Nassau to Highboune Cay
Foreign Affair cast off as planned. Obe, the dock master, ably organized the
departure. The dock was full of
well-wishers and people ready to help us get underway. Another sloop, Gray Ghost, was departing right after us. She was also headed for Highbourne Cay. The wind was blowing less than 20. We backed our way out of the slip against the wind and waves
into the harbor and were soon bound for Highbourne Cay. The sun was shining; however, there were a great
number of clouds in the sky which meant reading the water for coral heads would
be very difficult.
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| Yacht with Tender and Toys |
The waves grew steadily in height as we proceeded into more open water. We were into four foot waves by the time we cleared Montagu Bay. Our original plan was to work our way through the field of coral heads just south of Nassau by following the track recorded on our chart plotter during our run from Highbourne Cay to Nassau on April 5th. Then, we were going to head over to the White Bank and pick our way through the coral field there which was less extensive than that which we passed through on the Yellow Bank earlier in the month. It quickly became obvious that reading coral heads was extremely difficult due to the waves and clouds. We decided that it would be less risky to follow our earlier track through a denser coral field than to try to pick our way through one by relying on our ability to read the water under these adverse conditions. It was not a good day for visual piloting.
We arrived
at Highbourne Cay eight hours later. It
was a lumpy ride but we were happy we were no longer bobbing about tied to a
dock in Nassau. There were about 20
boats in the anchorage by sundown. We
got really closed to the shore and laid out 150 feet of chain in water about 11
feet deep. It was very calm which was a
pleasant surprise. Carla made us a
wonderful spaghetti dinner which we ate in the cockpit.
Our show for
the evening was watching one of the 100 foot plus long mega yachts hosting a dinner
on the beach. The crew set out 5 beach
umbrellas, as well as, portable tables with chairs for the guests. The tender shuttled guests ashore with a few
arriving by “personal water craft” – sea-doos.
We didn’t hear any music during dinner; however, there was a lot of
boisterous laughter. The beach party
ended about an hour before sundown. The
crew soon had everything back on the “mother ship” and the tender disappeared
into its “garage.” We retired to our
salon below. Our anchor light went on
and we were settled in for the night.
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