En Route to Georgetown,

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 23 Dec 2012 01:55
Today the weather is, (relatively speaking), not very nice.  It is cloudy and dull, quite windy and the chance of rain seems likely.  We have a 55 mile trip down to Georgetown which will be our base over Christmas. The first challenge of the day is getting out into Exuma Sound via Dotham Cut.  This is a narrow gap in the rocks through which the tide rages at times.  Optimum time for getting through is slack tide, which is the first issue, high water is at 4am and low at 10am.  If we go for 4am we will have to go through in the dark which is not really an option, and if we wait until 10am we will not get to Georgetown in daylight and will have to anchor in the dark.  Anchoring in a strange place in the dark is no fun, and especially not here as this is a very popular place for people to spend Christmas, so anchor spots will probably be at a premium!  Also, they don't seem to have grasped the concept of channel markers, so not only are you having to navigate relying only on paper and electronic charts, you can't see the coral heads in the dark!!  Plan A is to go about 7am, give it a go and it that fails we will just have to anchor and wait.  When we arrived at the cut, the tide was a strong tide taking the water out through the Cut and into the Sound, all good so far, however, to counter this the wind was blowing from the North East and blowing more water into the Cut than the tide could get out - the result of this is a very rocky, rolly exit, with lots of water and waves flying over the bow!  Fortunately, it is only a short distance and we were through and clear the worst of it in about half an hour.
That done we settled into the sail, we had the smaller headsail up as the wind was quite strong and gusty first thing.  Later in the morning the wind died down a bit and we changed to the larger headsail for a bit more speed.  (John was actually bent on overtaking another boat that was about a mile ahead of us!).  We were just pottering along when there was a loud bang!  If you remember, on the way to Nassau, the stitching on the mainsail gave way, well the same thing had happened to the headsail!  We quickly furled the sail - thank goodness for electric furlers and then tried to decide what to do next.  We had to try and keep the sail furled, and there was no way of reaching it to tie it down.  John tried motoring the boat in such a way as to keep it tight in, but this was going to take an age and was really not going to work.  By now, time was getting on, and the only real option was to go up the rig and fasten the sail down.  
John got started sorting out the various lines I needed to climb up and I got myself organised and worked out how I was going to do the job.  The first problem was that the line being used to hoist me up was attached to the mast, so in order to climb up the mast holding the other head sail, I had to use a safety line to keep me in the right place, otherwise I would just swing back to the mast all the time - not much fun in a rolly sea, not to mention dangerous!  After about an hour, I had been hoisted up and managed to get a line on the sail - this means we can leave it where it is until we get to Puerto Rico, and there is no need to drop it and store it on the deck.
Whilst I was busy, John took the opportunity to get a few p[ics for the blog - I did warn him though that if my Mum saw me up the rig while we were sailing that he would be in big trouble!!!



  Me hard at work securing the sail - I had no idea the photos were being taken or I could have stopped and smiled for the camera!!