We left No Name Harbor in Key Biscayne and sailed up north to fill our fuel tanks before the trip. While at the marina our friend Ian (who works in Miami now!) showed up to say hi and shoot the shit for a little bit.
We moved the boat further south into a better position and anchored for the night with the lights of Miami off on the horizon. Everyone spent some time cleaning the boat and putting everything away in preparation to leave the next day!
The plan was to not leave super early the next morning because Jason wanted to wait until the wind shifted directions. That was supposed to happen around noon, which would put us in place to sail overnight and get into the Bahamas at a reasonable hour in the afternoon. However once morning actually rolled around, we realized the wind shift was going to happen sooner than we thought, so we all got started on final preparations and pulling the anchor. Not everything went smoothly and while I was pulling up the main anchor it hit the secondary anchor causing it to get unhooked and chain and anchor started cascading down into the water. I kind of just stood there and looked at it, unsure as to what exactly I could do about it. Eventually it stopped and Jason helped me swap the chains so I could start pulling in the secondary chain and anchor. Of course, despite only being down there for a few minutes, the anchor had a huge mound of sticky, gross Florida mud on it. Our anchor wash hose isn’t really that long or powerful, so I usually get the process started by poking at the mud with the boat hook. That was what I was doing this time when I dropped the boat hook in the water. Awesome. (It’s our only one and It’s crucial) I had the brilliant idea to pull the anchor up and see if I could just bring the hook up with it. Unfortunately, my arms are about 6″ too short and the hook fell in the water. I got lucky and was able to run to the back of the boat and pick it up, so the day was saved! That whole experience was just kind of a shitshow and not the excitement I wanted when we’re about to embark on a 20 hour overnight sailing excursion! Either way… we got our shit sorted out and headed out the inlet and into the deep blue ocean!
Ian would mock us relentlessly if we didn’t at least try to fish offshore so we made sure we had our rods ready to go! We hooked into a small black fin tuna pretty soon into the trip. I had forgotten how much tuna bleed… I think we spent more time with a brush and bucket trying to clean the blood off of the boat (inside, deck, arch, dinghy, railings, and the hull sides…) than we did actually catching and cleaning the darn thing! …and in all the excitement I forgot to get a picture of it! 😮
Because the wind didn’t do what we thought/hoped it would do, we ended up motor-sailing across the gulf stream. Jason didn’t want to risk us going too slow and getting pushed too far north and missing our mark. The little diesels are pretty efficient so I wasn’t super worried about it, but it made for a fairly loud day. We made it across and close to the Bahama Bank right at sunset.
The cats don’t really like being underway. Duster just finds a spot on our bed to lay down and be sad. Dart gets seasick and starts wandering around randomly trying to find a good spot. We have to keep an eye on him at all times or he will try to go outside the cockpit and forward by the sails. He was “grounded” inside the boat with the screen shut for a while until he started to get sick again. Eventually he finally calmed down and found a place with a nice breeze to sleep.
This boat is very fast on a beam reach. Where Peregrine was happy going 6 knots, we had the head sail furled away and a reef in the main sail and were still going 7 knots. The problem was that if we go too fast, we’re looking at getting into the marina at like 3 in the morning…and they open at 8. So Jason minimized the sail area to slow us down. Eventually the wind changed direction and we were legitimately going slow and had to roll it all back out again. We took turns at the helm overnight and it was fairly boring (good!) but pretty bumpy. Neither of us slept well and we were very glad when the sun started to come up and our destination was looming closer on the charts!
Our destination in the Bahamas was Chub Cay Marina and we rolled in at about 8:30 in the morning completely exhausted from essentially being up all night sailing a boat! The trip took about 20 hours in total but we made it! We finally left Florida and cleared customs in the Bahamas! Time for a long nap for everyone!