Thursday, 20 December 2007

The Crossing

Lunch & dress up


Eva, resident artist


At Marathon we were joined by Eva whom we had convinced to travel from across the country to us in southern Florida. We sailed towards the eastern Keys so we could make an easy jump to the Bahamas. The waves at the beginning of the journey were enormous but we pressed on. We made it to Rodriguez Key by late afternoon , however the alternator quit on us and we had to have a stop over for a couple of days thus missing the sailing window to cross the Gulf Stream. We were stuck there for 5 days before we could cross the Gulf Stream.
On November 27 we crossed the stream into Bahamas to drop anchor on Gun Cay. Much palaver was experienced with the anchor that was not setting due to a rocky bottom. We then gave up and moved to the bank side of the island where we dropped anchor. We stayed for two days, the first day having been spent searching for the anchor. We had decided to move in the morning a bit up to another area with better holding but our anchor did not come up with the chain as we rolled it in. Mads performed a very smooth man overboard manoeuvre and Eva and him were later able to retrieve the anchor.
We continued after two days across the banks to Chub Cay, a journey of 80 nautical miles which we intended to break up in two. We spent the night on the banks after catching a fish for dinner. Chub Cay was spotted by mid afternoon and we checked into a marina so we could go to customs and check into the Bahamas.

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