I think we did a pretty good job at conquering Hope Town. We very much enjoyed our stay, but it was time to get going. We would skip Man O War because it was a Sunday travel day and we knew this particular island would be closed up, so to speak, for a day of rest, family time and service. We also needed to get through this area called the Whale Cut while the weather was favorable. Apparently if the wind, weather and tides are not all working together this cut can become very dangerous. We needed to push forward as the upcoming weather looked favorable.
Guana would be our next stop. It has two beach bars on it, Grabbers and Nippers. The Potters were anchored not too far away and joined us in the anchorage. We visited Grabbers with the gang. The weather got a little dark and stormy looking and well, we were not quite sure our anchor was dug in the best, so we decided to head back to the boat and stay on board and make sure the boat was secure.
The next morning, we pulled up anchor and headed over to our next location Green Turtle. This is where we would encounter the Whale Cut. Happy to say the Whale Cut was super calm with just a slight roll to it.
Green Turtle is still recovering as well from Dorian, at a much slower pace than Marsh Harbor. The town is quite sleepy but that did not stop us from having fun.
The following morning, we would see Corey and Scott off as they were traveling back to their home in Nassau. We would be pulling up anchor shortly after they caught the ferry to make our way to Great Sail Cay. We would need to make some pretty good time to beat some late afternoon storms. Bubba caught a pretty good sized Cuda along the way.
About 20 minutes away from the anchorage we could see the sky getting darker and darker. We rolled in the jib and dropped the main sail before we got close as the last thing, we needed was to try to do that in gusting winds.
John on a Leopard 42 that was in charter Radio’d and said he had just come through the storm and saw over 40 kts of wind. Yikes! That is not a comfortable position to be in for sure. John is a Leopard 42 owner also, but his boat is in the BVI now in the charter program.
We got anchored and would spend the next couple of hours of daylight watching the wind. Around 10:40 PM conditions turned BAD! It was pitch dark, no moon, no stars, just rain and howling wind. You could not see anything out across the way except faint lights on the other boats around us as it was raining and blowing so hard. It was like that for a little over an hour and then it calmed down a bit. That night was the scariest we have had yet.
The next morning, we were up early again to pull anchor and make our way to West End. As we were leaving John Radio’d over to say goodbye and thank us for our anchor holding through the storm. I am pretty sure the storm rattled us all. We were welcomed to a beautiful sunrise that morning.
The ride to West End was super smooth and easy. I had mentioned to Bubba earlier in the day that we had not seen any dolphins since we had been traveling. About two hours later there was a pod of dolphins that saw us and then went to greet John and Tracey.
The trip to West End was so easy that we debated just going all the way to Florida and skipping West End. After checking the latest forecast and the radar I opted to not push through. Later we would hear that the storm that came out of Stuart was producing winds over 50 knots.
As we made our way into the marina there were people parachuting from planes. Kinda of crazy thing to see as you are approaching a marina.
The marina at West End is okay but it was really cramped. I ended up having a medium sized yacht shoved up my rear and king fisher pull in ahead of me. The no seeums were also bad. This is the first night we have had air conditioning on the boat since we left Brunswick the middle of November and I am pretty sure we did not have it turned on then. Pretty proud of myself for getting us out of our marina spot that morning in the pitch dark and pivoting the boat in the tight quarters we were in. I had not had to do that in a very long time.
The storms that evening stayed offshore and all that we got at the marina was a little wind.
We would rise and shine early the next morning to make our way across the Gulf Stream to West Palm Beach, Florida. Ryan Potter gave John coordinates that were to shoot us almost directly into the inlet at West End. The coordinates would take us slightly out of the way at first but then allow us to ride the Gulf Stream across. We budgeted for 12 hours but made it in a little over 8.5 hours. There were times we saw 8.5 knots during our crossing which was great.
We got into the inlet just as the 17 knots of wind began to happen which was projected. We anchored down in a favorite spot there in West Palm Beach. We spent Thanksgiving there and rode out a blow there in November, so we knew the spot was trustworthy.
Stay tuned for the next update!