Good morning sailing fans….
Well…. just for shits and giggles how would you like to hear about the last few days on WildChild…? Maybe you will get a kick out of living vicariously through our adventure and misery… ha ha… the highs and lows of sailing life.
I think the last I had internet and blogged about the journey I had told you we were in Nassau and it sucked… then I put my foot in my mouth and upset Elena… Well the above map shows you our sailing route in the last few days. WildChild has been busy making miles south.
The sail from Nassau to the Exumas went relatively well. We landed in someplace called Highborn Cay before nightfall and set the hook to rest. The next morning we left in calm winds and gentle seas for an easy and almost boring long day of sailing. Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining about boring sailing… I much prefer it to sporty sailing for sure.
It was almost a boring day Tuesday until we hooked a really big Mahi Mahi…! YAY…. We finally did it… we caught one of the most delicious fish in the ocean…. AMAZING… WONDERFUL… IT WAS SO FREAKIN EXCITING…. It took us probably like half an hour to tire the big fish out and get him to the side of the boat. Us 2 girls took turns reeling him in and letting him run out again.
The fish was huge too… like 4 feet long and probably 30+ pounds… dinner for a week. This was the big moment I had dreamed of for years… We got the rod moved out of the rod holder in the back up to me on the deck where I could reel the big fish to the side of the boat for Elena to gaff him.
We had him… had him right there… exhausted and at the side of the boat… Elena got the gaff in him and started to lift him out of the water… I held onto the rod and kept pressure on the line just in case he slipped off the gaff…. Elena lifted with all her 5’2″ inches of body strength… and did not have the power to get him up over the side rail… the fish started kicking for life and a return to the sea… and he won… he fell off the gaff and made one last full body fight for life as he dove down… UNDER the boat… !!!! Fuck… He was spooling out the line and I could not keep him from getting under the boat… the line rubbed the bottom of the boat and SNAPPED… !
Fuck fuck fuck fuck… we fucking lost him… fuck fuck… we lost our only cedar plug lure too… fuck… The moment was completely heart breaking… We went from screaming in joy at the top of our lungs one moment to tears of defeat and misery in an instant. I started to cry and Elena hugged me trying to reassure me it was just a fish and we would get another chance. I could only think that if we had a man on board he would not have lost the fish… We are terrible fishergirls… maybe we should just give up… if we are not strong enough to land the fish then maybe we should just quit fishing… I sunk in despair.
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Wednesday we woke up to more light winds and very calm seas. We had dropped the hook the day before in Compass Cay after covering 30 miles after sailing all day at like an average speed of 3 knots (Nope no need to use the motor.. we sailed slowly).
That morning I was looking at the Navionics on the tablet at the path ahead for my daily captains planning and discovered an active captain note saying that 10 miles ahead there was an anchorage near someplace called Bitter Guana Cay where you could anchor and dinghy to shore on an island full on endangered iguanas..! How cool would that be to see..?
So we decided to give ourselves a break and only sail 10 easy miles that morning to have a day of rest. There was also a small town nearby called Staniel Cay where maybe we could dispose of garbage and provision. We tried to anchor 3 times near the town but failed everytime… there was swirling current against wind and we were circling our anchor each place we tried to get the hook in. After wasting an hour to learn this lesson Captain Lexi finally declared it a bad idea to try and get into the town and we moved a mile over to the bitter Guana Cay anchorage.
Now I am not sure of myself here… but it is possible we were in a national park… and it is possible we were supposed to pay someone for permission to anchor there… but as we had no internet coverage and the chart plotter did not saying anything about it… we did not pay anybody anything… we just anchored off a beautiful white sand beach in a great protected bay and dinghied into shore. Sure enough the island was chock full of these interesting ugly 2-3 foot lizards.
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Yesterday (Thursday) we woke up to rather strong winds and nasty seas. Captain Lexi had a hard time making the decisions that morning. Should we stay safe and comfy where we were OR make a jump out into the ocean and make a long jump to Georgetown?
It was a very iffy call to make… I reviewed all the information with Elena to get her input… She was not sure either.
So we had a wind forecast of 15-18 knots of winds from ENE but the winds over night were over 20 knots all night long… that meant it would be smashing waves onto shore… lots of fetch and consistent winds make for nasty waves.
WildChild is a tough girl… she can take it… she is a sailboat after all… we shouldn’t be afraid of wind… we need wind to move… Anything below 20 knots of wind is fine for her. So technically if the winds stayed below 20 knots we should have a good sailing day and make miles…. so we should go… but waves can make for an uncomfortable day… what would the waves be…? hmmmm….
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Every morning Captain Lexi does not drink coffee or tea… I drink chocolate milk… Yum… Well yesterday morning I had my usual glass of chocolate milk before we 
went sailing… but the thing was… It had expired 6 days ago…! yep… it wasn’t lumpy and didn’t smell bad so I drank it anyway. AND… later it seems like that might have been mistake…
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We left the Bitter Guana Cay anchorage yesterday morning at 9am. It was a very iffy decision and as we came around the point into the channel we had 2.5 knots of current against us and 18 knots of wind on the
nose to get out into the Exuma sound. The waters were choppy and confused… we had to push the engine hard to make our way out at 1 knot SOG. We navigated around the rocks and out into the deeper waters over the cliffs and raised the sails.
The ocean was not exactly nasty… it was only 1.5 to 2 meter waves most of the day but they had a dominant wave period equal to just over 1 boat length again and that means as we were
taking the waves from the side we were rolling quite a bit with waves often slapping onto the side of the yacht and spraying us in the cockpit. Splashy splashy we wash the boat in salt water again. We even had some waves wash as far back as the mast and splashing over the bimini.
WildChild was sailing with a reefed main all day and only 70% Genny most of the
time. We had winds mostly around 18-22 knots on the Port Beam with a wind angle between 70 and 100 degrees. WildChild is a beast… fast tough girl… she eagerly smashed her way thru the waves and at an average speed of 7 knots and balanced her CLE with her CLR fairly well.
The ride for the crew however was not so fun for us. Remember that expired milk I had for breakfast.. and remember my heart condition… well… I vomited… gave the chocolate milk back to king Neptune. I had not slept much the night before and was also tired all day sailing… so my body wanted to sleep… which meant my heart rate went down and my blood pressure kept crashing. When my blood pressure suddenly falls it seems to affect my stomach muscles.. they let go and I suddenly vomit. In the poundy poundy nasty waves I would be just fine for like an hour.. then I would lie down tired to rest… my heart rate would fall… when I got up each time my stomach would suddenly let go and I’d vomit again.
I puked 4 times and began to realize that I was dehydrating. I kept trying to rehydrate and kept giving it back to the sea. Elena was just not eating or drinking by choice because the ride was so rough for 10 hours and just got worse as the day progressed. So the two girls had a rough day sailing yesterday and by the time we dropped the hook last night here in Georgetown we were both exhausted.
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We also almost broached the boat yesterday as we made our way onto the bank. That was super scary for a few minutes. If you look at the image to the right you will see the Navionics chart showing the contour lines. See how close together the lines get…? that means very steep high underwater cliff.
Well we were sailing in under main sail only on a run (wind from behind) in 2 meter waves as the depth quickly went from a thousand feet to 30 feet. We were sitting in the cockpit together and I was standing watching the instruments when I looked back at Elena and saw a 10 foot wave rising behind us out of nowhere. It was cresting and bubbling over and approaching fast.
My eyes went wide in terror and WildChild got overtaken by the wave and started to roll on her side…. she started to lay over as the cresting wave got her sideways… I thought OH MY GOODNESS WE ARE GOING TO BROACH… FUCK… THIS IS BAD… We were both tethered in so I was already imagining us getting flung out of the cockpit, hanging on by our tethers.
When the auto pilot cranked the wheel hard over and cut nose up into the wave and it passed under us. I grabbed the wheel and put her in manual mode and white knuckled us thru 2 more ten footers up onto the bank as the depth changed from 1000 feet to 30 feet in 100 feet of distance. Running main only and with the engine in idle (as a back up) we started dodging rocks and reefs with breaking waves as we wiggled our way over very shallow water (10-14 feet) full of rocks. We got our girl to the nearest safe and protected place to anchor and called it a day.
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We will spend probably 3 days here resting and waiting for better winds to jump again…. we are not sure where to yet.
We are looking into maybe trying to get into the Dominican Republic when we leave the Bahamas… maybe Luperon.. then maybe Samana DR and then Puerto Rico…? We are just not sure if the DR is going to be safe for 2 girls alone on a boat…?
Anybody know..?
Anybody know the costs of checking into and out of the DR…?
Cheers Sailing fans…
Captain Lexi…
. … the uncertain…