That’s right, we finally made it. We left Kemah Nov. 3 and with 1458 nautical miles under our keel (1678 landlubber miles) we’ve arrived at a destination worthy of our efforts. We left Boot Key Harbor Saturday morning at 11 am, hopeful that the light easterly winds forecast for that night would, indeed, materialize. They were blowing 15-20 knots when we left so we had bailout plans for Long Key or Rodriguez Key if they didn’t. Not only did the wind cooperate (we wanted ’em light because our heading was ENE) but the seas were a calm 2-3 ft, even across the Gulf Stream! The next morning, after 116 miles at 0830, we crossed onto the Great Bahama Banks at South Riding Rock. It is amazing to go from over 2000 feet of depth to 20 ft in such a short distance! Calm wind and calm sea made for one incredible experience here. For the next 40 miles we were motor-sailing in a vast swimming pool. The pictures we took do not do it justice.

We have 3 fuel filters for our engine; a primary, secondary and the third one (I don’t know what you’d call that). Anyway, the third one hadn’t been changed since Texas and it announced that it was overdue 3/4 of the way across the Gulf Steam. The engine didn’t die, but every 23 minutes it would race, then begin to stall, then recover. I got a new filter, the required wrench, bucket and rags out ready to do the change out if it actually died, but thankfully that never happened (thanks to our electric fuel pump, Emeril, who kicked it up a notch and pushed the fuel on thru). However, lacking full power we failed to get across the banks before dark so we anchored for the night 2 miles south of the Russel light buoy.

Anchoring in these Bahamian tidal currents requires skills that we don’t have yet, but we finally got it down. The party was over at 11pm when the 20 knot winds kicked in. I tied on a 2nd snubber to the anchor chain and we moved to the cockpit to “sleep”. Morning revealed that the hobby-horsing the boat did all night in the chop had nearly chafed the first snubber line thru. With first light it was time to get off the banks! The new fuel filters (I went ahead and changed ’em all) cured the engine’s woes and with double-reefed mainsail we beat our way across the remaining 14 miles of banks. Over the banks and into the deep water of “The Tongue of the Ocean” brought 25 knot winds and 5-6 ft seas which would have made for a fast sail to Chub Cay (14 more miles) if they weren’t just off the nose. Things calmed down a bit once in the lee of the Berry Islands and we finally made our first landfall and cleared into the Bahamas at Chub Cay Club marina.

Wow!

David and Claudia