The Western Route down the Sea of Abaco

The Western Route down the Sea of Abaco   …   Monday 14th January 2013

We set out this morning from Marsh Harbor on what we hope will be a multi-day trip to explore the southern portion of the Abacos. Our destination for today was an anchorage just south of the Tilloo cut. We had previously anchored to the north of the cut but there is no way south from there because of shallow waters, so our route today took us on a circuitous inverted S shaped route which takes you down the western side of the Sea of Abaco to avoid the shoals. We motored out of Marsh Harbour and raised the sails as soon as we had sea room, and had a fabulous sail in 10-15 mph winds. We cover every angle of wind from close hauled to dead down wind with sails wing on wing, following a route that was quite tightly defined by the depth. We arrived at our destination around 2pm and anchored in about 8 feet of water. By the time low tide arrived at 4.25pm we were down to about 6.5 feet - not much more than 12 inches of water below the keel. After a quick lunch I headed out in the dinghy to do some fishing in Tilloo cut. Gloria decided to stay on Cotinga as she wasn't feeling so well. Today I was using cut squid as bait and I'm happy to report that it works. I landed three fish - two snappers and a ladyfish - but they weren't really big enough to keep. Interesting that I hardly had any bites until the tide turned to flood and then things really hotted up. Sortly thereafter, the weather to took a turn for the worse with clouds and rain and I headed back to the boat. 

 A couple of days ago we contacted the US coast guard to get a better understanding of what constituted a qualifying day of experience for a captains license. They replied today with a statement of their regulations, which included the following (I have underlined what I think are the key phrases)  … "eight hours of watch standing or day-working" …. or …. "On vessels where a 12 hour working day is authorized and practiced, such as on a six-on, six-off watch schedule, each work day may be creditable as one and one half days of service" .. or … "On vessels of less than 100 gross tons, a day is considered as eight hours unless the Officer in Charge, Marine Inspection determines that the vessel's operating schedule makes this criteria inappropriate, in no case will this period be less than four hours.". Based on this we plan to re-evaluate our log and include not only days where we did > 4 hours travel, but count days where we did 12 hours as 1.5 days, and also include days where we worked extensively on the boat. We won't count days where we basically just hung out on the boat. We'll fill you in on where we now stand as soon as we've worked it out.

Mike

26 29 04.9 N, 76 59 30.5 W

Our route today

Wing on wing

View from our anchorage as the bad weather passes