Long Day

After a poor night’s sleep we got up out of bed yesterday morning feeling tired. The wind and waves didn’t let up and the boat was rocking and rolling all night. In fact, the wind shifted more to the south making the waves even worse. We wanted to raise the anchor and get moving as soon as possible. First, though, George had to replace the main halyard. We noticed the day before that it was seriously chafed where it is held by the clutch. It is a new halyard—purchased from Annapolis Performace Sailing last summer—and we were already disappointed that it had started to chafe a little a few months ago. This chafe was much worse and must have happened when we crossed over from the Exumas a few days ago. George dug out of storage what he thought was the old halyard to use until we can replace the chafed one. It turned out that he had grabbed the old main sheet instead of the old halyard. He looked up the specifications for both the halyard and the sheet and it turns out they are made from the same size and type of line. The sheet is a bit longer, which is a good thing, since the old halyard had been shortened when it chafed near the end that attaches to the mainsail. After George replaces the halyard we raised the anchor and set out for Governor Harbour. We had heard a lot of good things about Governors Harbour although we had never stopped there, primarily because the charts say the holding is bad. We had already decided we wouldn’t stop if it looked like the waves were as bad there as they were at anchorage we had just left. As we approached we could see that the anchorage looked calmer, although it appeared to be quite crowded. There was even one boat anchored outside the harbor in a completely exposed location. We didn’t want to go into the harbor to try to find a spot to anchor in a place with poor holding when the conditions for anchoring—windy and choppy—were already challenging. On to plan B. We changed course to head for Current Cut and Spanish Wells from there. We wanted to time our passage through Current Cut close to slack tide so we had to keep our speed rather slow. If it hadn’t been for that we would have have had a nice, fast sail. As it was, we kept changing the sails to maintain a slow, but not too slow, speed. By the time we arrived at Meeks Patch, outside Spanish Wells, the sun was setting and we were exhausted. Fortunately, the wind did finally subside and this anchorage was nice and calm last night. 

New, chafed halyard

Ice cube that froze when we were heeling on our crossing from the Exumas. It froze in the shape of a wedge.