Building New Experience

Building New Experience   …   Friday 1st February 2013

Rather than hang around Marsh Harbor we decided to take advantage of the strong winds that are blowing at the minute and learn to use the "stay sail". This is a foresail that is flown from a inner forestay instead of the larger genoa. We had set up the (removable) inner forestay for our crossing of the gulf stream, but never used the sail as the winds were too light. Today we set it up again along with the running backstays to give more support to mast and left Marsh Harbor under a double reefed main and stay sail. The winds were 20-25 mph out of the NNE and as you might expect there was a fair bit of chop in the sea of Abaco. It didn't take us long to realize that a double reef was overkill and so we shook that out and went with a single reef. Our destination was Treasure Cay about 12 miles to the NW of Marsh Harbor, but a projection of land forced us in a more northerly direction for the first part of the journey. We were sailing fairly close to wind and the shape of our reefed mainsail wasn't that great - this is something we need to re-think … again. We have a single line system that  pulls down both the "tack" and the "clew" ends of the sail at either end of the boom. This allows you to put in the reef without leaving the cockpit, but as it is set up at the minute we don't seem to get enough tension on the outside of the sail (clew) and too much on the mast side (tack). Nonetheless, we were making 5  knots or more close hauled and then up to 7 knots once we were past the projection of land and able to bear off. I thought it was a wonderful sail. Gloria perhaps wasn't so convinced, but we made good speed, weren't overly heeled over and felt very comfortable riding through the waves. The anchorage at Treasure Cay was pretty full of boats, probably because it is completely protected from all angles and conditions are windy. We managed to squeeze in and took a trip ashore this afternoon to do laundry. Whilst waiting for this to finish we took a quick walk and were stopped by guy in a truck who saw our binoculars and asked us if we wanted to go on a birding trip tomorrow. We said yes and plan to meet him and the other birders at 6.20 in the  morning on the road outside the marina. We'll fill you in tomorrow on how that works out!

Mike

26 40 14.3 N, 77 17 02.2 W

Treasure Cay - a fine house on a point of land next to the harbor entrance

Green Steps

Palm leaves