Day 65

Day 65- Jumping Out In The Dark Blue Ocean

Today is Thursday, February 5, 2009. We got up early (6:30 am!) to prepare for the ocean sail down to George Town. This time there was not a choice of routes. The only way to get to Elizabeth Harbour and George Town, Exuma is via the ocean route. The weather was not calm, but it was blowing from the east—just right for a broad reach kind of sail. We strapped the dinghy onto the deck of Caribbean Soul and hauled the outboard up to its traveling spot on the back rail. We needed an outgoing tide to help us through the cut to the ocean from Little Farmers Cay. Eight o’clock in the morning seemed to be the best tide time, so wrapped up in warm clothes, we set the main sail and headed out.

Wow! What a ride! I am not sure that the pictures give an accurate feeling of what it is like to ride those huge swells as some were certainly 10 to twelve feet high! The seas were rolling in the same direction we were sailing (a following sea) so John sailed for the first five hours and I sailed for the last two (after the wind had died down a bit). The auto pilot does not perform well with a following sea as the boat gets knocked around a lot and you have to surf down the big waves. So, when the auto pilot cannot do its job, we humans have to do the steering.
In one of these pictures, you can see the jib of a boat behind us. This is a guy we had met at Club Thunderball several days ago and his boat is a big Morgan, which he was sailing by himself. We talked to him on the VHF and he seemed content to follow. Several times John and I commented that it was interesting that his Morgan with just the jib sail was keeping up with our swift little Tartan which was flying both main and jib. After several hours, the Morgan began to close the gap between us. Yikes! We started wishing that we had a big Genoa jib instead of the little working jib—or something—how could he be passing us? Then he called on the VHF to see how we were doing. As it turned out, the Morgan sailor was also running his motor which makes sense for a guy single handling a big boat! We, however, were feeling much better about our good little sailing boat keeping pace with a boat that was motor/sailing—funny how sailors get to feeling about such things—even sailors who claim to care only about cruising and not racing!
When we got to Elizabeth Harbour (George Town area), the big waves stopped, but the wind kept our sails full. John sailed the Caribbean Soul gently through several anchorages to check them out and just enjoy the last of our sail. We got lots of smiles and waves from folks on anchored boats seeming to enjoy our little sailing romp as much as we were!
Finally, we had to pull down the sails and throw out the anchor. At last we were in George Town! It almost felt like being home—but, guess what, it still was not bathing suit weather!