Offshore to Abaco

(Written 11/21)

You won’t believe this, but we’ve actually already been in the Bahamas for five days, having arrived in the Abacos last Sunday after a 478nm, 90-hour passage direct from Little River. The timing really couldn’t have worked better. I got back from my last trip on Monday Nov 13^th, and we had just enough time on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to complete our last pre-passage chores. The plan was to take off on our first good weather window after November 15^th, assuming there was one in sight, and if not just head down the coast and hop across when & where we could – departing from South Florida, if no opportunities to cross the Gulf Stream presented themselves before then.

November is a tough time to do the passage we just did. Big low pressure systems regularly go charging offshore from the Carolinas dragging strong, ugly cold fronts behind them. If you have a stout boat and don’t mind doing a little surfing these can provide for quick progress southward – but you absolutely, positively don’t want to be anywhere near the Gulf Stream during one. Strong N/NE wind against strong S/SW current makes for hellish conditions. So to get from SC to the Bahamas we needed about 24 hours of little to no north wind to get across the Gulf Stream, followed by 3 days of no strong south wind. A tall order, and an unlikely window to crop up exactly when we wanted it.

In fact it was a bit earlier than we wanted it – like I said, I was looking for the first window after the 15^th. For nearly a week before that, the winds had been howling incessantly out of the N and NE, and it didn’t look like there’d be much respite. When I spoke to Chris Parker on the morning of the 14^th, he seemed to think we’d have a break to cross the Gulf Stream on the 16^th, followed by a number of mild weather days to get into Abaco before the next cold front hit on the morning of the 20^th. I didn’t think our window across the Gulf Stream looked like it would last past sunset on the 16^th. On the morning of the 15^th, Chris agreed and suggested we depart that night to reach the Gulf Stream in the morning and be out of it by sunset. That set off a mad dash to get all our last-minute items complete. We were off the dock at 4pm, fueled up at nearby Cricket Cove Marina, and steamed out of Little River inlet in the dusk at 5:45pm.

The first night we motorsailed almost straight south on a broad reach in light northwesterlies, which made for a rather rolly ride. By daybreak the wind was 340 at 15; shortly thereafter we eached the edge of the Stream and turned to a 160 heading to directly bisect it using the “S-curve” method (average track was about 143°). You’ll notice this is quite a southerly heading for a Gulf Stream crossing; we intentionally crossed immediately north of the “Charleston Bump,” where the stream turns ENE and diffuses. This way the NNW wind would be across rather than against it. And at first it worked like a dream. However the wind picked up quite a bit earlier than forecast – not totally a surprise in the Gulf Stream, where warm water seems to add energy to any system – and also turned NE by early afternoon. Thus we were halfway through the Stream when the waves started piling up in a big way, with curling tops. I’d estimate they got to 10’, bigger than we’ve been in anyways. Windbird handled them well, but Dawn – who was already queasy from the rolly ride the previous night – became seasick. Not debilitatingly so – she was still able to stand her watches – but she couldn’t keep anything down for over a day.

By sunset we were out of the main part of the stream, although a 1.5-knot average diffuse rivulet persisted until early morning. That night the wind strengthened considerably as a weak cold front hit; the direction actually backed a bit to 340, then slowly veered to 020. We’d been intending to turn south at W77° but I wanted to stay at a broad reach under double-reefed main and single-reefed Yankee, where the boat was at least riding comfortably, instead of rolling dead downwind wing-on-wing. So we kept going SSE until the morning, when the wind finally veered enough for us to start turning more southward. We ended up riding W76°45’ down, which was far enough east that we hit an adverse-current cold-water eddy around N30° just as the NOAA charts predicted, but at that point I wasn’t worried about making good time – I knew we’d have to slow down to enter Nunjack Cut after sunrise on the morning of the 19^th.

Friday afternoon was a glorious sail, clear and warm and fast on a strong broad reach with big rollers sweeping past us. I had my pole and handline out ever since the Gulf Stream – where I caught a small bonito I threw back – and just before noon the pole got hit, hard. The fish fought incredibly hard for about 15 minutes, making me earn every foot of line I got on the reel (I had about 100 yards out at the time) – then suddenly gave up out of pure exhaustion, and I was able to drag him up to the boat where Dawn gaffed him. It was a 20-pound tuna, the biggest fish we’ve caught so far on Windbird…he provided several excellent meals, and we still have half of him in our freezer! The wind veered and eased during the night, and we had several excellent hours of beam-reach sailing on Saturday morning. Chris had predicted the wind would die shortly after sunrise but it persisted until about 10am, died for a few hours during which we motorsailed, then came back for about three hours in the afternoon. We’d just started the engine again at 4pm when the pole got hit again, this time a ~8-lb Mahi. He made an awesome meal of fish tacos with homemade corn tortillas our first night in at Green Turtle Cay.

By sunset we’d slowed a bit knowing we had only 60 miles to go in about 15 hours (I didn’t want to arrive at the cut until 9am for good light). Just before I went off watch at 7pm I noticed that our Racor vacuum gauge was showing a bit high, which wasn’t a huge surprise as we’d polished all our fuel through that filter before leaving. So when I woke from my nap I had Dawn stop the engine and I went below to change the filter and bleed the fuel system, a 5-minute job (my new fuel system is a thing of beauty, btw, I’ll write about it in another post). I should mention that we’d been noticing a bit of unusual engine vibration on this passage at 2200-2400 RPM, but didn’t see anything abnormal in the engine room and anyways hadn’t experienced it that much because all of our motorsailing had been at reduced RPM.

Well, Dawn went to start the engine again and as soon as she put it in gear it was obvious something was majorly wrong. The was a ton of vibration even in idle forward, which decreased around 1500 RPM but got far worse above 2000 RPM. I had her shut down and inspected all the engine mounts closely, where I found that the aft port lower bolt had vibrated down about 3/4”. I raised that corner of the engine to its original position but the vibration was just as bad. On closer inspection I found that the prop shaft-transmission coupling was rather loose. Ah-hah! It was actually the flexible coupler whose bolts had backed out partway since installing it in Cape May in September; they’re prevented from backing out all the way by the flange of the propshaft coupling, which also prevented me from easily tightening them. I weighed my options. If I fixed it now, it’d be a 1-2 hour job that only involved 12 bolts – but I’d be leaning deep into the engine room with the boat in a seaway, moving the propshaft & driveshaft out of place, and if I screwed up or was wrong about what was wrong with the shaft, we’d be engineless in a near-calm 50 miles from land, with a norther on the way. There’s no TowBoatUS in the Bahamas. So I decided to keep going with the engine at 1600-1800 RPM, which seemed to be minimum vibration. This put us at the cut a little earlier than planned, at 7:45am, but it was overcast with rainy squalls so the light wouldn’t have been any better at 9am and in any case Nunjack Cut is wide and deep and we transited it at just before high tide with little wind or swell. We arrived at Green Turtle Cay at 10am and took a mooring in White Sound, not wanting to run the engine up to back down on the anchor.

After straightening up the boat we launched the dinghy and I took the boat documents and customs paperwork into the quaint village of New Plymouth, where I checked in with a very nice customs lady. Totally painless, just like last year, and took maybe 10 minutes. When I got back I took Piper to shore, landing at the Bluff House Marina dinghy dock. He did great on the passage, going potty on the foredeck every evening, but was obviously overjoyed to be back on land. I took him over the hill to the beach by the Tranquil Turtle bar, and he obviously enjoyed his first beach run of the season. It was a sandy, salty, soggy and panting dog I brought back to the boat! We did some boatwork in the afternoon and then Dawn and I went back to the Tranquil Turtle for a happy hour tipple and to watch the sunset.

Yesterday morning started quite windy as the norther hit. I fixed our shower pump that had failed on the passage (was actually a broken hose fitting downstream of the check valve, allowing seawater to backflow into the boat – I had to close the seacock) and then launched into the coupling issue. As expected it was just over an hourlong job involving 12 bolts and 4 nuts. I did some thinking about why the flexible coupler's bolts backed out. We had torqued them down to spec, I’m sure of it. But Dave Laux had recommended greasing the bolts to ensure easy removal down the line. In retrospect I guess the removal was a little too easy. This time I coated them with threadlocker before torquing them down. The tough thing here is that because those bolts are hidden, it’s impossible to check them for tightness (as I’ve done with the rest of the transmission installation several times since September). So the first sign that they’re coming loose is play in the driveshaft – but at least I’ll know where to look at the first sign of vibration next time.

After boatwork we took the dinghy to New Plymouth and explored the quaint historical town, took Piper to a beachfront park, cruised through Black Sound, did a little more boatwork on return, and then reprised happy hour at the Tranquil Turtle before returning to the boat to grill up some tuna steaks. Today started extremely windy and squally and we delayed our departure to Manjack Cay until 2pm. In the meantime we did projects from 8am to 10am, took Piper on a walk and got drenched in a downpour, came back and lathered up for rainwater showers on deck, did a major reorganization and reinventory of several drawers and cabinets of boat maintenance stores, and finally slipped the mooring in a slick calm at 2pm. It was a quick 45-minute steam up to Manjack Cay, where we anchored between Manjack and Crab just before yet another squall hit. I dove on the anchor and found a large (dead) conch shell with a huge (live) rock crab living inside, then took Piper to a nearby beach and got eaten alive by noseeums while he enjoyed his daily beach run. Tomorrow we’ll be taking the dinghy out to explore the mangrove creek through the center of the island – reportedly lots of turtles – and snorkel the outer reef, as it’s supposed to be nice and calm. Should be a fun day. On Thursday we’ll return to Green Turtle Cay for Thanksgiving, then try to run outside Whale Cay to Great Guana Cay on Friday. We’re planning to cross to Spanish Wells (Eleuthera) around Dec 1^st so we have a little over a week left to enjoy our third visit to the Abacos.