Great Sale Cay

Monday morning, December 28th, we got up at 4:30am reluctantly. It was completely dark. But the water was smooth and there was only 4 knots of wind, which would make our exit from our slip easier. Brian arranged our dock lines in a certain way so that with the engine in neutral, he could “walk” our boat backwards by pulling the lines as he walked along the dock. I was at the helm, and I pulled our starboard stern line tightly to “swing” our boat out in the correct direction.

At the last minute, Brian hopped onboard at the bow, and I put the engine in forward and we quietly left the docks without a problem. It is so hard to contain my anxiety during these times. It is all I can do to stop the stream of movie images of a boat crashing into other boats in my mind. We do not have brakes on the boat. Without bow thrusters it is incredibly difficult to “steer” in and out of a dock, and when we go in reverse our boat pulls to port. Our boat feels like a massive animal that is slow moving but very heavy with the potential to do a lot of damage. I sighed deeply as we left the dock, only just then aware that I had been holding my breath.

With that accomplished, we were looking at about 68 miles of sailing this day in order to reach Great Sale Cay (cay is pronounced “key”) before sunset. Great Sale is uninhabited, and is known as a protected stopover spot across the Great Bahama Bank. We had 15-20 knots of wind for most of the day, with about 4-5 feet of seas. Later in the morning, “Charlotte Ann” called us on our VHF Radio once they left the dock at the West End. Their boat only has a draft (depth into the water) of about 2 feet, as compared to our 6 feet. This means they can go a lot more places in the Bahamas than we can. They left later in they day because they were able to take a shortcut. Our depth will definitely hinder us here, but there have been many other boats just like ours who have explored here before we came along, we just have to pay close attention and plan accordingly.

We continued to see a good 20 knots of wind off our port reach, coming from the north as we headed east. I was thrilled to see the green water! Here are some photos of our passage:







Above there is a photo of the screen we see on our cockpit GPS and our TV screen down below when we are at sea. The center is a representation of our boat, on course with the purple line leading to our next waypoint. The top left is our depth. The bottom left is our speed. We can also see estimated time of arrival at our destination, wind direction and wind speed, outside air temperature, and many other things.

We arrived at Great Sale about 1 hour ahead of “Charlotte Ann”. It felt good to stop the boat’s movement, relax, clean up and play more with the girls. They did phenomenally well during this trip! Madelyn’s imagination is a gift to both girls; she seems to come up with dozens of ideas of what they can do with a simple item from the galley or a few odds and ends from around the boat. Katja just toddles after her, happy to have a playmate, for the most part. This time, Madelyn did not get seasick at all. I think she is getting used to it.

We had invited the MacLean family to our boat for Happy Hour, but they were worn out from the voyage, so we will reschedule. Here is a photo of Brian and Madelyn headed over to their boat when they arrived at our anchorage:

I’m glad we have other cruisers to travel with now. It brings back fond memories of traveling to Maine and Cape Cod with the Stevens and Hitchcock families back home. Even though we did not get together that night, it was comforting to look out in the anchorage and see their anchor light shining in the darkness. I could picture their kids getting ready for sleep and I knew we would travel beside each other tomorrow on another long day at sea.