Crossing the Gulf Stream to The Abacos, Bahamas!

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

Crossing The Gulf Stream – Florida to The Bahamas

Just hanging around with Thomas.

Caught 3 Barracudas.

Ducked tape his life jacket on, since he always takes it off.

Andrew could not wait to get in the water.

Tuesday evening we left the Marina in Fort Lauderdale to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. The winds were coming from the south-east at about 25 knots. These conditions are not exactly the perfect “weather window” that most cruisers sit and wait for. Some cruisers wait weeks for the perfect conditions, but we did not want to waste any time. In addition, our friend Andrew had a flight booked out of Marsh Harbour leaving Saturday, December 13th.

After putting the kids to bed we had a chance to finish preparing the boat for the crossing. At 12:00 am midnight, Wednesday morning we left our slip and headed towards the Atlantic. We purposely planned to leave at this time so we would arrive in the Bahamas while it was still daylight. As we left the channel at Port Everglades the 15+ foot rolling waves with white caps were on the nose of our boat. Immediately I said, (Roxane) “lets turn the boat around!”. I was extremely stressed out as Ed and Andrew set the sails. I know that we needed good wind to sail across, but the waves were more than I could handle. Twenty-five knots of wind on the ocean is definitely not the same as twenty-fives knots on Lake Ontario!

Alexander enjoying a sandwich for lunch.

Once we were on open water the waves were more manageable at 10 feet and the wind was a steady 20 –25 knots. Our boat handled the wind and waves really well. All of us started to feel confident in how well the boat was handling these ocean conditions. Although Ed and Andrew didn’t handle the large rolling waves so well; both guys spent the entire trip with severe sea sickness. I sat and watched the horizon most of the night while the boat was on auto-pilot, the auto pilot took us all the way to the Bahamas without a problem. The guys were wiped out with nausea and vomiting. The skipper was sleeping, and Andrew the sailor who came to help us from PCYC, was also out cold on the cock-pit floor. I suddenly realized, hey these guys are suppose to be doing this, while they are out cold, I am up all night on watch. I noticed that every once in awhile the jib sail would get hammered with a wave, and the water would just run off. I thought about waking the guys, but it did not really effect the boat. I soon noticed a pattern of it every once and awhile, so I just let them sleep off the sea sickness.

We saw several cargo ships throughout the night.  Our AIS system notified us that one of these ships was headed right for us. We actually thought he was a lot further away, seemed like a couple of miles. He actually didn’t see us as well, he was bow on headed right for us, only about half a mile off our port beam. It is very common that these container ships may not be able to see you at all. Our navigation lights are at deck level and is almost impossible to see at night in any kind of sea. Earlier in Jacksonville, Florida a container ship only about a quarter of mile behind us, could not see us at all.

In these situations sailors often try to hail the boat with no luck. They seem to be ignoring you. But actually, our AIS would often show as many as 10 to 15 boats in the area, your eyes may only spot one or two. So when you are generically hailing the boat, he is looking at his screen, and sees 10 to 15 boats, and has no idea you are hailing him. So he does not answer. But with our AIS system, it actually gives you the name of the ship, which allows us to call him by name, and there is no ignoring that. So when Ed hailed him, and told him that we were the sailing vessel about a half a mile on his bow, he responded that he would alter his course immediately to 230 degrees to avoid us.  Don’t want to think about what could have happened had we not had AIS installed. That was a little too close for comfort.

A little snorkeling.

After traveling through the night at an average speed of 7 knots per hour, we arrived in the shallow waters of the Bahamas at 10:00 am, Wednesday. In calmer seas, everyone quickly recovered from the nausea and sea-sickness. Each of us were able to enjoy a large bowl of cereal. We were in 10’ depth of beautiful aqua-blue water, but to our surprise there was no land in sight for another 4 hours. We arrived at Mangrove Cay, a very small island on the north side of Grand Bahamas Island. This is where we anchored for the night, and enjoyed a good nights rest.

Thursday December 11th, 2008

Fox Town, Little Abacos Island

Ed and Andrew woke up at 6 am to raise the anchor and we started heading east. The weather was warm and sunny as we trolled two fishing lines behind the boat. We successfully caught several small Barracudas, which was especially exciting for the kids.

Alex loves all the wildlife of the Bahamas.

Andrew McAllister of PCYC and Ed.

Looking much better with your shirt on Andrew.

We arrived in Fox Town on Little Abacos Island where we anchored for the night. We enjoyed swimming and snorkeling off the back of the boat before dark. The bay in front of Fox Town has a sandy bottom surrounded by rocks and shoals on all sides. We decided to drop two anchors off the bow, one a Danforth and the other a Bruce for extra holding. This is called a Bahamian Mooring. We were in about 10 feet of water, and let out about 30 foot of chain and 50 feet of rode on both anchors. The Danforth holds exceptionally well in a sandy bottom. But the Bruce is less likely to let go in changing current or winds. While we slept a storm passed through. This same storm passed over the Gulf Stream the night before, where we could see up to 60 knot winds and thunderstorms on our Sirius Satellite weather system. As the storm passed over us, there was heavy rain and the wind was at 25 to 30 knots. We got up during the night when our anchor alarm went off. We checked our chart plotter and it seemed that one of our two anchors let go and re-set itself fifty feet away, due to a change in the wind direction and the tidal current. All was good and we went back to sleep, without any problems.

Friday December 12th, 2008

Thomas found this cool beach.

Spanish Cay and Green Turtle Cay

Black Diamond sitting in crystal clear water.

Navigating the shallow waters of the Bahamas, Ed does not rely on the chart plotter alone. He constantly monitors the depth along with the colour of the water, while plotting his position on paper charts. Ed then constantly compares the paper charts to the chart plotter for greater accuracy. There are virtually no red and green buoys in the Bahamas, this is due to the fact that the sand drifts and shifts. One year an area may be deep enough to cross, while other times it might be too shallow. With a draft of 6.5’ closer to 7 feet loaded down, we also have to pay close attention to the tides when making any sort of passage in the Bahamas.

The boys on the beach.

Spanish Cay Docks, a private island.

We cleared customs in Spanish Key, and hoisted the Bahamian flag.

Early 6AM in the morning we headed towards Spanish Cay. In Spanish Cay we cleared customs and stepped foot on Bahamas soil for the first time.  In the guide books they listed all the towns and islands that you can clear customs. Explorer Charts is one of the best charts and guides for the Bahamas, we highly recommend them. A few of the places to clear customs in the Abacos are, West End, Spanish Cay, Green Turtle Cay and Marsh Harbour. Spanish Cay Marina will charge you $50 for the use of their docks for clearing Customs. So you might as well spend the night here. Excellent first stop, good provisioning for a remote island and an amazing beach! Clearing Customs was a very easy process. The customs officials boarded the boat, had a little look around, asked us for the ships documents, and passports. For a boat under 35 feet the fee is $150 and $300 for over 35 feet. So unfortunately we had to pay the $300, but it’s good for a whole year, and if you ask, they’ll include the fishing permit at no extra charge.

Spanish Cay is a small privately owned island three miles long by half a mile wide. We rented a golf cart and loaded it up with all of our beach gear and a picnic lunch. We toured this pretty island and found a beautiful beach where we stopped for the afternoon. Ed and Thomas went snorkeling and found a starfish, and a live conch in it’s shell. It was an extra thrill when we had a good view of a stingray that swam into the shallow waters at the beach. We tried to follow it, but it was frightened and it quickly swam aw

We rented a golf cart for getting around the island.

Found these snorkeling,

Bahamas is for relaxing, not for working as you can see...

The boys in Green Turtle Cay, a beautiful little town on a small island.

Alexander found this conch, which had a little salamander inside of it. This became his pet for a few days.

Thomas Loves the Hammock.

Celebrating Alexander's 5th Birthday in Christmas Style.

Black Diamonds Boat Bread Recipe!

I got pretty use to the galley oven, and was able to bake cakes, muffins, bread and home made pizza on the boat.

I also baked a loaf of bread on the boat for the first time. I used a Hungarian recipe which requires less ingredients than most other recipes. This bread is a bit heavier than some but it bakes well in the boat oven.

I made half of this recipe:

3 cups      warm water
1 tsp        yeast
6 cups      flour   
2 tsp        salt

 

1. Add yeast and 1 tbsp of flour to one cup of water until foamy (30 – 40 minutes)
2. Using dough hooks add remaining water, salt and half of flour.
3. Add rest of flour (should come clean away from bowl).
4. Kneed.
5. Shape into a loaf, let rise (approx. 1 hour)
6. Brush with water and bake for 45 minut

The men of Black Diamond.

Later that afternoon we left Spanish Cay for Green Turtle Cay. We arrived at Black Sound Marina, at 5 p.m., and we walked into town before dark. The houses and businesses were all painted pretty pastel colours with little white picket fences. Most people use golf carts to get around on the small roads. With all the Christmas decorations it felt as though we were walking around Santa’s Village. We found a restaurant on the waterfront where we enjoyed a nice meal of conch, grouper and fried lobster.  One of the best meals we had in the Bahamas. We came back to the boat and decorated our tabletop Christmas tree and we also hung bows and window stickers. When we were done we sat down to celebrate Alexander’s 5th birthday with a cake that I baked on the boat.

Decorated the boat for Christmas, complete with tree.

Saturday December 13th -16th, 2008

Marsh Harbour

Saturday morning we left Green Turtle Cay for Marsh Harbour. We arrived at the Conch Inn and Marina where Andrew caught a taxi to the airport (back to Toronto). We spent the next few days at this cute marina. At 8:15 each morning we listen to the Cruisers Net in Marsh Harbour on channel 68 to receive updates on the weather, news and local events. The cruisers net, is like a live radio show broadcast on VHF channel 68. They have various hosts reporting on various information interesting to cruisers, there are even commercials where local restaurants come on the VHF and promote their establishment. They asked for a report from any boats around Whale Cay, this can be treacherous crossing on the out side of the keys to get to Marsh Harbour. Our boat’s draft is too deep to cross on the inside, so we had to make this crossing on the outside. There is a condition called rage seas, where the tide is going out, while large swells are moving in at the same time. Sometimes the seas can break surf at 20 feet high around this area. We crossed with 6-10 foot seas, they were not breaking, and we made it without trouble. When other cruisers heard our report, they decided not to attempt it. When we arrived in Marsh Harbour we were greeted by the host of the cruisers net congratulating us. After what I have experienced so far, it did not seem to bad, even Roxane and the kids were ok with it. Later we found out that people can listen to the cruisers net on the internet as well. We received e-mails from as far away as New York State, from people we did not even know, who have been following our blog. Unbelievable.

Once we arrived in Marsh Harbour there was a Christmas celebration in town with music, dancing and a jumping castle and photos with Santa. All the kids including, Thomas and Alexander received a wrapped gift. While there we bought Thomas a couple more books because he was getting low on reading material since he has read six novels on this trip so far!

Bahama Santa with the boys.

Marsh Harbour Christmas Party for the kids!

 

Christmas trees brought in and spread throughout the town.

 

All the children in the town received Christmas presents, courtesy of the Rotary Club.

 

The kids love Dolphins.

Sunset in the Abacos.

 

 

 

 

 

Day 5b – Land AHOY! – Jacksonville, Florida.

Day 5b – Nov. 3rd, – Land AHOY! Jacksonville Florida here we come!

We continued sailing the next morning under grey skies, and moderately heavy weather. Compared to the night before, it was very manageable. The winds were about 20 to 25 knots with large seas the had built up the night before. We were making good speed to land fall, about 7-8 knots the entire day.

 

Do we look tired?

At some point last night, we decided to slightly alter course to Jacksonville rather than St. Augustine’s Florida. The difference was only about 17 miles, but would mean arriving at the harbour mouth at 8PM rather than 10-11PM that evening. Paul also noted that the St. Augustine’s harbour entrance was a small shallow recreational entrance, where the Jacksonville entrance was a large commercial shipping entrance. In the weather we were sailing, with reduced visibility, large swells and waves would make it much safer and easier to enter at Jacksonville.

 

Ed cooking up a nice stir fry dinner.

We were counting down the miles, and hours to arrival. We were happy with our decision in not stopping earlier in the voyage. This allowed us to make it all the way to Florida from New York in 5 days, 3 hours. We were all proud of ourselves, and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment. Even Paul who has done this trip close to a dozen times said, “He has never made it to Florida so fast in his life, and also had something to brag about.”

 

Much happier now that dinner is ready!

At about 7PM we were very close to the harbour entrance, the sun had set, and it was quite dark. There was a lot of container ship and commercial fishing traffic in the area. We could count about 6-7 container ships on the AIS screen, plus another 3 vessels that we tracked visually that did not appear on the AIS. I would highly recommend AIS to anyone contemplating it. It’s really not that expensive, no monthly fee, and draws virtually no power at all. It basically runs on your VHF radio and chart plotter, so no additional power is consumed. It gave us added confidence in what we were seeing, and would answer questions like; Which direction is that boat traveling? What speed? Are we on a collision course? It also showed us that a couple of boats were anchored near the harbour mouth.

 

The seas look a lot worse in person. Click to enlarge.

Later we heard radio traffic between the harbour pilot and the container ship Captains. The anchored boats were waiting for the harbour pilot to come out and guide them in. We also heard from a large container ship that went out earlier that day from Jacksonville headed to Texas. He decided to head back into harbour due to the tropical storm he encountered, and decided it was too rough for his ship. Oddly enough this was the same storm we endured the night before. Wild, our 39 foot boat handled a storm that a container ship did not want to contend with. To be fair, we had the storm behind us, and we were running from it, with the waves behind us. The container ship would have had it right on his nose, but in any case we felt good about making it through.

I decided to make a security call on the VHF radio. This is a general safety notice to mariners in the area. In Canada the word Security is pronounced in French, but in the US its done in English. The call went something like this, “Security, Security, Security, a 39 foot sailing vessel Black Diamond will be approaching the harbour mouth in about 45 minutes, we are making about 8 knots under sail with limited mounvreability.”

 

Another view of the seas...

Soon after the call, we were hailed by the harbour pilot, who also acts as traffic control. He had a few questions for us, like what direction we were approaching from, and if we were headed for the sea bouy about 1/2 mile from the red and green bouys that mark the entrance that would guide us in behind the sea wall. He also wanted to know where we were coming from, when I responded New York City, non-stop, he was pretty impressed.

We made a text book approach to the sea bouy on a beam reach, then we veered to a close haul toward the entrance, furled in the head sail, and turned on the engine, and continued down the channel. We could see large seas crashing against the sea wall were now behind. It felt good to motor in calm water for a change.

The harbour pilot hailed us once more, he was piloting a 1000 foot container ship right behind us. He asked us to move to one side of the channel so he could pass. We asked which side he would like us to keep to? He responded that we could choose, and he would pass on the opposite side. The pilot and other ships in the area treated us with respect and courtesy, even though we were just a 39 foot sail boat entering a major shipping lane.

 

Notice the white caps...

It was an awesome site to have such a large ship pass us within about a 100 feet. Our 60 foot mast did not even come close to reaching the height of the decks of this ship.

At this point we were winding up the river, while I was searching for a suitable marina to tie up to for the night. I found the inter-coastal water way (ICW) on the charts, and a few marinas about 3-4 miles down the river. Navigating the ICW at night reminded me about the difficulties we had in the Erie canal on the way down earlier. We were trying to keep between the markers, assisted by the chart plotter and looking for them with our 3 million candle light.

The bridges are suppose to have 65 feet of clearance in this part of the ICW. Our clearance with the instruments is about 62 feet. As we approached one of the bridges we noticed the marker on the side of the bridge was showing only 62 feet as the tides were high. I was not certain we would clear the bridge, and attempted to slow the boat down, and eventaully had the throttle in full reverse but the boat was not coming to a complete stop. With the tides still coming in, there was a 5-6 knot current in the river.

The boat shifted side ways when the current got a hold of the keel, and she kept moving forward and under the bridge — side ways. At this point you might want to call me sideways Eddie. We drifted under the bridge side ways, only a few feet of clearance on each side of the bridge. Reminiscent of the lock we went through side ways and back wards in the Erie Canal.  If you want to read about that experience, click on this link.

I learned something from the lock experience, and did not panic this time, kept cool, and gently played the throttle so as not to hit the bow or stern on the bridge supports as we drifted through. The crew was ready to fend off, I kept my eyes on the bow and stern, and did not worry about the mast, there was nothing we could do about that. Luckily, we made it through without any damage, but must have been within inches from the mast height, and a few feet from the bow and stern. Paul was very relaxed about the whole thing, “Told you there was enough clearance, nothing to panic about.” I was relatively calm too, starting to get a few notches of experience under my belt now. Had I not had the lock experience, I would have panicked, and could have damaged the boat again.

Upon reflection of what had just happened, it was actually a good thing we drifted side ways. Had there not been enough mast height clearance, the boat would have heeled and drifted on through. We would have suffered greater damage going through straight on. 

Once we landed at the Palm Cove Marina gas dock, we were so happy to step foot on solid ground, that Peter, Cez and I all literally kissed the ground as we got off. It had taken us exactly 5 days and 3 hours to travel close to 1,000 miles, about 1,800 kms. What I keep referring to as probably a cruisers record!

The next day we attended to the boat, hosed down the salt with fresh water, pumped out, fueled up and charged the batteries. The boat made the voyage with no damage, or failures to the rigging or electronics. However, we did noticed one small thing when we landed, a bolt missing from the roller furling. It was not a threat to the rig, and the furling still worked despite the missing bolt. 

The Marina is actually very nice and modern, so I decided to leave the boat here for a few weeks. They have all the facilities you would want; Concrete floating dock that rise and fall with the tide, laundry, Wi-Fi, restaurants and a swimming pool. It is located conveniently on Highway US 90 and near the A1A, close to all the action by the beach. I thought the cost was reasonable at $550 for a whole month.

That evening we had a very nice dinner on the A1A beach strip. We decided to have appetizers at one place, dinner at another and desert at yet another. The first place was famous for mussels, so I asked the chef to surprise us with 2 mussel dishes done how ever he saw fit. We had probably the best two mussel dishes any of us had ever had, along with a cheese tasting platter. 

The next day the crew flew out, I stayed an additional day just to further clean and prepare the boat for it’s 3 week stay. I flew out the second morning, but can’t wait to be back in 3 weeks with Roxane and the boys. We plan to then sail down the coast to Fort Lauderdale, and then over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, where we hope to spend the next 6 weeks and Christmas.

Captain Ed, Signing off for now, please check back in the first week of December, 2008.

Day 1b – Evening setting out to Sea!

The Evening of Day 1 – Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Statue of Liberty at sunset.

Departed Liberty Landing at about 6PM, as we sailed past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island with the sunset in the back ground, it brought thoughts of the immigrants of old times that would have sailed across the ocean to a brave new world, the start of their American dream and the freedom it represents. We headed out to sea past Long Island, along a very long channel that is a major high traffic zone used by some of the largest containerships you’ll ever see. Over the next 4 hours we were passed by over a dozen container ships, each about a 1/2 hour apart from each other, some over a 1,000 feet long and 150 feet wide. The channel between the buoys is only about 500 feet wide, large enough for 2 container ships to pass each other port to port. We had to stay in the channel ourselves, outside the channel was even to shallow for our boat which draws 6’6”. So we kept very close to the red buoys, giving the ships lots of room to pass. Every time a ship passed at about 15-20 knots, it left a 4-5 foot wake that we had to climb and keep the boat from being tossed outside the buoys. They could not believe we were going out to sea at this time of night, and would blast their very loud fog horns at us. Keep in mind this is in complete darkness by now. Cez has not had a lot of experience helming, and he found it very stressful, he did a great job however. Paul was navigating, I was baking pizza in the oven and heating up some clam chowder for dinner as Peter kept us entertained all night.

At about 9 or 10PM, we saw a very bright light in the sky, at first we thought it was a helicopter, but then the light was coming right at our boat about 100 feet away. Cez thought someone was firing at us. Then another shot fired at our starboard bow, it felt like we were right in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Then we quickly realized someone was firing distress flares, but herd no mayday on the radio. We were debating what to do? Do we radio to find out if someone needs help, do we try to sail towards where the flares are being shot from. Then after about 15 minutes and 3-4 flares, the coast guard comes on the radio and announces a security call that they are conducting flare tests and training. In Canada they would have announced that hours before hand to warn people and not to freak them out. I think they were actually aiming them at us just for their entertainment.

Shortly after this we were in the Atlantic Ocean. It was pitch black, but you could feel the boat rising and falling slowly up and down the large swells. We started to head south along the coast, we kept far outside the ocean shipping lanes that lead the freighters south. We saw the large cruise ship that we passed in the port of New York earlier that day, going out to sea on our port side. We could see on our AIS that the ship was headed to Hamilton, Bermuda and when it would arrive in port. Our boat is equipped with the new AIS technology. I learned about this from Paul and Sheryl Shard at a PCYC seminar. They highly recommended it, so I had it installed on our boat. Its priceless! It is now mandatory for Commercial vessels to be equipped with AIS. It broadcasts digitally over VHF radio the boats name, size and length, boat speed, heading, and final destination along with other data. This is not an audio broadcast, but digitally interpreted by our onboard chart plotter (Marine Computer). It is then plotted on our screen, we can see where the boat is in relation to our boat, what direction and speed it is travelling, our plotter will calculate a possible collision course, and time of intersection. We can set up a safety perimeter around our boat, and it will sound an alarm if a ship enters the zone. We had AIS running all the time, it brought us a good sense of safety. Occasionally, we would also turn on our radar, and do a sweep of the area just to verify an all clear. We can’t run the radar constantly due to power consumption. But it can be programmed to come on every once in a while and do a sweep. This is also necessary to pick up any ships that may not be transmitting AIS. We have a 4K radar dome, good for a range of 48 knotical miles. I installed these two units because I knew I was planning on doing some ocean cruising. It is still important to keep a live watch 24 hours a day, but these tools just make life a little easier.