Chris-crossing the Country

We took a side trip to help Tom and Tina move their 53’ Benateau sailboat from St. Thomas USVI to George Town in The Bahamas. We left LAX on Tuesday, Mar 24 on a 1:00 am redeye flight to Houston, then caught a flight to St Thomas. We got lucky on both legs of the trip with up grades to first class. We arrived in St Thomas at 1:00 pm local time with a fair amount of free alcohol in our system 😄 We went to dinner on the island that night and in the morning walked up the “99 stairs” to view Blackbeard’s Castle, which is really just a watchtower. It was built by the Danes in 1679 and believed to have also been used by Blackbeard in the 1700’s. The stairs were also built by the Danish to connect the harbor with the town. After breakfast and souvenir shopping in Charlotte Amalie we set off for The Bahamas. The first 24 hours was relatively mild with some cloud coverage but not enough wind to fully sail. The second day and night brought rain and lightening and a rough passage; rough enough to cause one crew member seasickness despite wearing a patch. Day 3 cleared up and around 2:00 p.m. we were able to pull both sails out and turn the motor off. For the next 52 hours we sailed without the motor, except for a brief period to out run water spouts. This is by far the longest amount of full on sailing with no motoring that we have done. Winds varied around 15 knots Friday to Saturday and picked up around 20 knots thereafter; we were able sustain an average speed of 7 knots. We sailed past Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Turks and Caicos and around the lower Bahama Islands. By Saturday night we were sailing around Crooked Island and then along Long Island on Sunday.
At 6:50 Monday, March 30, the motor was turned on as we pulled into the Exuma inlet, anchoring next to Stocking Island by 8:00 pm. We traveled approximately 735 nautical miles.
The next day we went to Coconuts Club on Monument Beach and were able to catch up with Stephen and Mary Beth from SV Harmony who have been in George Town for a few weeks. That night we stayed at The Exuma Yacht Club and Marina so that we could catch a cab at 6 am to the George Town airport. From there we flew to Nassau, then had a flight to Houston, then another to LAX. Unfortunately we did not get upgrades on any of the flights back to LAX!もっと詳しく