March 27, 2022
It looks like scheduling makes Florida the place to be. Jinhee’s next trip to the boat will be just a few days and being in the Bahamas means wasting about 30 hours of it travelling, so back to Florida I go.
The winds are not my friend. I can’t say that these winds are unusual, but everyone for three years has been saying these winds are unusual. If there is an argument for global warming, the changes in weather patterns are high on the list of symptoms. In any case, these unusual winds, a davit that is not working properly and more travel constraints mean I am working my way back to the US.
On Friday I travelled a short distance to Fox Harbour and anchored for the night. The ride was very, very bumpy with short sharp waves (the water is very shallow with a long fetch), but not being in a rush allowed me to adjust course and speed many times to appease the sea gods.
Here are some photos of Home Free at Fox Harbour (I seem to have deleted the video of the shoreline!)
Saturday was another very short transit to Great Sale Cay to shelter from another wind onslaught. I am waiting here until late afternoon to go the short distance to Mangrove Cay and hope the forecast holds up for winds to diminish to 15 knots. The bank (Little Bahamas Bank) will still be bumpy, but it will settle quickly through the evening.
Here are a couple of drone shots. Note the blue of the water. This would have been so much fun with a dinghy and no wind!! I am so far from shore because it gets shallow quickly and the charts reference ‘unsurveyed area’, meaning I can’t trust the chart. Many other boats went much farther in, very close to shore and reported 6-7 feet of depth at MLW, but I didn’t venture so close. Perhaps with a dinghy . . . (I will solve that problem tomorrow, when another N47 owner catches me. He has a spare for the davit).
I have been enjoying life aboard, fixing a few things, cleaning a bit and reading.