It’s Wednesday evening, dinner’s done and the dishes put away. So now my thoughts are turning to our crossing to the Bahamas tomorrow on Thursday afternoon.
The original plan was to leave Ft. Lauderdale early on Thursday morning and clear in to the Bahamas at Bimini, a mere 50 miles from Florida. However, when it comes to weather, it’s up to God to decide and he has determined that the “window” for getting to the Bahamas is going to be short. This means that instead of a more leisurely run to Bimini, a run of about 50 miles, followed by a second day run to Chub Cay, another 75 miles, we will have to do a run to Chub from Ft. Lauderdale as a single overnight run. The problem is that the “benign weather we want for the crossing will only last for a short time and if we stop in Bimini along the way, the weather will likely turn against us.
The problem is that the “prevailing” or “normal” winds for this area are from the east and that’s the direction we need to go. You can’t sail into the wind so that means that we will need to motor all of the way. That’s not bad except when the wind is blowing hard against us. And, believe me, we don’t want to motor into strong easterlies. That would make Brenda sad. And, we don’t want a sad Brenda. Not good at all.
As Pandora’s normal cruising speed will only allow us to complete a run of about 75 miles in a single day of daylight, we will have to make this run overnight in order to make about double that distance. Brenda’s not too keen about being under way in the overnight hours, but it makes sense given the weather. While we are expecting light winds and a motor boat ride, there are supposed to be strong winds filling in from the east (a bad direction) by Friday afternoon. If we were to stop at Bimini instead of continuing overnight, we would miss the light winds and end up stranded at Bimini for days, perhaps longer while waiting for good conditions to return. Last winter our friends stopped in Bimini and were stuck there for a full week. We’d like to avoid that.
As we want to be further along on our trip without a long wait in Bimini, we decided to just go for it and motor overnight.
So, the plan is for us to get fuel and water on Thursday morning here in Ft Lauderdale and head out shortly after noon. Given a speed of about 7kts, we should be able to complete the run by mid morning on Friday.
I have made a reservation at Chub Cay marina, the only business in Chub Cay, for Friday night so it will be fun to clear customs there. I understand that customs is located at the airport and that the marina staff will take us there via golf cart to visit the customs officials. That should be an experience. So many of the islands in the Bahamas have only a few inhabitants and the only water and electricity available is precious and made on the island itself. Not like the US where electricity and water is taken for granted.
Today we finished provisioning Pandora with all the food we could stuff in the fridge. Our fridge is more like an icebox with a small freezer that will hold about 25lbs of frozen meat. The fridge is a top opening deal so it’s more like diving for food than in a normal refrigerator at home. And, don’t forget, that all the electricity for keeping food is made by our solar panels. In both the fridge and freezer you have to eat your way from top to bottom, very unlike in a home fridge where you can see about everything at once when you open the door.
This is a photo of our solar panels which measure about 8′ by 8′ and produce about 10 times the power of a car battery each day. That’s not a lot of power by “home standards” but the equipment is so efficient that this is still a lot of electricity and plenty for our purposes.
This photo was taken on the CT River not far from our “summer home” and clearly shows the solar panels on the top of the “bimini”. 
Anyway, wish us luck on our trip. I hope to post again once we clear in in Chub.
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