Adios, America! – Sailing Windara

I slept better than I expected I would, but I’d be lying if I claimed not to be nervous. The Gulf Stream can be a true beast if conditions aren’t good, and even in settled conditions I had no idea what to expect. Besides, I’m always nervous before an offshore passage, even though I’ve now done several. And I’ve never LIVED outside of the country – I’ve traveled for a couple weeks at a time, staying at hotels and resorts and done all the touristy things, but I’ve never had to worry about getting groceries or making sure I had access to the basics I need for daily life. I couldn’t help lying awake at one point, wondering if I’d bought enough food and thought of all the little things I’d need.

We were up early and under way before 7, headed for the Fort Pierce Inlet. It was a picture-perfect morning and when we headed out the inlet, the ocean was as calm as could be. Unfortunately that meant no sailing, but given the choice of settled seas for a crossing or the ability to sail, I’d gladly take the former any time.

Part way down the coast, we encountered a pod of dolphins, and they came to play in our bow wave. We took turns going up to watch, and it was a total bucket list thing for both of us. One of them rolled onto its side to look up at me, and I laughed out loud when one came up to breathe and sprayed me with salt water. Eventually they moved along, but we were joined by another pod a little later, and I felt like Neptune was smiling on us.

The Gulf Stream’s exact location varies, but the general advice is to hug the coast down to Lake Worth and make your turn to sea out there, so we did just that. We reached the sea buoy just after sunset, on my watch. I was on watch when we went off soundings (364 feet was the last reading) and when we left Florida state waters. Our bow wave was laced with bioluminescence, and we were leaving the bright lights of West Palm Beach behind us, venturing into the total dark. I’ve come to love completely dark skies on open ocean passages, both for the beauty of the stars and for the ease of spotting other boats out on the horizon. Radar and AIS help, but it’s nice to be able to see a ship’s lights clearly.

We got a little bit of a north wind as we were in the fastest part of the Stream on Chris’s watch, causing boxy, peaky 2′ waves. They weren’t all that bad nor did they last all that long, but they did make it hard to sleep.

My next watch was calm and quiet, except for being surrounded by commercial traffic. There was some kind of freighter off in the distance and several cruise ships, but none of them were appearing on AIS – at first we thought our AIS had stopped receiving (it does every once in a while), but we suspect they were probably just out of range. In the middle of my watch, we ended up on an intersecting course with a cruise ship, so I hailed them when they were about 4 miles out to confirm we’d be clear. It was nice to have it confirmed that we were visible on AIS and even nicer to know we’d cross clean. Late in my watch, the half moon rose a deep red orange, and it looked like a bowl or a tea cup emerging from the sea.

We made good time crossing the Gulf Stream, which was our goal, and we actually had to slow down to make sure we didn’t arrive before dawn. The Gulf Stream is the world’s strongest ocean current, and over the course of our crossing, it swept us about 7 miles north of course, but even still our estimated arrival was in the wee hours. I didn’t mind – we couldn’t have ordered better conditions for a crossing, and I was enjoying the passage. Soon, I could start to make out lights on the horizon, and before I knew it, there were only a couple miles left.

It’s amazing how fast it shoals up as you approach the Bahamas – we were within a couple miles of shore, if not less, before our depth sounder started showing depth again, and then it went quickly from 300+’ to 60 and even less.

Dawn found us hanging fenders, setting out lines and running up the quarantine flag so we could come into the customs dock. I knew there wouldn’t be anyone there to take our lines, and I wasn’t particularly excited… me and my oh-so-long legs don’t exactly love jumping onto a dock, and I’m always afraid I’m either going to face plant on a cleat or fall in. If you know me, you know how graceful I am and are probably picturing the imminent disaster in your head. Fortunately the dock was too high to get up on at low tide and all I needed to do was get a line around a piling. With a long, mostly-empty face dock to work with, it was a piece of cake.