Day 256, Wednesday March 5th – A lovely sail across Exuma Sound

Day 256, Wednesday March 5^th – A lovely sail across Exuma Sound

An early start to the day as we need to sail 50 miles and it is important to arrive in daylight with enough screw up (or catch a fish) time to spare.  The winds are out of the southeast and we are heading 250 degrees so it is a beam reach (winds 90 degrees to the boat direction).  This is a wonderful sail as we will not heel as much.  At first we wonder if the wind will be strong enough, but once out in the open we get a good 14 knot steady wind which is perfect.  No reef needed.  We hook up the fishing rod with a lure in the hopes a Mahi Mahi will join us for supper tonight.  We will cross a few contour lines, but won’t be running down any so not as good opportunity to catch something, but we will try.

Dawson spends the first hour listening to Chris Parker weather, while Julie is at the helm.  Once the weather is over, Dawson takes the helm and Julie does her French lesson.  By now a couple of hours have passed and there is no land in sight.  There are very few boats, we pass only a couple the whole trip; a sail boat heading the other way and a lone fishing boat fishing along the drop off at the Cat Island bank.  We while away the rest of the day reading and navigating.  Not a lot of attention is needed at the helm as we are in thousands of feet of water after the first hour of sailing, and it is the same tack the whole trip.

After 7 hours we see land and can start hearing people hailing on the radio.  We decide to call Syrena to see if they are in Cambridge Cay and sure enough they are.  They tell us it is pretty crowded in the anchorage.  Another boat Airtime hails us as they heard us calling Syrena.  Airtime is from Sarnia and we had met last summer in the north channel and spent more time together in the Erie Canal.  We are happy to hear from them and arrange to hook up in a couple of days.

Julie chatting to Barry at Sundowners

As suspected the anchorage and mooring field in Cambridge Cay is full so we head over to the anchorage just off of Bell Island.  We drop the hook and settle in for the night.  There was a call for sundowners up in Cambridge Cay so we head over.  Just after making this decision we hear Meridian  call in  about the sundowner.  We wonder what the young lads from Meridian are doing here as the last we heard they were en route to Eleuthra.  On the way in we see a large power boat named Meridian not the C and C 30 we wanted to see.  Oh well drinks on the beach is alright.  We socialize for about an hour see the sun go down and head back to Jazzebelle for dinner.

Dinner again is excellent but unfortunately due to our coffee shortage we have to forgo our evening coffee.  A couple of games, a bit of reading and we are off to bed.

Cheers

Dawson and Julie