I am sitting here at one of the Abaco Beach Resort & Marina swimming pools. I am patiently waiting for the bar in the middle of the pool to open. I don’t think it opens until 0700 hrs. But I am, as suggested, a patient man when waiting for rum. I smell the cook house. It smells good, but I do not smell the rum, so I wait. In fact there was a party here last night with two-for-one drinks. The place, of course, was flooded with cruisers. So many cruisers it took me 20 minutes to get my two expensive rum punches and then I forgot to get Lynn’s wine. Patience is a virtue and a hell of a lot easier when I have rum punch in each hand. I went back for her wine, very happy to wait.
This week I have been fearful of just about everything. Nervous about our crossings of Okeechobee, the Gulf Stream, Little Abaco Bank and crossing from island to island in the Sea of Abaco in our dinghy and concerned about anchoring and the mooring ball and afraid of getting lost again in the dinghy in the night after several Sundowners, a rum drink. Never mind that I got lost at Green Turtle Cay between Settlement Point and Black Sound entrance, a matter of a 100 yards or so in a straight line. Few would understand that challenge unless they had several Sundowners also, which is why Lynn didn’t even know we were lost I suspect.
I have been frightened of everything except my morning coffee. Then the day before we left for the Bahamas the darn cup full of coffee took a running jump at my computer and did a cannonball in the middle of the keyboard. I sat transfixed as the coffee, in slow motion, wobbled to the edge of the cup then concentrated all its energy back to the middle of the cup and exploded up and outward in a starburst of smoothness that then descended on to the keyboard several feet to starboard. Every key, except “Esc” and “Control”, held an opaque, golden tan pool of former goodness. It is odd that those keys were spared, since I couldn’t escape and had no control of anything. If I could drown in a cup of water (I haven’t yet, which is why avoid water and stick to rum), I guess it is reasonable to understand the demise of my computer in a partial cup of coffee. Father Phil of Curmugeon, a computer security pro, is currently performing the post-mortem. So, now I even fear my coffee.
It started last Monday. (Oh crap, a coconut just landed next to me and scared it out of me. Hmm, I should put lime in da coconut ‘n shake it all up. I’m beginning to like this place). As I was saying, last Monday 0’ dark thirty, we were in Stuart, Florida staged and ready to depart for the Bahamas. The day before we had scouted the pass from the ICW to the St. Lucie outer marker. Piece of cake.
We were up at 0330 and underweigh using our computer cookie trails from the day before to help guide us out channel across the ICW and out the pass. To be candid it was a darn sight easier the day before in the daylight. As we departed Manatee Pocket, I suddenly switched into panic attack function (OMG), where up is down and down is sideways and radar is wrong and the course line doesn’t stay under the little ship-like cursor of my charting system. Lynn sensed my disoriented state and stepped up or perhaps sidestepped into her Zen mode as she stood outside with million candle power beam seeking out our next mark, secure in her ability, and confidently, in a calm knowing voice, guided me ever so nicely out of the channel and on to a mud flat. But at least she did it with panache and it was skillfully accomplished. I was very impressed. We got to the outer marker at about the same time we would have if we had left at first light, but who cares. Really, it is the adventure that counts. Yeah, right.
Now for those of you that have made this crossing you know all the feelings and the wonders it provides so you may want to move on to another person’s blog, but for those who have not done this or simply want the visual of my green pants turning brown stick around. I can only revert to one of my pirate crews’ text expressions: OMG,or Oh..MY…GOD…. In my case it is often interchangeable with OS or Oh, Sh-t!
As we cleared the St Lucie outer marker we turned 45 degrees south for a 16 mile jaunt down and out to the Gulf Stream rather then head due east to the stream only 10 miles off-shore. We do this because, as our boating friends know, the Gulf Stream runs 2-4 knots north and, hence, rather than fight it the whole way across we can go south before we get to it then point straight east and end up in the right spot due to the current pushing us north as we motor east across the stream. (Deedra forget it. Its not that important.)
Being a Nervous Nelly and knowing the fickleness of the Stream and the capricious weather of the Florida Strait we choose weather like elves choose cookies. Both must be uncommonly good. For us a crossing, any crossing (except crossing a Street to a bar) forecast, must be 2’ or less for the seas and under 10 kts for the wind, and, oh yes, it must be out of the south for this crossing to prevent beating against the standing waves created from wind blowing against current. We like this very conservative forecast because, most of the time, just when you get to depend on a forecast being accurate, it is OMG/OS much worse and you die or at least wish you had. This day we were lucky, the seas are as forecasted and the sun spun up once again and turned the calmish seas the color of a peeled blood orange after the first bite.
So the Gulf Stream is really a river in the ocean which doesn’t make a lot of sense until you get to there, because that is exactly what you see - a river in the ocean. We got to the edge of the Gulf Stream and it was as if we were standing on the shore at the river’s edge. OMG. There was a line of color change, but more so a distinct change in the water shape. The wind blowing out of the south was going with the stream and this day the water in the Gulf Stream river was flat and so where a few yards before it was rougher and ruffled from the 5 mph breeze it was calm and flat in the river and the color, the color I have never seen before in nature. It was a rich, creamy, cobalt blue with endlessness to the colors depth that said, “I am deep, I am strong, I am the Gulf Stream”.
The Stream itself only takes us about six hours to cross from Florida to the Little Bahamas Bank. We knew that when we crossed onto the Bank we would have a depth change from 2,000 ft depth to 13-foot depth. OMG, we didn’t know it was going to happen in about one boat length. As we approached the bank we could see it by the color change about a mile away. As we crossed on to the bank the depth went so very quickly from 2,000 to 300 ft and then it seems like in one boat length we went from the color of deep space Cobalt blue to the sharpest, brightest, purist Arizona turquoise that we have ever seen. It was brilliant, almost blinding, as we skittered across into 13 foot of water of the White Sand Ridge onto the Bank.
We trudged on across the bank for 25 miles and as the earth churned the sun into a hot buttery set we dropped anchor and enjoyed the solitude and the quiet contrast of sunset and darkening azure six inch seas—in the middle of the Little Bahama Bank--aka nowhere. Nowhere was the perfect anchorage this evening as a full moon towed by the sun on a long leash shed its grace on Skinwalker. We have arrived in Paradise—now where are those 72 virgins we have heard about so much lately?
