February 06, 2001 -- Royal Island to Governor's Harbour Eleuthera

February 6, 2001 -- Royal Island to Governor's Harbour Eleuthera We raised anchor at 1200 GMT (0700 EST) to head to Governor's Harbour. We were making the passage with Gold Run, who had graciously agreed to show us the way they go. At 1307, we turned the engines off and moved under stay sail and main alone maintaining speeds of 4.8 to 5.1 knots! At 1312, Sandra had a tea incident. She was heating water in the microwave when a wave rocked us and her tea wound up leaning up against the door! There was nothing that could be done. When the door opened, her tea went on the floor. At 1315, Mike made his flipper call. It is truly a passage! At 1346, Sandra and I started doing sail trimming. We managed to get the speed up to 5.3 knots! At 1353, I put the fishing line out. Sandra logged this as, "Captain Nemo is going fishing." Mike suggested that we set something down for dinner, I insisted that I was going to catch dinner. It was a good thing we sat something down. At 1459, we entered Flemming Channel. It is a relatively deep entrance to the back end of Rose Island and Nassau. It is also a convenient and easy way to get to Porgee Rocks which is the jump point for heading to Allan's Cay in the Exumas. We also found out that Gold Run's engine had developed a problem so they were going to have to sail to Governor's Harbour. At some point in the next hour and 17 minutes, we made our turn to head for Governor's Harbour and then held that course (101 magnetic) for 6 hours. It wasn't terribly exciting. Unfortunately, the wind was not in our sail area so we had to motor sail. The high points of the day included the fact that everyone was able to read underway and I didn't take Dramamine! With the exception of the 20 minutes or so right after we turned to port out of Flemming channel, we never saw less than 20 feet of water the entire rest of the trip! We dropped anchor at 2045 GMT (1545 EST). We heard a boat conversation on the VHF about a good restaurant and bakery in town. Someone also mentioned a big blow (alot of wind) headed our way. I was slightly confused about that since I hadn't seen anything on the weather charts to indicate a problem! I hailed Skoals and we discussed what he had heard from Herb. Herb is an amateur weather forecaster who hosts a net on 12359 every afternoon at 2000 GMT (1500 EST). Between 1930 GMT (1430 EST) and 2000 GMT, he takes checkins from those boats that are seeking guidance on the weather conditions and an appropriate time to leave their current location. Anyway, Herb predicted 25 knots of wind blowing out of the East or North East for the next four to five days. We all agreed to come up on VHF after the next set of weather faxes at 0130 GMT (2030 EST). The next set of weather faxes did indeed show 20 - 25 knots of wind forecast for the next 72 hours. However, there was a slim chance that we would not see wind that high. We called it a day and went to bed! For those that are interested, the GPS coordinates we used for this treck are as follows: 25 15.7 76 55.5 -- Flemming channel NW side 25 14.3 76 54.4 -- Flemming channel SE side 25 11.750 76 15.006 -- inside Governor's harbour Of course the standard cautions and advice apply: Never rely on only one aid to navigation. An autopilot and GPS do not absolve you of maintaining a proper watch for your vessel, etc. The last way point inside Governor's harbour was a touch close to the sea wall for us, so we hand steered around it. Other than that, we found this to be an excellent and comfortable course.