Great Bahama Banks

Captains Notes:

I'm making passage from Staniel Cay to West Palm Beach to have the boat hauled for an out of the water insurance inspection. It's easy for the insurance company to say "haul the boat and have it surveyed"; to me that's loss of: charter revenue, the time and expense of a three day sail, six hundred for a haul-block-splash and six hundred for the surveyor plus the sail back to Nassau to meet my next charter guest. Insurance companies rule!

The sailing has been close to perfect, that is to say the wind from a good direction at 15 to 20 kts giving me a SOG of 9 to 11 kts.

My last two charters were up for real sailing adventure and we did sail a bunch, again with the right winds. While my Austrian guest were aboard there were two events that were very exciting for me. The first was to see a whale breeching near Rum Cay which was breathe taking and shortly thereafter we hit 14.2 knots. I have seen Dolphins in heavy weather that surf the waves than go airborne tumbling as they reenter the water, seems like play to me. The whales we saw were doing their version of Dolphin play in 10 foot waves; what a sight.

The most recent charter was with John and his new Bride Natasha, it was a honeymoon cruise. We met-up at Staniel Cay and had a spectacular sail down the chain on the Atlantic side. John and Natasha really enjoyed Chat N Chill at Stocking Island, George Town. There were a couple of hundred boats there for the Regatta and major party, the honeymooners participated in the party as a Stray Cat "crew duty" and represented us well. We than sailed off shore about fifteen miles to the Four Seasons at Emerald Bay, not my cup of tea but something to see. We again had a great sail back to Staniel. John will be making a delayed log entry about their trip so I will say no more.

I'm now 10 miles from the light at Great Isaac I will than have another 75 miles to sail so it will be a long day.

Mark