Back in the U.S.

We are anchored in St. Augustine after a long sail from Double Breasted Cay in the Abacos. After saying goodbye to Sara and Tom we made our way west stopping at a few remote cays along the way and waiting for the rain to stop. Finally on Saturday it looked good and we spent the day at Double Breasted Cay before pulling up the anchor and heading across the Little Bahama Bank at 7:15 p.m.

Double Breasted turned out to be one of the nicest cays we visited in all of the Bahamas. It had a huge white sandbar that dried out at low tide which was surrounded by little mangrove islands. I had been looking for conch the whole time we were in the Bahamas and finally found one that was old enough to take on our last day. We made conch salad with it which I ate on our sail back.

It  took us 41 hours to get to St. Augustine from Double Breasted which is actually pretty fast.We were figuring on 48 hours. In the Gulf Stream we were traveling at 12 knots with our spinnaker flying which is probably the fastest a Morgan 41 has ever moved. They are not known for their speed.

Sunday at 6:00 p.m we were about 40 miles off Daytona Beach and listened to the weather forecast that   said there was a good chance of squalls through the night with a lot of lightning and winds to 50 kts. so we made the decision to turn toward St. Augustine instead of continuing to Charleston. Turns out we would have been fine continuing on but it was nice to get into port and St. Augustine is a great city.

We are going to hang out here until we have good sailing wind to get back out into the ocean and continue up the coast. We want to get north as quickly as possible to avoid the heat and mosquitos. When we are anchored the boat usually stays cool as long as we can have all the ports and hatches open but when the breeze dies the mosquitos come out and the boat is a bit stifling.

Momma organizing Legos

Daddy and Nicholas on the sandbar at Double Breasted Cay