Day 263, Wednesday March 12th – a lovely sail
across the sound
We wake up to a dark bouncy day. The wind had turned to the South East over
night leaving us exposed to waves set up by the wind. We had not paid enough attention to the
weather forecast and paid for it with our sleep.
Dawson gets up to listen to the Chris Parker show and see if
there is any changes to the weather forecast, and Julie takes the opportunity
to catch up on her sleep. By 7:30 the
show is over with no changes to the weather forecast with winds blowing 12 to
15 out of the south. Looks like it will
be a lovely sail.
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| Sails up for a great day |
Julie is up by 8 and we are underway by 8:30. We have to leave the Bank (east side of
Shroud Cay) and cross over to the Exuma Sound side (west side). The bank is shallow water 10 to 20’ deep
while the sound is over 2000’ deep, during tides there is a large flow of water
through these cuts setting up quite a current.
On the ebb tide (tide dropping) the current is quite strong going out to
the East if the wind is from the east the seas around the cut can get quite rough. On this passage the wind is out of the south
south east but we still had a fairly rough passage for about 15 minutes just
where the cut reaches the sound. The
seas were frothy with about 7 foot waves.
If you sail down here you have to avoid areas when the current is
opposite to the wind.
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| Fishing line ready for action |
We transit the cut with no issues and quickly get the fishing
line out, we have hopes of catching a third fish. As it was a rough night Julie heads below and
tries to take a nap but as soon as she heads off the jib sheet comes lose so
she is quickly back on deck to get it back under control as it is whipping
around and banging the boat. The wind is
just aft of the beam and the waves at the aft quarter on the starboard side
making for a lovely point of sail. We
single tack the whole passage (~26 miles) and average just under 6 knots. The passage was great the only problem was
that no fish sacrificed themselves to us.
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| Catching some zzzzz's on deck |
We arrive at Cape Eleuthera Resort and Marina just around 3
pm, and pull into a slip. It is a good
looking marina but not very busy. There
are two other sail boats which we are tied up next to. A Canadian boat out of Toronto, Silver Maple,
and a 40’ Sabre, Calypso which we anchored occasionally with previously. We first met them at Black Point about two
months previous. There are only so many
routes down here so you often cross paths with boats several times.
The marina has a small store where we are able to get some
beverages and do some laundry. In the
evening we head over to the only restaurant, Pascals, not to fancy but the food
was good. We head back to the boat,
catch up on our blogging and make it a very early night.
Cheers
Dawson and Julie
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