This morning we find ourselves just east of Cape Canaveral, out in the Gulf Stream. The wind is barely blowing at 10 knots or less from the South South West. The Gulf Stream is a tame beast this morning. If it were not pushing us along 4 knots faster than we would be going without it we would only know it was here because the swells behind us are just a little bit bigger than they would normally be with this wind strength.
We left Nassau three days ago and after a slow 24 hour run on engine power, because of low wind, we made it to Lucaya, Grand Bahama. The Garmin XM weather was showing a tropical looking disturbance just to the west and north of us and I don’t play around with the possibilities of Tropical Storms and Hurricanes at this time of the year. We pulled into Lucaya to check the weather again. Every thing looked good so we left the next morning.
During our run up from Nassau to Grand Bahama we noticed the Screecher Halyard was fraying and it was very difficult to launch. When I looked closer I noticed that it looked wrong at the top of the mast and I assumed that it had just slipped its shiv. I made a harness out of some nylon webbing (thanks to my days of rock climbing in Wyoming) and we pulled Dylan up to the top on the main halyard. He informed us that the whole shiv and all were gone! Once he was safely back on deck he reminded me of the time with Bob and Jarred when we were flying the screecher and we all heard a loud bang from the mast. We all looked but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The rigging all was fine so we guessed that it was just a sheet banging extra hard on the mast or something. Now we know what that was... the shiv was blown out of the mast!
So we can’t fly the screecher. If we could we could sail right now and turn off this motor. The Genoa alone just can’t keep our speed up enough.
Well I just ate some eggs, bacon and a bagel for breakfast and need to get the fishing line back in the water.
Hope you all have a great day!
Captain Tofer, Captain Dick, and Dylan
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