I added info on this chart - our track in purple & other locations
10-29 It was a pleasant morning, cloudy, just a bit windy but calm seas. Pulled the anchor at 8:00. Again, the forecast was ‘iffy’ - a front was coming from the north-but when? Wayne calculated that it would take us about 11 hrs to arrive in Grand Bahamas. He admitted that he forgot to set the alarm for about 6am so as not to get there after dark. It’s gonna be tight as calculations showed we should arrive about 7pm - just getting dark. The first 5 hours or so were really enjoyable - we had gentle swells, not big & not close together. I was able to clean the head; cut onions & make tuna salad; work on my pictures & log; clean the galley; I grilled bratwurst for Wayne’s lunch & so on…It came on ever so slowly - the rocking, the rolling, the pitching - progressively more each time. Finally, you realize something’s changed - the wind was clocking around & the swells hitting us more on the beam. We deployed the fish. Soon, the waves were 5-8’…& maybe every 7th wave rolled us so much that the Para-vanes almost touched the water. This was NOT good as we still had about 6 hrs to go probably more since we loose about a knot when the fish are in. Things were falling down inside the boat that never moved before. Finally, we saw land but we also saw the trough of the front. Can we make it before dark? We still had about 4 miles until we could get into the Lucayan Waterway where we would anchor. Suddenly, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees, the wind picked up even more, the sun was setting & the rain started - oh shit! I do NOT like to travel in the dark. I felt somewhat safe as I could see the lights on the island. However, when I looked up again there was not one light to be seen!- not one! Did the whole island loose power from the storm or what??! I made Wayne go look too just to be sure I wasn’t in the Twilight Zone alone. He said the rain was obscuring the lights - Oh sure…every light on the island? Now I’m scared. We have the worst conditions you can imagine to enter a place you’ve never been to before - in the dark - and 
raining as hard as it can. I am always the chosen one to don rain gear & be outside to face the storms. It was no different this time. Thank God for digital charts-they show having to go in-between breakers from a coral reef & hopefully see the red & green markers to enter the channel. Sounds good-right? At night, everything is deceiving. Lights appear to be closer than they are so you think you’ll run right into them. The ONLY good thing was it was a bit calmer as we approached land. We made it into the channel & I was on the fly bridge working the search light manually - one side of the channel to the other until we found a shoot off the waterway & into another canal…that’s where we anchored. I was sopping wet, exhausted & would have kissed the ground had there been any under me. Neither one of us had an appetite we just wanted to stop. We stayed here for 2 nights & decided to get a dock in Port Lucaya. Sadly, no pictures of this wild adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment