The Mythical Down Wind Sail

Wind on the nose.  No matter what direction we go it always seems to be on the nose.  But…. but, yesterday was different, refreshingly different.  Our 60ish mile jump from the Abacos to Eleuthera was all down wind.  A total treat.  The seas were slightly confused, two different swells from different directions but still on the stern making it comfortable.  No slapping and no splashing.  The best part was our speed! We got surfing a few times and saw 8.1k. (That is fast for this boat) We left Boat Harbor cut about 4:30 am to make sure we got through Egg Reef and into the easy but narrow Royal Island  entrance before dark.  We were anchors down by 2:30 in the afternoon. Guess we could have waited for sun up.  It was a fun, fast sail. We are still glad we left early though, at dusk and just after dark we saw the other boats coming into the dark anchorage, definitely not ever our preference.

Keith had been looking forward to trolling this passage for weeks and despite our new freezer situation we trolled a line hoping that if we caught something it wouldn’t be too big.  Probably should have clarified with Neptune about a minimum size requirement as well. We caught a baby Mahi-Mahi that was just too small, back to the sea she went to make more baby Mahis.  As we approached the wall right before Egg Reef something-something BIG-bit and ran.  I’ve never seen line fly off a reel so fast, it was almost all gone before Keith could get to the pole and just about then what ever it was bit through the leader and was gone.  Don’t know what it was but I don’t think we wanted on the boat-freezer situation or not!  Funny thing is, that is not the first time we’ve hit something big on that exact spot.  Years ago when we were sailing with our friends on Night Wind, they called back on the VHF and said get ready we just got spooled.  As we sailed up to where they had been, we too got spooled.  Last year as well, it is where we hooked something big enough we were glad it bit through the line.  Note to self-not a place to take a swim!  

Bye, bye Abacos.  Hello Eleuthera!

Also, a little thanks out to the universe for such a beautiful sail—–without anything breaking!