Making a move...

On November 26, we (Hope and a new addition to our convoy… Unfettered..a Lagoon 450 like Hope) left West End in Grand Bahamas just as the sun was coming up and headed towards Great Sale Cay in the Abacos region. We had a great sail over! We were on a beam reach, both sails up in only 9 knots of wind but our speed over ground was 7.5 knots! We were scootin’! We all arrived at Great Sale Cay and anchored around the same time just before sunset. As soon as we got the anchor set, Rick, Harley and I got in the dinghy and went to a small beach close to the boat to let Harley do his business. We did not stay long because we were covered head to toe in no-see-ums which were biting like crazy. It’s puzzling to me how such a small insect that you can barely see has such a big bite! So..back to the boat to have dinner and get organized for the next day’s sail to Green Turtle Cay.

Next morming we got up early again around 7, raised our main and headed out...Hope, Unfettered, and us. Another Catamaran (No Name Nomads) in the anchorage with children aboard were having engine troubles and asked if they could join us just in case they had an issue. So they followed yet staying quite a way back. The wind was behind us the entire time. This wasn’t a great sail because we could never seem to get the sails adjusted just right. So we were constantly adjusting..not much of a relaxing sail. We tried wing on wing for a while but we could never hold our speed and the sails would begin to flog. Sometimes we were really moving swiftly 7-9 knots. I think we even reached 10 knots for a brief moment. Woo hoo! Hope was in the lead, we followed a bit behind and Unfettered behind us… who later passed us up near the end of the day. Once arrived at Green Turtle we all anchored close to shore. We did our usual dinghy ride to shore for Harley. I always enjoy getting off the boat to stretch my legs as well. Harley had a fun run on the beach, off leash for a bit….always fun to see.

We spent the next four days at GTC taking daily walks on the beach and in town, doing some provisioning and having a night out for dinner at the Green Turtle Resort located inside the marina. The coolest part during our time was a walk to another part of the island to see and feed the turtles and rays.

On December 1st, we did one last run into town for provisions and later that day came to the conclusion (after a lot of thought) that we needed to replace our lead-acid batteries with new batteries. We were having to run the generator daily, morning and night to keep a charge. And if we had to do this, we thought we may as well go with lithium batteries which are pricier but they perform better and last longer. They weigh less and take up less room. So we called places in the Bahamas and in the Caribbean (since this was one of our destinations) and no one carried lithium batteries. We could have had them shipped over but the cost would have been double as in the states, not to mention the shipping and tax fees on top. We figured we couldn’t go much further into the Bahamas not being able to ever really get this problem solved. So…we decided to turn around and head back to Florida and have the exchange and installation done there. We contacted Chris at Dedicated Marine (who installed our hard bimini last year) located near Ft. Lauderdale and he said he could get us in to do the work within a few days.

Stay tuned for the next blog post about our crossing the Gulf Stream and our time in Florida.