4.26 – Friday

Since we couldn’t stay at the marina, we were forced to anchor in a place known for swift currents and poor holding. We set the anchor well, so I slept until the current changed, and then I didn’t sleep at all. I didn’t sleep the night before our crossing either, so at best I’ve had catnaps for the past two days. Needless to say, we need to move to a secure anchorage.

We had to go out into open water today, and the wind had built up quite a bit of swell. However, we soon turned into a shallow, narrow cut and the waves smoothed right out. We’re using new chartplotting software on the tablet today (iNavX) so that takes some adjustment, especially in such a shallow area.

This feels crazy. The water is about 12 ft deep and jewel-toned teal blue. The wind is almost perfect, probably about 10 kt, we’re sailing on a beam reach and making about 5.5 kt. We haven’t engines-off sailed – seriously! – since our delivery from Ft. Lauderdale right after we bought the boat. Every time we’ve been offshore, the wind has been either too calm or right on the nose. It feels like magic.

We covered about 50 miles today to get to Great Sale Cay. This was easily our best travel day since we bought the boat. Absolute textbook sailing weather, perfect wind and almost perfect swell. Gorgeous water. I honestly thought days like this were unicorns.

Great Sale is pretty remote, we lost cell coverage early in the day and never got it back. It’s uninhabited and it doesn’t look like there’s much to do ashore, but we’re staying here two nights because we definitely need a recovery day.

4.27 – Saturday

Instead of exploring the island, we did chores all day. I think we need to learn that after a couple big travel days, we need a day off for chores, and THEN we can take a day to explore.

We ran the watermaker for a few hours today. Kyle cleaned up the cockpit, which needed a deep clean after we caught the mahi. As he was doing that, he realized that the transom locker drain was plugged and a lot of the cleaning supplies – including metal cans – were sitting in salt water, so he had to clean that as well. I used the fresh made water to do all our laundry, which had really piled up, I had more clothing than clothes pins!

We both got haircuts today, mine was desperately needed. Poor Kyle had to pep-talk himself through the whole thing, even after I reassured him there was no way to screw it up. I researched a lot of our upcoming anchorages, what there was to do and see, which ones had good protection, and picked out a few choice destinations.

Kyle noticed the port engine compartment had water in it – he’d made sure both were completely dry before we crossed – so he started to change the port raw water pump. As he did that, he realized the hose was cracked, so he put the old pump back on with a new hose. We’ll see if that solves it, if not we’ve still got the spare raw water pump.

One other thing. We clearly have the wrong courtesy flag. I thought a courtesy flag was just the national flag, but apparently that is not correct. Every other boat here is flying a flag that is three quarters red rectangles, and the national flag is the last quarter. So next time we reach civilization we’ll have to look for a chandlery to get the correct courtesy flag.

4.28 – Sunday

Today we moved on, getting a bright and early start because we knew it would be a big day. We knew we’d be going against the wind, so it would be slow and probably kind of rough. We left the anchorage heading almost straight north, and when we got past the island we were going to turn almost straight east. Somehow the wind was on our nose the whole time – no matter which direction we went we were too close to the wind to sail.

After we got past the island, we tried motor-tacking – driving as far to one side of the channel as we could, then turning toward the magenta line to see if we could sail. That was a no-go. Finally there was wider part of the channel and we managed to turn the engines off for about an hour, but we really spent the whole day bashing into the wind and waves. Like usual.

One unusual thing – we’ve seen these spots of glowing blue water. It’s almost white, it makes it look like there’s a very shallow shoal, but the charts show 15-20 ft depths. I skirted the edge of one and never lost any depth, so with the next one I was a little braver. We didn’t realize what was going on until that evening. There are no tricks of sunlight in the photo below, it’s all evenly lit.

This is the first time our anchor didn’t set on the first try, we’re learning we have to look for sandy spots and drop there. When we pulled up the anchor, we swirled a bunch of sand into the sea and it looked exactly like those glowing blue spots – so something must be stirring up sand out in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what it is!

Over 12 hours after we left the anchorage, we dropped anchor at Spanish Cay. Our friends on Y Dream said they were headed there, so we waited for them to arrive (they move faster than we do, so by all accounts they should have beaten us there, or at least been within sight when we anchored). Eventually they texted and said they had engine trouble. We can’t go ashore on Spanish Cay because it’s privately owned, you can only go ashore if you stay at the marina. I’m not sure why they wanted to stay there, I’m ready to move on to somewhere I can explore!

4.29 – Monday

We left around noon to go to Powell Cay, which has a big list of things to see and do. It’s only an hour away from Spanish Cay, by 1pm we were anchor down and making lunch.

It was a little stormy this afternoon, we hopped in the dinghy to snap a few photos of the glowing water with the dark sky in the background, but that was it.

Tomorrow we’ll go exploring!