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Saturday, February 18th - Long Cay, Turks and Caicos
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Out in the middle of the ocean with 20,000 feet of water
beneath you, a squall line in front of you, and a
shallow reef to leeward, I get the feeling that we are
living on the edge. We have no reason to fear the
situation, but I can't help thinking that if something
does go wrong, it could be bad; really bad.
Luckily, the worst that was to happen on our passage to
Turks and Caicos was an extremely disappointing lack of
success fishing.
We
departed Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas for the Turks and
Caicos islands on Thursday morning at about 6:30am.
John, Po, Jaimie and Skylar Martin, on their Leopard 42
catamaran "Jaimie," had left the night before. The
weather forecast was for the wind to go very light by
Friday night, so they wanted to get a jump start in the
hopes of getting more sailing in along the way. We
hadn't gotten our ducks in a row to leave, and we
figured we would be a little faster than them, so we
opted for a good night's sleep and an early morning
departure.
Our new best friend, Chris Parker from the Caribbean
Weather Net -
www.caribwx.com - filled us in on the all important
weather details and his forecast for our trip.
Essentially, the seas would be a little lumpy to begin
with, but the breeze would be in the 20 knot range and
from the East, perfect for our plotted course.
Looking ahead, he expected the seas to mellow out and
the winds to lighten up considerably by the weekend.
There was nothing threatening or worrisome to keep us
from making the 430 mile trek. As luck would have it, in
general we had more wind than was predicted and never
too much of it. We only motored about 8 hours out
of 56. I had the misfortune of being on watch for
most of those hours. There is nothing more
frustrating than putting up with the sound of the engine
for 3 or 4 hours, just in time for Joe to come up for
his watch and the wind to fill in so that we could start
sailing. One of those times we actually started
sailing upwind while surfing down the swell that was
hitting us on the stern, out of the east. It was
amazingly quiet down below. I could not believe
that we were going 8 to 10 knots with so little noise.
What a treat, even if it was Joe who got to experience
the full benefit of it!
We
had set up a schedule to check in with Jaimie on the SSB
(single side band) radio. It is a great security
measure for both of us to touch base on a regular basis.
We exchanged GPS positions and weather conditions twice
a day at 10am and 6pm. We added a third, mid-day
checkpoint to the schedule at 2pm. We talked about
our upcoming landfall. From what we have heard and
read, there is not much to see onshore in Turks and
Caicos. The beauty is in the beaches and
incredible reefs and shallow banks that abound with sea
life. Sounds just fine to me!
We
pulled out the school books each day and got the kids
through Lesson 88, 89 and the ninth review lesson.
Cassie's work is pretty self-explanatory and I was able
to leave her to it after a few brief instructions when I
was particularly tired and go down for a nap.
Normally, I sit through the whole lesson with her,
answering questions and reading ahead so I know what is
coming in the next subject. It is nice to be able
to leave her with the lesson manual and let her do it on
her own every once in a while. She seems to
appreciate the independence as well. Joe leads
Juliana through her lessons as she is less independent.
He also asked Cassie to help out with a cursive lesson.
Joe's skills are many, but they don't fall into the
handwriting category. We have had some success
with Cassie helping Juliana through math and cursive
lessons before, but it didn't go so well this time.
Juliana has had a change in attitude lately, for the
worse. Amazingly and thankfully, Cassie has had a
similar change in attitude except for the better.
Instead of the usual breakdown if she doesn't get her
way, she is now accommodating and understanding and
willing to compromise. These are traits that we
are used to seeing in Juliana, who has somehow forgotten
them.
All in all, we could not have asked for a better
passage. Although the wind was a little light, it
is much better to have too little wind than too much
wind. After the first day, the seas went virtually
flat. The moonlight shining on the water was
spectacular and it seemed as if you could see forever by
its light. The only thing that would have made it
better was if we had caught at least one stinking fish.
Happy weekend,
Christy, Joe, Cassie, and Juliana
Next entry
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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