Sunday, November 16 – By midnight, the seas had begun to deteriorate. It was still a nice ride, but the storm up north was affecting sea conditions down here. If all went according to plan, we’d be arriving to Abacos before the seas got bad. Since the wind direction had changed a little bit, Eric change our course a little bit for a smoother ride.
As the day went on, the conditions continued to worsen, which surprised us. When Eric checked the weather, he saw we were in the convergence zone of three weather systems, making the seas seriously confused. Swells were 3 – 4 feet at rapid intervals coming from three different directions, and once in a while we’d get a 5- 6 footer that would slam into us hard. There was 2 – 3 feet of wind chop, too.
Kosmos was hobby horsing and It was hard to move around the boat. We were all thankful that the closet squeak was fixed because it would have been driving us crazy in these conditions. In good news, it was a mostly sunny day with idyllic temperatures at 77-degrees and wind in the high teens. As expected given the sea conditions, we slowed down significantly, only averaging in the mid-5s at 1600 RPM. This was actually good because it meant arriving in daylight. This video was taken at 1230. In more good news, Eric was over his cold and Christi was mostly over sinus infection.
Sunset on Sunday.
Twilight
At midnight, seas conditions were still pretty much the same as they’d been all day. The engine room was now uncomfortably hot, so we had to be careful not to burn ourselves on hot metal when we did engine room checks. The moon didn’t rise until shortly before dawn, and it wasn’t cloudy, so the stars were amazingly vibrant.
By 0200, land was visible ahead on the chart. By 0300, sea conditions had improved significantly, so we must have gotten some protection from the land. Once conditions improved, our speed jumped back up and we were back on track to come in before sunrise, so Eric slowed us down to 1400 RPM, which put us at 5.5 knots. By 0400, we could see lights from the shore.
The closer we got to shore, the more our speed improved. Eric slowed us down a little more and added another 10-minutes or so to the route in the hopes of entering the pass after it was light out. We went through the pass at 0520 am. While still dark, it was technically nautical twilight — and the moon had finally risen, so we did have a little light from the tiny sliver of moon. Entering went smoothly. The radar and depths Kosmos measured lined up perfectly with the charts. It was a wide pass, so we didn’t have to worry about getting close to obstacles. There was a little bit of current in the pass that pulled us through faster.
The ride through the lagoon was calm and beautiful in the colorful pre-dawn light.
We arrived to the anchorage at about 0615. Even though we dropped anchor before the sun rose, there was plenty of light so we could see clearly.
Here was a map showing where we’d anchored.
And here was a map showing how far of a trek it was from Norfolk.
To be continued…