Darkness was upon us as we departed Great Inagua and we had quite a light show both to our North and Southwest. Thunderstorms had been predicted over Cuba and The Bahamas and somehow we were in an unaffected area. It was beautiful to watch from a distance. Lightning is the thing we fear the most, it's very random and there is no way to prevent a strike.
We had 12 knots of wind on our beam, perfect sailing conditions. We settled into our night watch schedule, with Jody taking the 2100 to 0200 shift. We like to do 5 hour shifts when we are double handed. You get a decent amount of sleep and only have to wake up once during the night, hopefully. My shift was 0200-0700. I slept in the cockpit because it was very warm and humid below.
We were sailing through the Windward Passage, between Cuba's East coast and the West coast of Haiti. We were favoring the West side of the Passage for a couple reasons. Number one, there are favorable currents on the West side and number two, there are reports of Haitian fisherman prone to piracy. We had no issues at all and sailed along through the night.
The wind picked up around midnight. We had 17 knots gusting to the low 20's so we put a reef in the main. This makes the sailing more comfortable and the wind vane holds its course better with a reef. When I came on watch at 0200 the seas had built up a bit but we were still sailing nicely.
On watch we like to listen to music and podcasts or look at the stars. Sometimes we read but at night it ruins my night vision. The sunrise was beautiful but with it the winds started to fade, because we were now in the wind shadow of Hispaniola. We started the diesel engine and motor sailed with the main and staysail at low RPM's to conserve fuel. We didn't know how much we would need to motor and we were unable to top off our tanks in Great Inagua. Diesel fuel is expensive there and reputed to be dirty.
At 0930 we got some wind from the Southeast, around 10 knots. We were sailing a close reach at 6 knots with some favorable current giving us a boost. The wind came and went all day and by 2000 hrs (8:00pm) we had been underway 24 hours and made 136 nautical miles. Around 11:30 pm we started to pick up the Tradewinds as we emerged from Hispanola's shadow. We were back to making 6.5 knots on a beam reach and life was good.
The next morning we were almost abeam of Jamaica making 7-8 knots with 5-7 foot seas. This was the sailing we expected in The Caribbean Sea. We had a reef in the main and the ride was pretty comfortable. Around 1:30 pm we made our final course change and we're pointed directly for Colon. We had caught up to our friends and from here on our courses diverged. They were bound for Bocas Del Toro, Panama. We said our goodbyes on the VHF radio and were looking forward to when we see them again. This night was to be our roughest of the passage.
Around 6:00 pm the winds had picked up significantly. We had 18-22 knots gusting to 30 and squalls to 35. One squall in particular caught our attention. We were sailing with a double reefed main and the staysail, which is a great sail plan for this kind of weather. We can still easily take a 3rd reef for the main if things get sportier and the boat sails well. Conditions remained like this through the night until mid-morning the next day. Around 1030 we unrolled the jib as the winds eased a bit. We had 15-19 knots, the seas had settled some and we were smoking along at 7.5 knots. We had done 151 nautical miles in the previous 24 hours, not bad.
As we got closer to Colon, the wind began to veer and we were sailing a broad reach. We dropped the staysail, which is less effective off the wind and continued with full main and jib in 15 knots. We were still making 6.5 knots and caught a smallish Mahi. It was starting to get hot during the day. Sometimes there was cloud cover but when the sun was out we hid behind shade screens in the cockpit. The seas had settled enough that we could play backgammon in the cockpit. We have 1000 point tournaments which sometimes last for weeks.
The next few days were on and off motor sailing as the wind became lighter and was more over our stern. When the wind is going in the same direction as the boat our apparent wind is decreased. We were excited though, because we only had 150 miles to go and we had conserved our fuel well so we could motor the rest of the way if necessary.
We arrived in Colon on the 18th of May, 5.5 days in total covering 812 nautical miles. We were amazed at all the commercial shipping in one place....This is definitely a cross roads of the ocean. We felt very small as we wove our way through these ships and got permission to come into the canal zone. We had reserved a slip in Shelter Bay Marina which is just inside the breakwater.
Once in our slip we celebrated with a shower ashore and a meal in the restaurant. Then we began to get to know our new temporary home. We will leave the boat here for a couple months as we travel to Arizona to see our kids and new grand baby, Margot Rae. We plan to return in late Summer and being to explore under sail the Caribbean Coast of Panama. There is so much to see here and we are also close to Columbia, Peru and Costa Rica.