Return to Florida

June 28th, 2016

The days of June were wrought with brief unpredictable pop-up storms that thwarted our attempts to return to Florida. The nights, however were calm and clear so we decided to set sail from Bimini across the Gulf Stream in the late evening, hoping to reach the Palm Beach inlet by sunrise.

Sailing through the night varies wildly depending on the phase of the moon.  When the moon is full and the sky is clear, night sailing is magic.  The light of infinite stars dances across the waves illuminating the horizon. The moon casts shadows and your eyes easily grow accustomed to the pale glow needing no additional illumination to pace the deck. 

We were sailing on a cloudy night with a waning crescent, which is an exercise in trusting your instruments and physical sensations.  With no visibility, our vessel plowed blindly through the inky blackness.  

We were able to see the lights of the Florida Coast many hours before sunrise.  In the dead of night, you can see Miami and Lauderdale all the way to Palm Beach.  First as a glow, then eventually, as full points of light breaking over the horizon.  As we had hoped, the night was both surreal and uneventful.  Around 3 am we slipped into the inlet and sunk our anchor into US sand for the first time in 4 months.

The next morning we awoke to the bustle of the West Palm inlet and started down the ICW towards Stuart.

After a night on anchor in Stuart, we continued motoring up the Okeechobee to Indiantown.

Through the hours of the late afternoon, beautiful contrasting rain clouds were all around us but somehow never upon us.

We hauled out at Indiantown Marina.  After a few days of cleaning, packing, and preparing Robin for dry storage, we returned to Arkansas to wait out the summer.

When the Wind Dies: Sailing from Andros to Bimini

June  25, 2016

After eight days in Andros waiting for a weather window to continue sailing, the radar was finally clear of sporadic red dots.  We departed during the best wind window, that evening around 5pm, and sailed gracefully into the sunset. 

Sailing remained as pleasant through the night and into the morning.  We were able to use the windvane and take turns keeping watch. But the sun rose higher the wind blew lighter until there was none at all. By noon we were adrift in the doldrums. The sails flopped, the water was calm enough to swim in, and we were going nowhere.  

While I wasn't elated to be delayed, I was glad to see doldrums before our journey ended; for the same reason I'm retro-spectively glad we were caught in storms. Because it is now forever part of my mind's landscape, and before it certainly was not.  Whether it's 360 degrees of raging water, wind and darkness, or 360 degrees of glaring windless flat crystal sea bleeding into the sky, it's not something you get front row seats to every day, even if you are in the habit of losing sight of land. So, as our voyage was coming to and end, I felt terribly appreciative to have seen so many varied seascapes in only four months. 

   

We waited for the wind to pick up for a few hours. The sun was so severe that the cockpit was getting too hot for bare feet.  We clipped a bed sheet to the dodger for shade while we waited. We really didn't want to burn fuel all the way to Bimini. However, preferring to reach Bimini before dark, we eventually gave in and started chugging, breaking the beautiful silence.

Luckily we were reunited with the wind along the way, and shut down the engine promptly.  Bimini was in our sights about 25 hours after leaving Andros.  As we sailed into South Bimini we passed the shipwreck of the SS Sapona.

The SS Sapona is a concrete cargo ship that ran aground off the coast of Bimini in 1926 during a hurricane. It was used as a warehouse for booze supplying Miami during prohibition. During WWII is was used as target practice.  In 1965 it was featured in 007 Thunderball.  Now it is a popular site for divers.

28 hours after leaving Andros, we dropped anchor as the sun set in the familiar pillowy sand of Nixon's harbor, South Bimini, about 100 yards from the first place we anchored when we arrived in the Bahamas four months earlier.

How to get to Andros the Hard Way

June 16, 2016

Our long sail from New Providence Island back to Florida was cut short when we had to stop at Chub Cay in the Berries to wait out the storms.  Weather at this time of year is spotty, and at this location on earth, doubly so.

The stretch of water between Chub Cay and Nassau is a few thousand feet deep, and then, in the stretch of a few hundred yards climbs to the Bahama banks at about 10-12 feet deep.  70-100 miles west of the Berries and Andros is the next multi-thousand-foot deep trench: the Gulf stream.

During slack tide, water sits on the shallow shelf and heats up in the sun while other waters hide in the deep trench, getting quite cold.  When the tide changes, either warm water "spills" off of the shelf into the cold deep or cold water is forced out of the deep, vertically up the wall to the warm shallows where it creates rapid thunderheads.

Chub Cay lies on the edge of the shelf where all this watery madness happens and about 12 miles west of the Northwest Channel, the only place on the shelf edge that is deep enough (about 12 feet) for a ship to traverse.

The day after being rerouted to Chub Cay by storms, we made our second attempt at the Northwest Passage. It was a lovely, mostly sunny day with a very favorable 15 knot south wind that had us on a gentle reach under full sail to the channel, no need to run the little diesel.  It was so nice that with an hour left to the channel, I popped down below to fix some lunch.  While Sarah and I were eating, Robin suddenly lurched hard on-ear, almost putting a rail in the water while turning nearly 90 degrees from east to north.  I jumped on deck to see what had happened expecting we had snagged a crab pot or one of my sheets or steering lines had frayed, but instead we were in the middle of 50 knots of wind from the west, and a small black spot cloud had formed in the otherwise sunny sky.  Our Aries self-steering wind vane steers according to the wind direction, so when Mother Nature decided to change 90 degrees almost instantly, the Aries did too.

But now we were on a fast reach at full heel under full sail in 50 knots headed due north towards the rocky breakers about a mile away (about 8 minutes at this speed).  I called Sarah on deck while I started the engine.

This is the moment for jiffy reefing.  If you don't have jiffy reefs rigged, then my advice is: don't go out sailing until you do.  I have each reef on a single line that cinches both tack and clew to pull the whole slab reef out of the mainsail at once.  It runs to a cleat and winch set up on my coachroof in the cockpit.  Under 50 knots of wind and without changing point of sail, I was able to reef the mainsail, with one line, from the cockpit, by myself, while the self-steering wind vane kept course.  I pulled the foresail in completely and had the mainsail all the way down to the third reef in about a minute.  Then I took the helm and turned 180 degrees, directly south to get away from the rocky breakers,  But even with a tiny triangle of sail on the mast, our Yanmar diesel was struggling to maintain any headway against the building swells.  The wind built the waves from a slow one foot swell to 6 footers pounding over the deck within about 10 minutes.  The engine overheated almost immediately.  I throttled it down and waited/hoped for the overheat to stop, because I wasn't about to shut it off.  But with no underwater propulsion, we were forced to do what the wind told us.  At that point, the only answer was downwind, fast.  

I was proud of my jiffy reefs, but I would have given anything for a downhaul at that moment.  With just that little triangle of sail, we were still making over 10 knots downwind  I wanted to douse the main entirely and continue sailing under bare poles, but the wind wouldn't allow us to take down the last bit of main.

Luckily "downwind fast" was directly back to Chub Cay.  Unluckily, we still had some sail in the air, the wind and waves were still building, the engine buzzer was screaming and flashing overheat, and we still had an hour and a half back to Chub.

The next ???? minutes are kind of a blur of me gripping the tiller as hard as I could while we surfed 10-foot waves that were so steep we were beginning to plow the bow of the boat into the trough while we were surfing the crests.  Even with that tiny triangle of sail, we were making over 10 knots dead downwind, and I thought we were close to pitchpoling.  Our windspeed indicator pegs out at 65 knots, and it was pegged for long periods.  Moving 10 knots downwind plus 65+ knots indicated apparent wind speed = 75+ knots actual wind speed.  The stitches on the end of our flag and the top and bottom buttons of my shirt got ripped out by the wind.  I could barely hear Sarah unless her yelling was directly in my ear.  It wasn't raining yet, but the wind was whipping up so much seawater that it stung when it hit you, which was somehow everywhere on your body at once.  I have no idea how long this lasted, probably less than 5 minutes, but it was enough time to give Sarah a warning that we may be living our final moments, and that I loved her very much.  She was pretty okay with that being the end of it.  I was impressed.

About ???? minutes later, the worst of it had passed, we could start to see a clear sky ahead of us again, and while we were still in 6-foot waves, the period had slowed down significantly, and the wind had "eased" back to a steady-ish 45 knots like when it all started.  Clouds were now dumping freshwater rather than wind-blowing seawater.  A more seasoned seaman would consider this a great day to make some distance.

We anchored back at Chub in the late afternoon about 20 yards from where we had left that morning, though it was afternoon, it looked like dusk, and we waited for the insta-storm to pass while holding through the 6 foot swells.  It was almost worse than sailing.

A day later, we decided that if storms were going to keep us from making it through the northwest passage, then we might as well wait for our time at Andros rather than Chub.  Andros is the largest and one of the least visited islands in the Bahamas.  It has large stretches of forest and fields and more rural settlements.

The sail to Andros went well enough.  It was a pleasant day that turned a bit sour near the end with a light squall, but nothing dangerous. The holding isn't great in North Andros, and the best of it, on the eastern side of the bay was taken up by four other boats with similar plans.  So we took the less-preferable western side. The sand is very shallow on the rock bottom there, so I had to dive and dig both our anchors into the best sand pockets I could find on the seafloor, and we rode out another night of deep swells. 

It took another day for the storms to finally clear enough for us to take a trip ashore, but in the meantime, the stormy weather made for spectacular sunsets.

Rerouted by a Storm

June 15, 2016

We departed West Bay with the intention of bringing our Bahamian adventure to a close with our course set for Florida.  We were headed towards the southern tip of the Bimini chain, a location far enough south to make the Palm Beach Inlet without the gulf stream sweeping us too far north. We had not decided if we were going to stop there or continue overnight towards Florida.

The sky was bright, and the sea was a vibrant glassy sapphire blue.

Sailing past high altitude rainfall.

We were happily sailing along at approximately 25 knots in calm waters towards clear blue sunny skies when I casually looked behind me. The sky was turning black as rapidly moving dark clouds coalesced on the horizon. Waterspouts began dropping to the sea.  "AJ!" I yelled pointing towards the stern. Then promptly went below to get the off shore life vests while AJ started reefing.

 

When I came back up a wall of darkness was devouring the light. As it encroached on both sides, we found ourselves pointed towards an ever-narrowing window of blue sky.

The wind kicked up, we put in another reef and decided to hightail it to the nearest island, Chub key.

We made it to Chub in time to anchor before sunset. It was a long windy bouncy night in the unprotected anchorage of a sport fishing club resort island. Unbeknownst to us, it was the first of many stormy nights to come, and our Bahamian adventure was far from over. 

24 Hour Sail to New Providence

June 4-5, 2016

With weather getting less predictable so late in the season, we decided to make rapid progress home with a direct sail back to Nassau. From Arthur's Town we would sail west, keeping north and skirt the southern coast of Eleuthra, cross the Exuma Sound, sail right through a passage near the northern tip of the Exhumas, and then jig northwest to sail right into the eastern entrance to Nassau Harbor.  

Experience led us to longer and longer (aka: more accurate) calculations for average distance to destination, so we figured on a conservative a 20 hour sail.  We left Arthur's Town, Cat Island at 3:45 PM for the overnight sail. We predicted a sunrise arrival in the  Exumas and a near-noon arrival in Nassau, with plenty of sunlight left for error.  And if we sailed faster than expected, and finished the leg to the Exumas before sunrise we would be able to turn north up the Exumas until sunrise and pick the next best crossing, then sail a shortened northwest leg through the morning.

Wind was coming steady at nearly 20 knots directly from the east, so I used my spare Garhauer 4:1 snap shackle blocks to rig a boom preventer so we could safely sail wing-and-wing dead down wind out of the anchorage in Arthur's town at 7 knots.  Engines are for the nervous.  I even found that the Aries windvane actually really likes sailing wing and wing downwind, provided you set your sails correctly for helm.

In our usual routine, after setting the windvane I droppped three heavy 6" plastic squid lures in the water to troll, set out on two hand fishing spools with massive 150lb. test clear monofilament line.  I had taken to sending two lures out on one of the spools, spaced at about 15 feet, so maybe it "looked" like a small school of squid were following our boat.  (Do squid school?  Do they follow boats?  Fish don't give a shit, so neither do I.)

Shortly out of sight of Arthur's town we landed three Jacks on all three lures at the same time.  During the "fight" (I throw on leather gloves, grab the line by hand, and mostly just yank them aboard) we lost the second lure on one of the lines, but still ended up with two Jacks alongside.   I wasn't really able to ID them (Jack Crevalle?), but I know their shape is both edible and tasty.

When I gutted the first jack, it had some strange yellow grub-like things in pockets around the gut sac, but when I began cutting the filet at the head, I saw they were big yellow worms and they had eaten pockets throughout its flesh...  We tossed it back and I began filleting the second one.  Same issue.  I thought back on every piece of raw fish I had devoured.  Still within range of BaTelCo's Cat Island Cell Towers, Sarah looked up wild fish parasites on Google and confirmed our findings, while I dumped bucket after bucket of seawater into the cockpit to wash away the blood and guts.

I steered west into the sunset; I couldn't be taken by its splendor.  Covered in the red spatterings of missed fish guts, I gazed downward into the endless ocean and mourned the death of my love: Sushi.

But the ocean heard my call and shortly after sunset, as we crossed into the deep of  the Exuma Sound and landed our first Yellowfin Tuna, two at the same time.  A raw fish eater's delight.   We couldn't take on that much meat, so I tossed one back to filet the other.  No worms, just that famous firm beef-red tuna flesh.

The eyes looked up at me.  "Eat me," it called out. "I am safe." I hesitated.  Then I saw that beautiful raw tuna flesh for myself.  I couldn't not eat it.  So, I didn't not eat it.

Jacked Jack by day, Tasty Tuna by night.

After filling up on tuna, we watched a movie to start the overnight passage on the west leg to the Exhumas.  We were following a rarely-travelled path through the islands with no shipping lanes until morning, so we relaxed below for much of the night on a "mutual watch," allowing our AIS/GPS warning beacons and regular on-deck checks to prevent mishaps in the dark.  The boom preventer proved very useful as I was able to fine tune the rig to allow the boat to ghost downwind as slow as 2.5 knots with about the same in apparent wind across the deck while Alfred, our Aries windvane, self-steered.

Yes, you read that right.  Don't give up on your windvane!

I believe you can balance almost any self-steering device with sail trim.  Just play with your boom vang, Cunningham, outhaul, preventer (if downwind), etc., and especially sacrifice your sheeting in order to find the sailtrim to balance the boat in a way that your windvane likes.  Optimal performance trim does not result in optimal cruising/self-steering trim, and the half knot you lose in speed is made up for by perfect directional steering that responds properly to swells and waves over the course of hours and never stalls.  A well-set windvane is as good as 90% of helmsmen, and even a better helmsman would require constant concentration to beat it over a long course.  We will eventually get an electric autopilot for motoring, but the windvane is an amazing tool that is far more useful than most people give it credit for.

Sunrise after a full night of ghosting downwind in still water, and Alfred the windvane finally gybed at 2 knots boat speed with zero wind across the deck.  I was half-awake eyeing the sun anyway, so I stepped on deck and looked around at the glassy sea.  We let the sails hang and the boat bob in the middle of endless deep blue, 10 miles east off the Exhumas sea shelf, while we made coffee and breakfast and prepared for a day of motoring.

The next day went smoothly.  We motored up to the eastern shore of Highbourne Cay, where we had first entered the Exhumas a month and a half earlier on the west side.  It was an easy inlet just north of the island, and by the time we were crossing on the shelf, the wind was back and we were able to quiet the blazing iron beast again and sail for most of the northwest leg.

As afternoon wore on, we caught a couple very large barracuda that also took the last two squid lures with them when trying to de-hook.  The wind turned northwest, and we had to motor into Nassau for the last hour.  And at 3:45 PM the next day, after a slow, relaxing, exactly-24-hour sail, we dropped anchor.

While backing down on the anchor, I released the tiller long enough for the rudder to overturn, and BAM!, make contact with the prop.  The boat started violently shaking, and I shut down the engine immediately.  A jump overboard to inspect for damage revealed that my two bladed bronze prop was now a one bladed bronze prop.  Luckily Cheoy Lee uses a 1 1/2" diameter solid steel driveshaft that is only 16" long for the boat, so that was still straight...  and at least the anchor was set deep.

New Bight, Cat Island

We left Georgetown on the morning of May 30th in fine weather, and arrived at New Bight, Cat Island, late that evening. 

Hoping for an ENE or even an E wind, we sailed all the way down to the eastern tip of Great Exuma before rounding north towards Cat Island.  

The eastern tip of Great Exuma wasn't far enough, and we sailed hard on the NE wind, missing the south western tip of Cat Island by 10+ miles.  That meant an extra five hours of slogging to windward late into the night.  Luckily the wind was predictable and at that just-right 15-20 knots with the endless windward protection of the sheltered harbor of Cat Island, so we avoided motoring altogether, and ripped upwind in smooth water, making four tacks over four hours all the way into New Bight sound.  We sailed to a stop, and dropped anchor just off the beach shortly after 1AM.

New Bight is a small town in the middle of the island, home to Mount Alvernia, a hermitage on the highest peak in the Bahamas.  You can barely make out the structure on the hill to the right of the cell tower in the picture below.

The town is built along a long, shallow beach.  No dingy docks, just beach the dinghy and dig in the anchor where ever you want.

We pulled up to the local fish fry, a string of food shacks along a road running parallel to the beach.

The food really can't be anything other than fantastic when the fish and conch are caught fresh that day. We ate at a little place run by a kindly Bahamian woman called Hidden Treasures.  She had sweet potato fries.

It was a bit stormy while we were there, little did we know we were going to be seeing a lot of storms in the coming months.

We rode out a couple days of storms before finally getting a chance to hike in and see Mount Alvernia.  It was spectacular, and well worth the wait. (Next episode!) Between rains we had a couple beers and at the local fish fry, and when we mentioned we were headed back through the Exumas to Nassau, our cook told us we couldn't go before the upcoming rake and scrape music festival happening up north on the island at Arthur's Town. Cat Island is the native home of Rake and Scrape music, so we made the obvious choice to head north up the island to Arthur's Town for the weekend before leaving. With a steady southeast breeze that Thursday evening, we spread sail wing and wing out into the harbor for gentle downwind sleigh ride 10 miles northwest into the sunset and another 15 on a fast running reach back north after rounding the 5 mile long sand spit, once again sailing to a stop right in front of the bar and dropping anchor around 8pm.  This time the bar was blaring local Bahamian music and locals with drinks in hand were lounging all over the rocky shore...  Looking forward to a music festival in Arthur's Town...

Racing to the Regatta

We planned on seeing the Exumas, but I wanted more than anything to be in Georgetown for the Family Island Regatta, so our trip from Nassau to Georgetown, through the entirety of the 365 islands in the Exuma chain, happened in the span of a week.

Leaving the east end of Nassau harbor can prove difficult in a flow tide, as water rushes in at half hull speed. We motored against the wind and current and resulting seas at three knots for a full two hours before we could turn south. Wind was never in our favor that day, and we stopped short of our first day goal of Norman's Cay. Norman's Cay is the former home to a notorious 1990's cocaine trafficker, and also notoriously close to Johnny Depp's Private Cay...

But with the sun headed towards the horizon, we stopped in Highbourn Cay just a few miles north.

It was a cute little island with a single very nice (and expensive) marina and a single resort. Our arrival was heralded that evening with fireworks

The next day with an ENE wind, we set sail southeast down the chain. Our eventual stop was Staniel Cay, or more specifically, Big Major Cay, home of the famous swimming pigs, about a half mile north. I was feeling a bit down about not catching a fish on the way from Nassau to Highborn Cay. We had much success trolling lures behind the boat in the Berry Islands, and reports from other cruisers promised the Exumas were replete with fish. Finally, as we sailed past a deep cut that day, the line on our our starboard side trolling spool went taught. I hauled it in only to find we had caught some seaweed. As soon as I cleaned the lure and dropped it in the water, I watched a Mahi Mahi take it at full speed just as it passed the stern. The line wasn't cleated yet, and started jumping off the spool. I tried to stop the fish's run when the line went slack. I had lost him. Even before my heart could sink, the port side trolling spool started spinning with another Mahi Mahi, this time large enough to yank the line through the cleat. I dropped the starboard spool and jumped across the cockpit to grab the port spool and start hauling it in. As I pulled the fish alongside the boat, I could see we had caught a very large male Bull Mahi, but in one last spurt of energy, he jumped out of the water, slapped me in the face, and ripped the lure right off the end of the line. Dejected, I hauled in the starboard side line only to find out that lure had also been taken with a bite clean through the leader. In spite of the loss of two fish and two lures, it was a perfect day of sailing. We sailed all day pointing just a hair above a beam reach in 20 knot of wind, gliding across the flat seas of the protected lee of the islands. Alfred the Butler, our self steering windvane, was able to steer a laser straight course. 

With the moon nearly full and hands-off sailing so easy we decided to sail into the night arriving at Big Major Cay shortly after midnight.

Aside from the swimming pigs, in the half mile stretch of water between Big Major and Staniel Cays lies another rather famous landmark: Thunderball Grotto. An unremarkable rock in the middle of the straight has been hollowed out by millennia of erosion to become remarkable enough for a 007 film of the same name. I wanted to swim in it before we left, but it is only tenable at low tide, and low tide the day after swimming with pigs was at 4pm. With our successful night sail a couple days earlier, we decided to wait until the afternoon and I made a quick trip across the bay to Thunderball Grotto to grab some GoPro footage before we weighed anchor and set sail exactly into the sunset.

We sailed past Great Guana Cay that evening and anchored under a 3/4 moon at Farmer's Cut. The next morning we headed out Farmer's Cut into the deep on the eastern side of the Exuma chain for the final passage to Georgetown.

Offshore was quite a bit rougher than our protected sailing before, and with a ESE wind we only made it as far as Lee Stocking Cay before a storm blew in and had us ducking into Aderly Cut early in the afternoon.

We finished the trip to Georgetown the next day, and in the pelagic waters off the eastern shores of the islands, we finally landed the big Bull Mahi Mahi that had eluded us.

I am a firm believer in fillet and release.

The Regatta had started a day earlier. The sloops were racing around Georgetown Harbor as we sailed in and selected our viewing spot near the Chat and Chill for the remaining three days of racing. 

Just as we dropped anchor I heard the sound of twin turbo props approaching immediately behind us. A very nice amphibious float plane had decided to enter the harbor and visit the Chat and Chill as well.

Surfing a Storm Front to Nassau

A storm front was approaching, so we only had one day on Bird Cay.  We had to finish exploring the abandoned mansion and dinghy back to Robin in time to pull up the anchor and make the jump across the bay into the leeshore of Frazer's Hog Cay before night fell.  The sun set as we were entering the anchorage, and we found our spot of anchor-friendly sand by flashlight.  We waited a day and two nights in that anchorage as the wind slowly clocked from E to SE, through S and W eventually ending up NW.  Happily, Frazer's Hog Cay anchorage is protected and calm from all directions, and SV Pura Vida was there again rallying the eleven other boats in the anchorage on the radio.   That night they assured us that the wind would remain from the NW the next day as the front rolled through.  That would mean a predictable downwind run to Nassau, something that doesn't often happen.

Strong tidal currents surge back and forth from the deep Northwest Bahamas Passage ("the tongue of the ocean") and the shallow Bahamas banks every six hours, so I figured we would try to leave on an outward surge off of the Berry banks headed towards Nassau, hit low tide in the middle of the deep and catch the incoming surge into Nassau for the second half.  35+ knot winds and waves building to ten feet were predicted for the day.  I was hoping entering and exiting in a tidal surge moving the same direction as the wind would keep the waves down.  Surely my rough guess at favorable tidal currents would keep seas down to easy four foot rollers...

...35-40 knot winds built to ten foot seas by the afternoon.

Odd wave patterns converging from the two stretches of deep water behind us.

I didn't think that Robin's gloriously curved eight-ton fiberglass and lead underbody could surf, however GPS speedometer regularly surged more than three knots over base speed as the waves passed underneath.  We even hit 10.2 knots on some surfs. (though the overall readings could be influenced by tidal currents).  We started the day with a double reef in the mainsail, but were fully reefed shortly into the route.  Our tiniest triangles of sail were both pinned in place by 40 knot winds, and Robin plowed a massive trough in the ocean.  Bottomline, our 38 mile trip, anchor up to anchor down, took exactly 5 hours, giving an average speed of 7.6 knots ... in a classic full keel sailboat with a 25 foot waterline.  #micdrop  #mindsblown

Things build.

Eventually Sarah had to help me on the tiller during the hardest moments of windward helm.  It proved too much for Alfred (the self-steering windvane), and I was exhausted after nearly five hours of holding course and could barely handle it myself.   

We were happy to see land, even if it did mean the waves got steeper.  We surfed one last time past the lighthouse and breakwaters into Nassau Harbor entrance.  The waves immediately died down to a heavy chop and we finally struck sails as we made our way past the cruise ship docks to the anchorage.  There are even more videos of the passage on our YouTube channel if you didn't get your fix of POV sailing at casual bicycle speeds.

The anchor was barely in the ground before we prepped the dinghy and headed to shore to toast being alive and upright.  It took three drinks to calm down and a fourth to toast Robin's bad-ass-ery on a record setting passage.