Our 1988 Passport 40, Billy Pilgrim, sailed south from Maine to Florida in fall 2021, then across to the Bahamas in what felt like a larger-than-usual migration of sailing snowbirds. In Florida, our population divided in two: those who would cross the Gulf Stream to the islands beyond, and those who wouldn’t. 

The Gulf Stream stands as a threshold—by no means ­impassable, but daunting just the same. Flowing north through the Florida Straits as swiftly as 4 knots, it brings its own set of problems.

Setting Up to Cross Over

The Gulf Stream challenges come in three parts: departure and entry ports, weather forecasting, and old-school vector piloting. Here, we’ll focus on crossings from Florida to the Bahamas and back. 

Coastal sailors quickly learn that the number of safe all-weather inlets from the ocean to inland waters is quite limited, especially south of Hatteras. In Florida, there are only seven: St. Marys (Florida-Georgia border), St. Johns River (Jacksonville), Port Canaveral, Fort Pierce, Lake Worth (West Palm Beach), Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale), and Government Cut (Miami). Several other inlets can be transited in settled weather and good light, or with local knowledge. The print and online versions of the Waterway Guide (waterwayguide.com) are the gold standard for timely information about US coastal piloting, including inlets.

Across the Gulf Stream in the Bahamas, the number of official ports of entry is also limited. The closest of these include West End and Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, or Bimini at the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank. Of course, it’s possible to fly the quarantine flag, stay aboard the boat, and continue sailing deeper into Bahamian waters, and then clear customs in the Berry Islands, the Abaco islands or Nassau. The same principles for crossing the Gulf Stream apply. 

Assuming your boat travels at 8 knots or slower, you’ll want to leave from a US port that’s south of your chosen Bahamian port of entry. Look at the coordinates of each waypoint, particularly the latitude, recalling that 1 minute of latitude equals 1 nautical mile, and 1 degree of latitude equals 60 miles. (Degrees and minutes of longitude do not correlate with distance.)

Watching the Weather

Timing for the crossing to the islands is dictated broadly by the seasons, and particularly by insurance mandates. Many yacht policies stipulate that cruising boats must stay north of some predetermined latitude (typically, the Florida-Georgia line, but sometimes as far north as Cape Hatteras) until the end of hurricane season. Some policies set that date at November 1, some at November 30.

Regarding weather, crossing the Gulf Stream in December and January means two things: prevailing fresh to strong easterlies (northeast to southeast quadrant, typically 15 to 25 knots, sometimes higher) and occasional dramatic northers. Northers are weather fronts that blow from the north and, in winter, often arrive dramatically. In the day or two before a norther, your wind will typically veer through the southeast, south, west and ­northwest. The front itself usually comes with a black squall, a drenching downpour and a cold blast of high wind. On the backside of the front, the northerly winds can blow strong for several days. Veteran cruisers on both sides of the Gulf Stream learn to watch for northers and seek good shelter when they come.

For the Gulf Stream crossing itself, you want neither of those two conditions: not the prevailing fresh easterlies, which would mean beating directly into the wind and waves, and not the ­northers, which can mean monstrous seas when the north wind meets the north-flowing current. 

The moment you want is the fleeting transition between them: the moment the wind begins to veer. You want to catch it as the wind is coming from the south, blowing in the same direction as the ocean current. In winter months, this condition seldom lasts longer than a day. You have to be ready when it comes.

Tools for onboard weather forecasting have improved immeasurably in the past several years. You can still get the old standby: VHF and SSB radio broadcasts of the latest observations and forecasts from the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What’s improved in recent years is our access to multiple forecasting models. 

Global Forecast System, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Spire, and the UK’s Meteorological Office—all these independent weather models are now accessible through such online graphic interfaces as windy.com or PredictWind, and others. Best practice is to watch the 10-day forecasts and cycle through the different models to see the variances among predictions. If you watch multiple models every day for several weeks before your crossing, you’ll learn the typical weather patterns for your season. You can also join a subscription weather-routing service like those offered by Commanders’ Weather or Chris Parker. 

For off-grid cruising, from what we’ve seen, the two most price-worthy options for continuous offshore weather forecasting are Garmin’s inReach and the Iridium Go! satellite communication systems. Our Iridium Go! cost about $700. While we’re in the Bahamas, we choose an unlimited subscription service for $150 per month (including international voice calls, texts and graphic weather downloads). We’ll cancel it when we’re back in the States. PredictWind developed a weather app called Offshore that works seamlessly with Iridium Go!

Plotting a Sine-Wave Track

If your goal is to spend time in the northern Bahamas (Grand Bahama or Abacos), then you might plan to clear customs at West End or Freeport. If you’re aiming for destinations farther south (Nassau, Exumas or Lesser Antilles), then Bimini probably makes the most sense.

The final Gulf Stream-crossing problem comes here. From Maine to Florida, nearly every leg of our passage followed the same procedure. We’d enter a waypoint in our chart plotter, zoom in to check the whole leg for hazards, and then steer to that waypoint. One of our watch-keeping tasks was to continually ensure that our course over ground matched our chart plotter’s recommended course to steer. From Maine to Florida, offshore and inland, the chart plotter and this method never led us astray.

When crossing the Gulf Stream, your chart plotter will lead you astray. The slower your boat, the more you’ll stray. The best tools for this crossing are the old-school ones: paper charts, parallel rulers, dividers and a pencil. Let’s say you’re under sail and making 5 knots. Your boat’s heading might be 100 degrees true, but when you enter the north-flowing current (2 knots, 2.5 knots, 3 knots or 3.5 knots of current as you approach the Gulf Stream axis), the chart plotter will show a COG altering ever northward, 50 degrees and more from your heading. As the velocity of the Gulf Stream current increases, if you try to resolve the COG on your chart plotter with its recommended CTS, you’ll find yourself turning ­ever more southerly and directly into the current—making precious little easting.

Cape Florida to Gun Cay

Rhumb Line: 45 nm at 103m/096t; Average current 2.5 kt at 017m/010t

The solution is to recognize this problem in advance, apply an average current velocity for the entire crossing, and plot a course that minimizes the treadmill effect. Your heading will remain constant, but the resulting track across the Gulf Stream will look like a sine wave. Most observers reckon that the average velocity of the Gulf Stream through the Florida Straits is 2.5 knots.

Billy Pilgrim typically sails at 6 knots on a nice reach. In flat ­water, we’ll sometimes crack 7-and-change; pitching through choppy waves will sometimes knock down our speed into the 4s. To plot our course, I started with the rhumb line from Cape Florida on the mainland to Gun Cay, about 10 miles south of Bimini. (You could do the same from the Government Cut sea buoy to Bimini, or from Lake Worth Inlet to West End on Grand Bahama Island. Ideally, choose a departure point that’s south of your arrival point.) Our rhumb line came to 42 nautical miles at 103M/096T. The Waterway Guides and US chart books tend to communicate in degrees magnetic, and the Explorer Charts communicate in degrees true, so I jot down both to keep my head straight. 

For our crossing, I created a table whose left-hand column lists boatspeeds ranging from 4.0 knots to 8.0 knots in increments of 0.5 knots (see the chart on this page).

The second column shows the duration of time we’d be exposed to that current (45 nm divided by each of the speeds in Column 1). Making 4.0 knots, we’d be exposed to the 2.5-knot current for 11.25 hours; making 5.0 knots, for 9.0 hours; making 6.0 knots, for 7.5 hours. 

In the third column, I computed the northerly distance we’d be offset by the current. At a boatspeed of 4.0 knots, we’d be exposed to the 2.5-knot north-setting current for 11.25 hours; that means if we steered the rhumb-line course, we’d be set 28.1 nm north of our Bahamas waypoint. Making 5.0 knots, we’d be set 22.5 nm north; making 6.0 knots, we’d be set 18.8 nm north.

The final sequence of the solution is to use old-school, ­pencil-­and-paper plotting techniques to find the course to steer. Using Gulf Stream data, I determined that the average direction of current drift for our crossing was 017M/010T between Miami and the Bimini islands. To counteract the current, find the ­reciprocal course by adding 180 degrees: 197M/190T. On a paper chart, I aligned parallel rulers through 190T on the compass rose, and then walked the rulers through our Gun Cay waypoint. In pencil, I drew that line through the waypoint and extending in a southerly direction.

Next, I used dividers to measure the offset distances from Column 3 in my table. If we made 4.0 knots of boatspeed, then I needed to offset 28.1 nm; making 5.0 knots, 22.5 nm; making 6.0 knots, 18.8 nm. On the 190T line, I made tick marks for each of these distances from our Gun Cay waypoint, noting the boatspeed associated with each offset distance.

The final step was to get the parallel rulers back out and draw lines from our point of departure in Miami to each of the tick marks. On each line, I wrote our projected boatspeed and the CTS for that boatspeed. Making 4.0 knots, our CTS was 136M/129T; making 5.0 knots, 130M/123T; making 6.0 knots, 127M/122T.

Working it out this way in advance becomes especially helpful once you’re out there actually crossing the Gulf Stream. If you find that your boatspeed increases or decreases in real time, you’ve already prepared yourself to make rational course adjustments.

As it happened, our 10-day forecast presented no good day of southerlies when we were ready to leave Miami in early February, so we chose a day of light easterlies and motorsailed across. We turned on our chart plotter but didn’t enter a Bahamas waypoint into it. Instead, we steered to the CTS we’d worked out in pencil ahead of time. 

At first, we found ourselves sailing south of our rhumb line. As the velocity of the Gulf Stream current increased, even knowing what we knew, we were still alarmed to watch the northerly ­component in our COG as the minutes of latitude for our position increased well above those of our waypoint. But we held to plan. As we approached the Great Bahama Bank, the Gulf Stream velocity decreased. In the last 10 miles, we adjusted our course in small increments and saw the Gun Cay Light just where we expected. We had left the Cape Florida sea buoy at 7:30 a.m., shortly after sunrise, spent a lovely day in that impossibly deep blue, and landed at our Gun Cay waypoint by 3:30 the same afternoon, with good light to pilot visually on the banks. We had sailed a steady course, with only minor alterations for traffic. But sure enough, our GPS track shows a sine wave across the Florida Straits.

Tim Murphy is a Cruising World editor-at-large and a longtime Boat of the Year judge. He and Lesley Davison cruise their 1988 Passport 40, Billy Pilgrim (svbillypilgrim.com), between New England and the Bahamas.

The post Seamanship: How To Plot Your Course Across the Gulf Stream appeared first on Cruising World.

Lucky enough to have learned to sail when I was a boy knocking around Maine’s Kennebec River in a small wooden centerboard sloop, I harbor a history of mixed feelings about boats. Most of these emotions are positive, even ecstatic. Feeling the wind and exploiting it in a moving boat — there is a profound sense of independence. And yet when I first learned it, this seemed too miraculous. I can recall feeling a premonition that sailing is too glorious to be anything other than temporary, like a lovely Christmas morning under a pretty tree that will be in the trash tomorrow.

Will the day ever come when I will have to give up boats? Until now, the answer has been no. Yet when I have been asking this question recently, six decades after those early joys on the Kennebec, I have a sense that the ground rules are changing.

While we are never too old for holidays, some other things must inevitably be given up. The irony is that the abolition is at my own initiative. This past June, because of something I learned about myself, I decided to cut back on boats, swearing off the type of sailing that I most deeply love, which is going far out to sea. I made this decision last summer in England because I decided that, at age 74, my basic capabilities were gradually failing.

When a very fine yacht club on the Isle of Wight invited me to come over from the States and present a talk on yachting history at its clubhouse, my wife, Leah, quickly organized around that superb event an equally superb shoreside vacation on a theme (English cathedrals and pilgrimage sites) of profound interest to us both.

I meanwhile arranged to get in some sailing after we left England by joining the crew of a classic wooden yawl that would sail one of my most favorite challenging routes, 650 miles from Bermuda across the Gulf Stream to the States. Taking both prospects — the tours, and the delivery — seriously, I immediately expanded my fitness regimen, with daily long walks and extensive upper-body exercises.

But once we were in England, our ­ambitious and seemingly sensible plan began to fall apart. We had not considered one important question: Could I do all this? I was eating well and sleeping well, my recent physical examination had been a success, and the jet lag was well behind us. Still, by midafternoon on most days in London or Canterbury or Salisbury, my previously resilient body and brain were scrambled to the point of being distracted, forgetful and (so I was informed) grouchy. After a week of this, Leah tactfully wondered out loud if I really was up to the Bermuda delivery. My immediate response was a defiant husbandly yes. Still, I knew exactly what she was saying. I decided to track myself and make my own decision. By the end of a day of constant self-­examination, I realized that though I was generally in good health, I was not at my old state of resilience. I felt more tired, forgetful and distracted than I could recall.

I asked myself one searching question: Would you want to have someone at this stage in your watch in the Gulf Stream?

My answer: Probably not.

With that, I decided to withdraw from the delivery crew. In my reluctant email to the owners, I wrote, “One of my most important safety rules of thumb is that any sailor who is physically or mentally ‘off’ in any way that makes him unreliable doesn’t belong in an offshore boat. … Now three months into my 75th year, I have always been independent and vigorous. These symptoms are new and disturbing.”

I began to wonder whether, at my age and in my condition, I could continue my old seamanship practices. One of my habits was to take a walkabout and inspection tour of the deck and nearby fittings every two or three hours (of course, I was always hooked on with my safety harness). Once, in a deeply reefed 45-foot sloop slogging through the Gulf Stream toward Bermuda, my flashlight beam triggered a bright spark in the leeward waterway. Further inspection revealed it to be a cotter pin that had somehow fallen out of the headstay turnbuckle (where it was quickly reinstalled).

Would I do that inspection today? Surely not in rough weather. But I could train a younger sailor.

Circumstances of Concern

Concerned about my strength, endurance and mental acuity, I was quite sure that I had made the correct decision by ­dropping out of the delivery crew. Yet I had some doubts, and to test them I consulted the spirits of some great and thoughtful sailors who, each in his own way, had said something wise about seafaring in rough conditions.

Joseph Conrad, who spent the first half of his life at sea and then devoted the second half to writing about it, offered a pithy rule of thumb in his autobiography, The Mirror of the Sea. Conrad’s rule was this: “A seaman laboring under an undue sense of security becomes at once worth hardly half his salt.” The key word is undue. A sailor must be honest and frank about risks.

One observer of this rule was Olin Stephens, a great yacht designer (his boats include the one I was to sail in from Bermuda) who was a vastly experienced and successful skipper and navigator. A man of considerable reserve and modesty, he sometimes was quite bold in his sailing and his autobiography, All This and Sailing, Too, for which I provided editorial assistance. He had few fears on the water so long as he trusted the boat. “The hard push was the highlight for me,” he wrote of a wild Fastnet Race in England in 1931 in his yawl Dorade. “We were sailing fast, and I thought it was wonderful as I felt her roll, first with the main boom hitting the water, then with the spinnaker pole almost doing the same. I could hear the water coming in over the bow and rushing down the side deck, moving fast, much of it over the cabin trunk and companionway. It sounded a little like Niagara Falls.” His shipmates worried, but Olin knew the boat was doing what he had designed it to do. Fifty years later, at age 72, he retired from both work and serious racing.

Forehanded

This notion of preparing well for any challenging activity has recently been renamed “forehandedness.” A surgeon, Christopher Nemeth, has defined it this way: “Anticipation and preparation for the uncertain future so that we are ready for it by the time it becomes the present. Forehandedness enables us to achieve a robust performance that can make success possible in spite of circumstances.”

“Circumstances” can vary, but if there is one place where they are constantly under consideration, it is in a sailboat banging across the mighty Gulf Stream, with great swirls of rapid warm-water currents bashing against each other and the strong winds that often blow. Of my 25-plus Stream crossings, at least half have been difficult. In one, a 65-knot gust blew the inner forestay right off the boat. During my first Stream crossing, as a 19-year-old deckhand on a big ketch headed to Greece, we were obliged by a northerly gale and the huge breaking sea it stirred up to heave-to for a day under a storm trysail. We couldn’t set that essential little sail until the deckhand spent the afternoon reattaching the sail slides that had fallen off because their seizings had rotted away.

This memory reminds me of some Gulf Stream wisdom written by the brilliant boating journalist Alfred F. Loomis: “A man who can’t stand the Stream blues is no addition to a crew, however ornamental he may be to a bar.”

Stamina

My own contributions to pithy seamanship rules include this statement in my sailing manual, The Annapolis Book of Seamanship: “The most important piece of safety equipment in a boat is a healthy, fit sailor.” My point is that many sailors place too much faith in the safety hardware they buy, and not enough in the skills, leadership and good judgment of the sailors they sign on as crew.

But there is another issue that strikes to the heart of my personal concern. That is physical fitness. Cruising World’s Herb McCormick raised this issue in his book As Long as It’s Fun, his fine biography of the remarkable Pardeys, Lin and Larry. Builders, owners and only crew of the famous Taleisin, they have retired from voyaging due to advancing age and health concerns. Lin told Herb, “I’m finding it difficult to right out say, ‘I’m not sailing across any more oceans with Larry,’ but he’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t feel he has the stamina to handle emergency situations. So why be out there?” In other words, when voyaging is not all that much fun anymore, you don’t have to do it.

Reflecting on these risks and variables, and the related morale issues, I think of a story about Sir Edmund Hillary. Long after he conquered Everest, he was not having much fun at all on a long, slow, discouraging slog across Antarctica. As he lay tossing in his sleeping bag, nagged by his faltering confidence, he took careful, objective inventory of his aptitudes and came up with this: “Slightly crazy, frequently terrified and not a bad navigator — and that about summed it up.”

Reassured of his fundamental ­competence, Hillary rolled over and slept like a baby. He had in his humble way succeeded in converting unhealthy fear into constructive caution. Knowing when to take a step back or even give in is a measure of wisdom and maturity. We can survive the important sacrifices.

John Rousmaniere is a longtime sailor and Safety at Sea instructor, and author of many sailing books, including Fastnet, Force 10.

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Crossing the Gulf Stream is a rite of passage for many East Coast offshore sailors. I’ll never forget my first time. The Stream seems to generate its own weather, and the precipitous clouds on the horizon ahead were the initial clue that we were approaching. Then there was the sudden spike in the temperature of the ocean, up into the high 70s, as confirmed by the boat’s seawater thermometer. The water itself shifted to a darker shade of blue, flecked with yellow patches of sargassum. And with a slight northerly breeze (thank God it was slight) leaning into the northward flowing current, the waves stood up into a progression of steep but reasonable, negotiable hills, the boat rising and falling with their flow. It was all very memorable. The Gulf Stream, the so-called “river in the sea” that trucks along in places at a good 4 to 5 knots, is truly a force of nature.

And, remarkably, it is also slowing down.

Such was the conclusion of a pair of recent scientific studies focused on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) — an ocean circulation system that includes the Gulf Stream — ­recently published in the journal ­Nature. Simply put, a section of the warm, salty surface waters of the Stream eventually peel off to form the North Atlantic Current which ascends into the high, chilled Nordic latitudes, heating the atmosphere on the way. There, the water cools and the weight of its salinity causes it to plunge into the depths, where it begins a return ­journey down the coasts of North and South America. The entire cycle has been likened to an “ocean conveyer belt” that plays a key role in Earth’s climate by exchanging warm ­water from the equator with cold water from the Arctic.

And the conveyer belt, so crucial to distributing heat across the planet, is not as quick as it used to be.

According to the Nature report, the two studies that issued this finding used vastly different methodologies: “classic examples of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches.” The former based its report on ­direct measurements of sea-­surface temperatures; the latter relied on measuring deep-sea sediment cores that reflect the speeds of the bottom waters on their return flow of the AMOC (stronger currents move thicker grains of sand). But both determined that the weakened AMOC has declined in strength by 15 percent, which the Washington Post reported as “a decrease of 3 million cubic meters of water per second, the equivalent of 15 Amazon Rivers.”

Mercy.

In science, as in life, one thing leads to another. In this case, perhaps ironically, the rapidly melting glaciers of the Greenland ice cap and the vanishing sea ice above the Arctic Circle are playing a significant role in this equation. Yes, those waters are cold, but they’re also fresh, and float atop the surface; their mass infusion into the briny sea disrupts the formation of the dense water that’s a key component in the spinning AMOC.

So, what does that mean to sailors and, you know, human beings? Well, should the brakes on the Atlantic circulation continue to be pumped, among other things, it could result in drastic changes in European weather, dramatic fluctuations in hurricane frequency and an abrupt rise in sea levels on the East Coast, with a backed-up Gulf Stream having no place else to go. There are lots of other scenarios, and none of them are great.

One of the central questions of our time, of course, is the ­degree to which man-made sources have contributed to climate change, and in this case, what role they played in the AMOC slowdown. Interestingly, the authors of one study ­attribute the cause mainly to human-induced factors (i.e., those that have played a part in the relatively new phenomenon of swiftly melting ice), while those of the other suggest it probably began for natural reasons around 150 years ago but has since been aided and abetted by our own collective impact on the changing climate.

As with contemporary politics, there is no clear consensus.

So, for now at least, we’ll leave it to the noted oceanographer/poet Bob Dylan, who once sang, “Come gather round people; Wherever you roam; And admit that the waters; Around you have grown; And accept it that soon; You’ll be drenched to the bone.” For, yes, the times they are a-changin’.

Herb McCormick is CW’s ­executive editor.

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We left Miami after the boat show on the evening of February 21 and headed out Government Cut around sundown, happy to be under way. The wind was blowing of course from the east, so we motored into it making for a super-splashy ride across the Gulf Stream. I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I’ve been on night watch, and this boat is a far cry from the boat that I last did this trip on (a 1965 Pearson Vanguard), so I was a little bit intimidated. Since the conditions were snarly and we were in a busy shipping lane and most of us were new to the boat, we doubled up for watches that night. Sleeping was almost impossible with the pounding, but we managed, and had an uneventful crossing and were on the Bahama Banks by daybreak. Having a full complement of crew is a luxury, and we dropped down to single watches around this time. With six people that meant two hours on and 10(!) hours off. How civilized.

Other than Jesse and myself, the crew included my friend and co-worker David, Amanda, who’s been crewing on the boat with Jesse since its launch last fall in France, James, a really experienced sailor and old friend of Jesse’s, and Jacob, a newbie to sailing.

We set out the fishing lines and caught a gorgeous mahi-mahi before anchoring off of tiny Green Cay, just off of Rose Island, near Nassau. Delivery portion done for the day, we set about to more cruisey-type activities such as watching _Captain Ron_ in the cockpit and serving up the catch of the day. The next day allowed us some sleeping-in time followed by pancakes and scrubbing the hull. Need I mention that two 54-foot hulls are huge underwater? Fortunately, there’s a great reef nearby, and we got in some excellent snorkel time that included a sea turtle sighting.

Once the light was good enough for coral head spotting, we weighed anchor and headed toward the cruising paradise of the Exumas. But first we had to cross the Yellow Bank. While the Bahamas are fairly well charted, the waters are also quite shallow and filled with reefs, coral heads, and sand bores, and the Yellow Bank can be a stressful stretch of water. Good, polarized sunglasses are key as is a sharp lookout.

Jesse and I were both glad to be back in the Exumas and seriously wished that we’d had more time to spend there. We dropped the hook off of Norman’s Cay, then enjoyed an amazing sunset and ribs on the grill. By now we were all settling into the rhythm of cruising—looking for the elusive green flash (Jacob and David didn’t believe me. They probably still don’t.), eating treats from the galley (thanks Jacob!), getting annoying songs stuck in each other’s heads (that’s all you, James), practicing celestial navigation (well, James and Amanda anyway) and peppering conversations with Captain Ron quotes (“…does not navigate, and in my opinion, steers badly.“)

A huge difference that I noticed this time while in the Exumas is that the islands didn’t feel quite as remote as they did the last time. Maybe it was because we got there so fast (we’re in fast forward, remember?) or it could be that I rarely lost cell coverage. Either way. (I think that gone are the days of wandering a remote Out Island looking for the BaTelCo office in order to make a phone call. Which is a shame in some ways.)

The next morning, Jacob, David, Jesse, and I took off to explore Norman’s pond, which has a downed plane in the middle of it, a relic from the island’s seedy drug-running past. We chatted up some cruisers anchored there and learned that the next day started the George Town Cruising Regatta (that harbor was getting too busy for our new friends). Once we got back to the boat, it was time to head out and make our way to George Town. In order to time our exit from Norman’s, our pass through Wax Cay Cut to Exuma Sound, and our entrance into George Town all in good light, we needed to leave Norman’s around 4 p.m., have a leisurely night passage, and enter Elizabeth Harbour in the morning.

Of course the windex only points the direction that we want to go, so it was a night of motoring, but other than that, what a night it was. Rarely in my cruising life have I been blessed by the night watches that other cruisers rave about. My nights have typically been filled with squall lines and ships. But this night was different. When I awoke for my 0200-0400 stint, I was strangely full of energy. I went up to the nav station to relieve Amanda 10 minutes early and enjoyed one of my favorite night watches. Ever. Totally peaceful, with a crystal clear sky and a bright full moon (and great music—solo dance party, anyone?). It really was magical, and for the first time ever, I actually didn’t want my watch to end. Since it was my last passage (I’d be flying out from George Town the next day), I decided that I’d wake up early to catch the moon set and the sunrise, so I slept for a couple of hours and then joined David on his 0600 watch. I even made coffee cake for the crew.

Entering Elizabeth Harbour, outside of George Town, brought back memories. The first time my husband, Green, and I sailed in there, it seemed such a remote, hard won, upwind destination, and this time, while still upwind, it just seemed easier. I was shocked when I’d realized that we’d only left Miami four(!) days before.

Jesse and I listened to the VHF chatter on the morning George Town cruisers’ net—it was indeed the first day of the Cruising Regatta (volleyball games! pet parades!), which runs through March 8. Unfortunately, us crew (this was still a delivery) had some chores to do, so we weren’t able to participate in the festivities. That night though, it being my last night and all, we all headed into town and went dancing at the Rake n’ Scrape at Eddie’s Edgewater, which was a perfect ending to my super quick cruising/delivery experience.

The morning, of course, came way (way) too quickly, and I was off to the airport to catch my first of five flights home. It was a brutal day, and totally surreal. Even now, as I’m sitting at my desk in Rhode Island on Friday afternoon, I’m wondering, was I really cruising in the Bahamas, like, four days ago? As I left the boat Tuesday morning, Jesse tells me, “don’t worry, this trip is about to become a lot more like work. Your timing is excellent.” Indeed, a few hours later, they shoved off and started making tracks to the Virgin Islands, which was about five days of light-wind close reaching away.

Fortunately, I heard that they got to use the sails for more than decoration.

(You can read about that part of the trip in David’s post On to the Caribbean)

Check out a photo gallery of the trip.

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