We Made It!

A Successful Crossing Yesterday

Thanks to everyone for their votes about when to leave paradise. We somewhat reluctantly packed up quickly on Tuesday after reading the latest weather reports. We sailed for about 6 hours that afternoon to get in position to cross the next day. There was a lot of wind but once we got sails up, it was okay. We anchored and got ready to leave early on Wednesday. That night, we chatted with the only other sailboat anchored in this staging anchorage on the far west side of the Great Bahama Island. We thought we would buddy boat for awhile the next day. They were planning on a 36 hour passage, essentially riding the Gulf Stream north to St. Augustine. We could join them (and considerably shorten our travel days in Florida) or take the shortest route possible across the Gulf Stream to Ft. Pierce -approximately 12 plus hours.

The next day, our crossing was so much better than our last. It wasn’t pretty and by about 2pm, Dan called it for the shorter route. We were managing but another 24 hours of getting tossed around felt above our pay grade. We saw sustained winds in the mid twenties, which is the highest wind we have ever sailed in and generally wouldn’t choose to do so. But the wind was coming from behind us and we surfed the big swells for much of the voyage. It was salty and rocky but doable. We left at 6:30am and arrived around 6:30-7pm.

We got into Ft Pierce exhausted. We anchored by 8pm. Dan took down our required travel Bahamian flag from our spreader. We quick showered, had some soup and crashed - only to be woken at 2am and 4am by our anchor alarm. There is such strong current near the inlet to Ft Pierce and you get turned 180 degrees every 12 hours - so our anchor had dragged. Luckily it reset but we didn’t get a lot of sleep.

Today, we were able to get into a marina and clean up at Fort Pierce. And tonight we celebrated our crossings with our friends Cathy and David, who completed their crossing this morning around 4am. It had been a couple weeks since we last spent days together in Eleuthera and it was great to laugh about all our mishaps and adventures of this cruising season. We’re hoping to get more sleep tonight.

Next up: 225 miles as the crow flies to Brunswick, Georgia, where we will leave the boat.

Pre dawn departure

*Here’s a video of the swells from the cockpit of the boat

We had a decent view of Artemis’ launch as we arrived

taking down the Bahamian travel flag

Our wayward anchor & alarm