We have arrived...

We have arrived…..

We really didn’t have a plan where to go after West End ,leaving our journey open to the wind and fate ! Best is to talk to other sailors, see where they’re heading ,so when we heard them talk up a storm (?) of praise about an island called Double Breasted Cay , we checked back with our collection of guides - and sure enough , it was supposed to be the most beautiful Cay in all of the Bahamas. So why didn’t more people go there , we’d never heard of it ? Well , we were soon to find out…
We motored through a nice cocktail of dark and stormy , either no wind or all hell , one of them packing winds so fierce, it slowed us down to 1.2 knots under full power - but it rewarded me with nice photo of nasty weather.We reached Great Sale with the fading sunlight , no diving the anchors there , so we slept with the GPS on anchor-drag alarm - just in case . No serious cocktail-hour there , but we where rewarded with a calm night and actually got to go sailing the next day . The wind was huffing steadily at around 15 knots and “Quixotic “ proudly showed us what she was made of. It was a day we had worked for so hard , all systems up and running , flying 7.2 knots ( YEAH !!!) by little Cays in beautiful weather on our way to paradise.
Double Breasted Cay has two little sleughs to get into some nice protected anchorages and as we were getting closer to the island ,we realized we can’t make out the channel. All looks fine on the chart plotter ,but all we see is a little opening between jagged coral rocks we wouldn’t even try to get our dinghy through , not to mention the mothership . And could we really trust “Charmaine “ ( The Garmin GPS ) blindly , for obviously once we ‘re in that tight a quarters there’s no turning her around . Well , the prudent mariner and Cindy , the proud boat owner, took over and we turned our boat around and decided to explore our options by dinghy.
I’m sure you can imagine our disappointment when we finally had Quixotic anchored , done diving the anchor to make sure she’s set and the dinghy ready to go, the wind started picking up to a good 20 knot speed. No way were we entering that narrow gap in these conditions , and none of us felt great about leaving our home out there on her own , what if she starts dragging while we ‘re out there looking for our anchorage ???? Oh well, I guess we were off to another night out in the open ocean, GPS on drag - alarm and the boat rocking and rolling . But we all know what an awesome sleep we can get when the cradle is rocking like that ,and again the goddess had mercy on us and sent all the squalls the other way.
Next morning we went exploring and talked to people in the anchorages , nothing like some local knowledge . We found out we had to consider tides and currents to make our entrance and being kinda still in the open water - exit mode in case of a storm , we choose a nice spot tucked in behind the island. So we moved Quixotic around the island to our chosen spot and once we got her anchored we realized the tidal current had gained some dramatic speed and it pointed our transom directly into an ugly set of rocks . Morale and the sun was getting pretty low by then and we kinda questioned our capability here , when we got a call from Scotty and Peggy on “Black Gold” over on the other side of the rocks . “ Are you girls staying out in the open ocean again tonite , or are you coming in over here now that it is slack high tide ? “
I haven’t heard a nicer way of someone telling me I’m messing up , so I replied “ Heck no. I’d just love to spent another night with my GPS on anchor-drag !?! “ I think having to deal with my heavy german accent he must‘ve missed my dripping sarcasm , for he backed off immediately and wished us a good night. Oh ,you should have heard me come back at him : “ Hell no , I AM NOT HAPPY !!! “ just short of screaming help . He told us that boats actually make it through that gap in the rocks all the time and he and another sailor came over in the dinghy to guide us through to safe haven. An hour later we were showered and relaxed in this absolutely beautiful spot between a heavenly sandbar and a coral rock island and the gentle breeze that was rocking our ship out in the open ocean was gently caressing our tired bodies. The moon was lighting the sandbar to a glowing white and we knew then - we have arrived…