Well the day finally came, 12th March 2014, and it started off with a beautiful morning to leave the dock at Fort Lauderdale and weave the way through downtown. My crew for this leg of the journey is Greg, best mate from the home town of Adelaide since we were 9 or 10 years old. Will be sailing with me for the next few weeks until having to head off back home and to work.
With the outbound river cruise done, and a quick stop before heading out to the open ocean for fuel, it was down to a short wait for the last and final bridge to open and allow us to get on our way. Leaving the protection of the US inland waterways at 0830 and out to sea we went. The early morning calm soon gave way to a good breeze blowing up, and with the Gulfstream to contend with also it made for a bit of a choppy start once clearing the breakwaters. Although with the wind up it meant no delay for getting the sails up and finding our heading for Bimini, Bahamas.
The sail across was pretty standard, although it did have a little something extra for me with the knowledge that it was the start of my long journey. After a bit of a bumpy start conditions improved for a spell around midway of the crossing. Even managed to catch up and sail past another cruiser seemingly bound for Bimini too. These fine conditions though didn't hang about too long, as was forecast the wind continued to increase and as the afternoon came so did the swell. It was more of a wind driven chop to be fair but it was short, steep and close together making for a wet ride.
We sailed until within just a short distance from Bimini, where we had hopefully our one little bit of bad luck as the main sail didn't stow so well and flapped about until it was wrestled under control with some careful balancing on the boom with 25 knots and rolling in the swell. All good fun! Got ourselves sorted out and then made our way in to one of the marinas for the night, clear customs a good feed and now early to bed for an early start on day two to cross the Great Bahama Bank.
