Happy Valentines from Nassau!

Here's an email posting which never showed up on our Blog...maybe it will after this:

We had a rolly night at Gun Key and thankfully weighed anchor at 6:30 in the morning to head for the east as far as we could make it by sundown. For most of the day we were crossing the Great Bahama Bank which was from 6 to 12 feet deep. It reminded me of Pamlico Sound due to the shallow water with the open ocean impression. The big difference between the Bahama Bank and the Pamlico Sound is the water of the Bahama Bank is a bright crystal turquoise that appears to be lit from within and Pamlico Sound looks like day old coffee. We spent the first third of the day in a nice sunny broad reach, the second third of the day in a sunny windless motor, and the last third of the day in near gale conditions. The wind was whipping up to 35 knots, just like it has so many times in our last few months. The big difference this time was that we didn’t have mammoth waves since the water was so shallow, and that when a wave broke into the cockpit and soaked the pilot, it was a nice warm giggle of a splash. We did make one mistake though; we typically roll the dinghy up before making any trip over 10 miles…we decided to pull it behind us for this trip and the poor dinghy took a bashing. It survived just fine, though, but we have to remember not to do that again. Those big winds really helped us make it all the way to a harbor though, and we dropped anchor at Chub Cay (N25 24.530 W77 54.563) just 15 minutes after the sunset, and threw down another anchor for luck. Chub Cay isn’t protected for those winds, so the night ended up being a bouncy one…we were just so happy to be in port.

When we woke up on Wednesday morning we decided to go ahead and complete the trip to Nassau looking for a calmer night’s sleep. We stowed the dinghy and Reinhart pulled in the secondary anchor. It turns out you do have to tell us twice, because the anchor locker door fell on Reinhart’s face in those rocky conditions and put a gash in his forehead. He definitely has me beat, because I believe this may be a permanent scar and you can’t even make out my scratch from last week. We immediately put in something to prevent that from happening again. We set the storm sail and a reefed main and sailed off anchor at 10 am in beautiful conditions with 20 knot winds coming broadside. Within an hour we had the reef out and the jib up in 15 knots. Three hours later we pulled in the jib and set the spinnaker in 10-15 knot winds and the winds continued to diminish from there. This was the first day we used our complete sail inventory! We doused the spinnaker to the delight of a crowd on a booze cruise as we came into the huge and bustling Nassau Harbor at 4pm. We found our anchorage at N25 04.756 W77 19.781, and it took a bit longer to anchor since Reinhart and I switched anchoring duties and it took me a little longer to find the right spot and not pull the anchor right out of it. Reinhart has been enjoying the opportunity to actually see the anchor being set in this clear water; this time he was off the boat with his snorkel and mask while we were setting it. We are looking forward to blowing up (inflating, that is) the dinghy tomorrow and checking out Nassau.

We are having crab cakes and champagne for our Valentine’s celebration tonight and we hope you have an enchanting evening as well!