Sunday 19 May, Passage to USA day 3: From Racoon Cay to Tongue of the Ocean, with all types of sailing: amazing downwind with Parasailor in the morning, heavily reefed and wet upwind at mid-day, fast beam reach in the afternoon and into the night.
It was a very loud night, as thunderstorms and heavy rain continued throughout the night. I kept popping into the cockpit to check wind speed as squalls passed over. At least we got all the salt washed off the boat.
Wake up alarm is set for a very early start, and the anchor is up by 5:40am. Today’s plan is to sail across the southern Bahamas Bank (hence we need the daylight to spot any coral heads) to Tongue of the Ocean. It’s a leg of 85nm, in depths no greater than 7m. The wind is light and we motor the first 1h30’, making water to top up the tanks.
When the wind picks up to 11-13kts, sails are out and we have a gentle broad reach at 6-7kts boat speed. We contemplate putting up the spinnaker, as the true wind is on that 150-170 annoying angle when the genoa doesn’t fill properly and keeps collapsing. But since the sky is still quite angry we think better of it. So we fly full mainsail and genoa, and settle for safety rather than faster speed.
Yesterday I noticed we have a leak in the vang, again :(. Nothing major, just few spots. But enough to get us annoyed that the issue came back. We conclude that probably the jerks in the rig, when the pressure in the vang fluctuates, are damaging the seals inside the vang. This one goes on the list of topics for research during summer. Maybe we need a bigger size vang. For the time being, it gets bandaged with oil absorbing cloth.
But enough of relaxing and flopping around, time for some excitement. The water depths are very constant at 7m (deeper than the chart shows) and we have seen no coral heads to avoid, so we will risk putting up the Parasailor. We furl away the genoa and out comes the Monstresse (our temporary pet name for the Parasailor). Lines are ready and we manage to hoist it easier than yesterday. Well, the hoisting itself is pretty straight forward, but keeping the sock from twisting as it flies out in the wind is the key ingredient to a successful launch. And we manage just that, a slick and quick launch. Now we have peace, no more banging of the genoa or the rig. Wonderful. It flies beautifully in this wind (11-14kts, 150-170deg true wind). And we enjoy the peace for a while as the Parasailor and mainsail pull us along very nicely.
For even more excitement, we then want to fly it poled out, dead downwind. Clipping the pole on the lazy sheet and raising it into place is easy. We don’t put a pole downhaul line as we figure the Parasailor’s windward tackline will do that job. To bring the pole into action we simply ease off on the windward tackline and pull in on the windward sheet that goes through the end of the pole. The pole comes aft nicely and the spinnaker with it. There, now we are flying a normal symmetrical spinnaker on a spinnaker pole. Lovely.
Totally enthused and over-the-moon with how it performs and how comfortable the sail is, we want to fly the drone to capture the full picture. And what a view it is from up there. Cloudy Bay looks simply stunning sailing fast on flat water with spinnaker and mainsail. Plus, from the aerial view, we realize just how big the Parasailor is next to the mainsail! Which we thought is quite a big sail.
The rest of the morning is spent trimming the lines and experimenting with wind angles to see how high we can take it. The wind itself is gradually moving forward and soon we are hard in on the spinnaker with apparent wind at 80deg. That’s flying pretty high for a symmetrical kite!
Just before mid-day very black clouds are coming towards us so we take the Parasailor down in preparation for any wind squalls. With the genoa fully out we can point higher into the wind and actually resume on our desired course after all the playing. But within minutes the wind picks up getting sucked under the cloud.
And when we want to reef the genoa the hydraulics are off again. Bloody hell! The timing sucks, again! This time is just a matter of switching on the button on the Empirbus control panel and we successfully reef both mainsail and genoa. And just as we are safely reefed the wind gusts up to 28kts, and we reef the main even more.
The sea builds up very fast, giving us lots of spray over the deck and even over the spray-top as we bash through the short steep waves. So much for having all the salt rinsed off last night. It all calms down in a couple of hours and gradually the blue clear sky returns, but the wind remains quite high. And we continue with reefed main, enjoying a fast sail.
Mid afternoon, with perfectly clear skies, the air starts to feel much more fresh – cooler and certainly less humid. It’s a welcome relief to the hot sticky air recently. This is the remnants of a cold front reaching us. It reminds us we are moving north out of the tropical zone now. Trade winds will be replaced by variable conditions. We will need to start watching the forecast closely, after months of not needing to.
At 6pm we are approaching the numerous underwater sand bars and gullies where the bank meets the deeper ocean depths. This is the tricky spot because we couldn’t find any information with regards to transiting this transition. The few depth points on the chart don’t give us confidence and we keep eyes glued on the depth sounder. Two factors gave us confidence though to proceed this way: the chart does say “Bossom Channel” and Google map satellite image showed a gully in the sand at this Bossom Channel area.
We need not have worried. The minimum depth we saw was 6m and a 1kt current suggested we were in the Channel.
Out in the Tongue of the Ocean the sea is still relatively flat, and as we set course to pass close to Nassau, we are on a very fast beam reach averaging 8kts boat speed in 12-14kts wind.
Tongue of the Ocean is a very interesting feature. It is literally a small piece of water with deep ocean depths (2km), in the shape of a tongue, surrounded by the shallow Bahamas banks. We are entering the Tongue at its southern most point and travel north along its full length, with The Exuma’s Bank to the east and The Great Bahama Bank and Andros Island to the west.
At dusk there is a beautiful golden light and we sit on the aft deck taking it all in. It feels almost magic to sail towards the sunset, and this evening we do see the sun set, just, before it got covered by a line of puffy clouds on the horizon.
As the night sets in we take precautions and reef the mainsail in preparation for any surprise squalls. And we continue on a not so fast beam reach, but safe and comfortable.
Mid-evening a nearly full moon rises behind us, in a big red disc on the horizon. And it’s quickly followed by Jupiter then Saturn all in a procession. As usual, the light from the moon on the water is beautiful, but impossible to capture on a camera.
As we pass Green Cay, where we note it’s navigation light is not working, the wind drops and we are barely sailing. But it’s so peaceful on the moonlit sea, we live with the 4-5kts boat speed.
Today’s only let down was the color of the sea. We were envisioning a turquoise sea across this entire Bahamas bank, like we had seen it last year. But instead, it was just dull green-ish. Are we becoming too fussy with regards to sea color preferences?
Still, what an amazing day we’ve had!
