Day 272, Friday March 21st A day of Cuts

Day 272, Friday March 21^st A day of Cuts

Well we are really torn today about where to go.  Choices are to head south to Governors Harbour which looked like a great town to visit and the winds and weather are perfect for getting there and anchoring there, or heading north to Royal Island and making our way to the Abacos.  There is nasty weather in 5 days time for a couple of days so that has to factor into the decision.  After an hour of weather and charting research we decide to point the boat north.  This truly has the feel of “the trip is over” now it is back to work getting ourselves north.  Until now it has been new territory, new exploration, but by end of day today we will be in the anchorage we landed at on Nov. 9^th when we landed after our 6 day crossing from Hampton Virginia. 

Today will start with us exiting the cut here at Hatchet Bay, transiting the Current Cut and then entering Royal Harbour via the narrow cut at it's entrance - therefore a day of cuts.

Dawson hoisting the DRS

DRS is up

The only technical challenge today is to time getting to Current cut which is a narrow passage so lots of current with the tides.  It is ideal to reach at slack tide which is about 1:30/2:00.  We say our good-byes to Miraki who are heading to Governors Harbour and weigh anchor at about 10:30.  We have 16 miles to get to the narrow passage, but by the time we get the anchor up and sails set it is 11:00 so we are cutting it close.  The wind is not as strong as we had hoped so our speed is only 4 knots.  We could run the engine but we chose to put out the asymmetrical sail instead.  This increases our speed to 5 but we were down to 2 knots for the 30 minutes it took us to rig it.  It is a beautiful sail and we are also doing some fishing with 2 lines out the back hoping to snag a mackerel or something else edible.  Unfortunately we do get a bite, but don’t manage to hook anything.

Glass Window from the water

Dawson enjoying the sail

Current Cut off the bow

We get to Current Cut at about 2:00 which we think is the desired time and there are a couple other boats around so seems like we all made the same timing decision.  Approaching the cut it was mixed water levels with shifting sands so we had to be careful not to run aground especially since it was high tide and we would be stuck until it cycled back to high tide 12 hours later and hope for a higher tide. As we are getting closer to the cut we see a dolphin on the right side of the boat.  It decides to go under the boat and pop up on the other side so we take this as a good luck sign for getting through the narrow passage.  As we get closer to the entrance to the cut and we could feel the current.  We started to accelerate and from 5 knots of speed to 10 knots of speed.  We had started the engine to ensure we could manage the boat if it was pulled in a direction we did not want.  Fortunately the current just pulled us along in the direction we wanted.  There must have been at least 4 knots of current as we normally would only do about 6 with the RPM’s we had the engine churning at.  Once we were spit out the other side of the cut the winds seemed to pick up a bit and we had to change the direction of sail to get to our destination at Royal Island Harbour.  We were now on a close reach and the boat heeled over quite a bit.  Not as comfortable a ride as we had previously.  We continued to fish, but no fish wanted to be our dinner sadly, so we took some fish out of the freezer.  This is our last serving of Mahi Mahi that we caught a couple of weeks ago.

By 4:30 we are safely anchored in Royal Harbour for the 3^rd time.  There are another 10 boats in the harbour and we suspect there will be a big sailboat race to the Abacos tomorrow.   Dinner is wonderful and we spend the evening planning and preparing for tomorrows sail and off to an early bedtime as we are getting underway at daybreak.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson