We left Rock Sound on Tuesday, Feb. 7 with excellent north east wind. We were hoping to be underway around 7am but the starter motor for the engine had another plan. We were all ready to start the engine and pull up the anchor – I turned the key and nothing happened – not even the “dead battery” sound. Mark went into his home away from home – the engine room – and tried several different things to get the engine to start. After 20 minutes of trying various things, Mark just bypassed the starter switch and started the engine. Not the best way to begin a 48 nm trip but at least we could leave the anchorage.
Our first stop was at Cape Eleuthera Marina to fill up our water tanks. Last year when we got rid of our diesel generator, we also got rid of our old water maker and we haven’t replaced it yet. We are very fortunate that our water tanks are large – we can carry over 250 gallons of water in our 3 tanks. Last time we filled up was in Vero Beach on Jan. 17th and we only took on 140 gallons at Cape Eleuthera Marina!! That works out to about 6.5 gallons of water a day!!
Our sail across the Exuma Sound was amazing. The wind was on our aft port quarter (left side at the back) and we had all 3 sails up with a reef in the main sail (reefing makes your sail slightly smaller – we had a lot of wind!). We had wind in the low 20knots for the whole trip and we were cruising along nicely with boat speeds in the low 7 knots. We did see one 9.3knot speed but that was only for a brief time. With strong wind you also get larger waves! The waves were mostly in the same direction as the wind so we were being pushed around a bit from the stern. It was a spirited ride – or some would call it a bit “salty”. We arrived at Cambridge Cay by 4pm and ended up anchoring close to the shore. Lots of boats were in this anchored when we arrived but it’s fairly large and there was space.
It’s Thursday, Feb. 9th and the wind is still blowing but from the east now. Mark spent yesterday fixing the starter switch – it turned out that the bracket holding the solenoid that starts the engine had rusted, causing the solenoid to disconnect. Mark made a new bracket for the solenoid and replaced some of the cables and the engine started like it was brand new!! We relaxed for the rest of the day and just watched boats come and go from the anchorage. Today we walked across Cambridge Cay to the ocean side and watched the waves roll in! With all this wind, the Exuma Sound is very rough! Glad we’re not out there today!
We’ll probably hang around Cambridge for a few more days – we’re expecting strong wind that will be clocking around from east to north over the next few days.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 