Lake Worth to Exumas

[ka4wja]

Terry,

Soungs like a decent plan....
Have fun and enjoy your cruise, you and your family deserve it!!!

Fair winds....

John

[witchcraft]

WE crossed from Lake Worth to West End, then went to the Berry Islands, then Spanish Wells. Eleuthera, Nassau ( to drop off kids for flights), then Allens Cays and so on. Each of us makes our own decisions according to weather, boat and crew at the time. Have fun and safe sailing
witchcraft

[danielgoldberg]

Just curious, if you haven't left already, considering that you appear to have a decent amount of offshore experience, why not just leave Miami, go a bit north so that you take the Northwest Providence Channel, then hang a right once you're east of the bank and head straight for Nassau? All in it's about 200 some odd miles, so figure you are talking about 30 hours or so (maybe more maybe less depending on weather and how hard you are willing to push the new iron genny). No worries about entering the bank, no shallow water travel at hull speed for your first time on the banks, etc. Seems to me if you are willing to do an overnight in deep water, that's the way to go.

Note that I have NOT done this, though we are starting to plan a comparable trip a few years out, and for a variety of reasons we are considering doing the above (but leaving from Ft. Lauderdale). Seems to me this is the fastest and least complicated way to get from Florida to the Exumas, but many people avoid it because they are uncomfortable with an "offshore" overnight passage. Seems like you're not concerned about some offshore sailing, so it's not clear to me why you want to fight trying to get across the bank as fast as you can without traveling at night.

[Tspringer]

We anchored up around the corner from Nassau about this morning. We went across the stream, onto the banks at North Rock just north of Bimini, down to the Mackie Shoal waypoint and then on to Northwest Channel light. We did not make it across the banks in daylight, but the route off the banks seemed pretty straightforward on all the charts and reasonably deep so we left the banks at night. It was no big deal, except there were several other boats entering the banks at the same time so we had to watch the traffic.

The crossing from Northwest Channel light to Nassau was pretty rough. We motored as the winds were dead on the nose and they quickly grew from 10-12 knots to 20+. By half way across the seas were running 5-8ft. This was my wife's first experience of a bit of a rough passage and she did great.

The route across the banks that we took was over 10 feet deep pretty much the entire way with the majority of it over 15 feet deep. Using the Explorer chart waypoints I would make the trip at night in good weather and we saw plenty of people who were clearly doing that.

Daniel.... the route we took was shorter in distance than going further north to stay in deep water and the banks were fun. I do tend to agree about night sailing in deep water. My wife and I both prefer to sail at night, particularly when the stars are out.


Terry

[danielgoldberg]

Originally Posted by Tspringer

Daniel.... the route we took was shorter in distance than going further north to stay in deep water and the banks were fun. I do tend to agree about night sailing in deep water. My wife and I both prefer to sail at night, particularly when the stars are out.

Hey, all that matters is that you made it safely and you had fun! Congrats on making the crossing. You guys certainly deserve a bit of easy sailing after your engine ordeal.

[SoonerSailor]

Just got back from a week in the Abacos. I don't know what people define as cold, but we weren't. While there, two cold fronts with 20kt winds from the W and NW blew through, but temps were never below 60 deg F at night. In the Abaco sea, 20 kts of wind from W or NW is not an obstacle.

Just wanted to point out that this time of year it might be cooler than you like for swimming (but even that wasn't so bad), but not really cold!