Acklins Island, Bahamas

The next leg of our voyage was a 92 mile trip to the north coast of Acklins Island to a small protected anchorage.  Since this would be an overnight sail, we left at 2:00 pm on the afternoon of May 9, 2015.  Winds and waves were not what was predicted and were actually 15-20 knots out of the southeast with 3-4 foot waves.  This means that we had to tack more to reach our destination by sailing.  Motoring is not really an option as there is no fuel available until we reach the Turks and Caicos.  We crossed the Tropic of Cancer at 4:45 pm, we are officially in the Tropics.  The winds and waves increased and we turned on the engine only to have it seize up two hours later at 3:00 am.  Now we have no choice but to sail and we still have three-quarters of the trip left to travel.  The waves kept crashing over the top of the boat and now the salt water was coming in through our sliding windows and getting most everything wet.  If you know about salt water – it doesn’t ever dry and is corrosive.  The rest of this trip was not for the fair weather sailor.  We were constantly getting wet from the waves coming in the cockpit, the autopilot broke, the stitching ripped out of our genoa sail, the flag halyard came loose and got caught in the wind generator, water came in through the solar vent on the navigation station and got our PC’s, Kindle, iPad charging cord, phone charging cards, and stereo all wet with salt water, the boat hook flew out of the cockpit into the ocean, a 5 gallon jerry can of diesel fell over and leaked three gallons of diesel on the deck and through the window into the head, one of the life lines came off and the Sunbrella lifeline cushion flew off, the radar deflector fell down as it shredded the line, the jib sheet line came loose in one of the squalls and wrapped about 50 times around the other one, water came in through the anchor locker into the v-berth and our hanging locker and soaked all of our hanging clothes.  And by the way, our windlass anchor motor broke a few days after leaving Nassau.  This means that Chuck has to manually pull up the anchor each and every time.  This trip lasted 30 hours and 139 miles.  We went through four squalls and 12 foot seas during the last five hours. We had to tack into the anchorage in the dark with the help of our two boat buddies that we are traveling with – Circe and Panache.  It’s great to have boat buddies!  We later found out the painter line from our dinghy (stored on the deck), came loose and wrapped itself around our prop.  We stayed on Acklins Island in this uninhabited anchorage for three days to repair, fix, dry, clean and recuperate our own bodies.  The anchorage called Atwood Harbor was a calm place to recover.