By far, the highlight of the trip was a day aboard a cigarette boat, "Rush Hour". At speeds near 70 mph, we did in one day what usually takes a week in a sailboat. We snorkeled the Indians (rocks), visited the caves on Norman I., had lunch at Dead Man's Beach, at the luxurious Peter Island Resort, toured the Baths,
For the rest of our time, we did lots of snorkeling, some sailing on a small tri-maran, some hiking, and even some diving.
Because of dissatisfaction with the APS picture quality,
Dawn went out and bought a fully automatic
35 mm camera.
As it happened, she used it with the distance setting,
and got some nice panaramas
and lots of
fish portraits.
Our first hurdle was 150 miles of Bahama banks - lots and lots of silty sand covered by about 10 feet of water. The first day was a great sail out of Marsh Harbor, up the entire coast of Great Abaco Island, to a little anchorage at Hawksbill Cay. The next day we made our way to Sail Cay, sailing full speed until a sand bar loomed ahead. We tacked and shortly encountered another sand bar. This continued until we bumped our way through the connection between the two sand bars, and anchored off the Cay. The third night was spent on Mangrove Cay off the very shallow north coast of Grand Bahama Island.
The fourth morning we were off - motoring in light winds for most of daylight across the last of the bank with no real land in sight. Finally, we crossed a 20 foot shallow of very white sand, making the water color a light aqua. At 40 feet, the water was a deep aqua. By 60 feet, the water was beyond blue to indigo. The next time I looked, we were off the banks beyond depth sounder range, and the water was absolutely purple. This is the first time I had seen deep, clear water known to sailors as "blue water". It was a beautiful reminder that we were now in serious ocean.
We'd been surrounded by thunderstorms most of the day. I watched in awe as one about 6 miles away sent out a funnel cloud which touched down to form a waterspout. I was intimidated, but the more seasoned crew said they see them often, and just go around them (right.), and the worst damage anyway would be to wrap the sail around the mast - tightly.
After a night of flickering lightning, we found ourselves 50 miles off the coast of North Florida with a perplexing problem - thick smoke from a Florida swamp fire. At least the smoke carried my cell phone signal, and I was able to call home for the first time since leaving Florida earlier by plane.
We tried to out-run the smoke to the north. Although we did get out of it, the winds died, then settled from the north. We'd been fishing for hours without so much as a bite. The light winds left the boat to circle a couple of times, and when checking the lure, we discovered a tangle in the middle of the line which fishermen call a bird's nest. (When I told my wife about this, she said "aw, the poor birds".) We set about untangling the bird's nest, and as I've seen so many times before, that's exactly when the fish decided to bite. We tried to fight through the bird's nest, but of course the line snapped right away. That was the only fish we saw for the entire trip.
Stuck between the smoke to our south, and north winds, we decided on the second night out to set a slow motor course west to arrive at St. Augustine, FL just after dawn. We took some much needed rest, Jane bought us a marvelous dinner ashore, and we walked the touristy district.
Then we were off again on a day-sail to Fernandina Beach on the GA line. On the way into the beach, I saw my first Leatherback Turtle. - very prehistoric looking with three ridges on its back. The following day brought light winds, and we motored up the intra-coastal waterway to Brunswick, GA. Finally, in favorable winds, we took an overnight sail from Brunswick to Charleston. My sweetie was waiting, so I caught a plane home the next day.
As of September, Spencer has been diving twice. Dawn deferred both trips.
However, since Spencer now has his own underwater camera,
there are finally a few New England dive photos to show.
Coinjock, NC, Oct. 21, '01 -
Dawn and Spencer
depart
"Conquest".
after moving her from Melville, RI. since Oct. 4. We stopped at:
