It's been a long week since our last blog entry. jane returned to Nassau on Monday afternoon. It was only a 55 minute flight from Orlando but it took just as long to go through immigration. Something about spring break and Easter week!!
Our weather router, Chris Parker, predicted 5 beautiful days to travel so Kinvara left the Nassau dock by 7:15AM Wed. morning and headed along the Northwest channel under full sail and power. We wanted to do half of our trip back to the US so speed was essential. Our route was over deep water. In fact when we left Nassau we registered about 50' under our keel then the depth started flashing. That means we dropped off below 999'. It is an abyss in this channel!!
We saw flying fish and many more birds than our trip south. We also thought we saw a few small whales....very black fins. Perhaps dolphins but they tend to be gray. Once we had travelled 60 nautical miles over the abyss we came onto the banks again with about 15-20' of water. Another 30 nautical miles brought us to Mackey Shoal where we tucked in behind it for the night with 4 other boats. It had been a 13 hour day under sunny skies and calm seas. Perfect!!! There was the most glorious sunset with no cloud or land obstruction so we were able to see the "green flash" of the sun. Once dark the moon appeared as a large orange ball on the eastern horizon. It was a nice way to spend our last night in Bahamian waters.
Thursday morning we were up at 5.30AM for coffee and breakfast in order to get an early start. By 6.15 we were underway again, in the dark, looking forward to the sunrise. Unfortunatly as we were getting under way pretzel somehow hurt her right front leg. We noticed she did not put any weight on it so we had to try to keep her quiet. She was hurting but we could do nothing before getting back to the US. We continued on accross the banks for another 30 miles past Bimini and into deep water again. We were expecting winds from the NE changing to the E at 10-15K moderating in the afternoon with 2-3ft seas in the gulf stream. We finally hit the Gulf Stream about noon time and headed NW to Lake Worth inlet about 70 nautical miles away. In this direction we planned on catching the Gulf Stream to give us a few knots of extra speed. Within a few hours the conditions in the Stream changed drasticly. The winds picked up to 15-20K and the seas built to 6ft. Our speed built from 9K to 10K to 11K and finally to 12K for a period of time. Since we were traveling NW it ment being in the gulf stream longer but it also gave us a better angle to the waves and so we decided to stick with the stream to get us to our destination as quickly as possible. The boat handled the stress better than the crew but at the end of the day we arrived safe and sound in West Palm Beach and dropped anchor at 7:15PM.
Friday morning we moved into the Rivera Beach Municipal Marina to take care of pretzel. We took her to a vet where they took e-rays etc and determined that nothing was broken but her arthritis was acting up and she twisted her leg badly but she would heal with a little help from some pain killers. She needed lots of TLC when we got back to the boat but we were glad things did not end up worse than they did. To sooth our souls we carried Pretzel up the dock to the Tiki Bar and enjoyed a strong rum punch while waiting for our take out dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment