Friday, April 17, 2009

Days 128 and 129- Passage to Abacos

Days 128 & 129—Passage from Eleuthera to Abacos

Thursday, April 9th and Friday, April 10th, 2009
Our passage from Eleuthera to the Abacos was a two-day trip. Day one was an easy sail along the Eleutheran Banks north to Current Cut. The only challenges predicted for this day were navigating the two cuts—Hatchet Bay Pond Cut and Current Cut. As it turned out, neither cut was a problem—smoothing sailing through both! Pictured below are views of the Hatchet Bay Pond Cut. Hopefully, you can get a feel for how tight that little cut is!














We have no pictures of Current Cut, but there wasn’t much to see above the water. The tricky parts in Current Cut are the rocks and tidal surge below the water. We timed our passage for slack tide when the surge would be at a minimum, but we had to be careful to steer around the rocks that lined the channel (most of which you cannot see from the surface). As it turned out, Capt. John zoomed through the Cut with no problem! We anchored up north of Current Cut for an early night to get lots of sleep.
Pictured here is one of those shots we have to explain. It is Eleuthera’s Glass Window from a distance. It’s a very narrow part of Eleuthera that used to have a natural bridge. A hurricane took out the natural bridge so a man-made bridge now spans the gap. With our binoculars we could see the ocean through the gap under the bridge. We doubt that you can see very much in the picture, although you can try enlarging it if you want. Anyway, here’s the Glass Window, Eleuthera.














Our second day was an ocean passage through the Northeast Providence Channel to the Abacos—about a 60 nautical mile trip. We timed out trip to hit favorable winds so we could sail the whole way across the Channel in daylight hours. This plan necessitated an early start so we could make it into the Abaco Banks (Sea of Abaco) by dark. Our start began with coffee and cereal at 4 AM! We were sailing north toward Little Egg and Egg Islands by 4:30 AM. The winds were great and the Channel was rolly with 4 to 5 foot waves. Six or seven other sailboats were also heading across the Channel at the same time. It was a brisk and exciting sail across the deep blue water of the Channel. We averaged 6 knots sailing for 10 hours—a full day of sailing. Our friends aboard the catamaran Rum Tum Tiger rolled out their spinnaker. Here are a couple pictures of Rum Tum.














By 4:30 PM, Caribbean Soul was sailing into the Sea of Abaco through the Little Harbour Cut—no problems, mon. We sailed north to a sheltered anchorage at Tilloo Cay, Abacos. Lots of good sleep and rest there!

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