Day 107- Sailing Whichever Way the Wind Blows

Day 107--- Sailing Whichever Way the Wind Blows in a Ship of Fools

On Thursday, March 17, 2009 our plans to explore Eleuthera have been put on hold until the new cold front winds calm down a bit and start blowing from the south or at least southeast. Getting to Eleuthera from the Exuma Cays is about a 30 nautical mile sail north across the deep dark blue waters of Exuma Sound. Since our average sail speed (on a good, breezy day) is 6 knots at best, you can see that the crossing to Eleuthera will take at least 5 hours and getting to a good anchorage will take a couple of hours more. If everything works according to plan, it is a full day of ocean sailing. We definitely will be blogging more about that when we get to a good weather window. Until then, we have no firm plans except to relax and continue to enjoy the Exuma Cays. So with that in mind we headed out from Warderick Wells Cay to “whichever way the wind blows.”

And, where would the wind blow us on this lovely day? We decided to let the Caribbean Soul decide which way she wanted to go, but she seemed to be confused.
To give her more time to decide, we sailed west out into the light blue waters of the Exuma Banks away from the Exuma Cays. Once we got out on the Banks, we thought sailing “whichever way the wind blows” would be obvious. Yes, well, at first we thought we should sail north (northwest) up the Exumas to Norman’s Cay with the wind right behind us. The wind was light and our efforts to sail downwind with both the jib and main got us about 2 knots of boat speed and a constant fight to keep both sails filled. Caribbean Soul did not seem too happy with that.
Well, maybe we missed the obvious. Maybe CS wanted to sail south (southeast) down the Exumas back to Staniel Cay again. So, we turned CS around and sailed as close into the wind as possible in the opposite direction. After about a half hour, we realized that CS would need to constantly tack back and forth in order to sail in this direction and the winds were just too light to make much headway in this direction.
Now is the “Ship of Fools part” that we knew you were waiting for. We turned CS around one more time and returned to the very slow downwind sail to Norman’s Cay. The folks on shore must have gotten a good chuckle out of watching this crazy sail boat sail back and forth for two or three hours!
Suddenly, we both knew what needed to be done—CS obviously wanted to fly her spinnaker—why didn’t we realize that earlier? So captain and crew dived into the project. We dug up the spinnaker from its hiding place below the v-berth, rolled up the jib, dumped the spinnaker out on the foredeck, attached halyard to head, tied sheets to clew, led sheets back to cockpit through the special snatch block on rail, ran tack line to the cockpit, lowered spinnaker pole and attached it to clew, raised pole’s topping lift, hoisted spinnaker while controlling sheet, trimmed sheet, raised snuffer sleeve, said a prayer, and poof the sail inflated. It’s a sailing miracle! And, of course, we performed this task like a well-oiled machine, with grace and aplomb—NOT!
The spinnaker turned out to be a great help as it increased our boat speed to 4-4.5 knots and it looked great—honest! The spinnaker ride lasted for about 1 ½ hours and the wind/weather began to change. Down came the spinnaker (oh, all that hard work!) and what was once a slow downwind sail became a fast broad reach in the same direction. The sky clouded up and threatened to rain. Then, suddenly, the wind stopped—nothing—no wind—totally becalmed! Capt. John insisted that we wait it out and resist the urge to crank up the engine. Finally, the wind did come back and we sailed on to Norman’s Cay arriving around 6:30 pm. This 20 mile trip ended up taking about 8 hours, but we sure got to do a lot of different kinds of sailing! A fun day—no kidding! Next time, however, we will be less cavalier about sailing “whichever way the wind blows!”
*Sorry, no pictures. We were busy!