Duer Family Cruising Adventures

For the past week we have been traveling with our seemingly life long great friends on board, ok only 30 years but you get the picture. The Bahamas in winter are a bit tough when planning a week adventure, weather and tide are a huge factor as well as distances between useful ports for arriving or departing guests. Accidentally, or with great luck it seemed to all work out as we were able to meet in Nassau, get out 36 hours later make our way through the Exumas to Staniel Cay where our friends departed about 30 minutes before a strong cold front arrived that left us at anchor with 30 knots of wind and 12 hours of torrential rain. During the week - nothing but blue skies and relatively light winds. We were able to stop at Allens for a visit to the pre-historic iguanas, Highborne for some fuel and grocery, Warderick Wells for hiking, snorkeling and wildlife before arriving in Staniel for some swimming pigs, snorkeling and an afternoon at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club to celebrate Rae’s birt...

  Above our Anchorage in Highborne Cay Exumas. Departing Chub Cay had us head SE for the western end of New Providence, where we spent a couple of days waiting on sailing winds to head to the Northern Exumas - Allens and Highborne Cay area. West Bay in New Providence was new to us and really should just be used as a useful stop over, the anchorage experiences lots of water movement from the New Providence Channel and the Tongue of the Ocean. There is an underwater sculpture garden and some nice reefs for snorkeling that passed some time for us.  Allens Cay is home to prehistoric iguanas, which are generally curious and somewhat aggressive, at least they charge then feint away at the last moment. We found a stunning reef to snorkel just north and east of Allens Cay, that because of the relatively calm weather was easily accessible.  Alas the first significant cold front of the season is on top of this weekend, and as I type this we have 30 knots sustained out of the NW. We...

We made it, crossing on Thursday-Friday. The passage (120 miles) though relatively short has a number of challenges, the most important is the weather for crossing the Gulf Stream. The basic strategy is to wait for an approaching cold front that clocks the winds toward the the SE/S/SW at under 15 knots, then get across before the squalls and northerly component wind hit. The GS crossing is about 50 miles so the better part of a day. Voyage path also plays as the GS moves north at about 2 knots average, 4 knots in the middle, so you have to be aware and account for your set north, essential meant us steering 20 degrees south of our lay line. Next step is to cross onto the banks, going from off soundings (too deep for the depth sounder to register) to 10 feet of water in less than a mile. We did this with daylight to help pilot around the shallower bits. We then anchored up in the middle of the banks with nothing but water for about 60 miles in any direction, had some dinner and a swim, ...

The last sun set of 2022 captured in Key Biscayne at anchor off of Cape Florida. Jake was out for 10 days, we toured Miami Beach, the Bill Baggs State Park, Stiltsville, did some snorkeling, swimming and played lots of games. We also weathered some pretty nasty wind and cold through the Christmas weekend, though certainly not has difficult as the rest of the U.S.  We finally saw a Manatee on what will be our last couple of days in Florida. A small but good, we hope, weather window has opened up for us to cross the Gulf Stream and onto the Bahamas. We are very excited, and a bit weary from prepping the boat with food, supplies etc for the next several months.