If you missed Part 1 of our return home, you might want to scroll down and read it first. This post is part 2 of 8 that describe our long sail home
Part 2 – Plan and Prepare
As we started planning to sail back to Florida, our first order of business was to identify a weather window for the trip. We needed wind, but not a gale, and we needed southerly winds for the Gulf Stream crossing. We needed a window of about 4 days. That duration was unlikely, given our experience with the passage of cold fronts during our trip, so we allowed mentally for the possibility that we would need to wait out a front somewhere, even though we continually hoped to avoid that possibility. After all, with no engine, our options for entering and leaving anchorages were severely constrained. Many, many entrances to anchorages in the Bahamas are much too tricky to maneuver under sail alone.
We needed the weather window pretty soon. It was already late April. Our insurance wants us north of Florida by June 1 each year, the beginning of hurricane season. Even after we got back to Florida, we knew that it would take some time for a mechanic to determine the problem with the engine and then do the repairs. After the repairs were done, we still needed time to get north of Florida before June 1. We really could not dawdle.
We had to choose a route that gave us the least challenges to our limited maneuverability yet took us as directly as possible to our goal. We worked out a route with a decision point in the middle. We could depart Big Majors Spot, traverse the Decca Channel, and cruise up the Tongue of the Ocean. When we reached New Providence, we had to choose either the Northwest Channel or Northwest Providence Channel.
If we chose the Northwest Channel, we had to arrive at slack or flood, because we dared not risk it if the wind were east or southeast into an ebb tide. We had to navigate a fairly narrow path to the Northwest Shoal, then to Mackie Shoal and Great Isaac Light. As we viewed our weather windows, we inevitably found ourselves crossing that bank in the dark. Or anchoring out there through the night. The tidal currents on and off the banks can be very powerful, and we worried about our options passing the Hen and Chickens and Great Isaac at any time.
Our other choice was to take the Northwest Providence Channel (Route B) around the Berry Islands and completely avoid the banks and Great Isaac. It added distance but greatly reduced our risks on the banks. As will become clear later, this choice added its own risks. You can never avoid risk altogether when you embark on a sailing adventure. The trick is to be able to manage the risks you accept.
Both routes converged between Great Isaac and Freeport. From there, we had to cross the Gulf Stream without power, navigating appropriately to arrive at our destination, the Lake Worth Inlet.
We identified 4 tricky challenges along our path.
As for the weather window, our first choice failed us when the predictions were revised unfavorably for us. The next window looked like four good days if we started on Thursday, so we got ready to go, but there was never enough wind. We need 10-12 knots to move this boat. On Thursday, April 22, the wind never exceeded 7 knots. One day lost.
On Friday, April 23, the winds were predicted to be at or near 10 knots all day. In fact, they were much lower until late in the afternoon. Since our plan was to sail round the clock, it would not have been unthinkable to depart in the afternoon, but it was completely unthinkable to navigate the Decca Channel in the dark. A second day was lost.
As we waited, we continued to discuss our plans. They were complicated by the fact that not only was the diesel engine completely unavailable; the generator that we used to charge our batteries was behaving strangely. We had been running it 2-3 hours each morning and another hour or so in the evening to keep our batteries well charged. However, at the same time our diesel engine problems emerged, the generator began to behave strangely as well. Not being an electrical engineer, I can only report that Larry said it was putting out too much voltage to the inverter/charger. If it had an AC load, such as the electric coffeepot or the water heater, it could be induced to run normally for almost an hour, but eventually, even those loads were not enough to keep the voltage down and the generator had to be shut off. We could charge the batteries to some extent, but there would never be sufficient charge to run e-charts or the auto-pilot.
As we planned our watches, we expected that twice a day, Larry would be able to run the generator for about an hour, but during that time, he needed to give it his undivided attention. We would be able to have refrigeration, lights, hot water, and most of the comforts of home as long as we were careful.
Sailing without the auto-pilot was a daunting prospect, but we gritted our teeth. What choice did we have? If we stayed where we were, we would never solve our problems. We decided that we would take turns at the helm, 2 hours on, 2 hours off. Our actual schedule was a bit more flexible, but not by much. Without the auto-pilot, somebody had to be steering at all times.
Sailing without electronic charts was less daunting, but still undesirable. We sailed without them for several years, but never on such a passage as this one. Of course, we had already learned that e-charts cannot be the only resource for piloting in a place like the Bahamas. During our whole trip, we were constantly checking the e-charts, the paper charts and the guide books for all the information we could get. We had two sources for GPS information: a handheld GPS with a display about the size of a cell phone screen, and a GPS mounted on the nav station. We had the Explorer Charts for the Bahamas, which we had come to rely on heavily, perhaps even more heavily than our e-charts. (When we went to Hatchet Bay, the e-chart showed us sailing through solid rock, so we took the e-chart locations with a grain of salt in the Bahamas.) Our handheld GPS had a chart display of sorts, but you can imagine that what you could see on that little screen would be more entertaining than informative. It did, however, provide information such as speed over ground and distance traveled, etcetera, which proved very valuable to us.
The part that worried me most as we planned was sailing at night. We had cruised round the clock on several occasions, but always with the engine, the auto-pilot, and the e-charts. The person on watch at 2AM mostly needed to be sure not to collide with another ship or go off course into some other hazard. We had never sailed at night precisely because we had not felt ready to manage sails at night. However, in this case, we really had no choice. Even if there were some place to stop each night, stopping meant that it would take us a very long time to get back. Even if there were some place to go, there was no guarantee we could get in and out under sail. We had to sail round the clock. Again, we gritted our teeth and accepted that challenge.
We had a plan. On the morning of Saturday, April 24, we listened to the weather, observed that the wind was running about 12-14 knots from the east, and everything looked right. The generator hit some kind of a glitch after half an hour, but we assumed we could make that time up later.
It was time for the Go/No Go decision.
We chose GO.
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