March 16, 2015 Great Sale Cay to Green Turtle Cay

Both Dave and I woke during the night at different times.  But we both commented this morning about how dark and quiet it was during the night.  And I haven’t seen stars like that since I was in South Dakota. 

The weather changed for the good today.  The winds had backed down so we felt comfortable leaving for Green Turtle Key.  It was about 50 nm away so we knew we had a long day ahead of us.  Dave’s headache was gone, yay!

We have the Explorer Chartbook  of the Bahamas.  So we used that to navigate through the islands.  There are some common routes that boaters use.  We set “waypoints” on our chart plotter and let the autopilot take over between the waypoints. 

We decided to take watch rotations just to give each other a break.  It isn’t as critical for just a day trip.  About 11:30 am we were at a good angle to the wind to put up the sails.  Plus Dave wanted to be sure the main would unfurl without problems.  First we put up the jenny and our speed went from 6 kt to 8.5 kt.  So we backed off the engine from 2000 rpm to 1200 rpm and still went about 7.2 kt.  Then we put up the main sail and we went back up to 8 kt and shut off the engine.  SO PEACEFUL!  No problem with the main unfurling.  The boat actually was healing about 20-25 degrees.   We could have brought the sails in some to level out, but we were enjoying the ride.  We actually went over 9 kts a few times.  That only lasted for about an hour before we had to change our course and therefore the angle of the wind.  Once we turned into the Sea of Abaco, the wind was right on our nose.  So the engine came back on and the sails come down.  We had to get to Green Turtle Cay before sunset. 

guacamole at sea

We anchored just off of Green Turtle Cay near New Plymouth.  We can’t leave the boat until Dave goes in to clear customs in the morning. 

Sunset off our stern at Green Turtle Cay.  Anchored just in time

We ran the generator so we could run the water maker.  And we could charge our computers and phones.  We were able to get wifi from shore.  So we cancelled my phone tonight.  We cancelled Dave’s before we left, but decided we should keep one functioning in case we needed it for an emergency contact once we got here.  We are going to check into getting a Bahamian phone for emergencies or for contact with meeting visitors.  It really seems strange already to not be about to text or send a photo, or just check e-mail or Facebook.  But that’s OK. 

We were in beautiful blue water all day.  We still can’t believe we’re here.