Back in Daytona

Doug and I flew back to Daytona last night from Marsh Harbour.  I drove Doug to St. Augustine this morning so he could take the cheap flight home on Sky Bus.

 I left the boat on anchor in the Marsh Harbour anchorage.     I will go to work the Atlanta race on wednesday of next week and then plan to be back on the boat around the 12th (hopefully with Jan - as long as her schedule allows).  I'll try to post some photos from the first part of the trip later.

Wednesday Update

The Marsh Harbour Anchorage as the front approaches

You should be able to see green on the bottom of these clouds.  The reason I took this photo is because the water under these clouds (which you can't see) is such a vibrant aqua color that it refects back up to the cloud bottoms as green

Today, after listening to the cruiser's net this morning - which is a VHF broadcast for all the area boating cruisers, Doug and I decided that we'd catch a ferry from Marsh Harbour to Great Guana Cay and go to a well known restaurant and bar named Nippers.   We took the 10:30 ferry to Great Guana and took the short walk to Nippers.  Nippers is a cool spot which sits up on a dune line overlooking the atlantic ocean.   With the front approaching, the skies and seas were very interesting to see.  We had a couple of bloody marys and then ordered up some lunch.  Doug had the lobster wrap and I had a seared tuna with wasabi and soy sauce because I was missing Jan alot more than normal and that's what she'd be eating.  It was wonderful and I'll be bringing Jan to this spot for lunch/dinner when she comes back with me after the Atlanta race.

The front came through (which is always grand to watch on the water) and in mid afternoon, Doug and I walked the sandy paths from Nippers over to another bar/restaurant named Grabbers.  We sat there and talked with some other cruisers as the day's weather continued to deteriorate.    At 4:30 or so, we wandered over to the ferry dock and boarded the ferry for the 30 minute ride back to marsh harbour.   With the front coming through today, it was a better deal to take the ferry than to take the sailboat over - since we had a pretty good spot in the harbour and our anchor seems very well dug in.

Doug fixed the rest of the Mahi from the good folks we met at West End for dinner. It was great.  It's good to have someone aboard who likes to cook.   I'd eat hot dogs every day or just eat out all the time if it were up to me to cook.

Tuesday Update

We're sitting in Marsh Harbour - anchored in a crowded but happy anchorage.  We arrived around 1:30p after making our way from Green Turtle Cay.  The passage through Whale Cay Channel was uneventful.  It was some of the most beautiful water along this route that you've ever seen.

My connection is very slow, so I won't upload photos now.

We will be sitting here through tomorrow due to a cold front that will pass through here sometime tomorrow and bring strong Northerly winds for a day or so.   This is where we fly out of to go home, so worse case scenario, we just check out the general area and/or take a water ferry to another cay and hang there for a day or so.

We have boat repairs to do tomorrow.  Doug is going up the mast and will feed the halyard line down inside the mast and I'll fish it out.  We then have to try and find the weather that will allow us to unfurl the foresail, tighten the luff with the halyard and furl up again.  We'll play it by ear.

The land of unanswered questions

Ever since I first got my iPhone anytime I, or anyone around me was wondering something, I would just grab the iPhone and do a google search and find out the answer.  I would always hold the phone and say "cool huh?, there are no unanswered questions".    Well,  sunday night we were in the 'land of unanswered questions'.   Great Sale Cay, where we anchored was extremely remote. A nice island where the anchorage forms a 'question mark' shape, we were in the midst of less than 10 other boats - all with plenty of room between them to not feel like they were huddled in the middle of this beautiful wilderness.

We left West End (where I entered my last blog post) around 8:30am and headed NNW up and around Sandy Cay until we had enough water to head west and onto 

the Great Bahama Bank.  The water turned the most beautiful color  you've ever seen.  It was a 9 hour sail to Great Sale Cay where we anchored at 5:30 and enjoyed an trifecta of night sky shows.   The first was incredible cloud-to-cloud lightening off in the distance.  After that, most of the low clouds moved away and there were more stars than you can imagine.  They were super bright and densely packed.  An hour or so later, the moon rose big and orange.   It was a cool time in a cool place.

Monday morning, we were up and underway by 7:30 or 8.  We headed south around the tip of Great Sale Cay and then eastward toward the Sea of Abaco.  We put out the mainsail and then as I was putting the headsail out, we had problems getting it to unfurl properly.  I kept trying different things and finally it unfurled.  Just 20 seconds later, it became slack along the luff and I realized that the jib halyard has broken.  We quickly furled the headsail back in and just spent the rest of the day motorsailing.  We arrived into Green Turtle Cay's White Sound around 5pm and anchored in a fairly tight basin.

We took a taxi golf cart into New Plymouth Settlement and had dinner.   We'll be getting underway this morning in an hour or so. We have to cross an area called Whale Cay Channel today before a cold front arrives tonight/tomorrow because that area is unprotected from the seas and strong winds form the NW, N or NE will create a condition called 'rage' and we want to make sure we get on the other side of it.

Here's a photo of a barracuda that Doug caught during the passage across the banks.  It was about 3 feet long and we were lucky in that it was able to break free of the hook while we were thinking about cutting the line