South Water Cay: The best laid plans...

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

016-49.020 N
088-5.100 W

The plan was rather simple. Just wait for the winds to die down as they normally do in the early afternoon and head on out through the cut. The problem was that the winds had been blowing 25-30 kts from the east all night. After working on the wind generator in the morning, I took the dinghy into the cut to see what it was like. It really wasn't bad and I assumed that once we got into deep water that it would get even calmer. Bad assumption.

The winds slackened to what appeared to be 15-20 kts around lunchtime so pulled up anchor and headed out. Sue had visions of our passage through the cut in Xcalak, Mexico at about this time last year, and had herself well braced in the cockpit. The trip through the cut wasn't bad, but as we got into deep water the seas got much larger and steeper. We had 7' steep seas from multiple directions that we were crashing through. On top of that the winds picked up significantly and we were seeing 30+ kts (35 mph) on the nose. We were making 4.5 kts, but had 14 miles to go, so this didn't feel like a good plan. On top of that we could hear items that weren't sufficiently stowed crashing around down below. At a lull in the waves I turned around and headed back towards the pass.

The trip back through the cut was more exciting in my opinion than the trip out. We were surfing down good sized waves, and when one would catch you from the side, it would try to swing the boat sideways. It takes a lot of fast handed steering to keep yourself pointed the direction that you want to go. We made it in without any problems and anchored behind South Water Cay again.

The latest plan is to pull up anchor when the winds die down and stick our nose out into the cut. If we can make it out, we'll head to Glover's reef, otherwise we'll head to Twin Cays and look for Manatees. On the plus side we just found out that we can pick up US TV programming on Ch. 13. It's a potpourri of programming where they pull in feeds from everywhere and mix them. This morning we got CNN, then CBS, then Spanish programming, etc. News, wow!

-- Geoff (who's amazed that Kerry appears to have the nomination) and Sue
Log ID: 456