To the Abacos

Wednesday 8/28:

We left Great Harbor Key Marina and went up to Great Harbor. They are actually about 8 kts apart. That way we will have a  shot to the Abocos tomorrow.

Thursday:

Took off for the Abocos today. After we were out about 2 hours we got caught in a storm. There was a little bit of thunder and lighting but not all that bad. I learned two things about being caught in a thunderstorm at sea. First they get really windy. We had 30 knots of wind at times. We didn’t have the sails up but I will always reef when I see a storm coming. 

Second is the radar isn’t that much help when you have all the rain coming down around you. We had a tanker that was going to cross our path.  I was tracking him on radar and it looked like he was going to cross in front of us. When the storm hit all I could see was rain  on the radar and I could not see the freighter. So I had to keep an eye out for him. Which is tough to do in a storm.

Also just before we got the rain from the storm I caught another barracuda. I was pulling him in and I could see the rain getting closer. Before I got him on the boat it just poured. 

So I had Karen driving the boat and watching out for the freighter and I got soaked pulling in a fish and the dogs want to see the fish. Basically it was mass chaos.     

Anyway the storm moved on, the freighter passed  in front of us and sun came out before we got to the Abacos.

Friday:

We left Sandy point in the Abacos to go around to the other side. It’s supposed to be 60 knots around. 

Just when you think that you are starting to figure this sailing thing out the simplest things can happen. We started out and I heard a thump then a couple of them. We looked around the boat but didn't see anything, Then I looked at my starboard engine on the control panel. It was off. Then I looked and we weren’t going very fast maybe a knot. I looked over the stern and saw a rope was wrapped around the prop. I got in the water and found it was my anchor rope with the anchor attached. Everytime I take in the anchor I put a latch in the shackle to keep the anchor in place. The latch is tied off on a cleet up front. I’ve been doing this ever since I got down here.

Well the latch was untied from the cleet but still attached to the anchor. I found this out two hours later after we retrieved the anchor and removed the rope from around the prop. 

I don’t think I will describe the entire exercise Karen and I went through to get the boat back to running condition and to find the anchor, but there were several swear words involved, a lot sea water being swallowed and a good test to see if Karen really loves me or not.

This all happened on our first two miles of the trip.

The next 16 miles we’re going in a 15 kt wind with 4 foot seas. Since we were going directly into the wind we could not sail so we just had to ride it out. Max is looking a little sea sick. Its good Karen and I don’t get sea sick.

 We got around the south end of the Abacos and headed up the east coast. There is nothing between the east cost of the Abacos and Africa. So we had seas of 5 to 8 feet. We were moving sideways on them so it was an interesting ride. Basically we would go up one and then surf down the other side. My speed odometer was going from 3.9 to 6.5 kts. Everytime  I climbed on we would be down to 3.9 and when we went down the other side it was 6.5. But the nice things about these waves were there was a lot of room in between them. So you didn’t get a chopping feeling.

We anchored off of a town called Cherokee. I have no idea why they call it Cherokee. That seems like a word that doesn’t belong in the Bahamas.