Tuesday 21 May, Passage to USA day 5: From Northwest Channel to Freeport. Gentle sail till mid-afternoon, fast beam reach after sunset and thrilling broad reach into the night with Parasailor.
What a peaceful night! No sounds and no movement in this middle-of-nowhere anchorage. We slept like babies. And waking up to this calm remote surrounding and bright sunshine boosts us for the day ahead. Magical place, especially when we think of the life that goes about undisturbed under the keel of the boat. And on that note we are glad to see, on the anchor-watch alarm, that Cloudy Bay has stayed in one place during the night, meaning we didn’t drag our anchor chain over any of the little coral gardens in front of us.
By 9am we are ready to upanchor and start the journey across the last section of the Bahamas Bank from Northwest Channel to the deeper water of Northwest Providence Channel hich runs between Nassau and Freeport. The wind is very light and depths are only 3-4m in several sections, so initially we motor until the depth increases to something a little safer.
Two hours later, with depth now 5+m, the wind picks up to 6kts and sails come out. It’s a very fickle wind, and we spend some time trimming the genoa and mainsail to make the highest speed possible. Then we set the autohelm to steer to the wind, and we sit back and relax in the cockpit, enjoying the beautifully gentle sail. Wishing for a pod of dolphins to come and perform for us.
It is all so wonderfully calm that we are inspired to fly the drone. Perfect conditions for it. At first, it is more of a practice flight, experimenting with various functions like active track and follow me. At least we tried to, but none of them was successful. It seems they don’t work once the drone software “thinks” it’s over 1km from us (the take-off GPS point is quickly 1km astern). So we settle for the usual manual control flight and experiment with angles and smooth flying instead. As usual, I catch the drone as it comes into land, and we both eagerly go below to see the footage. It’s nowhere near as exciting as when we flew the Parasailor, but nice aerial shots nonetheless, holding the drone in one place and rotating and dipping
the camera on Cloudy Bay as she passes close to the drone.
It maybe gentle sailing, but we are hardly making headway in this very light wind, so we turn our attention to sails and course. We need to gain some speed, because at this rate of 4kts we’ll get to the Chesapeake in 10 days not 5! So in the hope that later in the day wind picks up to at least a steady 7kts to be able to fly the Parasailor, for the moment we decide to point higher into the wind (hence gain speed) which takes us more to the north than to the west (bad move as it turns out). And hopefully we’ll revert to steer directly west later. If not, we’ll end up east of Freeport!
And what doesn’t help either is the current. Ever since we got off the bank into the deep water, we’ve had a constant current of 1.5kts dead against us from the NW. Some of the Gulf Stream current, which runs north up the Florida coast, must be breaking away into the Northwest Providence Channel. We didn’t take that into account! And in hind-sight maybe we would have been better off on a direct west course across the bank, rather than north-west across this channel and into the current. Oh-hum; would-of, should-of, could-of. C’est la vie! Anyway, the only thing we can do is to carry on and hope this pesky current reduces as we pass west of Freeport.
We have a go at fishing, and try a brand new lure, bright fuchsia colour. Minutes after we put in the water, a fish grabs it. Must be a big one, as the reel is spinning like crazy. As we start to reel it in, the tension in the line is soon gone. And sure enough once reeled in not only there is no fish on the hook, but instead half the lure is gone. Greedy fish! How dare it eat the lure and avoid tasting the double hook. Clever fish that one. We hope it found the rubber tentacles of the lure to its liking (or not!).
Encouraged by the success, we put it in the water again. And soon get another fish, a reasonably large Barracuda. Just what is it doing out here in the deep water? We don’t risk eating Barracuda, so after we remove the hook we throw it back in the water and it swims off. Today is its lucky day!
As one thing leads to another, and while gently sailing north, we end up spending most of the afternoon doing an inventory of all the fishing gear we have in various boxes, including taking pictures of all the various lures and fishing gear we acquired with Cloudy Bay. Ray, we are coming to you to tell us what they’re used for 🙂 Lately we are getting quite enthused with fishing and we need to hone our skills ready for the Pacific.
Meanwhile the wind is playing with us. Not only it remains light and fickle, but also shifts from E to SE. And with autohelm set to wind, our track gradually turns from heading north to heading north-east. Not to mention we are only doing 2kts speed, basically just slipping sideways in the current. Ok, that’s it! Enough of being patient and protect the environment (and our diesel supply). Engine has to come on if we want to get to the Gulf Stream and not to West Africa! But we do keep the sails up, pulled hard in, to give the engine a little help.
With no sails to trim, we focus on admin. The cockpit gets a good clean and windscreen gets washed. And above all, my long pending items to mend are addressed: sandals for the June wedding to glue, and a dress to put sail-tape up the inside seam, where some annoying piece of plastic scratches my leg. Glen particularly like this dress and these sandals, so he doesn’t
mind playing the tailor and cobbler.
We have our late lunch just before sunset, to enjoy the magical golden glow lighting the boat. It is one of the most special moments of the day, when we are at sea. And we watch a beautiful sunset, over a cloudless horizon. Its definitely the most impressive sunset we have seen this year.
Around sunset is also the best time of day to get the weather forecast, and we do manage to connect the SSB to Nova Scotia station. But the GRIB files are not downloading. The connection is just too slow. All electrical systems are switched off (to avoid interference), but still nothing. As a last resource, we shut down the engine too and we bob around hoping this will help. It didn’t. After 15min a frustrated captain emerges from down below “screw this, let’s just go”. And so we motor on, into the dusk.
At this stage we are approaching Freeport, and we see the heavily lit up port to our starboard. It must be a busy place, judging by the number of ships going in all directions which we observed on AIS throughout the afternoon.
Contrary to the pattern of wind dropping after sunset, it actually picks up to an extraordinary 12-14kts! Out come the sails, full main and genoa, and we are on a fast beam reach. Well, it would be faster if it wasn’t for the damned 2kts current we still have against us. Just when will we get rid of it, we wonder? We are sailing beautifully at 8-9 kts, but only making 7kts SOG. We contemplate whether to sail on a direct west course rather than north-west, to get to the main Gulf Stream faster, but for the moment we remain on the same course. It feels wonderful to be sailing again, after five hours of motoring.
Miffed with the unsuccessful SSB connection, as we pass close to Freeport, and Glen manages to download the weather forecast via 3G roaming and PredictWind Offshore App. It looks like we are going to have a lively sail up to Virginia. Maybe even a bit too much as a nor’easter will reach down to the Florida coast by Thursday. But if we get far enough north by Wednesday, the heavy wind should pass safely south of us. Suddenly we feel more urgency to get into the favorable Gulf Stream current and make miles north, as fast as we can.
The forecast also shows 12kts wind throughout the night and the angle is perfect for the spinnaker. And the sky is cloudless, with no risk of squalls. So we feel brave enough for the next level up on the Parasailor learning curve: flying it at night! Genoa gets furled away, but we keep the mainsail up as we want maximum speed.
Needless to say we are both twitchy and very anxious, and we take extra care double checking the lines, because it so much easier to get things muddled at night compared to day time. And, if you do get yourself into a situation, getting out of it is a multiple more difficult at night. Or so it seems. And sure enough, even with care, as we launch the spinnaker, one of the guy lines is the wrong side of a pole guy that was lying on the deck. So down comes the sock again, to correct the mistake. Then we re-hoist it without any dramas. It’s up there poled out, filling nicely and pulling us in the direction we actually need to go.
We set the autohelm on “wind” for 120deg apparent and watch it for a while. When the spinnaker luff occasionally collapses, it recovers very quickly without our intervention. Oh, what a sail! Once confident everything is balanced, Glen goes to sleep (in the cockpit) and I remain on watch starting the midnight shift. The job of spinnaker watching is greatly helped by the moon that just rose behind us. Two-sail spinnaker reaching in bright moonlight is simple the-dogs-bollocks!
And again we are super impressed with the performance. We are touching 8kts in 6kts of apparent wind on the beam (12kts true, on our starboard quarter). It feels like we have a silent motor pulling us, because the wind across the deck is so light you could hardly imagine that we could even sail in it, let alone fly along at a healthy 7-8kts. Added bonus is that at last the current against us is dropping below 1kt. As we move into the Gulf Stream we will see the current helping us for once.
And on we sail into the moon lite night, quietly, with only the sound of the bow wave rushing along the hull. The pleasure of sailing doesn’t get better than this, and we are pretty pleased with ourselves!