Lady Ella gets her
anchor up before us so she heads toward the inlet in front of us. We’re not
sure about FFF but head out about 1:40am. The inlet is well lite and we have no
problems leaving. We see more lights so we know more boats have the same idea.
We finally reach FFF on the radio and find out they are
several hours ahead of us! Those cheats! They decided they were doing the
crossing and neither of them could sleep, so they headed out about 11:00pm.
Well, we are glad they are going even if they did cheat.
We had a good trip for the first several hours then we got
into the Bermuda Triangle. Our GPS stopped working! No big deal! It just lets
us know where we are! We don’t need it! Wrong! We called out to our fellow
travelers and told them we had problems and we hoped to get them straightened
out soon. We followed behind Lady Ella and Shay went below to “fix us”. We are
so used to knowing exactly where we are all the time. And when you are in a big
dark ocean it’s even more important. There are no markers, lights or buoys out
there to follow. After a while Shay got
us straightened out and we were ok, but it was not fun for a while. We will be
getting a new GPS antenna to use on the return trip. The thing is, we put on a
“new, old” antenna this summer. It was a 15 year old antenna that had never
been opened but it was still old and doesn’t do what we need.
We got to Memory Rock in the daylight and headed on toward
Great Sale. Rocking B had left Ft. Pierce Inlet, heading directly for Great
Sale and should get there before us. We had great weather and water, very calm
and easy on us. This is our best water/weather passage to the Bahamas.
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| Lady Ella looks good. |
We got to Great Sale and anchored about 5:30. We traveled
101.23nm at 6.4kts for almost 16hrs. Oh, we had a visitor follow us into the
anchorage. We were motoring along and heard a strange buzzing noise and looked
up and saw Ken’s drone alongside us. He got a great video of us coming into the
anchorage with the setting sun in the background. Thanks Ken. We will treasure
it! It’s good to see Rocking B here. We have missed traveling with them. Lady
Ella is near by and FFF went to the top of Great Sale to anchor. They just have
to be different. I know, they want to get to Donny’s dock early so they can get
the best spot!
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Rocking B waiting for us at Great Sale
|
It’s been a long stressful day and we want to get our
chores, dinner, showers done and settle down. We checked in with the others and
plan to leave about 5:00am.
Oh no, I messed up. We kept talking about leaving at 5:00 so
that’s what I set our alarm for. To get up at 5:00 not leave at 5:00. We told
everyone we would leave as soon as we could and we were sorry. Ken said he
wondered what was going on when he didn’t see any lights on. Next time sound
your horn! So we brought up the rear as we headed out the anchorage. FFF was
way out in front, then Ken, Lady Ella, then Escape. Lady Ella dropped back
behind us, they had a funny noise going on. Thought they may have something
around the prop. Had a beautiful Bahama sunrise and great trip to Green Turtle.
Several other boats left the anchorage besides our group and we kept seeing
more add on to the caravan as we passed by other anchorages. The closer we got
to Green Turtle, the more boats we saw. And
all the ones in front of us seemed to be heading to Green Turtle. Well, we hope
they won’t all head to Donny’s Dock! There were at least 12 boats racing in
when we did and we heard others calling Donny on the radio. One boater said
“Let the races begin!”
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| Our first sunrise of the Bahamas. |
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| Rocking B |
We got here around 2:00pm. We traveled about 54nm at 6.5kts
for a little over 8hrs. We had a great time with beautiful calm waters.
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| Lady Ella |
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| Cute little boat |
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| Entrance to Black Sound. We are close! |
We talked to Donny and he had our same dock from last year
open for us. He did have to move another boat, but it had moved when we got
there. FFF and Donny were on the dock to help us in and we had no problems.
Lady Ella got settled in and Rocking B went to the “family dock” for a few days
until another boat left the big dock.
We all got settled in. It takes a while to get all the lines
adjusted, the fenders out, the boards on and the power plugged in. But it’s good to be back!
We plan to spend a couple of months here again. We hope to see friends we made last year on the island and meet lots of new ones this year.
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