We had planned to leave Great Sale Cay about 22:00 in order to sail the Bahama Banks during the night and arrive at the Gulf Stream at first light at 06:00 Saturday morning.
Both Jorgen and Jim on Innisfree got bored and antsy so after a quick VHF conference we upped anchor at 20:00 and fecked off outta Great Sale.
We had an uneventful motorsail across the banks and hit the stream at about 04:00. Innisfree’s chart plotter wouldn’t fire up so we were their eyes for the big stuff like AIS and radar, navigation etc. Luckily Gwenn had her trusty handheld Garmin GPS
I checked the weather again and now it called for ESE winds at 10 kts – not enough wind to sail at reasonable speed on a run to a broad reach – crickey it was going to be a motor sail again!
At sunrise we met Boomerang who had left Double Breasted Cay the day before and sailed under spinnaker all night doing speeds between 4-8 knots, that’s what a performance Catamaran with lots of carbon fiber thingos can do – it lets you sail!
Anyway, just when Jorgen had stopped biotchin about no wind – it piped up – go figure.
Wind increased from ESE at 10 and clocked to SE at 15 kts. Once we hit the stream we were screaming along under full sails at 9+ knots. Sail of the Century # 2 or so we thought.
A couple of hours later while Jorgen was napping in the cockpit, our Autopilot decides that it is time for a Crazy Ivan Maneuver and does a 360 degree turn with a wild jibe thrown in (thank Buddha we had set a preventer while on a broad reach). Maria let out a scream and a few expletives, a still half napping skipper got the ship back on course sailing due west at 270 degrees. Only the autopilot showed us sailing a course of 90 degrees – due east. The little bugger must have gotten confused. The resourceful Maria did what one should always do when in doubt – shut the autopilot down and restarted it again. Worked like a charm!
The wind was blowing fine; we were loving it and kept up with Innisfree a 38’ catamaran.
I guess one shouldn’t wish for too much wind, because all of a sudden the winds increased to 20 kts gusting 25 and clocked to SSE – on the beam! Time to reef main and jib and we still did 8+ knots under reefed sails.
Got into Ft Pierce around 13:00 Saturday, the entrance was some tricky driving with 6-7’ waves on the beam an Q rolling gunwale to gunwale and corkscrewing her way into the inlet – vomitus maximus
Decided to head straight up to Vero Beach which is another 15 miles up the ICW. We hooked a mooring ball and had Innisfree over for crossing party with Bubbly wine.
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