Wow – the power of the sea! We started out
in the dark at 5:30 a.m. yesterday from West Palm Beach/Lake Louise to head
towards West End in the Bahamas – the last leg of our Florida journey.
First off, we encountered an electrical
problem. The day before, Jeff had, with much effort, groaning and swearing,
installed a new part on our autopilot – critical for a 9-hour trip on open
ocean. Auto was working fine, but somehow the chart plotter (which gives us our
direction for navigation) was now backwards – with north and south reversed.
This made navigation out of sight of land somewhat awkward. And when we saw
many boats heading in a different direction from ours, we were a little
concerned that we might end up in Africa J.
Suddenly we spotted one other boat sailing
parallel to us. With some detective work, we ascertained that these were our
friends from Mimico on Spar Trek – so we knew we were heading in the right
direction.
Much relieved, we relaxed into the 9-hour
journey on 7-foot waves, on our nose, in a very “confused” sea – with nothing
in sight but Spar Trek, which quickly outpaced us, being a much larger boat. We
rocked and rolled as the waves tossed us around like a toy boat in a washing
machine.
The result was lots of sea water over the
deck, and into the accidentally left open hatch in the head, with the contents
of the boat strewn hither and thither. But my captain navigated us perfectly
(despite the upside-down chart plotter) into a beautiful little Bahamian bay,
in which was located the Old Bahama Bay Resort and Marina. We checked into
customs without a hitch and then feasted on our first (but definitely not last)
fresh conch salad. Welcome to the Bahamas!!
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