St Lucie Inlet, Florida to Marsh Harbour, the Abacos

At 8:50AM on June 30, 2010, we headed for the open ocean out of St. Lucie inlet, south of Fort Pierce and hit the Gulf Stream about nine nm out from the coast. We were lucky to have enough wind of the stern to at least pretend to sail a bit (usually at this time of year, the wind is out of the east and is "on the nose" - that is, you are headed directly into the wind and can't sail).

About 15 minutes into the voyage, the fishing line started screaming with a 10-15lb Bonita on the end of the line (someday I will invest in a scale). This proved to be fortuitous inasmuch as I ate Bonita Sashimi exclusively until we made landfall a few days later.

Around 4PM (at 27°17.091/79°41.272), the engine quit and we set a point of sail. What heading you say? Well, the magnetic compass reads 170°, "Otto" the Autopilot, reads 115° and the handheld GPS reads 011°. Yes, it was frustrating to have three distinct compass readings while adrift in the middle of the GulfStream, but that, to my mind, is just "part of sailing" and the important thing is to remain calm. Worst case, we know the sun (usually) comes up in the East and we can always get a rough bearing that way.

9:50PM, engine quit again, changed fuel filter again. Speed roughly 5.3MPH.

11:15PM, engine quit again, changed primary fuel filter this time.

2:05AM, July 1st - on the Banks! At this point we actually have a depth that the fish finder can read - about 35 feet.

3:03AM engine quits again - I decide to call it a night and drop anchor.

6:30AM, changed secondary fuel filter again - this one quite dirty, added 3 gallons of spare fuel to the tank. Set Otto to 44°

9:50AM, two squalls nearby generating some wind switched to motor sailing, making 7.2MPH.

2:05PM, first sight of land! We can see Walkers Cay and Grand Cay.

5:30PM, ran aground at 27°13.482/78°21.367, literally 200 feet from land at Grand Cay. There is a tricky, visual approach to this area requiring someone to sight the water (the sand banks marked on the charts change all the time and are unreliable). We were so glad to be almost "safe" that we broke open the rum drinks perhaps a bit early and I was distracted enough to miss the channel. Anyway, we were hard up on a sand bank just as the tide was receeding and you could see about four inches of waterline paint on the hull.

We dinghied to shore, found a native "Kenny" who agreed to come out and try to pull us off the banks. He came over in his boat with friend with a boat. The friend had the whole family onboard - mom and a brand new baby and at least three others onboard. Anyway, both boats tried to pull Clarity off of the sand banks but, try as they might, we were hard-and-fast. So, we agreed that Kenny would come back at 8:30 that night to check on us and to pull us off the banks at a higher tide.

Kenny is a conch fisherman and I asked him what his take was for the day and he said "about 242 pounds" (which probably means he caught 242 conchs - I highly doubt he, or anyone he knows, owns a scale). He sells this for $3/lb in town, so that's a pretty good income for a fisherman; however, bear in mind this is probably split by 3 or more people.

At 8:45, Kenny had not showed up, so I began to try to motor Clarity off of the banks, revving the engine up to 3500RPM, going in reverse and forward. Eventually the engine overheated and quit. (Julie later pointed out that this was probably due to the fact that the engine requires a fresh supply of salt water coming in and, since we were on the bottom, the intake tube probably was probably clogged with sand. Sounds plausible to me).

At 9:30, Kenny shows up with just his boat and, without much effort, was able to pull us off the hard. He then towed our boat into the harbor at Grand Cay in complete pitch black (there was no moon until maybe 2AM). He dropped us there and I paid him $70 for his time - money well spent in my opinion.

July 2nd, 2010 found us at the marina in Grand Cay called "Rosie's Place". This is quite an interesting town in that it seems that almost everything is owned or controlled by "Rosie". The marina, the gas dock, the grocery store, even a group of bungalows are all owned by Rosie. This is a rough and tumble town, make no mistakes. While we were there we clearly saw a boat bringing in smuggled goods (mostly groceries and the like) to avoid the onerous 50% import tax. While hear, I got a local to wash out one of our dirty fuel filters with gasoline (price: one Budweiser) and refueled our spare diesel tanks. There was no hope of finding a filter in this sort of town.

11:45AM, depart out of Grand Cay, headed for Great Sail Cay. At 12:45, we finally had light enough winds to where we could calibrate "Otto" so that the compass reading on the autopilot actually matches that on the handheld gps.

To this day, I still use a $99, eTrek handheld gps for all navigation. It is reliable, runs on two AA batteries (and is thus safe from lightening strikes).

Around 2:45, with storms on the horizon, we were able to shut down the motor sail at about 6.5MPH, heding 127°. I see a note in the journal that says "remembering it's a sailboat"

At 6:10PM, we crossed the same exact location we were at in 2008 off of Fox town.

At 6:45, the squalls we were previously enjoying became much more intense and we headed north to avoid them as much as possible.

At 7:00PM, with 40-50kt winds, we decided that the storm ws not avoidable and doused all sails, battened down the hatches and dropped anchor to ride it out. I made a point of going below, firing up the inverter and having the family watch a video during this tumult. Spent the night here.

July 3rd, 2010 at 7:00AM started up again, made it to Spanish Cay by noon.

Spanish Cay is an interesting island in that the entire thing is owned by Don Davis, who also owns the mega-yacht builder Richmond Yachts. Everyone loves this marina as it has a fresh water pool, a jacuzzi, a nicely appointed bar, restaurant and convenience store. It is certainly a welcome break after basically 4 hours without stopping.

Spanish Cay is a great marina, but so far appears to be the most expensive in the Bahamas. They charge $2.75 per foot, per night plus $50 for electricity. With the bit or re-provisioning we did, some lunch, dinner and drinks, when we went to check out the bill was $475. That's for one day! One for the record books. I figure the kids and Julie deserved it after the crossing.

July 4th, about 11:00AM, we left Spanish Cay headed for Great Guana Cay at Nippers to hopefully see some 4th of July fireworks. There must have been 1000 people at Nippers that day and the party was a blast. I will try to post a video of this time soon.

Since it was still daylight at the end of our evening at Nippers (and Grabbers, another famous bar on the island) - and there was virtually no wind, we decided to head out for Marsh Harbour and to make it as far as we could with available light. When the light ran out, we dropped anchor in the middle of the channel and were able to see fireworks all around us unti about 11PM.

The following morning, July 5th, we made it into the Marsh Harbour and promptly ran aground again! This time it was due to a poorly marked channel and because our depth sounder is incorrectly (and temporarily) mounted on the back of the boat, so we don't know depth until the boat has already passed over it. Where we were there is a deep, 20 foot deep, channel cut out of the bottom by dredgers and, by the time the depth sounder alarm went off, we were up on 4.5 feet of water. We could literally see the drop off point about 10 feet off of the stern and were unable to reach it. We eventually got off the bottom by waiting for other boats to drive by making a wake.

At 10:45AM, July 5, 2010, we arrive at Mangoes Marina, which at this point feels like home. It took us five days to get here!