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“The Trip Home”
After completing repairs to our starboard saildrive, we decided to revisit some of our favorite Abaco Islands. We had several reasons for this. Some of our friends from George Town were now arriving in the Abacos on their way north, we needed to make sure the saildrive repairs were really done correct and we liked cruising these islands. We joined our friends on “Nauti-Nauti” and “Star” in Hope Town for a few days and then went on to Great Guana Cay to meet up with Truit & Val on ”Margaret”.
Finally on April 12th, we had a favorable weather window and the time had come to head Double-Wide west toward the US. Our first challenge was to sail around “The Whale”. This is a relatively short ocean passage out around Whale Cay but involves going through two ocean cuts between the islands. The cut between Whale Cay and Green Turtle Cay is pretty shallow yet the ocean just offshore is 1000’ deep and when the wind blows against the current the swells grow to enormous heights and cause what the locals refer to as a “Rage”. When we first arrived in the Abacos a Moorings 42
catamaran tried to get through Whale Cay passage during a rage and took a breaking wave over the bow, it crushed the forward windows of the main cabin allowing hundreds of gallons of sea water to flood the cabin and washed the rear doors right out of the boat. Luckily our trip through this pass was not very eventful. We did have 6’ swells but they were not breaking.
We stopped at Green Turtle Cay to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary, and to wait out a predicted cold front with winds forecast in the upper 30’s. We found a spot to anchor in a small bay call White Sound. As the storm approached more and more boats arrived in this harbor, all looking for a safe spot to ride out the storm. It seems like the bad storms always begin in the middle of the night, and this one was no different. About 03:00 we were awakened to shouts and horns from other boats. As we looked out into the pitch black harbor there seemed to be several anchored boats moving about and lots of shouting from their crews. About 10 minutes later I noticed that the boat anchored
in front of us was getting very close. Then all of a sudden our anchor was no longer keeping us in the same place. I am pretty sure that the other boat’s keel caught our anchor bridle and pulled our anchor out of the sand. I quickly started the engines and motored forward into the black night.
When it looked like we had some room between us and the other boats, I tried to winch the anchor back in but it would not come (probably still caught on the other boat). I then put out a 2nd anchor but it would not grab. So we headed for the other side of the harbor where I knew there was a sandy beach. My plan was to run the boat into the sand and get out of the way of the many boats now trying to maneuver in the shrieking 30-45 knot winds. All of a sudden out of the night I saw a pier just ahead of us. Nancy grabbed a dockline and somehow managed to toss the line over the piling and secure the bow of the boat. It was then easy for me to swing the stern in
and tie the boat up securely. All of this we did while dragging two anchors and about 200’ of anchor chain. By this time we were totally drained both physically and mentally and decided to go back to bed. The next morning the wind was still screaming but the sun was up and we were safely tied to a private pier on the side of the harbor. It turned out that the house was for sale and no one was living there, so we stayed put until the wind abated two days later.
Our stop in Green Turtle was not all bad. We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary while there and had dinner at the Bluff House resort overlooking the sea of Abaco. It was a memorable evening in a really picturesque place.
After the high winds passed we headed for our next stop Great Sale Cay. This would be our staging point for our ocean crossing to Florida. We arrived late that afternoon after a beam reach in 15-18 knots. This was a fun sail because we were able to pass 8 monohulls that were all headed to Great Sale and had left Green Turtle earlier that
morning. We spent the night and most of the next day anchored at Great Sale Cay and then started our passage to Florida just before sunset. There was a huge full moon rising over the island as we hoisted the mainsail, raised anchor and ghosted out of the anchorage at 4 knots. We sailed across the Little Bahama Bank during the night on a broad reach and reached the edge of the deep Atlantic Ocean just after sunrise. Unfortunately, the wind died and we had to motor the 68 miles across the Gulf Stream to Fort Pierce but still were able to arrive about an hour before sundown.
We checked in with the department of Customs and Border Patrol and were instructed to come to the airport after 10:00 AM Sunday morning and to bring our passports. Apparently, we were not on any kind of terrorist watch list because the agent quickly told us we were cleared into the country and we could return to our vessel.
After nearly five months in the Bahamas it seemed strange to be back in the US with all of the noise, traffic, shopping malls and the cars on the right hand side
of the road. It was good to be back where we had dependable phone and internet service and our radio and TV now worked with many stations to chose from. We are looking forward to seeing the waterway towns in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas and are especially excited about sailing the Chesapeake Bay after being gone since 1984. We hope it has not changed too much.
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