The Great Bahama Bank is like a shallow plate with irregular edges. The highest parts of the edges are the islands and cays. The interior is a wide expanse of shallow water. It’s about 70 nautical miles across and an average of 12 feet deep. We plan to take two days to cross it. It’s going to be very calm tonight so it seems a little surreal to drop anchor with no land in sight and watch the stars.
We traveled south from Bimini and entered through a small channel between Gun Cay and Cat Cay. There are charts that show you areas of extreme shallows and areas of heavy coral heads. So, you shouldn’t just sail across without a little planning. The charts also show popular routes around the obstructions. I think the biggest danger is over–confident boaters. If you don’t want to get hit in the middle of the night by a boat with its autopilot on, don’t anchor too close to the popular routes.
We did have a rescue at sea today. The wind took Mike’s 2nd favorite hat for a dip but the hat can’t swim. Since the first favorite hat has already gone missing, this became a great time for a man-overboard drill. With all the sails up it was a little tricky convincing the boat to approach the waterlogged hat at the exact right distance (Linda’s reach with a boat hook) before the hat sank. We prevailed, the hat was recovered and Mike doesn’t have to down grade to his 3rd favorite hat yet.
Hat History: Mike's original favorite hat was his Bald Head Island hat that we got in 2016. When that went missing about 3-4 months ago, one of my hats (Horn Point Harbor) became his new favorite. Horn Point Harbor went missing within the last few weeks. Thank goodness my Shipwright Harbor hat is bright pink. I think it’s safe. But at this rate we may need to do some hat shopping.
No comments:
Post a Comment