Our plan was to leave Fort Pierce at around 8-10 at night to coincide with the current going out the inlet. However, there were strong thunderstorms that were moving through with lightning so we decided to wait a few hours until they were gone before we left. We ended up not sleeping at all and actually making it out into the ocean around 1 in the morning. The sail was pretty chill for a few hours with light winds and mostly just motoring across the Gulf Stream. The winds were predicted to be south/southwest which would push us across nicely however, as usual, the forecast was wrong and we got to sail upwind in 20 knots the entire second half of our crossing. The waves started to build but we were only mildly uncomfortable and mostly just disappointed in the weather forecasters.

Because we had to delay our departure that means that now we’re going to arrive in the dark.  Our destination was Sale Cay. It’s a small island in the middle of the little bahama bank. There’s nothing around so it’s where a lot of people stop to rest on their way to and from the Bahamas.  We stopped here on our first ever passage and knew that there was really nothing tricky but coming into a place in the dark is always extremely disconcerting. To make matters worse we had been watching a line of thunderstorms slowly advancing our way for most of the sail.  As we arrived at Sale Cay we realized that there was actually a lot of lightning and it wasn’t very far away.  Awesome. (Not stressful at allllll) As soon as I went forward and started to drop the anchor the sky opened up and it started dumping rain. Lightning everywhere and a torrential downpour.  I just started dumping anchor chain and since I can’t see anything I just went back inside the boat and waited it out in the cockpit with jason.  Luckily the anchor held, the storm passed by, and we all but passed out into our bed after 21 hours of sailing.