After leaving Vieques (in a hurry… see our last blog post, lol) we had a lovely sail to Culebra. A nice quick beam reach, and after months of heading upwind, it was – well – like a breath of fresh air. Read more
Fish
Crooked Island
A quick note first – hurricane Matthew just blew past Crooked Island. Our thoughts are with the people there, and in the rest of the Bahamas. With all our hearts, we hope no harm came to them.
We left Rum Cay determined to sail – not motor – to our next destination. We couldn’t be sure, until we got away from the island, exactly what the wind would be doing. To accommodate the uncertainty, we set a number of potential destinations in our chart plotter, and decided we’d make the eastern-most one that the wind would allow. Clarencetown, Long Island if the wind was south of east, Crooked Island, Plana Cays, or Mayaguana if we had a little more luck and the wind was pure east or north of east.
It turned out that we could not have been luckier if we had tried, because we ended up at Crooked Island, which we would have otherwise passed by, and it was just amazing. Not just the island itself, which would have been enough, but the beautiful people we met there, both on land and on another boat.
Seabrook, Texas to Palmetto, Florida
Preparation, planning, and perfect timing are all that it takes for a beautiful five and a half day sail across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida from Texas. The wind, blowing nicely from the north at 12 to 15 knots, provides a beam reach that is the envy of all who have gone before. Calm seas with outstretched wave height of two to three feet seem to mock the stories of the Gulf’s treacheries. Averaging 7 to 8 knots puts us there in less time than we imagined. Having a beautiful chef on board and catching yellow fin tuna along the way round out the trip to make it the absolute best experience a sailor could want…
Well, that was how it was supposed to go.
