February 15, Carter Cay to Green Turtle Cay

As the song goes “what a difference a day makes”…….on the ocean, that is more true than anywhere.  In fact, what a difference a few hours can make!

I was awakened at 2am by the sound of howling wind.  Not being someone who springs to life when unexpectedly awakened I lay in my bed for a while to process the noises.  Then, realizing we were held in place by only an anchor, I decided to go up top and see what was going on.  The wind was howling at 30+ mph.  While we thought we were in a relatively sheltered anchorage, the wind direction had shifted and we were not sheltered.  So I watched the anchor alarm on my iPhone, not really knowing if it worked or not…..surely an App called “Drag Queen” could be relied upon?.........I reverted to GPS to see if we were moving or dragging our anchor.  It seemed we had indeed dragged a little.  Unfortunately the direction was towards a steep shelf behind us …….and the exposed wreck of a boat, about 50 ft behind us now.  Not much I could do but watch.  Letting out more scope on the anchor was not an option in this situation.

Morning came not too quickly.  The wind was still howling.  Raising the anchor became a team effort, with me at the helm, Brian on anchor windlass controls and Patrick having to re-set the Windlass breaker several times.  We were glad to be off.  Now we had to navigate the tight channel and shallow depth.  This took us within a boat length or two of land – a rock outcrop.  We were of course on the windward side being blown towards it.  The alternative was water less than 6 ft in depth.  We made it through.
We then motored with the strong wind and short-period waves on our beam.  This was not too comfortable, but we had it for a couple of hours.  When we made our turn, we had the wind almost behind us, resulting in a much smoother and faster ride.  We pulled out the jib to about 75% and we were surfing waves.  We hit over 9 knots several times, which is fast for our boat.

We made Green Turtle Cay by afternoon.  Salty was a real trooper…….due to weather, he was not able to go for his  morning walk before we left.  Despite having a piece of astroturf for doggie emergencies, he held out from about 7pm the night before.  Needless to say, he was well relived to set foot on terra firma!