Sailing to Rock Sound

After our brief stay at Half Moon Bay it was time to move to another Island. This time we were moving to Eleuthera that we had partially visited before. Last year we visited Spanish Wells which is the principal town on the Island that stretches in an arc probably close to 100 miles.

Each island group in the Bahamas is different. Depending on how, when and who settled it the developments are different and of course the weather is vastly different driving each unique island experience. So we moved on to Eleuthera to spend several days getting to know it. The trip from Half Moon Bay to Rock Sound would be about 40 nm.

On the sail over since we were heading an initial tack of about 270 with the wind somewhere nearly behind us and then a second tack about 40 degrees higher the use of the spinnaker seemed apparent. When we headed out in the morning the wind seemed to be at about 150-160 degrees so we would be able to use the spinnaker all the way up to Cape Eleuthera a distance of about 27 miles. As we passed the cruise ship passengers loading into their ferries we popped the spinnaker and went straight to our first waypoint.

During the first leg we had a very high angle on the wind so heeling over we were hitting 7-8+ kts and quickly cutting through the swells coming in from the ocean with the apparent wind in the low teens. We passed 2 other boats that had been in Half Moon Bay the night before that had left before us and were trying to sail. Getting more experienced with setting the spinnaker I got it up quickly so we lost little time in the transition from power to sail.

The second leg was more downwind and slower as the apparent wind switched from 170 port to 170 starboard but we still managed to almost match our apparent wind speed for the 15 miles of the second leg. One of the boats we passed went to power and the other was over 5 miles behind us when we turned at the next waypoint.

We actually overshot our waypoint so that when we turned we would have a better angle on the wind which would be at about a broad reach. Dousing the spinnaker was a bit more time consuming than raising it because it got caught up in the jib sheet and the staysail but we finally got it through the hatch below and went to regular sail for a short leg of about 4 miles. Then we turned on to a close reach and were sailing over 8 kts in 10-15 kts of true breeze until we finally turned onto our final leg that was dead into the wind where we doused the sails and took up looking for coral heads for the remainder of the trip into Rock Sound.

At the end of the day we had covered close to 40 miles, more than half of which had been dead downwind averaging close to 7 kts overall with a 2 person crew. What a great day of sailing! Now on to island exploring and getting to know another new town.