Thursday January 27, 2011

I woke up at 5AM today. I was very excited because it was a sailing day. I made a pot of decaf coffee and ate a cinnamon bun for breakfast. The cabin was a ness so I began stowing the gear. It took fifteen minutes to get everything in order. I then checked the weather. The forecast was for a sunny day with winds 10 knots out of the NE.. High today is expected to be 78 degrees.

I took a shower Double checked the GPS and the route to Great Sale Key. I rode the courtesy bike around to the other side of the marina and said goodbye to the folks on the Admiral ChiChi.

At 7:30AM I hanked the 155 Genoa to the forestay so that I would spend a minimum amount of time on the foredeck. I fired up the Honda and checked to make sure that it was cooling properly. Once the Honda was warmed up and I was confident that it would work properly, I had a brief conversation with Jim and Lee and told them that I would see them on the water. They said to monitor channel sixty-eight on the VHF radio. I tossed of the dock lines and the wind blew me backwards out of the slip. I put the Honda in forward gear and motored out of the harbor at four knots. Once out of the harbor, I raised the mainsail as the wind was on my nose and you must be pointed directly into the wind to raise the sails. The wind was a steady ten knots. I then raised the head sale and followed the track programmed into the GPS.. I followed the track. Something was not right the GPS was leading into shallow water. I then pointed the boat back toward deep water. Lee called me on the VHF radio and told me that I was going in the wrong direction. I slowed the boat down and let FinniIrish take the lead. I followed Jim closely into the shallow water of the Indian Key Channel. Ellie took a picture of the Water Mark.

At 8:30 we made the turn into the Indian Channel and WaterMark was reaching into the wind making five knots. I turned the motor off.

Nohablo is presently steering the boat. We are on a port tack making just a little over five knots. I have the FM radio on and am listening to a Bahamas radio station. It is absolutely beautiful. The sun is shining. The boat is healing over at 10 degrees. Jim turned the FiniAIrish into the wind to put up his sails when he did this I took the lead. When I look back I can see my two buddy boats. FiniIrish is about 500 yeards behind me and Passaage is about one half mile. The water over the Little Bahama Bank is turquoise. There is eleven feet of water under the keel. It is possible to see the bottom.

Her in the Bahamas you can tell the depth of the water by its color. White water is shallow. Turouoise water is deep. Nohabo has and automatic setting. I can set Nohablo to seer a straight course. When the wind and wave pus WaterMark off course Nohable automatically make an adjustment so that hae boat will go straight. I can also tell Nohable to turn right or left by pushing a button. There are two buttons one red to turn left and one green button to turn right. When I push gthe putton one time, nohable canges course by one degree. If I hold the button down for two seconds No hablo makes a course adjustment of ten degrees.

My life long friend Phil Vance gave Nohable his name. We were sailing on Lake Huron and he came up with Nohablo. Phil ssaid that was a good name for the autopiolot as it did not talk. It just makes a little haahahh when it make a course adjustment.

At about 9:30AM I pulled the banjo fishing reel out of the lazerette and let out about 100 feet of line. I’m hoping to catch a fish for dinner. If not it will be beefaroni. It is now 11AM we have been on the water for three and a half hours. I have covered a distance of 20.5 miles. 15 of those miles have been under sail. As I scan the horizon the only thing that I can see is water. Clear beautiful and very salty water. The only other humans out here are on FinniIrish and Passage. As WaterMark makes her way I’m listening to a Bahama radio station.

12:00 noon. Passages and FinniIrish just passed me. The winds have died down. Under sail we were making a good 5 knots and sometimes a little better. The winds are laying down a bit and the speed has dropped to 4 knokts. At 4 knots we will get into Grat Sale at about 7PM. That would mean sailing into the anchorage after dark. Most cruising guides tell sailors not to sail at knight unless you have local knowledge. Here in the Bahamas You need light to judge the depth of the water.

I just fired up the Honda and am now motor sailing at hull speed which means that we will reach the anchorage just before sunset at 5:57 PM. I’m tol that the angle of the sun near sunset makes it easy to judge the depth of the water.

It is really beautiful out here. As WaterMark sails herself, I can’t help think about the incredible power of God. There is something spiritual that happens to a person when they are out in the water far away from land.

It dosen’t matter how big your boat is or how much money you have. Everyone out here o the ocean is treated by God as an equal. Sometime I have to inch myself to make sure that this is real.

I cannot thank Sandy enough for putting up with me sailing trips as today is the perfect day to be on the water.

1:00PM Mangrove is off on the starboard side of the boat. I have the iPod playing and I cannot help think how much Mangrove looks like the West Sister Island in Lake Erie. The water off Mangrove key is twelve feet. Mangrove marks the half way point to Great Sale Cay. I just look on the chart. I have been misspelling the word Key. The charts show it as Cay. I will now make the adjustment and spell these little masses of land Cays.

The other boats are now way ahead of me. From this distance they look like toy boats that your float in the bathtub.

I just checked the line that I am dragging behind the boat. No bites. I mustw be going too fast at catch a fish. I am currently traveling at almost 7 knots!

2:00PM The bigger boats have passed me by and left me in their dust. They are now just a speck on the horizon. I can hardly see them.in front of me. I am truly out on the sea alone. There are some very small Cays off the right (starboard) side of the boat. The wind has diminished. I am motor sailing. I just refueled the Honda. I have developed a system. I have a small 2.1 gal can of gas. Then on deck there are three 6 gallon cans. To keep spillage to a minimum, I transfer fuel from the 6 gallon tank into the 2.1 gallon tank. This way I know that when the Honda tank gest to almost empty, I can put all of the fuel in the 2.1 gallon can into the Honda can and not over fill it. In the past I would just fill the Honda tank from the 6 gallon tank. Sometimes I would over fill the Honda tank kand gas would spill into the sail locker.. The sail locker is next to my aft bunk and it there is gas in the locker, I can smell it when I crawl into the bunk. This system works good and since I have been doing it this way no overfills and no gas in the sail locker.

Sandy was with me one time when I over filled the Honda tank and the boat smelled like gas for three days.!

2:30PM I pulled the chedder cheese out of the little cooler to have a cheese and cracker snack here on the high seas. Dave and I bought the cheese in Ft Pierce. We snacked on cheese and crackers crossing eh Gulf Stream. After I opened the original packaging, I put the remaining cheese in a zip lock plastic bag. I keep the cheese cold with ice. When the ice melts somehow it leaks into the plastic bag. The soggy cheese had a lighter coat than normal. I assume that the milky outer coat is ok to eat as I just snacked on soggy cheese. I wonder why plastic bags leak. I know that when I sail with Sandy, we always double wrap the items like lunch meat so it does not get wet. I’m still on the rhumb line making a good 6 plus knots.

At this speed, I shoud be able to make Great Sale Cay before dark. This is the kind of day that I wish everyone I know was onboard to share this awesome experience.

I arrived at Great Sale Cay at 5:00PM. Set the anchor and was in the absolute middle of nowhere. No phones, no Internet, no cottages, no people other than the folks traveling with my floatilla. I traveled 59.5 miles in just over eight hours.
The bigger boats FinniIrish and Passages beat me to the anchorage.

Jim and Ellie on FinnIrish hosted a Great Sale Cay cocktail party on their boat. When Jim got into his dingy to pick me up and ferry me over to the party, his dingy motor would not start. He tried and tried to get it going. Finally Lee from Passages rowed his dingy over to get me. I had one pineapple rum drink and was ready to crawl into my bunk.