Passage to the BAHAMAS: The LAST Leg

According to our plan, this was to be the third leg of four that would get us to Georgetown in the Exumas.  We were pacing ourselves to be able to rest at anchor every other night.  Our next planned stop would be Clarence Town, Long Island-Bahamas.

Up...

We set out early from Mayaguana and enjoyed fair winds and another comfortable, fast sail for the first 14 hours. In the late afternoon, we even captured a few shots of a lone humpback whale doing backflips.  After dinner, the ride continued to be so smooth that we watched the movie THUNDERBALL (James Bond flick partly filmed in the Bahamas) in anticipation of visiting the famed grotto located in the northern portion of the Exumas.

UP...

Shortly after I went below to sleep and left Dan on watch, the wind and waves came on strong.  To reduce distractions, I use earplugs on passages when off night watch duty.  All of a sudden, I heard the commotion of sails being reefed and felt the boat rocking hard.  It sounded and felt scary enough that I instantly suited up in my foul weather gear and PFD and climbed back into the cockpit.  We trimmed the sails a bit more and things began to feel better.  So I retired to my bunk once more.

...and AWAY!

Three hours later, it was my turn at watch.  Dan said the wind had shifted and caused us to be off course a bit. The waves were also causing Exit Strategy to veer away from our intended waypoint.  At this juncture, we made the decision to continue on toward Georgetown instead of Clarence Town because we would have arrived in Clarence Town three hours before daylight.

My task was quite clear- try to keep the boat from losing more ground. However, three hours later when Dan got up to take his second watch of the night (our routine- I take one, he gets two) we had indeed lost a few more degrees on our heading.  Now we couldn't be sure that we would make it to Georgetown in daylight!

A thorough examination of the charts ensued and resulted in selecting an alternate anchorage on the northwest coast of Long Island that we could enter in daylight if necessary. To our delight, when we rounded the northern tip of Long Island, it put us in a more favorable point of sail.  Thankfully, we arrived by mid afternoon and were able to make our way safely into our second coral head strewn bay of the Bahamas, namely Elizabeth Harbor at Georgetown in the Exumas!