Headed Back to the USA

Bill, our trusty crewmate, preparing for the 4 to 6 day crossing from the Bahamas to the Chesapeake. He is carefully studying Miss Emilie's famous Goombay Smash. You can see the glow of the punch to the right of Bill’s head. The Blue Bar is apparently a must hit spot on Man-O-War Cay.

Once you have a few Goombay Smashes you have to pay up to Miss Emilie.

We left the Bahamas through Whale Cay Channel about 3 in the afternoon after an attempted last day snorkel near Green Turtle Cay that didn’t work out. It took us 4 days and 3 hours to get from Whale Cay to Cape Henry, the entrance to the Chesapeake. It was good sailing all the way till we rounded Cape Hatteras – the grave yard of the Atlantic. Then we needed half a day of motoring to get in. We had daily 24 hour runs of 120 miles to 187 miles. The latter with a lot of help from the Gulfstream current.

  While in the Gulfstream, we had southerly winds that let us pole out the jib and sail wing-on-wing (the main sail on one side of the boat, the jib sail on the other).  Pretty comfortable ride in 15 to 25 kts of wind. You can see a 995 foot container ship crossing our bow under the sail on the horizon.

An entire family of genetically suicidal flying fish.

We needed to run the genset to charge up the batteries one afternoon. This turned into sail-in movie time. I was on watch and didn’t get to watch the movie, but the resident critics said it was pretty bad. The popcorn was good.

The skipper carefully studying a 4 day old newspaper on his Kindle.

Bill got antsy when we started motoring so we told him to ‘Go fly a kite.’

A pleasant passage wouldn’t be complete without a lightning storm to greet us just as we were ready to get off the ocean and head in.

If you look at Bill’s face you can hear the thunder and see the lightning bolt that just let itself loose from the cloud.

Finally we make in to Cape Henry. l-to-r the old Cape Henry Lighthouse, the new Cape Henry Lighthouse, and the Virginia Pilot’s control tower.

 

And just to make up for the lightning storm, we ordered up a nice rainbow once we entered the Chesapeake. Now we’re officially back in the USA.

Paul