February 21, 2008.

Of all the cruisers who head to the Bahamas, Georgetown is the goal of probably 80 percent of them. A much smaller percentage goes on from Georgetown and heads over to either Conception Island, Rum Cay or Long Island. An even smaller percentage leaves Long Island and heads for the Jumentos. The Jumentos are desolate. If you need it, you better have it with you because you’re not getting it there.

So we were up and underway for the Jumentos. We were in the company of 4 other boats. The only iffy part of this trip is the depths immediately before, during and after Comers Channel. The tide will be highest around 0930 in that area so that’s our goal, 0930 at Comers Channel. It should take about 2 hours to transit the shallow section.

The beginning of the sketchy area was about 2 hours away if we could maintain 5 knots SOG. So we weighed anchor at 0700 and 10 minutes later shut off the engine as we had between 5 and 10 knots of wind coming straight over the stern.

Wing and wing was being a giant pain in the ass in the light wind so we dropped the main and ran under genoa alone at four and a half knots. That is until we ran into a head current and our speed dropped to barely 4 knots. On came the engine for an hour and a half to ensure our timely arrival at Comers Channel.

We arrived on schedule and all went well. We never saw less then 4 feet under us so that meant we would have been fine even at low tide as the tidal swing in this area is about 3 feet.

After we were sure that we had made it, we again shut off the engine and raised the main sail. Now with both sails up we again tried wing and wing. The wind was steady at about 10 knots so we once again relied on The Boat Pole of Speed. By using the boat pole as a whisker pole we were able to keep the genoa full as we swept westward.

Once we had arrived at the Comers West waypoint we turned approximately 70 degrees to port. This new heading brought us to Veranda’s favorite point of sail, a beam reach.

The wind had built to the predicted 10 to 15 knots and we were off and running. At this point we were behind everyone but during the next 6 hours we averaged over 7.4 knots SOG so we were able to overtake everyone except Meermin, the only trawler in our group. It was a fabulous run south and again I was able to learn so much about fine tuning Veranda’s speed on a single very long run on one tack.

We decided to anchor in the lee of Flamingo Cay. It will provide us with good protection from north through east to south. There will be an abundance of snorkeling opportunities as well. After a few days we’ll probably head north for 10 miles to Water Cay for a night before returning to Long Island.