In early May, Darlene and I delivered our boat from Culebra to Charleston. We spent a few days sailing in company with our friend Shawn aboard Neverland, and then saw a weather window to leave on the 1,200 mile passage.
The first 48 hours was exhilarating sailing. We departed amidst squally conditions but a good stiff NE breeze. El Gecco picked up her heals and quickly we were playing in the mid double digit speeds. In that period we covered 410 miles, before the winds when light. Then our daily average dropped down to 150 miles per 24 hrs period in winds of less than 10 knots. We did not bother to motor as we were able to sail faster than the engine could push us.
I did put out the fishing line and eventually there was that high speed zing off line running out. Knowing that I would have to stop the boat, I pointed up into the wind and went to slacken the genoa sheet so that I could furl the headsail. Returning to the cockpit, I saw the fish jump. It was a marlin about 6 foot long. When I got to the real and began bringing in the line, alas, it came easily. I feared the line had broken, but that was not so. The marlin had spat out the hook and the tackle was still there. It was the first marlin I have hooked and glad that it freed itself as I would have had a hard time bringing it to the boat just to remove the line and hopefully set it free unharmed.
I was tuning in to Herb on Southbound 2 when he informed us that we were en-route on a collision course with a major storm. This storm turned out to become tropical storm Andrea. We were just north of the Bahamas, on the rumbline when I decided to turn hard to the west to avoid deteriorating conditions. We were going to head instead for Florida.
Conditions deteriorated fast. Darlene got to experience a rough night at sea. The winds reached 45-50 knots in the gusts. The seas build accordingly to what looked like the next morning to be in the 30 foot range. We were taking the seas beam on with a deep double reef in the main and a slither of headsail. We were still sailing in the double digit numbers and the motion was pretty stable aboard. We could feel the acceleration of the boat, but at no time did I feel unsafe or that there was a possibility of capsizing. Geoff Schoening designed this boat properly and she respond was a well founded craft would.
Conditions got that bad that I decided to duck into the shallows of the Bahamas near Walker Cay to take shelter. We ran 200 miles out of our way in about 29 hours. We arrived off the coast early morning and the seas in the shallow waters were huge. I set us up to run downwind into the coast with following seas. Sometimes I was not sure if the waves were going to smother us. All I hope was that my electronic charts were accurate and that the sand bars in this part of the Bahamas had not shifted. I was watching walls of white water offshore but was committed to getting behind the reefs. A few times white boiling water threatened to engulf us, only to lift the boat and go beneath.
We did get in to safety and waited out the storm at anchor for 48 hours before jumping onto the back side of the tropical storm. It did stall and I pushed out towards the NE. We picked up gale force winds from astern and surfed up to a top speed of 18.7 knots. In 52 hours we were in Charleston Harbor, motoring in light conditions. We did smell the smoke of the fires burning off the Florida / Georgia lands. This is too early in the season to be having tropical storms. Hurricane season does not officially start till June and the first storms of this kind are not till late June.
