Back to Nassau, arriving through the eastern channel this time. We pulled back into Nassau Harbour Yacht Club to do our Customs out-processing. The Bahama Immigration/Customs website actually works fairly well when you have good coverage and understand how the website works. We had all the required information uploaded and our checkout only took a few minutes (after the two hour wait for the customs folks to come to the marina). It seems their main concern is that boaters who bring guns into the country show they are exiting with the same weapons and ammunition that they arrived with. For us, they never came to the boat and just stamped my paperwork.
First light on the 6th and we are heading out, passing by Atlantis on Paradise Island. The wind was calm in the harbor allowing us an easy departure from our slip.
Passing by the Nassau lighthouse on our way out the Western channel.
Nassau in our wake in the distance. We had a good sailing day to the Northwest Channel where the wind died and we had to motor for the next 12hrs up the bank to the Gulf Stream where the wind picked up again.
Sunset as we pass through the Northwest Channel and head up the Bahama Bank towards the Gulf Stream. Its another 18-24hrs before we make our landfall in Florida.
Sunrise on the 7th, we are off the bank and approaching the Gulf Stream. Was a quiet night with basically no marine traffic and light winds. We motored all night long and are now setting the sails to sail across the Gulf Stream with the wind rising but safely from the south.
We've been checking the engine bilge every few hours to see how bad the leaking is since we had to run the engine for the last 12hours after sailing for 12hours out of Nassau. There is only a wee bit of water. The leak seems to have sealed itself. That's good news as we can now sail to the Florida coast then will need the engine to get into harbor. We'll be able to get within range of Towboat US if we should need to secure the engine and get a tow into a repair yard.
Sue is off her 4-6am watch. Time for a short nap before coming back on watch in 4hrs or so. Rivah's keeping her warm.
Sue is back on watch and took this picture to show that the complex passing situations always seem to arise when she is at the helm.
The maritime rules of the road are straight forward when two ships are passing. But when you introduce a third ship it can get interesting. We are in the center of the screen with a merchant ship coming from the right and a sailboat coming from the left. We have the right of way over both of these vessels and they are both supposed to pass behind us. However, if both alter course to pass behind us, they are then heading right at each other.
The merchant ship asked us to alter course and pass behind him (a good safe option anyways) and the sailboat acknowledged that he would pass behind us as required. It all went smoothly and safely but required some communications over the radio. The advantage of AIS (automatic identification system) is all the ship's names are available to support calling them. This was our first trip with our AIS transmitter and we were contacted by multiple vessels along the way to coordinate passing.
Here we are sailing along the western wall of the Gulf Stream. Our boat icon symbol shows you where the bow of the boat is pointing (towards shore) while the blue arrow shows the direction the boat is actually moving. In the data window our SOG (speed over ground) is 12.1kts. Given that the max hull speed of our boat is less than 7.4kts, this means the Gulf Stream is flowing at about 4.7kts through here. These speeds moved our ETA to Fort Pierce up from about 7pm to nearly 3pm this afternoon.
An earlier arrival time would be great as we need to get into port and anchored before this frontal squall line arrives later this evening. We should have plenty of time as the squall line is not expected till after dark and we want to be anchored well before dark. But this type weather dictates that we will pull into Fort Pierce and not continue up the coast offshore to Port Canaveral.
Safely pulling into Fort Pierce channel, around 1700. You can see the thunderhead cumulus clouds building to the west. Rain coming tonight.
All was going super as we crossed the Gulf Stream with some impressive speeds. All up to two hours out of port when the wind suddenly shifted from the south to the north (with the approaching cold front) and went to 15-20kts on the nose. Our ground speed went from 7-8kts to 2-3kts almost immediately. We remained 2hrs out of port for nearly 2hrs as we struggled to close the coastline and get out of the steep waves on the bow that were stopping our progress. We finally made it in a couple hours late and well before the thunderstorms arrived later that night.
Anchored off Fort Pierce channel on the northern side. Checked the engine bilge and only a few drops of water leakage. Perhaps we can make it back to Virginia??
Thus ends our 17 day cruise to the Bahamas. Now for a couple weeks of ICW transiting back to home.
