We’ll start this leg of our journey in Fort
Lauderdale on Thursday, January 19,
2005.
Lauderdale on Thursday, January 19,
2005.
Fort Lauderdale’s transient docks are
packed with boats that have been waiting
weeks – in fact, two that we talked to have
been here for almost two months – waiting
for a favorable weather window to cross the
formidable Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.
Our original plan was to take four days for
the crossing to Nassau: one day to cross the
Stream to Bimini; two days to cross the wide
and shallow Grand Bahama Bank, which
should be navigated only in daylight by a
boat with any significant draft; and the fourth
day from Chubb Cay (in the Berry Islands, at
the eastern edge of the Bank), crossing the
Northeast Providence Channel to Nassau.
packed with boats that have been waiting
weeks – in fact, two that we talked to have
been here for almost two months – waiting
for a favorable weather window to cross the
formidable Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.
Our original plan was to take four days for
the crossing to Nassau: one day to cross the
Stream to Bimini; two days to cross the wide
and shallow Grand Bahama Bank, which
should be navigated only in daylight by a
boat with any significant draft; and the fourth
day from Chubb Cay (in the Berry Islands, at
the eastern edge of the Bank), crossing the
Northeast Providence Channel to Nassau.
This was a conservative and typical plan, requiring the five to six day clear weather window that all the other boats
have been awaiting for so long. The need for the long window arises because there are no real protected harbors
until Nassau, and the consequences of hitting bad weather either in the Stream or on the shallow Banks can be,
well, uncomfortable.
(Note to our Coronado friends ... "cay" is properly pronounced "key.")
We’ve been checking the National Weather Service forecasts religiously, twice a day, and have also been in daily
communication with Capt. Pam Lendzion of Saint Augustine, an experienced skipper and our weather maven. The
outlook is not good. A strong cold front has just passed us, moving west-to-east, which brought the storms and high
seas that we’ve experienced on our trip down the Florida coast. Another cold front is hot on its heels, expected to
cross Florida as early as Saturday, and the central Bahamas on Sunday. This will bring with it the same storms as its
predecessor but, more significantly, it will bring the northerly winds that will whip the Gulf Stream up into a frenzy.
There is no prediction as to what will follow this new front. We could be holed up here for weeks along with all of the
others … and, I’ll lose my California crew in 12 days …
… so … with Pam’s advice, we’ve devised a new, somewhat unconventional plan. We’ll surf the fronts like you’d surf
the troughs between two waves, moving east with the favorable winds that follow the first front, and be holed up
safely in Nassau when the upcoming storms wash over us.
We pull away from the Fort Lauderdale Municipal Docks at 11:30 pm on Thursday night, to catch the 11:45 Las Olas
Bridge opening, and then the midnight 17th Street Bridge opening, the only two obstructions between us and the
open sea. Fort Lauderdale inlet is wide, smooth, and well-marked. We have no trouble sharing the channel with an
incoming cruise ship. We are in the Gulf Stream as soon as we clear the first channel buoy, telegraphed by the 10
degree rise in water temperature and the sudden increase in waves and chop.
It’s fantastic! We have the perfect southwest wind we need for the crossing. We hoist full sails, turn off the engine,
and we’re sprinting at 7 to 8 knots, sometimes surfing to 9 knots on the following swell. The ¾ moon behind us
shines on our wake, we set our autopilot to track us to our first waypoint, and we go on our watch schedule. Dave
Udell and I take the first watch, from 12:30 am to 3:30 am, Peter Mcrae and Michel Schmied will take the next three
hours until daybreak, then we’ll alternate through the following day.
Our timing is perfect. We arrive at North Rock, north of the Bimini Islands, at about 6:30 am on Friday, just as the
skies brighten in the morning. There are clouds on the horizon ahead of us, which blocks the sun from shining
directly into our eyes. As we cross over onto the Bank, in less than a quarter of a mile the water depth drops from
“unmeasurable” (on our depth sounder) to 20 feet, and the water temperature drops 10 degrees.
Sailing on the Bank requires two things: careful navigation to our next waypoint, Russell Light, and a sharp lookout
forward to watch out for uncharted sand ridges and coral heads. The water depth varies from a fairly-consistent 12
to 15 feet, down to a troubling 7 feet as we sail over Mackey Shoal. Mackey Shoal is shown clearly and definitively
on our charts to the north of our route, but with a disclaimer: “Reported to be further southward (1951).” Well, we
can now definitively report, 54 years later, that it is.
Our objective is to make it across the Bank, a 64 mile trip, between sun-up and sun-down. To do this, we keep the
power poured on, with full sails, then full jib with motor as the wind clocks around to the northwest, behind us.
We stream a lure, just for fun (and to keep Dave occupied), and to our surprise, there’s a strike! We can’t slow
below 6 knots because the jib is pulling strongly, so landing our catch is a shared effort. We pull in a 3’ monster of a
barracuda, thrashing wildly, huge sharp teeth gnashing, and it takes us at least 10 minutes to get it off the hook and
back into the water. Time enough for a picture!
Russell Light is a pole sticking up out of a huge expanse of water in the middle of the Bank. It marks the intersection
where the four main routes from the west converge to the single safe route to Northwest Channel Light, which marks
the eastern exit from (or, entrance to, for the westbound) the Bank crossing. In 14 miles, we’re back into the
thousands-of-feet deep water of the Northwest Providence Channel. We still have 13 miles to go to reach our stop
for the night at Chubb Cay, and the sun has just dropped out of sight behind us.
We reach Chubb Cay at 7:30 pm and drop our anchor in 6 ½ feet of water (a mistake, as it turned out, as we bump
bottom a few times as the tide continues to drop for another hour). On this leg we covered 128 miles in a 20-hour,
straight-through sail, My trusty crew, who’d caught plenty of sleep during the day, stays up and grills steaks for
dinner; I fall into bed fully-clothed and sleep through until the next morning.
Saturday morning is warm, clear, with a light breeze and glassy water in our anchorage. Dave and Pete go for a
swim, Dave clears the fouling from our knotmeter paddlewheel, and Pete paddles away from Dakota Rose in our
dinghy Rosebud (how cute is that?) to take pictures of the boat.
We fuel up on coffee, pull up the anchor at 9:30 that morning to escape the anchorage before the next low tide, and
set our course for Nassau.
The sea is calm, there is minimum wind, so we raise the main to catch whatever wind we can and crank up the
engine. All around us are sailboats. At one point we count 13 other boats all heading down this last 36-mile stretch
of highway to Nassau.
Nassau Harbor is like a busy airport runway. There are nine cruise ships (four Carnival ships, at least 5,000
passengers each) tied up at the docks, with a variety of small and large craft going in and out and back and forth
constantly. It takes us 30 minutes of calling on channels 16 and 09 to get the attention of Nassau Harbor Control to
get permission to enter. We also need to call for clearance to enter our destination, Atlantis Marina, and are put on
standby for another 30 minutes as they (preferentially) allow the 136’ motor yacht Inspiration, with a very pinched
looking British family aboard, to enter their narrow harbor. As it turns out, once we’re at our slip and tied up,
Inspiration is much more typical of the yachts at Atlantis than is our humble Dakota Rose. Most of the human life we
see on the docks comprises well-dressed and well-groomed crews, who seem to spend their time either cleaning
their boats or sneaking off to smoke. We see very little evidence that the actual owners of these floating palaces are
present.
The Customs and Immigration officers cleared us in right at our boat, after I executed an affidavit that our arriving
vessel did not have any cases of plague, cholera, typhus or diphtheria aboard, and that we did not have any
evidence of rat or mouse deaths during our voyage.
The marina is part of the huge Atlantis Paradise complex, which includes a fantastical turreted hotel, casino,
timeshares, an aquarium, countless pools and Jacuzzis, a private stretch of beach, and a museum showcasing
artifacts from the lost (but, now apparently found) City of Atlantis. As for the water slides, well, I can’t express it any
better than the guidebook we received upon check-in:
have been awaiting for so long. The need for the long window arises because there are no real protected harbors
until Nassau, and the consequences of hitting bad weather either in the Stream or on the shallow Banks can be,
well, uncomfortable.
(Note to our Coronado friends ... "cay" is properly pronounced "key.")
We’ve been checking the National Weather Service forecasts religiously, twice a day, and have also been in daily
communication with Capt. Pam Lendzion of Saint Augustine, an experienced skipper and our weather maven. The
outlook is not good. A strong cold front has just passed us, moving west-to-east, which brought the storms and high
seas that we’ve experienced on our trip down the Florida coast. Another cold front is hot on its heels, expected to
cross Florida as early as Saturday, and the central Bahamas on Sunday. This will bring with it the same storms as its
predecessor but, more significantly, it will bring the northerly winds that will whip the Gulf Stream up into a frenzy.
There is no prediction as to what will follow this new front. We could be holed up here for weeks along with all of the
others … and, I’ll lose my California crew in 12 days …
… so … with Pam’s advice, we’ve devised a new, somewhat unconventional plan. We’ll surf the fronts like you’d surf
the troughs between two waves, moving east with the favorable winds that follow the first front, and be holed up
safely in Nassau when the upcoming storms wash over us.
We pull away from the Fort Lauderdale Municipal Docks at 11:30 pm on Thursday night, to catch the 11:45 Las Olas
Bridge opening, and then the midnight 17th Street Bridge opening, the only two obstructions between us and the
open sea. Fort Lauderdale inlet is wide, smooth, and well-marked. We have no trouble sharing the channel with an
incoming cruise ship. We are in the Gulf Stream as soon as we clear the first channel buoy, telegraphed by the 10
degree rise in water temperature and the sudden increase in waves and chop.
It’s fantastic! We have the perfect southwest wind we need for the crossing. We hoist full sails, turn off the engine,
and we’re sprinting at 7 to 8 knots, sometimes surfing to 9 knots on the following swell. The ¾ moon behind us
shines on our wake, we set our autopilot to track us to our first waypoint, and we go on our watch schedule. Dave
Udell and I take the first watch, from 12:30 am to 3:30 am, Peter Mcrae and Michel Schmied will take the next three
hours until daybreak, then we’ll alternate through the following day.
Our timing is perfect. We arrive at North Rock, north of the Bimini Islands, at about 6:30 am on Friday, just as the
skies brighten in the morning. There are clouds on the horizon ahead of us, which blocks the sun from shining
directly into our eyes. As we cross over onto the Bank, in less than a quarter of a mile the water depth drops from
“unmeasurable” (on our depth sounder) to 20 feet, and the water temperature drops 10 degrees.
Sailing on the Bank requires two things: careful navigation to our next waypoint, Russell Light, and a sharp lookout
forward to watch out for uncharted sand ridges and coral heads. The water depth varies from a fairly-consistent 12
to 15 feet, down to a troubling 7 feet as we sail over Mackey Shoal. Mackey Shoal is shown clearly and definitively
on our charts to the north of our route, but with a disclaimer: “Reported to be further southward (1951).” Well, we
can now definitively report, 54 years later, that it is.
Our objective is to make it across the Bank, a 64 mile trip, between sun-up and sun-down. To do this, we keep the
power poured on, with full sails, then full jib with motor as the wind clocks around to the northwest, behind us.
We stream a lure, just for fun (and to keep Dave occupied), and to our surprise, there’s a strike! We can’t slow
below 6 knots because the jib is pulling strongly, so landing our catch is a shared effort. We pull in a 3’ monster of a
barracuda, thrashing wildly, huge sharp teeth gnashing, and it takes us at least 10 minutes to get it off the hook and
back into the water. Time enough for a picture!
Russell Light is a pole sticking up out of a huge expanse of water in the middle of the Bank. It marks the intersection
where the four main routes from the west converge to the single safe route to Northwest Channel Light, which marks
the eastern exit from (or, entrance to, for the westbound) the Bank crossing. In 14 miles, we’re back into the
thousands-of-feet deep water of the Northwest Providence Channel. We still have 13 miles to go to reach our stop
for the night at Chubb Cay, and the sun has just dropped out of sight behind us.
We reach Chubb Cay at 7:30 pm and drop our anchor in 6 ½ feet of water (a mistake, as it turned out, as we bump
bottom a few times as the tide continues to drop for another hour). On this leg we covered 128 miles in a 20-hour,
straight-through sail, My trusty crew, who’d caught plenty of sleep during the day, stays up and grills steaks for
dinner; I fall into bed fully-clothed and sleep through until the next morning.
Saturday morning is warm, clear, with a light breeze and glassy water in our anchorage. Dave and Pete go for a
swim, Dave clears the fouling from our knotmeter paddlewheel, and Pete paddles away from Dakota Rose in our
dinghy Rosebud (how cute is that?) to take pictures of the boat.
We fuel up on coffee, pull up the anchor at 9:30 that morning to escape the anchorage before the next low tide, and
set our course for Nassau.
The sea is calm, there is minimum wind, so we raise the main to catch whatever wind we can and crank up the
engine. All around us are sailboats. At one point we count 13 other boats all heading down this last 36-mile stretch
of highway to Nassau.
Nassau Harbor is like a busy airport runway. There are nine cruise ships (four Carnival ships, at least 5,000
passengers each) tied up at the docks, with a variety of small and large craft going in and out and back and forth
constantly. It takes us 30 minutes of calling on channels 16 and 09 to get the attention of Nassau Harbor Control to
get permission to enter. We also need to call for clearance to enter our destination, Atlantis Marina, and are put on
standby for another 30 minutes as they (preferentially) allow the 136’ motor yacht Inspiration, with a very pinched
looking British family aboard, to enter their narrow harbor. As it turns out, once we’re at our slip and tied up,
Inspiration is much more typical of the yachts at Atlantis than is our humble Dakota Rose. Most of the human life we
see on the docks comprises well-dressed and well-groomed crews, who seem to spend their time either cleaning
their boats or sneaking off to smoke. We see very little evidence that the actual owners of these floating palaces are
present.
The Customs and Immigration officers cleared us in right at our boat, after I executed an affidavit that our arriving
vessel did not have any cases of plague, cholera, typhus or diphtheria aboard, and that we did not have any
evidence of rat or mouse deaths during our voyage.
The marina is part of the huge Atlantis Paradise complex, which includes a fantastical turreted hotel, casino,
timeshares, an aquarium, countless pools and Jacuzzis, a private stretch of beach, and a museum showcasing
artifacts from the lost (but, now apparently found) City of Atlantis. As for the water slides, well, I can’t express it any
better than the guidebook we received upon check-in:
Just beyond the Royal Towers, you can climb the towering 6-story Mayan Temple and plunge down
one of its 5 water slides. If you are particularly daring, the Leap of Faith will propel you down a 60-
foot nearly vertical drop before you pass through a clear acrylic tunnel submerged in a shark-filled
lagoon. Also experience one of the two Challenger high-speed dual slides and race a friend to the
bottom. Take a thrilling high speed safari on the adventurous Jungle Slide. Or travel on an inner tube
through the blackness of the Temple’s core as you ride down the 5-story corkscrew Serpent Slide
before floating through a clear tunnel in the shark-filled lagoon.
one of its 5 water slides. If you are particularly daring, the Leap of Faith will propel you down a 60-
foot nearly vertical drop before you pass through a clear acrylic tunnel submerged in a shark-filled
lagoon. Also experience one of the two Challenger high-speed dual slides and race a friend to the
bottom. Take a thrilling high speed safari on the adventurous Jungle Slide. Or travel on an inner tube
through the blackness of the Temple’s core as you ride down the 5-story corkscrew Serpent Slide
before floating through a clear tunnel in the shark-filled lagoon.
(I’ll be taking good notes to present some new ideas to the committee planning the new clubhouse at CYC!)
Last night we chatted with a couple in a Bertram powerboat that left Fort Lauderdale 10 hours after we did and
battled 5 to 8 foot swells that were rolling into Fort Lauderdale inlet as they left, almost forcing them to turn back.
And as I write this, on Sunday morning in Nassau, the leading clouds from the oncoming cold front are bringing the
first showers, with thunderstorms expected later this afternoon. All in all, our plan has worked perfectly!
Our plan now is to hole up here for the next two or three days until the bad weather blows through, then spend a few
days visiting some of the nearer islands, maybe Spanish Wells on Eleuthera, maybe Alice Cay or Highborne Cay in
the Exumas, before returning to Nassau on Friday to send my California crew home and welcome the rest of the
Streifer family on Sunday. I wonder if Jay and Maddy will want to try the water slides?
Last night we chatted with a couple in a Bertram powerboat that left Fort Lauderdale 10 hours after we did and
battled 5 to 8 foot swells that were rolling into Fort Lauderdale inlet as they left, almost forcing them to turn back.
And as I write this, on Sunday morning in Nassau, the leading clouds from the oncoming cold front are bringing the
first showers, with thunderstorms expected later this afternoon. All in all, our plan has worked perfectly!
Our plan now is to hole up here for the next two or three days until the bad weather blows through, then spend a few
days visiting some of the nearer islands, maybe Spanish Wells on Eleuthera, maybe Alice Cay or Highborne Cay in
the Exumas, before returning to Nassau on Friday to send my California crew home and welcome the rest of the
Streifer family on Sunday. I wonder if Jay and Maddy will want to try the water slides?
Fort Lauderdale to Nassau, Bahamas
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