Riding the Conveyor Belt

Riding the Conveyor Belt

Saturday 26th  Sunday 27th April, 2025

Well we made it back across the Gulf Steam in one piece and are now on a mooring in Fernandina Beach. Since leaving the Exumas, we have been following a plan that was based on using the Old Bahama Bay marina, at the west end of Grand Bahama, as a jumping off point. It looked like there should be a reasonable weather window and we monitored that closely. Using PredictWind we were able to determine the best departure time and route, and slotted in a couple of rest days, one at Bullock’s Harbor in the Berry islands, and one at Old Bahama Bay prior to the Gulf Stream crossing.

The Gulf Stream is an astonishing phenomena. A wall of water, several miles wide and a mile deep, flows northwards from the Caribbean up the west coast of the USA at speeds of up to 3.5 knots. It influences local and global weather, and is renowned for nasty, steep waves if the wind has any northerly component (wind against current / tide effect). Our weather window was based on the persistent NE winds and seas of the previous week settling down, and completing our crossing before the next weather front rolls off the east coast of the USA, once again generating northerly component winds. On the whole, the promising weather forecast held up and on Saturday morning we were up at 5.30 am, off the dock and on our way by 6 am.

The down side of our chosen weather window was light winds. From the outset we had the main sail up and motor sailed westwards to join the Gulf Stream as soon as possible. Within a couple of hours we were already picking up beneficial current, and as we turned northwards we also deployed our Genoa and were able to use the light winds to help boost our speed. I should add that the mainsail also helps to dampen rolling in these conditions. We were flying along quite comfortably, riding the awesome conveyor belt of water at speeds of 9-10 knots until noon. At this point Gloria noticed that we had blown out a seam at the top of our mainsail. We quickly dropped the sail and spent a little time considering our options. 

Repairing the sail underway was certainly possible, but would require dropping it completely onto the deck and then taping and hand stitching, whilst being bounced around. This did not seem like an attractive proposition and I was concerned that I would get seasick and find it difficult to recover. We talked about cutting out to Fort Pierce, the closest navigable inlet, but didn't really want to lose the opportunity to ride the Gulf Stream. So in the end decided to continue as we were, and repair the main sail once we had arrived back in the USA and were safely anchored.

The conditions in the Gulf Stream were about as good as they get, with about 4 foot swells (7 seconds period) and a light, wind driven chop on top of that. It still felt pretty bouncy and the night was pitch black with no moon. We did some fishing and hooked a small mahi-mahi, but he threw the hook before we could get him on board. This was perhaps the best outcome because he really didn’t look big enough to keep. We had prepared food in advance and enjoyed a Mediterranean style pork casserole for dinner. Mostly, we just lazed around the cockpit doing a lot of nothing! Whilst there were periods when we might have been able to make adequate speed sailing with the main and genoa, but without the former it would have just been too slow. So for the remainder of the passage we motor sailing with the genoa and the engine running at ~ 2000 rpm. In the end, our timings worked out really well. We covered 295 nautical miles in 36 hours (with an average speed of 8.2 knots) and arrived at Fernandina Beach on a rising tide with favorable current. The only issue we had at the end was getting to the last available mooring ball. We saw depths of 6.5 feet, which was unnerving to say the least, but around the mooring itself there appears to be more water. For now, we are safe and comfortable and will spend the next couple of days resting and preparing for the next leg of our journey.

Mike

30 40.113 N, 81 28.251 W

Sunrise off West End, Grand Bahama

A couple of hours later and you can see how being in the Gulf Stream has bumpier conditions

Sunset Saturday night - Gloria said it was another 'green flash' event, but i must have looked away at the critical moment

Sunrise on Sunday morning in the Gulf Stream

We had a brief visit from a migrating Yellow Rumped Warbler. He looked exhausted and still had ~ 40 miles to go before reaching land