This post is part 6 of 8. If you have missed previous posts, you might want to scroll down and read them first.
On this trip, with regard to our winds, it seemed always to be feast or famine. Wednesday, April 28, was famine. The winds were almost nothing. After the two back-to-back cold fronts with their tempestuous wind and wave, it was nice to have some peace, but only for a little while. We were glad the fronts were gone, but we wanted to get to Florida. We could not go there with winds less than 5 knots.
In fact, we could hardly go anywhere. We had decided to simply putter around in the channel, trying to avoid big ships and trying not to go too far east, so we would be ready to cross if the wind ever became strong enough. We were okay with holding our own. We had no idea how difficult that would become.
One of the big lessons of cruising the Bahamas is the tidal currents. We learned to write down the Nassau tides every day, and we learned to pay attention to the relationship of the local tides to the Nassau tides. We learned to care if the difference between high and low tide was small or large. All this stuff matters. In the Chesapeake, the only reason to care much about the tides was if you had a deep draft boat and you wanted to eat lunch at Rock Hall. Otherwise, we hardly cared if they were up or down. In the Bahamas, you care a lot.
For example, when we went to snorkel at the Thunderball Grotto, we planned to arrive at slack tide. However, we were a little slow getting ready that morning, and flood had already begun by the time we arrived. The flood current was strong enough that I never did get inside the grotto. We thought we might go back later, but things happened, or didn’t happen.
On another occasion, during a high high ebbing to a low low, we tried to go against the ebb in the cut between Fowl Cay and Big Majors. The current completely turned our dinghy around and sent us back where we came from.
I learned that the power of the current results from the vast amounts of water that must move between the banks and the deep water through small cuts. However, I failed to understand that even when there is not a cut, the currents are still powerful. They are spread out more, but still strong.
On this day of light airs, as we tacked back and forth across the channel, we were moving in a location approximately between Great Isaac at the edge of the banks and Freeport at the end of the Grand Bahama island. We had grown inattentive, because almost nothing was happening, until we found ourselves in a position about 5 miles from Great Isaac and prepared to tack. That is when we discovered that we might be steering north, but we were going south, and south led onto the banks.
This was a big problem. Ordinarily a sailboat in this fix would hoist the iron jib, but our iron jib was unresponsive. What to do?
We were still sailing with reefed main and the staysail, because we really didn’t want to go anywhere in a hurry, but as we watched ourselves move inexorably toward Great Isaac, we surely wanted to go somewhere else at any speed. It was uncanny. Then we remembered the tides. We were within five miles of the banks, and it was flood current. The wind was so light that it was not filling the sails. We deployed the big genoa, but it simply flapped. We steered away from the banks, but the boat continued to drift. We had no power. The water was still too deep for us to drop an anchor, but if we reached a place where the anchor would bite, how would we ever get away?
If we ever had needed wisdom it was then. We prayed together for the wisdom to see some solution. Then we returned to our analysis. We peered intently at the charts as we continued to chart our position using the handheld GPS. We were headed for Great Isaac, and no two ways about it. The sails were dead. In desperation, we tried to tack anyway, but the headsails would not begin to cross.
Then a tiny gust of wind hit the genoa, and it flapped against the forestay. Larry said, “I wonder if I can walk that thing across. And if I do, I wonder if it will make any difference.” He went forward and led the genoa past the inner stay. Another little gust caught it and it filled momentarily. We let go the port sheet for the staysail and it filled on the starboard side. Larry released the traveler for the main and moved it to starboard. The wind speed indicator reported 7 knots. Suddenly we could hear the water against the hull. On this tack somehow we were moving.
I screamed, “Look at the GPS? Where are we?” Larry looked and behold, we were moving north. We charted every 5 minutes, and we were moving ever so slowly north. At last, we were on a tack with enough energy to take us away from Great Isaac. Whew!
The rest of the day and through the night we had one objective: stay clear of Great Isaac. The moon was still big, although waning. We saw a few big ships, but none in our path. The night passed quietly, and the morning dawned. The wind was from the east at barely more than 5 knots. That was certainly not enough wind to take us across the Gulf Stream, but we did not want to waste an opportunity to go forward. We tip-toed northwest and then gibed southwest. We simply had to keep moving.
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