From 3/2/12 to 3/12/12, I flew home for Jerica's wedding shower. Leiby stayed in St. Maarten and then single-handed Trilogy the 100 miles to St. John when weather permitted.There he had the opportunity to anchor with his good friend Tom, who was on a boat with students he was instructing. I flew back to St. Thomas, where Leiby met me with Trilogy anchored in Lindbergh Bay, which was so close to the airport I was able to walk to the dinghy. The next day we sailed to Fajardo, Puerto Rico where we stayed in the wonderful Sun Bay marina for two nights. We worked nonstop, doing major provisioning, laundry and installing the new mast nav lights. On Thursday, 3/15/12, we left with the intention of getting as far as we could toward home. After 555 miles and 99 hours, that turned out to be Attwood Harbor, Acklins, Bahamas. During this passage we sailed over the Puerto Rican trench, which is 26,000 feet- one of the deepest points of the entire Atlantic ocean. On Monday, 3/19/12 we arrived at our beautiful, private anchorage at Attwood Harbor. This, to me, is the ultimate type of cruising destination- isolated and unmarred by civilization. We left on Friday with good sailing weather and travelled NW for two nights, through the Exuma sound and then into the Atlantic ocean between Cat and Eleuthra islands. On Sunday morning our engine died. After Leiby spent some time diagnosing the problem, we discovered we ran out of fuel. We were under the gun to get to anchor because a weather front was on the way, so we proceeded to sail the rest of the way to Abaco with a SW wind. To enter the Sea of Abaco, we had to go directly into the wind and make short tacks to traverse the north Man of War cut, which is no more than 2/10 mile wide. Right when we were at the critical bottle neck, a ship wanted to exit the cut. Rather than get run over, we heaved-to between reefs. As we were lying hove-to, the ship called us on the radio to warn us we were going to crash into the reef. Leiby called him back to inform him that the only reason we were in this precarious situation was to let him pass. With the wind over 20 knots in the Sea of Abaco, we beat west 12 miles to Treasure Cay where we dropped anchor under sail. We could not properly set the anchor in the ground since we had no power. Leiby dinghied into the marina to get fuel, but they were out of diesel until the next morning. Leiby was able to borrow 5 gallons of fuel from Kevin and Dorothy, a very friendly couple from Havre de Grace, MD. That night, squalls hit with lightning all around. We had gusts of wind up to 50 knots. This was the most severe weather we have encountered all year. Since we hadn't been able to set our anchor properly, the next morning we discovered we had dragged our anchor 3/10 mile, thankfully into safe waters. On Monday, 3/26/12 we filled up our fuel and water in the morning and sailed upwind all the way to Manjack Cay, always racing the closest sailboat going our way. Today, we had a beautiful sail to Spanish Cay, our current location. We plan to leave these tropical waters and sail back to the states starting tomorrow. Pictured: sailing instructor Captain Tom Hamilton; under sail during PR to Bahamas passage; our rockstar lure "Pink" does it again for Leiby; the flag lady at work retiring the PR courtesy flag; inspecting the local masonry on Acklins island; Skippy, enjoying the beautiful creeks of Acklins island; Leiby's 12 years old again.
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