End of Day 1 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSBradio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359 (AST, GMT-4) 23 Apr 2019

Dear All,

Well we are off again on another long (ish) passage.  This one should take us somewhere around 3-4 days depending on the wind which is looking rather variable and the effect of the Gulf Stream.  We will cover something in the region of 400 nautical miles getting from the Bahamas to Charleston in the USA.

Leaving the Abacos

We left Great Guana Cay in  the Abacos at the top end of the Bahamas at 1000hrs, sailed through Whale Cut and then set ourselves up sailing as close to the wind as we could on starboard tack.  That had us heading more towards Jacksonville FL than Charleston SC (which is about 160nm northeast of Jacksonville) but, after a day of calm tomorrow, on Thursday the wind is supposed to go around to the southwest which, provided it is strong enough, will blow us up to Charleston nicely. So, we may end up sailing a somewhat banana shaped course, but we should end up where we want to check into the USA.

By our reading of the regulations we did not need to check out of the Bahamas, so we have just set off from a remote anchorage on Great Guana Cay.  We'll see what happens when we try to check in to the USA but hopefully we have properly understood what needs (and doesn't need) to be done. Charleston is a big port of entry so it should be easy to fulfil our Customs and Border Protection (CBP) requirements there.  Nicky visited Charleston with work and has always wanted to go back to show the place to me, so we are quite excited about getting there.  It should be a great stop.  Plus, we will be able to meet up with Ollie and Sheena, friends from the UK, who are going to be holidaying at Myrtle Beach a couple of hours' drive north of Charleston.

Dolphins, lots of them!

Our departure from the Bahamas was marked by a visit by a large school of dolphins (bottlenose and Atlantic spotted). They seemed to like that we were sailing at over 7 knots and they played in our bow wave for about 20 minutes before disappearing off.  Since then we have not made such good progress; the wind has dropped as low as 6 knots which doesn't really get BV moving, even close-hauled.  In addition, we had about a knot and a half of current against us for the first few hours. We checked where the Gulf Stream was sitting before we set off and that will help us north when we get much closer to the American coastline but between here and there we saw that there are couple of swirls of current against us.  We clearly found one of those!

Last look at the Abacos

We did not do a shopping trip before we set off as we still have plenty of supplies on board from stocking up prior to visiting the Turks and Caicos, Cuba and the Bahamas.  We even have some tins of stew left over from our Atlantic crossing, so it's definitely time to try to eat into the stores and try to lighten BV's load somewhat!  Fresh bread, therefore, is a DIY job and part of my afternoon activity (in addition to molly-coddling Georgina along, who didn't like the light winds) was baking a loaf so that we have some for breakfast.  Nicky also made some yoghurt, so we are all set to start day 2 well fed.

Love

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 23 April: N26 48 W77 17
Position at 2359 23 April: N27 41 W77 43
Midday to midday distance: n/a nautical miles
Midnight to Midnight distance: n/a nautical miles
Total miles covered:  80 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: 326 nautical miles

End of Day 1 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA