When I last left you, we were staking out lounge chairs and staying at Bahama Bay for 3 more days. Landlubbers will not understand this; boaters will—we had a weather window to travel further east to the Sea of Abaco which is the hub of the island chain. However, this means two long travel days with a beautiful anchorage in the middle.
At 8am, we were headed for the lounge chairs; by 10am, we were topped off and headed out for Great Sale Cay—more impulsive than usual for us but we were thinking about the marina docking specials ending the end of March and wanted to cash-in on some of these savings. We will be back to Old Bahama Bay when we travel west again for the return trip to FL. It will be a nice place to wait to get that weather window so I will again lay claim to that lounge chair.
The journey starts with a passage through the Indian Rock cut and here we are following a sailboat through. The Bahamas do not have many navigation markers except for a few “sticks” like this one at Mangrove Cay. With Explorer charts and GPS coordinates, navigation is fairly easy but attention is needed. Don't worry that our Chartplotter is reading " Sonar Service Lost" as we have a back-up depth sounder and sometimes we have to turn off the main one as it causes interferrence on the SSB radio--the flukes of technology.
The journey starts with a passage through the Indian Rock cut and here we are following a sailboat through. The Bahamas do not have many navigation markers except for a few “sticks” like this one at Mangrove Cay. With Explorer charts and GPS coordinates, navigation is fairly easy but attention is needed. Don't worry that our Chartplotter is reading " Sonar Service Lost" as we have a back-up depth sounder and sometimes we have to turn off the main one as it causes interferrence on the SSB radio--the flukes of technology.
We started with E winds at 12 kts. on the quarter with 1-2 ft. chop and could only manage 6.7 kts due to the wind, waves and tide. By noon, we were in 2-4 ft seas and 15+ kts winds. We thought that we would have more favorable conditions based on the weather station readings at Bahama Bay, but as we journeyed further east, winds and waves increased.
After 48 miles, we pulled into Great Sale Cay and set the anchor in a sandy bottom with great holding. Except for the turquoise water, this could have been an anchorage in the Apostle Islands although we did have 3 sided protection so could sleep well.
We were contacted by Jeannie and Hans on “Mischief” to come over to their Hatteras trawler for cocktails. Who could resist an invitation like that? They are former Loopers who have done the Loop and Downeast Loop and are here in the Bahamas for the first time from their home port in Jacksonville. They have 2 months to explore the area and we only have a month so our plans are different but it was great to compare notes and swap information.
Our night ended with a full moon and a galaxy of stars overhead.
