Thursday, January 28, 2010

After listening to the weather then looking at the weather & winds charts (E/SE at 5-10 and waves about 4 ft.) we decided to leave tonight at 8pm with Flex Time. Destination – Lucaya. It’s about 14 hours and we anticipate getting in before noon. Time to get the dinghy lashed down on deck and everything put away in it’s proper place (so there’s no slamming around below decks). Then hopefully we can get a nap and be bright eyed and bushy tailed for the over-nighter. I wish we were crossing the Gulf Stream during the day. Then we could check out that purple color again. No matter how we look at the timing element though, if we’re going to Lucaya, the Stream will be crossed in the dark. If not, then we won’t arrive there until dark. That’s not a good idea.

We picked up our anchor at 8:00 and headed out a choppy inlet. The winds were definitely NOT 5-10 knots. After 7 miles out, it was still spraying over the bow and we weren’t doing any better than 4 knots. Flex Time was a couple miles ahead of us. We could see their lights in the distance. Then our dinghy started doing a dance on the bow of the boat. Great! Slamming into waves and a dancing dinghy. This didn’t seem like a good time for dance lessons. I didn’t want Wayne or myself to go up there while we were slamming into the waves in the dark. After some discussion we decided that we would head back. So, Wayne hailed Flex Time to let them know we were aborting our passage. With sail tucked between our legs we headed back to the inlet to re-anchor. If the dinghy would have stayed secure, I could have continued on, but with all things considered – and we both concurred – try the next weather window. Points Xanadu and Lucaya will still be there. In the mean time – we are back at anchor in Lake Worth and are calling it a night. Flex Time is continuing at 4 knots. They have a destination that they need to be at in a couple weeks (people coming in). Hopefully we’ll meet them again in the future :)