Bahamas

Sunday Jan 20 11:12 AM. Greetings from the Bahamas. We sailed out of Ft Lauderdale yesterday 10AM. Had a fast crossing of the Gulf Stream arriving off the Bahamas around sunset. Just before dark I noticed my spare anchor had shifted on the crossing…we did bury the bow into numerous waves. Sent Joyce forward to tie it down. She was soaked when she came back, sent her down for a hot shower and some dry clothes.




99% of the time I want to go faster , but in this case I had planned the passage at 6 knots, enough time to cross the Stream before the big cold front blew through and time for us to make the turn south along the Bahamas Bank (An extremely shallow area between the islands where the water depth averages 8-9 ft. Remember we draw 7 ft. a tall starfish could be a bump on the bottom. I did not want to cross that at night or in 25 kts) We were doing 8-9 kts in 25 knts..damn…we were going to arrive around 5 am if we didn’t slow down. Seems the Lady had other thoughts. Every time I reduced sail the damn boat would go faster. We took the longer route, same as the 25 + cruise ships (cattle boats) that passed us during the night. They leave Lauderdale and Miami around 7 pm and we start seeing them from 10 pm on…half coming in for a new herd of cattle and the other half with a new group of bovine ready for the fattening.(FOOD SERVICE 24 HRS A DAY) By the time the boats get to St Thomas the waterline goes up 6 inches when they all get off to spend their money on inflated duty free goods. If you don’t think the American public is obese then sit in St Thomas and watch them roll down the narrow streets…Any way…I had not slept well Fri night…damn kidney stone again…so Joyce tried to accommodate me by letting ,me get some rest early…too damn bumpy…I should have tried the saloon. (The motion in the fore and aft cabin is well more vigorous than in the center. I have been thrown on the floor more than once) so we took turns at the wheel watching the Cattle boat parade. They light up like a small city. I took the wheel about 4:30 as the last cruise ships passed. We could see the lightning in the clouds as the front approached. Joyce crashed and I reefed everything down for the blow. We made the turn about 5am..Still no front. After the turn the seas were calm in 15 kts. Joyce had a nice sail while I grabbed some sleep. I got up about 6:30…you could see the black wall behind us...the wind shifted 120 degrees in 10 min and the temp dropped 20 deg. Wind piped up to 20-25..back up to 8+ kts….started to rain hard…we decided to duck in behind on of small islands. We were cruising along the Berry Islands. ..Frozen Cay...Seems the Bahamas are broken into several groups..kind of like counties. The Berry’s are small and for the most part uninhabited except for the few under development with BIG US money.




Chub Cay where we will check in tomorrow is big bucks. You can see Arnold Palmer’s little 120 ft boat “The Bear” moored in its $450,000 slip….Well lunch time..then an afternoon of rest and movies we downloaded off of Graboid….