Chub Cay

We got up early from Bimini with quite an agenda for the day. First stop was Cat Cay. On the way we got to snorkel the wreck of Sapona. The kids loved getting to dive the anchor and see how well it was holding, we then explored around the wreck which has become an artificial reef.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon doing drills: different points of sail, heaving-to, Man-Overboard drills. We then anchored just off Cat Cay to rest for a few hours, have some dinner, before starting our overnight crossing. We planned to cross the Great Bahama Bank overnight, and arrive at the start of the Northwest Channel at daylight to pilot that entrance in plenty of light. We plotted our course and determined we needed to leave at 8:00 pm. We divided into teams with 2 hour watches. We rigged jacklines, wore our PFDs with harnesses so we could always clip in anytime we left the cockpit. We set out some snacks–trail mix, pasta salad, veggie straws, (homemade chicken noodle soup and crackers for Kim still trying to advance her BRAT diet). We got out our headlamps with the red light so it didn’t mess up our night vision. Aislin and I took first watch from 8p-10p. We had a beautiful sail. There was no moon, no ambient light, and a clear sky. The stars were FABULOUS!! We were WONDERSTRUCK!!! What an amazing universe we are in! We were this tiny dot on the Earth, sailing through the water, surrounded by magnificence.

When Kim and Ben got up for their 10:00 watch we practiced nighttime Man-Overboard drills before Aislin and I headed to bed for a nap. MOB is a lot harder to do at night than in the day. I had no depth perception with a dark sky and dark water, once I even ran over “Bob” (basically a float with a light on it). He went right between the hulls and Kim snagged him on the transom. Yet another reason to stay on the boat and not fall overboard!

We continued alternating shifts throughout the night, steering only by compass without the help of an autopilot, plotting on the chart hourly with GPS coordinates to adjust our course as necessary. We had a brief rainfall, (Kim and Ben had to don foul weather gear to not be completely soaked), had the wind shift and then die so ended up dropping sails and motoring for several hours. There is no “set it and forget it” with sailing!

Kim and Ben were on watch for the sunrise.

We made it without incident to the Northwest Channel and continued on for 3 more hours to finally drop the anchor at Chub Cay.