S/V Midnight Sun II and III: Journey Back from Cuba

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Journey Back from Cuba - Part 4, Anclote to Pensacola

The final leg of our Cuba trip was leaving from Anclote Key crossing the Gulf to Pensacola. Winds were forecast from the NE clocking east at about 20 kts, and seas 4-6 ft. The distance was about 270 miles, and we had bailout opportunities at Carrabelle, Port St. Joe, Panama City, etc. We have learned on this and other trips not to take 4-6 ft seas lightly - that is in the Gulf, where the frequency is short.

Beating into 4-6 ft seas can be brutal and uncomfortable. But for this trip, the seas were generally quartering from behind us, so this was not bad at all.

Sunset at Anclote

We left Anclote Key under full sail, but after a short time, we decided we had a bit too much cloth out, so reefed both the main and jib. This made for a more comfortable ride and the boat itself seemed far more at ease. We were still making good speed. We hit the high 8's and 9's at times and I believe we averaged 7.6 .kts. on this entire leg.

Leaving Anclote Key

I don't recall our exact sailing time for this leg, but it was about 35-36 hours, and other than the last piece of this leg, we pretty much sailed the rhumb line back to Pensacola.

On this leg we did see some spectacular dolphin shows! Video does not do it justice at all! and we could not capture the scene sufficiently to describe in in photos. but at one point in time we had over 50 dolphins chasing us, on the bow, and generally surrounding the boat. This pod stayed with us about 30 minutes.

We had several others join us on this trip. One amazing sight was to see a following wave above our transom with two dolphin faces looking at us. Unfortunately. this was not caught on film! Good thing they did not jump as they would have been in the boat with us!

We arrived (again at night) in familiar surroundings at PYC. Our trip was complete. We had an amazing time with an amazing crew. This was a trip off the bucket list!