Mid Stream

At Sea
25 38 N 079 49 W

Friday, 1800
This morning we left Rodriguez Key and headed for the open sea. We decided to go for West End and the Abacos. We had to thread our way out through the reef between two shoals. It was tense because our GPS chartplotter isn't working to show us where we are. Anyhow, we successfully navigated the reef any how and soon I was able to call out, "We have blue water!" That made us both feel very good. Later in the morning, Libby said, "I love this. I could do it forever."

The winds were very light the whole day, and coming from our stern quarter. We tried with the jib alone, and with both main and jib and with the whisker pole holding the jib out. None of those worked very well. We had to motor from noon till 1700. But now we're in the axis of the Gulf Stream and getting a two knot boost from the current. The motor is off and we're sailing with just the jib. Our ETA at West End is about 0800, just about perfect for clearing customs.

We saw about a half dozen small fishing boats and four ships today. Not much traffic. All in all, it's pretty calm and pleasant out here in the middle of that dreaded Gulf Stream.

Libby felt seasick for a while, and even I became a little queasy because the seas were on our beam. However, now the seas have calmed a lot and we both feel better.

By the way, here's the story on our GPS. We sent the Lowrance GPS back for repair because the button pad to move the cursor up/down/left/right failed (it fell out on to the floor). Following instructions, I removed our navigation chip before sending it back. The unit came back, but not with the innards repaired, but with the innards replaced. That should be OK. I noted that the software version had been bumped from 15 to 18. Anyhow, when I put the navigation chip back in, the Lowrance refused
to boot. It gave an error message, "Invalid loader." Damn. I suspect that they changed something in the software between rev 15 and rev 18 that made it incompatible with our chip.

Oh well, I've confessed here several times that I'm ashamed at how dependent we became on that GPS map. Now's our chance to re-learn how to get along without it. We certainly couldn't get it fixed before returning to the USA. Anyhow, the navigation chip did not cover the Bahamas anyhow. There are no accurate electronic charts of the Bahamas so I hear.