feb13 to 18

Caribean Bound
On February 13 I gathered up Jack Genge, fueled up Top O' The World, and headed down the ICW. It was a giant day for me as I have spent 3 years working on the boat and Sheril has spent 3 years spending her hard earned money in loving support.   William, Joyce, and Shane came out to bid farewell and gave us a nice gift of books and colored pencils for Jack to do some drawing in his spare time.   We ended up at the beautiful city marina in Vero Beach.  The next morning we had a few repairs to do but made it out of the Ft. Pierce inlet at sunset in calm weather for an overnight Gulf Stream crossing.  We motored halfway before the wind picked up about 3 am and we could sail in a blazing moonlight.  I tried to sleep from 9 to 12 but don't think I did.  Jack tried a couple of times through the night without much success.  We were blessed with good wind and nothing breaking so it was a great relief for me as so many people warn of crossing the Stream in any north winds.    The sun was coming up as we sailed onto the Little Bahama bank, a vast area of shallow water (9 to 30ft).  As one approaches the bank the Ocean bottom comes up rapidly from 3000ft. to 30 ft like a steep mountain.  This boundary area was like a giant washing machine, with waves coming from every direction.  The tossing about was short lived though as we settled into a nice sail toward Mangrove Key, a small patch of island used as a rest stop for sailors coming to Abaco.  We motored the last 10 miles in a dead calm.  Most sailors eschew this condition but I love it as you can sit on the deck watching the bottom go by in swimming pool clear water while Magellan (the name Jack coined for the autopilot) steers.  I have recurring dreams of this scenario so I never tire of it.  The bank is like a dessert though.  Unlike Florida which is rich with birds, dolphins, and Manatees, the Bahamas has its sea life concentrated in certain areas.  We stared at the bottom and noted anything at all, a plant or a sponge.  As we approched Mangrove Cay we saw a cute little Hammerhead Shark swim by and a turtle.  I noticed us a approaching a large dark spot and as we closed on it we saw it moving.  My heart raced as we could see it was a large fish.  In the swimming pool clear water we stared in disbelief at the largest fattest fish I have ever seen in the wild, an 8 ft. shark!
The next few days we worked on the boat some, and rested.  On Feb 16 we motored upwind 24 miles to Great Sale Cay, another uninhabitted resting spot for east west sailors.  We took the dinghy over to a beautiful beach being guarded by some small sharks.  The peace of thescenario did not go unnoticed by me.   No manmade sounds of any kind. No humans within 20 miles.  Just the sound of the light wind blowing through the Casuarina trees and our feet splashing the water as we walked.  If the outboard hadn't died on the way there it would have been perfect but nothing's perfect.  On the long paddle in the dinghy back to the boat I was stressing about the number of broken things when Jack noticed something under us.  I donned the mask for a look and yelled "there's 100 nice Snappers on a wreck right under us"!  The broken stuff in my thoughts disappeared as Jack came up with the great idea of anchoring the big boat right over the Snapper hole.  We did this and tried every combination of gear and tossing food into our aquarium to no avail.  I donned mask and spear next and defined the saying, shooting fish in a barrel.  The snapper were almost fighting so see who could get close enough.  Maybe they have some game of counting coup on the ugly bald white guy.  They lost one of their 4 lb members which we released into the frying pan for dinner.  Tomorrow we plan a little payback for the snapper by killing 4 Lionfish on the wreck, a foreign species destroying the Bahama's reefs.