did a 30 hr jump in November from Charleston NC to St. Mary’s GA with Roger and Peter and it was not pretty for me at night…tossed my cookies and generally felt like crap. I finally tried a higher dose based on Peter’s experience and that seemed to work. I used that dosage on our crossing from Egg to Abaco and it worked great. For those who get motion sick, Stugeron does not stop that feeling I get in my head (think head down in the passenger seat as the car goes around a curve 😉) but instead of having a wave of nausea follow….nada. It is FANTASTIC! Consequently, I was very excited for this jump and being on night watch helming.

Roger had fit the boat to use our spinnaker pole to hold out the front sail for wing on wing and we had a preventer set up to stop unintentional gybes. This made our sailing even more fun and kinder to our sails. We switched helm duty every 2 hrs during the day hours. The wind was a little less than forecasted but we were making good enough time as we crossed the banks and said goodbye to the Bahamas. We had a hard deadline to get into a save anchorage of Saturday night as there was a very big storm hitting by early Sunday morning. When the winds died, we finally gave up, furled sails and started the engine. After about 4 hrs and just before sunset the winds filled in. We were approaching the Gulf Stream and hopeful that we would get enough current boost to stay on track…we were going for the Ponce de Leon inlet! I was greeted by a beautiful nearly full moon and Venus once again. They have been frequent companions in the night sky on this trip and I was happy to have them guiding us home.

We were taking 1.5 hr shifts overnight with the hope that we could each catch ~1 hr of sleep during our time off. I was much more likely to accomplish that given my gift to fall asleep quickly (thanks universe!). Roger took the first shift starting at 8 pm. When I came up from sleeping below to take over at 9:30 we were clearly in the stream since we were going above 8.5 Kts. That is fast for a sailboat. By the time Roger came up after his attempted sleep we were doing above 9.5 Kts and I had seen 10.1 Kts speed. We had full sails up and the wind was 17 Kts with gusts to 22. The sailing was vigorous but the gusts did not overpower my ability to helm, or at least not much. Roger next shift saw 10.5 Kts or better with periods sustained at 11.7 and a top speed of 12.1 Kts! That was our top, the next shift saw our speeds dropping into the 9 range, we were coming out the other side of the stream ☹. But. we made up for the slow motoring earlier and were on track to get to the inlet in the afternoon.
We gybed over (turned the boat so that the wind was coming over the port sides instead of starboard) to head towards Florida and off the stream. Alas, we forgot that the preventer was on the boom (a rope that was holding the boom off to the port side) as we set up to gybe. This meant that we put a lot of downward force on the boom before we realized our error and released the preventer to complete the gybe. As we gybed I heard a metal on metal ting sound (out of Roger’s hearing range). Once the boat was settled on the new tack Roger noticed that we had broken the outhaul on our boom. That is the fitting that attaches the back point of the sail to the boom. Roger made a quick rig fix to allow us to get some power out of the sail, but it was not going to perform well now. We sailed about 1.5 hrs that way and rather than being bummed that the wind was dying, it was ok. It was an old fitting and we are glad that it broke then and not when we were flying in higher winds earlier. That would have been rather a bigger deal to handle!

Within minutes after turning the engine on, Roger noticed a dolphin. Within a few minutes we had a pod of dolphins playing in the bow wake of the boat. I saw 7 jockeying for position at one time and there were many others out further. It was SOOO much fun to watch them play. I found that if leaned out over the side they would roll on their sides to look at me, it was wonderful to connect with them that way. Roger said he was not sure who was having more fun, them or me 😊.

About 5 hrs later we were approaching the Ponce de Leon inlet. The guide books and web sites are very cautious about this inlet, it can have lots of pushy currents, shifting shoals and breaking waves. Happily, it was not physically difficult though we were both nervous as we moved along a jetty with breaking waves just to our right side and small sport boats and jet skies zipping around us. Though we had wanted to stay at a marina for the storm, we could not find one and so we headed full circle back to the anchorage where I had joined Roger on Dec 20.