We have arrived in Florida! Including our two-day layover in Warderick Wells, we traveled from George Town to Florida in seven days. Pretty impressive! We have certainly come a long way (literally and figuratively) from our first painful few weeks in the Abacos.
After an eventful layover in Warderick Wells, we sailed to Nassau (11 hours). The next day we sailed to Chub Cay in the Berrys (7 hours). The following day we decided to sail directly to West Palm Beach (23 hours). We had tossed around several options, including sailing to Bimini and then West Palm, or to Bimini and then Fort Lauderdale and then West Palm. However, it would have been an all-day sail to Bimini (75 miles) and given that the weather has been so settled (10 knots or less from the east), it just seemed easier to get it all over with in one long leg.
We left Chub Cay at noon. We did three hour watches until 6:00pm, when we switched to four hour watches. I did 10-2 and Hill did 2-6. On our night sail to George Town, we did two hour watches and we both ended up wiped out because we didn’t have enough time to sleep. By doing four hour watches overnight, the person off watch actually had the chance to get a decent chunk of sleep. We were still tired when we arrived in West Palm, but not completely exhausted. The night sailing was quite beautiful – the moon was almost full and the sea was almost calm. The only downside was that with the light winds, and our course taking us almost dead downwind, we had the motor on most of the way.
I was on watch when the skyline of West Palm came into view a little before 8:00am. I refrained from yelling out “Land Ho!” since Hill was asleep, but I did manage a little happy dance in the cockpit. We dropped anchor around 11:30 am. Tomorrow we will move to a marina and rent a car and try to restrain ourselves from binging on American culture (Hill has already rediscovered the iPhone). On Monday we will pull the boat out of the water and take a break from sailing until the end of the month, when we will begin making our way up the east coast.
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