We planned on checking out of Spanish Wells, sailing a nice day sail to Chub Cay, and then leaving from there however it didn’t end up working out like that. As usual we have no idea what day it is, so we assumed the customs office would be open. It wasn’t because it was Saturday. We called the marina at Chub Cay and they charge $100 for the privilege of using their dock even for landing a dinghy so that was out. In the end, we called the Spanish Wells custom office enough that they decided they could just process our paperwork online in their program and we didn’t need to come in at all! Hopefully they’ll eventually make this the process because it was so easy and fast. Either way, we’re now good to go! We spent the night at anchor and left early the next morning at 6am with the sunrise! The winds were lighter than expected but not too bad so we hoisted the spinnaker to take full advantage.
Luckily the day was mostly boring with the light wind just bobbing along making progress West towards Florida. The spinnaker was up all day!
Our desired landfall is Fort Pierce where we are going to have the boat hauled out of the water for new paint and some small maintenance. Unfortunately that inlet can get nasty if the current and waves oppose each other so we had to time our arrival to be at slack tide or after. That meant that we had a schedule to follow. (Always an undesirable situation). In hindsight we should have known better but we chose to keep our speed up and left our spinnaker flying at night. Now, jason drove the boat all day while I napped around but when night came around he crafted me a quad shot latte (loooove that latte machine!) and went to bed. The first part of my watch was uneventful. The boat was sailing excellently and there was no land or traffic to worry about. I was just sitting there making sure nothing weird happened. However around midnight we started inching closer to Freeport harbor. Fun fact, Freeport is a major shipping port littered with cruise ships, cargo ships, and other traffic…and I’m rolling in here at night with a huge sail up and there are ships everywhere. And *of course* when we start getting close the wind starts to shift around. Meh. What I learned is that the cruise ships just make huge laps all night long at 15 knots so the passengers think they’re getting their moneys worth. The cargo ships are the opposite. They shut down their engines and just drift with the current at 1 knot even though their tracking data shows them as “under power.” The wind starts to pick up now to over 20 knots which is more than is safe for the spinnaker. I, unfortunately, have to wake Jason up to wrestle the damn thing down onto the deck. That ended up needing both of us because of the wind and the darkness making everything harder than usual. At the end, though, we got it settled and Jason got to go back to sleep. I think the caffeine and terror kept me awake because I was literally wired until like 4 in the morning when I finally decided I was bored of sailing and allowed Jason to take over again.
Sleep was awesome. I slowly realized I should probably get up and check on Jason and the boat. Everything was as I left it. The sun was now up and since I was up also Jason decided we should put the spinnaker back up because the wind had really died down. So we did. And it was a hassle since we didn’t put it away right because it was dark. Eventually though, we gave up on sailing and had to start the engines to make sure we got to the inlet on time.
After spending so much time around “real” sailors, people who have been or are going around the world etc I feel a little bit like an imposter having only been to the Bahamas. It’s so close, does it even count? Maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t but there’s still nothing as rewarding as heading back in the inlet after successfully sailing your boat to another country across the open ocean! It’s exhilarating!
Welcome home True North! We made it! 🙂