Sailing Arcas

We're Baaack

And we're back on the boat! We spent most of our break in Austin and Dallas, visiting my family, with a stop in Lawrence, KS over Memorial Day weekend to attend the wedding of Hill's cousin.

We put Arcas the water this afternoon and returned our rental car a few hours later. However, we are still tied up at the dock at the boat yard. We originally planned to leave tomorrow morning, but as usual all of our boat preparations took longer than planned, so we are going to stay here one more day to finish. We had an epic shopping trip at Wal-Mart this morning, buying provisions to last about six weeks plus other odds and ends that we've been waiting to buy once we came back to the U.S. We put most of the food away but still have quite a bit of organizing to do tomorrow. Hill also needs to do a few things to the boat to make it Coast Guard-legal. And, we need to review our charts and figure out where to go!

The immediate question for our journey is whether to stay in the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) or go outside into the Atlantic. Staying in the ICW means that we will be protected from winds and weather, but we will have to motor rather than sail. The ICW is also both narrow and crowded, more like a road, so we will have to hand steer most of the time, which requires more concentration. We will also have to stop each evening as motoring on the ICW at night is not recommended. And there are numerous bridges along the way that have to be raised to let boats through. Let's just say it's not the fast route.

On the other hand, going out into the Atlantic means that we are at the mercy of the weather - and Florida has had daily thunderstorms with lighting and strong gusts for the past 2-3 weeks. There are also a limited number of inlets into anchorages, so once we are out there, we are committed to reaching our next destination unless we turn back.

We've talked to other boaters and gotten lots of different advice. A lot of the recommendations are to go outside and sail straight to Charleston, SC or Beaufort, NC, which would take several days. I'm not ready for or excited about 4-5 days of offshore sailing. On the other hand, it's bloody hot and humid here, so after a few more days of sweating I may reconsider.

But I'm excited about sailing up the coast and seeing the U.S from a different viewpoint. I'll have to make sure to keep my head out of my laptop - I purchased a Verizon connect card so I'll have internet anywhere we have cell phone access. And I'll have cell phone access! It's going to be a little different than the Bahamas.

Pictures!

I was finally able to upload our photos from the last few months - check out the links on the right under "Photo Albums." Enjoy!

Back in the US of A

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.

More About George Town

I wanted to add a little more about our stay in George Town. George Town is a well-known cruising destination, and hundreds of boats anchor there during the winter months. Our cruising guide referenced all sorts of scheduled activities, like yoga and volleyball, set up by the boaters.

Our first night in George Town, I looked out at the sea of anchor lights surrounding us, and realized we hadn’t been anywhere this full of boats anywhere else in the Bahamas. The VHF was a constant chatter of boaters hailing each other to make plans or talk. Our favorites were the two or three boats with children on board who would hail each other to make plans to go to the beach and play after they finished their homeschooling. They were so cute!

Still, George Town was not one of our top destinations in the Bahamas. If we had not visited during the Family Regatta, I think we would have found it quite boring. It was not as lively as we expected. One of our friends told us that there were 1/3 the number of boats there from his previous visit – yet another indication of the effects of the US recession that we’ve seen reflected in many other ways in the Bahamas.

But I’m not sure that we would have liked it better with more boaters. Our favorite destinations on our trip have been those with spectacular natural beauty – the places where we could go hiking or snorkeling or diving. The water in George Town’s Elizabeth Harbour wasn’t as clear as in other parts of the Bahamas, and the 20+ knot winds we endured during our stay made it difficult to do water activities (unless getting soaked in the dinghy counts).

George Town was also where we had to part ways with our friends on Lizard and Moondance, who are continuing on to the Dominican Republic. We wish them well!

George Town to Warderick Wells

We are back in the Exuma Park HQ at Warderick Wells. We sailed here directly from  George Town - covering the route that previously took us three weeks in one day.

We are finally blessed with light winds and an army (navy?) of boats is heading back to Florida from George Town. Hill and I ducked out of the crowd to fulfill our promise to ourselves to volunteer for a day at Exuma Park. Yesterday we helped disassemble a salvaged motorboat, install some donated cabinets, and clean and re-organize a storage room. At the end, we were tired! I guess that's what happens after skipping a few months of "real" work.

This island is our favorite spot of our journey and we decided that we couldn't leave without spending at least one more day here snorkeling and admiring the spectacular views. We are heading over to a new snorkel spot in about an hour, at slack tide. Tomorrow we will leave before sunrise for Nassau. It's only 50 miles, but we have to cross the "Yellow Bank," an area of coral heads, and we need good visibility for that section of the journey, thus we will leave early so we can reach the Yellow Bank around 1pm.

If the forecast holds up we should be able to continue straight to Chub Cay, then Bimini, then Florida before the end of the week. But as we've learned, we can't be too strict in making plans. We are looking forward to the U.S. though, swine flu and all. I can't wait to hit a real grocery store.

P.S. Hill and I have tons of photos waiting to be posted to the site. However, Internet connections in the Exumas just aren't up to the task of uploading and downloading large amounts of data. We will get them up once we are back the U.S.