Gulf Crossing 2016

1-25-2016
We are up early and getting ready to leave Lake Worth to cross to Green Turtle Cay. We plan on going in at Memory Rock which is a 57nm trip and should take about 9 hours at 6.5kts. Then we are heading to Great Sale Cay, another 40nm and should take about 7 hours.  We will rest at Great Sale for a few hours and then leave around 2am for Green Turtle. That trip will be 58nm and take about 9 hours. We have planned our arrival time to give us a rising tide so we will have enough water to get into Black Sound. As always, these times are dependent on the weather. The calmer the weather, the calmer the wind, the calmer the water, the better the trip!

We left Lake Worth at 6:45. We had a beautiful full moon still shining as we left the anchorage. The cruise ship Celebration was getting ready to leave. We beat her out!


Yes, it was dark when we got up to leave!

 

 

 

 We had a beautiful sunrise as we left the anchorage. We had a great trip south this year. Met up with lots of old friends and made lots of new ones. Richard and Connie, on Sea Salt; we'll see you over there soon. David and Emma, on Five Flip Flops; get our dock space ready. We're on the way!

I had not slept good the night before we left, so Shay let me go back to bed. The sea was not all that calm, so he made it easy on me.  It's hard to estimate the wave heights, but Shay said they were 4'-6' in the Gulfstream. Thanks for letting me sleep thru that!

We have video of some of the crossing. Hope to get it downloaded soon. Check back later.

 

Once we got on the banks, the water calmed down and we had beautiful calm aqua water. We got to Memory Rock, on the banks, about 2pm. We got to Mangrove Cay about 5:30pm. We saw several other boats we had talked to in Vero that left Lake Worth about 3am this morning. They were just pulling Mangrove to spend the night.

This picture was taken about 2:30pm. Calm water and beautiful blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

We knew we were in the Bermuda Triangle when we lost our route about 7pm. We turned things off and back on and they came up ok. Thank goodness!


Beautiful sunrise!

We ran 2 engines all day at about 7.5kts. That's faster than we usually run. Running faster makes the stablizers work better and that makes the ride a lot easier.

Our big full moon rising over the water about 8pm.

We got to Great Sale about 9pm. We traveled about 14 hours at 7.3kts and went 102.93nm. There were 2 other boats anchored there. Of course it was dark so no pictures. We went to bed and set our clocks to get us up about 2am.

This is our trip from Lake Worth to Great Sale Cay. The blue dots are two hour intervals.

Up and moving at 2:20am. There were 5 boats there when we left. Shay said he heard a motor running during the night and thought someone was dragging. Nope, it was someone else coming in. It's still dark so no pictures.

My sweet hubby let me go back to bed once we got out of the anchorage. Gosh, he sure is being good to me. He must be up to something!

He got me up just in time to see the our first Bahaman  sunrise. We have a great sunrise video. Hope to get it downloaded soon. Check back later.

Our first look at the entrance to Black Sound on Green Turtle Cay.

 

Fuel boat leaving Black Sound

 

This is what the markers look like heading into the Sound. They definitely want to make sure you go the right way!

Looking down the Sound toward Donny's Dock.

The first picture shows mangroves along the entrance. The next is a house along the water. The third is the fuel dock. This is where the fuel boat stops to leave fuel on the island. He was coming out as we were coming in the entrance. Of course we waited for him to get out before we started in. The last picture is another pretty house along the water.

Of course, David and Emma from FFF were there to greet us and catch our lines. It's great to see them!

This shows the last day of travel from Great Sale to Green Turtle.

This shows the entire trip from Lake Worth to Green Turtle. Great to be here. Can't wait to start exploring!

 We got to Donny's Marina dock about10am. We had traveled almost 8 hours at 7.1kts and went about 55nm.

Now its time to explore this island and surrounding area. When the weather is good, we will go out and explore and when the weather is not so good we will stay at the dock, Yes, we are at a dock. We don't spend much time at docks when we are away from Morehead City, so this will be different. All the water we can use, plugged in power, Wi-Fi, and no dingy ride to get to shore. This is living!

We are planning to be here until the end of March. Our daughter, Lauren, comes over for spring break the end of March, so we are looking forward to that! We will poke around the area and see what there is to see and do here. Looking forward to a great few months!