Sailing Vessel Beruta Ship's Log
Exuma - Abaco
2 May 2012
The weather has finally set. For one night I even had to escape the George Town lee shore anchorage and hide behind the Stocking Island couple of miles away. It was blowing over 30 knots. With one foot under the keel in low water and wave heights exceeding this depth, I had thought that it was safer to be somewhere else.
George Town has a couple of supermarkets with better than nothing choices of food and a couple of liquer stores. Provisioned Beruta for a few days, I decided to skip two large islands, Cat and Eleuthera, being unable to find interesting places to stop there and rushing a bit to get to Florida. I set course to Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco with the intention to clear out there for the states.
The distance is 220 nm with the last 30 miles stearing in shallow water behind the barrier reef. Hence, it was wise to leave in the evening in order to get to entrance point by sunrise on the third day.
At 5PM local time I weighed the anchor, hoisted the jib and sailed north for about 4-5 miles before I get to the exit of the reef. Then I raised half of the mainsail. With the NE wind of 18 to 23 knots, I was making 6.5 sailing 60 degrees into the wind and 5 to 12° M.
3 May 2012
At around 4:30AM I was between the Cat and Eleuthera. Here there is an underwater ridge that connects these two islands with the depths of 20 meters. It's less than half a mile long and then the depth drops to thousands of meters again. I was afraid that some unusually strong currents might exist in such area but my worries were for nothing. After crossing the ridge, I slightly changed the course to 15° M.
At about 9:30AM it was possible to stear 340° M straight to Abaco along the northeastern coast of Eleuthera. The wind became abeam and even a bit abaft. It also diminished to 8-12 kts. I was making 4.5. I could have taken out the reefs on my mainsail but I had enough speed to get to Abaco by sunrise. Only 90 nm left.
By noon the wind increased t0 15 kts. I lowered the main because was sailing to fast but by the evening it dropped again to 5-10 kts. Hoisted the half of the main again and changed the jib for genoa. Back to 4 kts. Good!
4 May 2012
I had slept a bit during the day, so I wasn't tired and monitored the course by 2AM. It was still 4 hours to go. So I layed down without an intention to fall asleep. When I open my eyes, it was already light. Damn it! In a second I was in the cockpit. Just in time to put the tiller hard to starboard. If I were asleep a minute longer, I wound have been grounded. Beruta was 100 meters away from a lee shore of a little island, which was supposed to be on my port side when I enter inside the reef. It was less than 5 meters under the keel. Oh, God, thank you for waking me up! Arkadi, always set a cell phone alarm! said I to myself. It was so silly not to rely on it.
I lowered the main and entered inside the reef under genoa. To Marsh Harbor I was sailing for another 4 hours making 3 to 4 kts in 6 to 10 kts wind. I anchored around 11AM local time in 2 meters of water.
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