Winds were much lighter in the morning, and coming from the north directly now, so we had much better protection where we were at Pensocola Cay.
I decided to try a new technique sailing off anchor since we were close to the cliffs. Normally we raise the main sail but …
We woke up to a rather large swell and strong north west winds in front of Coopers Town. It was a pretty uncomfortable morning, so we got underway quickly after waking up.
Raising anchor was a real challenge here, and I had to bust out some gloves. We were in …
Had a nice couple of nights at Manjack Cay. Met up with Bluemoon and got to see their Guineapig setup on their boat (they have two Guineapigs onboard), which was actually quite brillant. I couldn't picture it before seeing it, but it works quite well.
They are heading back to …
We managed to stick out a couple of nights at Great Abaco. We had good wind protection, but quite a bit of waves rolling in, which made it rather uncomfortable at anchor. But it wasn't horrible and maybe our least bad option.
We did however make the most of it …
We were at Crab Cay for a couple of nights while we had some strong southeast winds. We went ashore the first day and I somehow managed to knock a coconut out of a tree with another coconut. We attempted to get a couple more by boosting Aria up a …
We spent two nights at Manjack Cay on the western tip. The anchorage was nicely protected from the winds we had, but at high tide we did get some ocean swell coming in, and so it was a bit rolly now and again because of that. We ended up re-anchoring …
We woke up with plans to cross through Whale Cay Cut today. This little section of the Abacos is very shallow between Whale Cay and Great Abaco Island, and so the deep route is to go out and around Whale Cay. This means timing the tide to avoid currents, etc …
We spent 5 nights at the dock at Orchid Bay Marina on Great Guana Cay. This was a nice break from the constant go of cruising and gave us some time to relax and catch up on work, boat projects, provisioning, etc.
We didn't actually get up to a whole …
After not being able to get a mooring ball in Hope Town, we decided to book a stay at Orchid Bay Marina on Great Guana Cay nearby. We've been on the go a lot lately and we were looking for some down time. Also there was a fair bit of …
Had a bit of a lazy morning before getting underway today. We planned a little 20NM sail up to Hope Town. Nice light winds, but enough to sail, so we raised our full main and sailed off anchor and floated out of the anchorage and due north. Had some fun …
Today was finally the day, making our big crossing north to the Abacos. It was a bit of a northern migration with the 30+ other boats from our anchorage all heading the same way. I'm not sure why, but we were a bit apprehensive about this passage. I guess we …
Our plan today was to make our way to Current Cut (a narrow bit where as the name implies, the current gets quite strong with the tides), and then head over to Egg Island to anchor for the night before heading north across Providence Channel to The Abacos.
The wind …
We spent some time in Rock Sound waiting out some weather, and re-provisioning before heading north again. We had quite a little front come through with enough wind to flip our dingy that was trailing behind the boat. Thankfully we had the paddles tied down on deck, so our only …
Very lightwind day today. We sailed off anchor nice and easily, and headed towards Shroud Cay.
We put up the spinnaker, realized we needed to head upwind a short bit more (oops), doused the spinnaker, sailed the 10 minutes more we needed, and then raised it once again. It was …
We waited out the strong winds in Pipe Cay anchored close to our friends on Atlas VII. It was quite windy, but we were anchored up pretty well and we were nicely protected as the winds wrapped around from the south through west to north.
Our chain seemed to get …
Our first night anchored in Pipe Creek didn't go so well. The evening was wonderful, but late that night I woke up and noticed the little motor cruiser that we were anchored some distance away from was right up close to us. I suspect we were being influenced more by …
We had a nice night at anchor, and woke up early to head across the sound. Winds were light to start, but made for an easy sail off anchor.
We were on a close hauled tack for most of the way with a perfect line to Staniel Cay, but shortly …
Today was our crossing back across Exuma Sound to Eluthera. We had some nice east winds predicted for the day which would give us a nice wind angle to cross the sound. We wanted to leave early to give ourselves lots of time, but this meant going through to Lumber …
We spent three full days at anchor in Rudder Cut. Our friends came down and anchored beside us, and we had a nice few days of just hanging out there. Their daughter turned 9 (pretty cool spot to have a birthday!) and we had some cake which was nice. We …
We spend a full day in Calabash Bay and rowed ashore to hike up to Columbus Monument. It was a bit of a row, and a long hike, but a nice easy one on a wide road with very little traffic. Beautiful views up at the Monument as well. Aria …
Today we had some nice winds to make our way toward Long Island. We finally heading out of Georgetown and then back up the Exumas and back over to Rock Sound Eleuthera as our destination to meet up with family there. But since the winds are good for heading to …
After our traumatic night with the dingy, and the crapy nature of this mooring ball in the current, we woke up and decided to move over to an area called the aquarium to check that out. We were considering just dingying over from Cambrige, but it was time to leave …
We spent two days in Warderick Wells. Aria and Theone did some hiking on the island during the day, while I stayed on the boat to get some work done.
The next morning we sailed off the mooring ball. We were the last ones out, so there were no other …
After a long rolly night and not much sleep, we woke up slightly grump and got underway. We slipped the mooring ball and sailed out with a double reefed main in the strong winds. When we got to the deeper areas we rolled out a bit of genoa and were …
Super light wind day today, and we woke up to a very calm morning. I wanted to check out the well that was nearby, they say it was even used by pirates back in the day. I didn't realize there was any natural fresh water here, but this proves me …
We wanted to row around some of the mangroves in Shroud Cay, so we packed up some food and water, our snorkel gear, and set forth in our dingy. The entrance to the creek was near where we were moored and it was a quick row over there. The current …
Our second day in Rock Sound we woke up to a pretty wavy anchorage. We got into town for some provisions and I got a bit of extra water to top up our tanks. After that we motored over to the other side of the Sound to find a much …
We had a nice few days in Hatchet Bay, very well protected from some of the winds we were getting. It was nice to be at a super flat anchorage this time.
Our first day at Hatchet Bay we got invited to the beach with a couple of the other …
After a rolly and long night, we were excited to get going and get into Hatchet Bay where there is great protection from everything, and thus nice clam waters. We hat lots of room and nice winds so we sailed off anchor and started heading upwind towards Hatchet Bay. Just …
It was time for us to move on again. We had a beautiful day with some nice light winds, so we sailed off anchor and headed towards Current Cut, where you can cut through into the Bight of Eleuthera. It's called Current Cut, because as you can imagine, the current …
Spanish Wells was a fun stop for us. We were anchored out front of the harbour which worked well with the north winds we were having while we were there. The row in was about half a nautical mile, which was a solid workout going into town and back.
Our …
Winds were looking nice finally after many days of easterly winds, so we decided to make a big hop over to Spanish Wells. The winds were looking like we might have wind on the beam, but as is often the case, the winds seemed to be close hauled the entire …
After getting to White Cay (maybe more commonly called Hoffmans Cay, which is the larger Cay right here as well), we were ready to finally stop and relax a while. We had 5 other kid boats with us here, all part of the Berry Christmas group. Our first night in …
After a good sleep we woke up and had some time to enjoy the place we were in before moving down to White Cay where our buddy boats where. We were the only boat in the anchorage and it seemed crazy how beautiful and empty the place was. Aria and …
As we relaxing on anchor at Gin Sur Mer on our first day after crossing over, a plan was being formulated by the group of kid boats to head out that evening for an overnight sail to the Berry Islands, specifically to White Cay about half way down the chain …
We spent one night in West Plam Beach, and the next day I rowed Theone into a nearby boat ramp to head into the city to pick up our packages from the UPS store, and to get our last minute groceries. The weather window was looking ok. But more than …
We spent two days at anchor near Marriot Resort, just south of Jensen Beach. It was a nice anchorage to stop and get some rest. Lots of wind the past couple of days and there were probably at least 15 kite surfers out zipping around the bay.
We spent our …
So we ended up spending a lot of time in Jensen Beach (7 days!). We originally planned just a few nights to re-provision, but then the weather was getting ugly so we just stayed, and then stayed longer.
We did rent a car there for 2 days which was super …
We spent two nights at anchor in Fort Pierce Inlet. Where we had anchored was right beside a beach where we could easily row to shore and leave the dingy. So we did that, and got some groceries, pizza, ice cream and all the good things that are usually hard …
With a nice weather window to sail down the coast, we left the marina in St. Augustine just before 9:30am in order to catch the bridge opening at 9:30. We left in a bit of a rush, but made it through the bridge and then motored onward out …
We spent three nights at the marina in St. Augustine. We originally booked 2, but as usual, 2 is never enough. They day you arrive is always spent getting there, getting settled, showering, cleaning up the boat, etc. Day 2 ends up rushed, provisioning, trying to site see a bit …
We had heard a lot of good things about St. Augustine, and so we decided this would be our next stop along the way. We were going to take the ICW down, but weather was looking pretty nice for a sail outside, and so we decided to take that weather …
We decided to make a stop at Cumberland Island yet before leaving the area. So we finally pulled up anchor and motored the short 9NM sail from St. Marys to Cumberland Island. Or first anchor attempt was a bit too close to the sand bar, so we pulled up and …
So we ended up spending 4 nights at anchor in St. Marys. The anchorage was busy, and tight, but we held well despite the back and forth of current and wind that kept us rotating all over the place.
We were in St. Marys after hearing about the city hosting …
We spent two nights at the Harbourwalk Marina in Georgetown. Really great facilities, and it was nice to be at dock for a couple of nights. Cold nights means we could also run our electric heater at night, which is a nice luxury. Aria also was able to meet up …
Raised anchor and motored out of the creek. Low tide on our way out (was high on our way in) but still pretty good depths, nothing under 8 foot. Motored past a few other sailboats anchored along the creek on our way out.
Pretty easy day, just motoring along again …
Our next destination was Georgetown, but we were more than a day out from there. We picked up hook after a nice breakfast and coffee and headed back into the ICW southbound. We had a couple possible anchorages in mind, and as we made our way we decided on a …
Alright, so this post starts on November 14th early in the morning for our haul out. As scheduled we got into the travel lift early in the morning, and very efficiently got hauled out. Lots of staff on hand, and very well organized for our haul out.
We got up …
We talked to Zimmerman's boatyard, and made a plan to get in there. Because of tides we needed to get into the travel lift at a specific time so that we'd be at high tide with little current. This resulted in us needing to be there at 6am, so we …
A bit unsure of our destination for the day, but we were eyeing up Carolina Beach as the likely destination. We all had showers, feeling refreshed and clean, and we set off the docks around 9am. The entrance at Harbour Village is narrow, but we saw great depths the whole …