St. Augustine, FL

 Approaching Great Sale Cay

Took just a water over shallow sand photo....will miss this!

We anchored and had an early supper - then took at nap at about 8:30 - we set alarms for 11:30PM (the first time we've set an alarm in 6months at least!) 

We did watch the sky at 11:44PM  for the scheduled SpaceX launch....we watched until almost midnight and didn't see anything...bummer.  It was cloudy down low on the horizon, but clear above so we thought we might have a good view.   Oh well, there will be more opportunities.

We raised the sails at anchor at midnight as planned.  Then Duane went to raise the anchor and the windlass (the electric thingy that pulls the heavy chain up) made and awful grinding noise and stopped working.  So he had to pull it up by hand - ugly thing to have to do with the sails flapping in 18 knot winds.  But he got it pulled up and we were on our way.  S/V Purrfect had left about 15 minutes before us.

 

Beautiful moon to sail by!

 

I mentioned that Cathy was giving us updates on the wind/waves often.  We expected fairly rough seas and gusty winds, so we put a reef in the main.  The winds were mostly behind us, so we were sailing wing-on-wing for hours on end.

 

Our new friends Chris and Allison on S/V Purrfect were sailing at the same time as us - they were making good time with their spinnaker.  We lost track of them in the middle of the first day.

 

Really nice sailing - the forecasts were for much worse conditions than we actually saw.  I prefer that to the other way around, for sure!!

 

I was a bit surprised that we didn't see much boat traffic - this is the only tanker that got close enough for a photo.  (And we usually see many cruise ships in this section of the ocean but obviously those are not sailing right now!)

 

Sunset at sea....

 

And night #2 was moonlit as well!

 

We took our Bahamas courtesy flag down....the winds have taken their toll.

 

Approaching St. Augustine after 39 hours sailing!  Weird to be back in civilization again.

 

Back to a familiar spot, the St. Augustine municipal moorings.

 

And back to traffic noise and sirens...

 

 Tourism seems in full gear here - this is a paddlewheel bar!

And this probably doesn't need any explaining!

 We got cleared in with US Customs and Border Patrol - easy peasy.  Then Duane set out to fix the windlass.  He knew the windlass was in bad shape, so he's been using it gently.  Luckily, last year Jim and Bentley from Salty Paws were in Oriental with their Manta and mentioned that they were going to sell their windlass parts that they removed with upgrading.  The part (painted blue) that we needed had been fairly recently purchased by them, so it's almost new.  Duane had just stored it on the boat as a spare. Nice to have the part without having to order anything!

And he got right to work - we've got a nicely working windlass again!

Glad I get to bring my mechanic with me!!!

 

 Weather will probably force us to stay here a few days....we're going to look at getting our Covid vaccine here.  Time for a bit of relaxing now.

Powell Cay, Abacos, Bahamas

 We sailed about 10 miles north to Powell Cay.

 

Went ashore for one last walk in the Bahamas this season.

 

This trail was a little more overgrown than the last one, but we managed.

 

Coming out on the ocean side.  A little different view than normal with some grass and actual trees.

 

Beautiful beach, we decided to walk around the point of the island to get back to the anchorage instead of back-tracking on the same trail.

 

Tough going on part of the walk on this eroded limestone.

 

Cool little coves.

 

At one point we had to take our shoes off and walk across this weirdly spongy surface at the shoreline.

 

The shore was littered with these tree carcasses from (I assume) Hurricane Dorian.

 

And then at another point, we had to leave our shoes on and wade thru the rocky surf to get around the point.

 

Paused for a selfie!

 

Pretty large starfish at the water's edge.

 

And the circuit was complete in about an hour, back to the dinghy with Sojourn in the background.

 

I had one last chore I've been putting off - scrubbing the waterline just on the underside of the boat.  The rest of the boat is nice and clean still - the bottom paint is looking really good.  But where it's shady all the time under the boat, this green algae has taken root.  So equipped with Scotch-brite pad and a handy suction cup (to help me stay in place as I scrub - thanks Ed and Cathy for giving me their spare), I scrubbed it all clean.

 

Good as new - although I suspect it will grow back.  I just wanted to get it done before we are in the very murky waters in the US.

 

And as I was scrubbing the boat, I saw this lovely huge starfish.  It's well over a foot across.  Something cool and other-worldly about starfish!

 

Here are my beach finds for the walk earlier in the day.  The purple glass is the neck of a bottle - I suspect it was once clear and the sun has tinted it purple.  (I read that manganese as a component in some glass turns purple with UV exposure).

 

And a lovely sunset.  Tomorrow we'll sail to Great Sale Cay and then hop off for the sail over to the east coast.  We should have internet at Great Sale, but it is very remote - I'll send notices on the SSB if we lose coverage.

Manjack Cay, Abacos, Bahamas

Scary little story, then on to fun stuff.  One of the most tense times we've had in recent memory.

Overnight, there was a really, really strong thunderstorm that woke us up at 2AM.  The boat was tossing wildly in the small crowded anchorage.  And we rushed to the cockpit to find that our anchor was dragging.  Duane cranked the engines and for the next 20-30 minutes we powered forward and steered around to avoid all the other boats that were on moorings.  I admit, we knew that the holding in this anchorage was not ideal, but the moorings looked a little suspect (many were damaged) so we decided yesterday to anchor instead of picking up a mooring.   I backed down hard (full power) on the anchor and I thought we were good.  But with the wildly shifting winds, the anchor got fouled with debris from the bottom and no longer held.  Definitely a poor decision on our part.  Lessons learned.  Duane did a great job at the controls, I was running from side-to-side telling him where the boats were.  We had NO visibility forward, the rain was pounding.  My face stung every time I stuck it outside the cockpit enclosure.   And a complicating factor was that one large power boat did not have any light - no anchor light at all.  So they were only visible during lightening flashes.  But we made it thru unscathed with a few close calls as the wind pushed us around.  When the storm finally passed, we pulled up the fouled anchor up.  Duane removed a bunch of sand/grass and a piece of plastic siding!   Here's what was wrapped around the anchor.

 After getting the anchor up, we decided that we would just go back out of the anchorage, down the narrow channel and anchor in the wide open (but unprotected) bay near New Plymouth.  Not any fun at 3AM!  But I had the previous track on the chart plotter and it was no problem.  Everything calm now....others must have had problems as well because there were 2 other boats in the bay with running lights on, maneuvering and re-anchoring at the same time as us.  We got settled and had a very peaceful sleep the rest of the night.  That which does not kill us makes us stronger.....

Now on to more fun things!

We woke to a pleasant sky, back into the anchorage because we need fuel for our return trip and we need to clear out of the Bahamas with customs.   There were several calls on the VHF and before long this fairly large fuel tanker comes in.  A surprisingly large vessel for this small anchorage!  

 

Really starting to sink in that our Bahamas exit is underway....we had been in contact with the customs agent from Treasure Cay.  She came over to Green Turtle on the ferry - and this is her office!  She's at the picnic table with her forms.  Duane is handling the paperwork with her here.  Several other folks are leaving so they are using her services as well.   A couple of signatures and we're checked out of the Bahamas!

 

After getting our fuel tanks topped off and disposing of the week's garbage we headed a few miles north to Manjack Cay.  (I wasn't spending another night at anchor in White Bay!)  Very nice sail with just the main sail up.

 

After getting settled, we went ashore for a little exercise.

 

The couple that owns this part of the island keep a couple of trails maintained for the cruisers.  So nice of them.

 

A nice boardwalk into the mangroves.

 

You could arrive at this point via dinghy if you prefer to start the walk this way.

 

Very nicely maintained trail - someone has been busy clearing.  Pretty long trail - I'd say close to a mile.

 

We kept hearing rustling in the woods alongside the trail.  Then we spied many of these little land crabs.  Fast little boogers!

 

And out to the pretty ocean beach!

 

A left-over sisal plant from a plantation many years ago, I assume.

 

As we got back near the owner's barns we kept hearing clucking and a rooster.  She's apparently not afraid of being eaten like most Bahamian chickens!

 

Back to the boat - we watched an oddly uplifting movie - In and Of Itself.

We'll move a little more north tomorrow and then it will be positioning for the run to the US!