Sunday, 22 April, was a relaxing day on the mooring. The town is pretty much closed down, so we did boat chores and put another coat of cetol on the teak. Noah had a great time at the sleepover on Iceni and didn’t get back aboard Intuition until almost 10 am. The kids were up several times in the night due to rain, mosquitos and general chattering.
Karen, on Tiki, came over and asked if the “Kumihimo lady” was aboard. She and Beth met in Georgetown where Beth introduced her to this Japanese braiding technique and Karen was ready to learn some new patterns. Tiki was only a few moorings away.
Monday morning we listened to the weather and it sounded like Tuesday would be the day to go. Winds and seas were too high on Monday, should moderate on Tuesday and might moderate so much on Wednesday that we would have to motor. We this in mind, Iain and I drove our dinghy out to Ridley Head, following our planned course in a handheld GPS. We had good light and low water, so we could see the coral heads clearly, even in nine foot swells. After scouting the area, we went back to the boat and downloaded the track from the GPS into the computer and compared it to the charted course using Coastal Explorer. After a few tweaks, we were both confident that we could follow the track out, even with less than ideal light on Tuesday morning.
Both families went to town and did one last shopping trip at the Food Fair. We bought the essentials; chocolate and pizza. Both were good bargains and would make for a special meal before the big crossing. The kids all wanted to buy M&M’s. After figuring out that a big bag would get them more for their money than three small bags, they split the price of a 1.5 pounder. Back on Intuition they split the booty into ziplocks and then turned Noah’s cabin into some kind of a space cruiser from Star Wars. Karen stopped by again and gave Beth a straw basket she had made from local palm fronds. It is very special with handles made out of shells.
Tuesday dawned grey with rain off to the southeast for our “big” atlantic crossing from Eleuthera to the Abacos. Checking with Chris Parker for the weather yielded a “go” forecast of East winds at 18 kts moderating to 16 later in the day in a 5 foot swell with a 4-5 ft wind chop. Dropped the mooring line at 0724 and headed out with Iceni following since we had the electronic charting capability. The routing worked well and we were safely outside the reefs by 0749 motorsailing at 7.2 kts to charge
up the batteries.
We had been so preoccupied with safely clearing the reefs that we had neglected to force Noah into the cockpit. We were headed north and the wind and seas were on the beam making for a very rolly ride. He joined us at 0815 to deposit the contents of his tummy onto the cockpit floor. Turns out he had forsaken breakfast and broken into the chocolate in the refrigerator. The evidence lay before us for all to see. A bucket of seawater quickly cleared it away.
We spotted a freighter called the “Imperial Fortune” coming in from the East and slowed down to let it pass in front of us by turning off the engine. It was interesting that this large ship did not appear on AIS. We did track him on radar and he passed 1.5 miles ahead of us moving off towards Nassau. Our speed dropped to 5 kts and Iceni broke out their spinnaker to make use of the lighter 10-12 kt breeze. This made for some nice photo ops as they caught up with and passed us. Iceni is a 40′ Warrior
and we expect them to be faster under sail than us with their additional five foot length.
Over the next three hours, the wind picked up and by lunch time we were doing 7.3 kts after putting a reef in the main. We counted nine sailboats headed on a similar course as we zipped along rolling up and down the nine foot waves. Noah was still not feeling very well, but didn’t want to follow our advice to sit up and look at the horizon. He was laying face down in the cockpit when a wave rolled us enough that he slid off the seat onto the floor. Only a couple of scuffs, but he decided to sit up
after that.
At 1338 Beth sighted land and we reefed the Jib to lessen our heel as the wind was up in the low twenties. At some point, Iceni had doused their spinnaker due to the stronger winds and we, in our fat little Island Packet, snuck by and lead them to the Little Harbor cut. With the stronger than expected winds we arrived sooner than expected and started the engine up to go through the cut. With an East wind and a rising tide the entry was relatively smooth and we were inside the cut by 1500.
Because we arrived at almost high tide, we decided to go into Little Harbor proper and take a mooring ball. The entrance is only one meter at low water and we need about 1.5 meters to remain floating so we took the opportunity to go in. The Iceni crew wasn’t interested in visiting this artist community so they went on to anchor a little further North. We hope to catch up with them in a couple of days. We covered 51.7 nautical miles from Eleuthera to the Abacos in just under eight hours. Not a bad day!
After showers and western egg sandwiches for dinner we all felt much better. Noah also had crackers and a bowl of cereal to help fill the void in his tummy. Turns out that several of the catamarans we’d met in Cambridge Cay and Spanish Wells were here for a “Manta (the brand of cat) Migration” rendezvous. Noah and I went for a dinghy ride to survey the area and found a mangrove creek and a cave he wants to explore tomorrow. There was a green sea turtle that swam along in front of us for a few minutes until he thought we were too close and disappeared under the water. Back at the boat we are hearing snapping shrimp under the hull for the first time in a long while. There could probably be a band playing under there tonight and it wouldn’t keep us awake. Time to shut the computer down and get some shut-eye.