Great Sale Cay
Bahamas
26.59.127N
78.12.914W

35.4 NM
6.5 Kt Avg.
7.9 Kt. Max
5.27 Hrs.

Current Odom: 8012.5 NM

What’s the saying? “The best laid plans of mice and men . . . ”

As is our custom, we listened to the weather report first thing this morning. Squalls would be coming in during the night and most of tomorrow. Toucan Dream hailed us on the radio and then came over to say goodbye with promises on both sides to get together in Florida. We had a wonderful time with them and look forward to seeing them again soon. Dale saw Aye Doc on the horizon and hailed them to check on Stacy’s hand and to say our good byes to them as well. They’re from Georgia, so perhaps we can get together with them in the future too.

We hoisted our anchor and headed out of the anchorage. Tina, a British flagged sailboat, was right behind us. We waved to them and yelled across as we passed by; they were heading west, we were heading northwest. We added in a few more way points into the chart plotter to take us along a northern route to Carter Cay where we wanted to explore an abandoned tracking station and then dinghy over to Yankee Cay to rummage through the conch shells the fishermen leave behind.

The better part of the morning was a great motor sail. However, as usual, Mother Nature had other ideas and decided to add thunder, lightening and buckets of rain into the mix. We slowed our pace when the visibility decreased and dodged a few boats heading in our direction on the same “road”. We turned on the radar and were happy to see that we would be able to skirt most of the squall. In fact, by the time we reached our waypoint to turn off “the road” to Carter Cay, it appeared that the squall was breaking up. We hadn’t gone more than a mile toward Carter Cay, when it started raining again. So we consulted the radar again and saw that the storm was developing more behind us and heading our way.

Since we have never been to Carter Cay and according to the map the anchorage was clearly exposed, once again, we changed our direction and headed toward Great Sale Cay. At least here, there is protection offered in the form of a horseshoe shaped harbor. A couple of looks over the shoulder at first showed that Carter Cay was under a black cloud. A little later on it appeared to have clear skies. At this point though, Dale wasn’t inclined to turn around and go back. I think if tomorrow morning the skies are clear (in case the forecast is wrong), I’ll suggest a day trip there and back.

We’ve been very fortunate as far as mechanical difficulties are concerned, so you can imagine our surprise when the engine started to falter coming into Great Sale to anchor. Of course, another squall was bearing down on us at the time but we managed to get in and anchored without mishap. Although the fuel filter didn’t appear to be clogged or water logged, Dale went ahead and changed it and cleaned all of the water strainers again, just in case. We won’t actually know if this has done the trick until we run the engine again. Right now, in the anchorage, it’s doing great.

Great Sale is our jumping off point for heading home and now that we are here, it’s hard to believe that our Sabbatical is almost over. We still have another long transit ahead of us but due to the engine sputtering, Dale has already completed several of his pre-transit checks so securing the Palace for the crossing should be rather simple.