Sailing is 90% boredom punctuated by 10% sheer terror.
–Author John Casey
Even though our sail repair parts were sitting in the same port just a few miles away from us, it took eleven days to convince FedEx and the Bahamian customs officials to hand them over. Phil repaired the mainsail in a couple of hours, and we left Port Lucaya early the next morning bound for Great Harbour in the northwest Berry Islands.
When traveling for pleasure, one doesn’t usually wish for “boredom” or for a trip that is “uneventful.” But for us, it is a victory when we get where we’re going without breaking anything. We didn’t.
Port Lucaya to Great Harbour
We motored out of Bell Channel and put out the jib before raising the mainsail, putting a happy grin on Phil’s face. But as the mainsail reached the top of the mast, a loud bang rang out and I ducked, thinking something heavy would fall on my head. We looked at each other.
“What now?” I said. Phil inspected the sail rigging at the mast and came back to the cockpit.
“I broke the boom vang,” he said.
A month ago, I would have said, “The what?” But we had seen one of our Youtube sailors break his boom vang just a few weeks earlier, so I knew. Phil tied it up for stability and I asked what it meant for our setup.
“Not a thing,” he said. “I never use it.” We will ask our rigger to repair it when we get back to Florida, but until then, it’s just another broken thing on the boat. We keep a list of “broken things.” During the afternoon, we noticed that the wind instrument was not working and that one of the three filaments in our Dutchman Flaking System had snapped.
The rest of the 60-nm trek to Great Harbour was uneventful, motoring with full sails to keep up a speed of 5.5 to 6.5 knots so we could arrive in daylight. The chart plotter noted that it was ten hours between waypoints. We had calm seas with a current that ran against us in the morning and with us later on as we approached the Great Harbour anchorage.
The islands to the west of the anchorage are used as playgrounds for cruise ships, and we saw three of them on our way in. Royal Caribbean calls Little Stirrup Cay “CocoCay” and leases the island for its passengers to enjoy their “Perfect Day,” with a water park, skidoo rentals, snorkeling areas, beaches, aerial ziplines, and a full-size helium balloon that takes passengers 450 feet into the sky on a tether. The water park has towering water slides, the Caribbean’s largest wave pool and a lazy river, all watched over by more than 100 lifeguards.
There were two other boats anchored off of Goat Cay when we arrived. We looked for a large sandy area to drop the anchor, and when Phil found the perfect spot, I took the helm. He went forward and lowered the anchor. Then when he asked me to reverse, I shifted and somehow got it stuck in reverse (it was revving too high to shift) so I could not get it into neutral.
Going in reverse, I ended up pulling the anchor out of its perfect spot and dragging it along as I struggled with the transmission in a panic. Phil yelled for me to slow the engine as we were in danger of plowing into the boat behind us, and with that I was able to shift to neutral. Of course, we had to start all over. That was my 10% of terror.
Safely anchored, I apologized to Phil and we both decided I needed more time at the helm so it would become second nature, like driving a car. A cocktail or two went by and we watched the sun go down over CocoCay. We turned to the east, anticipating the appearance of the full Pink Moon of April. It rose above the trees just a few minutes past sunset, and it wasn’t actually pink. Native Americans called it the Pink Moon because of the pink flowers that bloomed in early Spring.
That wasn’t the end of the fun in the sky. There was a SpaceX Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral later that night, so we went out to watch. We could see the glow of the second stage as it crossed overhead, a plume of light gray and white mist surrounding the speeding spacecraft. The bright flare of the re-entry burn lit up the sky as the first stage made its turn to descend to a drone ship east of the Bahamas. It was a show worth watching.
The next day, Phil repaired the filament on the mainsail’s Dutchman Flaking system and re-folded the sail. It was a day of rest, brilliant and calm. We watched an impossibly large turtle lift its head out of the water, take a breath and descend. We both saw it. Usually only the first person sees the turtle. By the time the second person looks for it, it’s gone.
Great Harbour to Royal Island
The wind was blowing out of the northeast at around nine knots when we left the harbor early the next morning. I took the helm as Phil pulled the anchor at 7:30, and needing the practice, I drove for a while as Phil put up full sails. It was a perfect partly cloudy day with bright sun and temperatures in the mid-seventies. We motor-sailed through the morning. This was a long passage and we wanted to arrive at Royal Island in the daylight. It’s dangerous and scary to anchor in unfamiliar waters in the dark, so we try to time our trips in daylight hours.
As the wind was building, we turned off the engine to see if we could sail fast enough to make it to our destination by 6. We couldn’t; the speed slowed to 4.5 knots under sail alone, which is a great pace if you don’t have a deadline. We enjoyed the few minutes of quiet and reluctantly restarted the engine.
By mid-afternoon, as we crossed the open waters south of Great Abaco Island, the seas began to build and the wind picked up. Phil expected this to happen, as we were in the middle of the Northeast Providence Channel, a passageway known for heavier wind and currents. To our south, New Providence Island, home of Nassau, was more than 60 nautical miles away.
We started to speed up and heel over, with winds picking up from 15 to 19 knots with gusts over 20. The sails were full and the waves were exceeding three feet, with some building to four feet. Catmandu leaned into it, heeling over 15 degrees with an occasional 20. We were overpowered and started to think about reducing our sails. The speed was fun, but a little scary as we slid down the higher waves and pounded into the white-capped ridges. The clouds rolled in and we started to feel chilled.
******
Heeling: a basic process affecting all sailboats
which begins with the boat leaning over…
and ends as the sailboat finally exhibits its natural tendency
to come to a state of rest on the sea bottom.
–from Sail-ing, by Henry Beard and Roy McKie
******
Phil decided it was time to furl the jib completely and spill some air off the main, which made it much more comfortable. We rounded Egg Island and Phil hand-steered through Egg Island Cut, a narrow gap between the small cays. Egg Island was named for the many birds nesting there, where early sailors could go ashore and gather eggs for food. But someone had the bright idea of pasturing goats there, and that was the end of the eggs.
Early in the day, Phil had texted two boats anchored in Royal Island Harbour (found on the phone app, “No Foreign Land,”) asking if there would be room for us. Both captains assured us there was plenty of room. We dropped the mainsail and pulled into the small harbor at 5:30pm, finding just a few other boats. I was anxious to redeem myself as a good first mate as Phil went forward to drop the anchor and I took the wheel. The anchoring was uneventful — the anchor set right away and held.
After the wild ride in four-foot choppy seas and high wind, we were ready for a rest. A small green turtle wandered by, this one in no hurry to dive. We sat in the cockpit with gin and tonics and watched the sun go down. Our new surroundings in Royal Island Harbour were quiet, calm, and lovely, protected on all sides. We don’t consider this boredom; we think sailing is 90% peaceful. We will sit for a time while the sky fades into pink and periwinkle, and wait for the ibises to gather in the trees.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”