Our Crossing to the Bahamas

After a sound nights sleep at Great Sale Cay in the Abacos, we are feeling well rested and ready to go this morning.

After listening to the weather and studying passageweather.com we felt we had a good window to cross over to the Bahamas. The prediction was that the wind would shift after midnight, but by then we would be on the Bahama banks where it would not effect us much. We decided to leave from Vero Beach at 7:30 Saturday morning and headed out. There were dozens of dolphin playing on the waterway, which is always a fun way for us to start the day. Morning is still our favorite time on the water. We went
down the intracoastal waterway to Fort Pierce and got cheap fuel at Port Consolidated (sometimes called Port Petroleum). It was only 2.34 a gallon for diesel if you paid cash or wrote a check.

We went out the Fort Pierce Inlet into the Atlantic. Fort Pierce is a little too far north to make a good crossing so we went outside south to St Lucie before we took a left and headed for the Bahamas. The sea was calm with waves less than 2 feet. We put up the sails and were really enjoying the trip. Around sunset we saw the front coming in behind us so we took down the sails. We never had any rain, but the wind shifted just as the sun was going down. We had a bumpy ride. We reached Mantanilla
Shoal, the edge of the Bahama Banks around 9:30. The seas were a little easier, but still rolly.

Around 2:15 in the morning, while Wayne was at the helm and I was just waking up from a nap, Otto, our Autopilot, alarmed, gave us an an error message, and turned off. The manual steering was acting goofy in the heavy surf. We tried doing a 'bleed and feed' of the hydraulic steering fluid, but it did not seem to work. By this time it was 3:30 in the morning and we were exhausted. The water there on the banks was only 18 feet deep, we decided to anchor until daylight. We tried to get some sleep
while the boat rocked and rolled in the choppy seas. We were awake at sunrise after a restless time of trying to sleep. We did another bleed and feed on the hydraulic steering fluid and the manual steering was working fine, but the autopilot was still not working.

Great Sale Cay was only 10 miles away, so we headed that way. We anchored in Great Sale Cay around 10:00 in the morning. We enjoyed the safe anchorage and caught up on our sleep. When we anchored here on our first cruise, it was our last stop in the Bahamas before heading back to the US. Last time we shared this anchorage with almost 30 other boats. This time there were only 6 of us. This is where we took the picture we used for December for our 2008 calendar. The sunset was pretty last night
but not as photogenic.

We have a spare linear drive for the autopilot, Wayne installed it. Unfortunately, we got the same error message. The user manual for the autopilot does not show the error messages, so we will need to get an internet connection to do some research and hope to find out what is causing our problem. Wayne will also check all of the connections to be sure nothing has come loose or gotten corroded.

Today is a beautiful day and we cruised from Great Sale to Manjack Cay and are anchored between Manjack and Crab Cays. The manual steering worked well all day with no problems. Wayne learned more about our new GPSMap 540 today, it does a lot of neat things. The GPSMap came with the charts of the US and the Bahamas. The Bahamas charts are more up to date than the ones we have on the computer. It is nice to have the GPSMap in the cockpit.

Our plan is to go to the Green Turtle Club tomorrow and clear customs.