Across to the Abacos tomorrow?

Across tomorrow?

We went as far as Stuart, FL, last night.  We splurged and took a slip at Mariner’s Cay Marina.  The shower was great!  The marina is in Manatee Pocket, hence the following from Ray:

We're in Manatee Pocket near I-95

From Green Cove Springs, just a four hour drive.

We could'a come quicker by car.  

But chose to bypass radar

I Submit, it's the best way to arrive

 

6 days by Submit is a whole different way to travel!  And, given we have no wheels, it was nice of Kirk and his dad to take us grocery shopping and then to their favorite restaurant for dinner.

We topped up on fuel, a total of 38.5 gallons.  Barbara’s math tells us that is 0.57 gallons per hour, pretty parsimonious for about 14,000 lbs of sailboat and gear.

Well, the saga of the transmission continues.  It had a brief inspection and 4 bolts tightened, and was declared OK.  However, it still leaks.  For this trip, we’ll continue to sop it up and top it up.

A small child in a small boat with his parents noticed us today and became excited, shouting and waving.  It reminded me of our youngest grandchildren back home.  Not many grandchild hugs around here.  But, a minute later we had dolphins rising by the boat!

Passing through the Jupiter, FL, area today was not fun.  At least 5 bascule bridges are spread out about a half hour apart, but if you are not there at the hour or half hour for a regular opening, you have to wait.   We were late at one and had to sit for 28 minutes, and just barely made others. 

And there were hundreds of boats:  little slow boats, big slow boats, sailboats motoring, small fast boats, big 1200 horsepower 4 engine speed boats, and on it went for miles.  Most of the fast boats seem to have no idea of courtesy, nor the amount of havoc their huge wake creates as they pass.  We couldn’t wait to leave that area.

We are anchored in north Lake Worth tonight.  The forecast looks favorable for a crossing of the gulf stream tomorrow.  No elephants.  We will head to Memory Rock on the Bahamas bank.  It will take about 10 hours if all goes well.  We expect to motor sail to make time during the crossing.  We can slow down to sail at more modest speeds after we are across.

This evening saw us inflating the dinghy and stowing it on the foredeck.  In the rare event we needed it for an emergency departure of Submit, having to pump it up could be an inconvenience!

Other stuff is stowed away to keep it from falling around and to get it out of our way for travel.  Boneless pork country “spare ribs” with barbecue sauce was the tasty lead for dinner tonight.  Barbara has a snack box packed for us to nibble on during the crossing.  We’ll poke our bow out into the sea and if it looks OK, off we go. If not, we’ll head back in and try again Tuesday.