Our north wind came a day early so we left Ginn Sur Mer at 6 am on Friday, Jan. 19. This 80nm trip required us to get up early so we could arrive with some light to anchor. Well that plan didn’t quite work out. I set an alarm for 4am (so we would be underway at 5am) – or so I thought. At 5:30 am we both were up in a bit of a panic and I realized I’d set my alarm for 4pm!! Okay so we started the trip a bit later than planned but that’s the way things go sometimes. We did manage to have anchor up and be heading out of Ginn Sur Mer by 6am so that wasn’t bad. The only negative of leaving was that we missed Alizarin (Julian and Brad) and Orkan (Sharon and Rick) who arrived at West End around 12pm.
It was a good day for moving south. We had set up the spinnaker the day before hoping we would have a nice downwind sail but the wind strength just wasn’t there so we had a long day of motoring. Once we were south of Grand Bahama Island, the waves lengthened out and we had a very good, uneventful trip to Great Harbour Cay. There were lots of tankers, cargo ships and cruise ships moving so we kept an eye out for them but nothing came close. We did have a nice little dolphin escort late in the afternoon. They really like to race ahead of the boat and play in our bow wake.
We arrived at Great Harbour in the dark – that’s a little stressful. We’ve only anchored here once before (and we arrived in the dark that time too) and we had difficulty getting our anchor to set. This time we headed towards the north end of the anchorage (by Rat Cay) where we could see other masthead lights. We got in as close as we dared with our lack of light, dropped the anchor and it grabbed right away!! That was a great relief. We were anchored and settled by 7pm.
Saturday morning we were up by 7am, wanting to depart at 8am to do the 40nm to Bond Cay. The Great Harbour Cay anchorage is almost in the middle of the island. To get back out and around the top is about a 12nm journey (partly over the path we took to get in). We had north/northeast wind on Saturday so it was a tough slog getting out of the anchorage and around the top end. We pounded into the waves so hard that our anchor came loose twice!! Not much fun going to the bow to secure it when the boat was going up and down by easy 6 – 7 ft, but Mark did it as quickly as he could.
Once we were around the top and heading in a southerly direction, we deployed the jib and mizzen (jib and jigger this is called) and sailed the rest of the way to Bond Cay. It was a beautiful sail – wind and waves following which was perfect. It was a very quiet day on the water, maybe because of the wind speed and direction or maybe because everyone was already tucked in somewhere to wait out this easterly blow that’s starting today (Sunday).
Our anchorage at Bond Cay is large but very shallow. It’s hard to get close to shore which makes you feel a bit out in the open. It will be good for the east and south east winds that are coming over the next several days. Our plan now is to wait here until the end of the month. We’ll move to New Providence (west side) on or around Jan. 29th and go into our reserved dock space on January 30. We’ll be all settled and secured before we fly home on February 1st.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 