Those of you on our SPOT satellite e-mail distribution list should now know that we arrived in the Bahamas yesterday (Thursday) morning. We sailed from Port Saint Lucie to Palm Beach as planned, and spent a night at anchor there. However, we then decided to do the crossing to the Bahamas differently that what we told you we'd do.
The wind direction was exactly wrong for sailing from where we were to where we wanted to be. The wind was coming right straight from the direction we wanted to go and the weather forecast said that things wouldn't change any time soon. So we knew it would take longer to make the crossing than we'd originally hoped. Therefore we decided to do it as a night-time crossing so that even with the extra time required we'd still arrive during the daytime. We rested up at Palm Beach during the day, and then in the late afternoon pulled up the anchor and left.
We sailed through the night... which is something I absolutely love doing. Sailing under a starry sky is an incredible joy for me. Since Judie is an early sleeper while I'm a late sleeper I took the helm during the first part of the night while she slept. Then during the second part of the night she took the helm while I slept. It worked out very conveniently for both of us.
I removed the bimini (the canvas cover over the cockpit that shades us from the sun during the day), because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see the stars while seated at the helmsman's position. It was worth doing. The stars were absolutely glorious. The Milky Way was clearly visible, and even the various branches of it could easily be seen. There were more stars in the sky than most people ever see. Even a couple of falling stars. On the horizon there were lots of clouds and even some very impressive thunderstorms, but they stayed away for the most part. Occasionally some clouds would pass overhead blocking my incredible view of the stars, but not too often. Only one squall hit us during the crossing (bringing rain and stronger winds) but it passed quickly.
The moon came up soon before I turned the helm over to Judie. It was quite bright and completely spoiled the view of the starry sky. So Judie completely missed seeing the Milky Way in all its glory and she could only see a very tiny fraction of the stars that I saw. But she didn't mind. The moon reflected on the ocean's surface is a very impressive sight too.
We arrived at the western-most part of Grand Bahama Island in the morning. That's the location where I activated the SPOT system to tell you we had arrived. I'd hoped to spend the night there, but we quickly discovered that the sea bottom there isn't good for anchoring. It was so hard that the anchor couldn't bite in to where it would hold us reliably. So after several failed attempts to anchor at several locations on the western tip of the island we finally decided to move to another part of the island for the night. In fact, since we were tired from the overnight journey we decided to splurge and stay at a marina rather than anchoring. (That way we could have internet access to tell all of you what's up... except that we've since discovered that although the marina does have a wireless router which we can always connect to, their server can't actually connect to the internet 90% of the time. Apparently they share an internet connection with a whole lot of other people. Oh well... if we're patient and keep trying then eventually we can get online for a few minutes.)
We're now in a place called Sunrise Marina, near the town of Lucaya on the southern part of Grand Bahama Island. We'll stay here for a couple of nights before moving on to somewhere else. I chose this marina because it's right next to one of the boat yards that I had called by phone before leaving Utah to see if they could store out boat for a while when we return to Utah in August. I liked what the manager told me over the phone but I wanted to check it out in person before deciding where to leave the boat. (FYI, I liked what I saw today at this boat yard and so although I'll be checking out a few other alternatives before making the final decision, if I had to go with this boat yard, I'd be OK with it.)
"Where will you and Judie sail to next?", you ask. Ah... that's the beauty of being on a sail boat. We'll just see which way the wind is blowing and let that decide where we go next.
Talk to ya later.
Doug
p.s. Here are a couple of photos
First, this is the marina we're in now and that's the boat yard in the background.
And then this is the spot near Palm Beach where we anchored for a night after we left Port Saint Lucie and before we took off for the Bahamas.
In case you're wondering why I'm only sending pictures of the boat rather than pictures of us... it's that neither one of us feels particularly photogenic. You might not see many (or even any) photos of us on this blog. Or then maybe you might... we'll just have to wait and see.
Bye for now,
Doug
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