Tripppin In The Bahamas – This Is Going To Suck

A continuation from my earlier post, http://wp.me/pKtoE-a4.

The Next morning most of us awoke to mild hangovers, and adding insult to injury we were faced a somewhat nasty weather forecast. The seas were ranging from 1-3 feet inshore, building to 2-4 feet with thunderstorms and high winds in the gulfstream. It would figure that the day we’re crossing would be nasty, but we’d come this far and we weren’t turning around. Four foot seas were doable in the boat, so we loaded knowing were going to get a little beating and soaking wet. It was ironic since the weather that morning was so nice in the marina. We took off out of Lake Worth Inlet and headed for the tip of West End.

Copyright: Google Maps

The weather was great, the seas were solid two-footers, and the radio blared on Jimmy Buffett for the first hour. We only had four miles to go that day before we were officially in the Gulf Stream, and the weather seemed to be holding out for us early on. After we were about 25 miles offshore Lane and I started to notice this nasty thunderhead off to the southeast. We both said nothing, which was pretty typical. We’ve been doing these types of trips long enough that a lot of things go unspoken between us, but not unnoticed. A few minutes later I finally tuned to him and said, “We can’t get in front of this thing.” To which he said, “Let’s shoot north, speed up, and see what happens.” I honestly didn’t have a better plan and this storm wasn’t looking like it was going to break or slow its progress. I sped up. We were now cruising at an average speed of 36mph and the seas were picking up. Not only were we getting some nasty bumps on the keel, but the temps fell off drastically. So much so that everyone on the boat was now cold. The three things you never want to experience 30 miles offshore are nasty thunderheads with lightning, and cold air. Fortunately, this storm didn’t look like it had any lightning up its sleeve… but I’ve been wrong before.

You can find the next part of the journey here, http://wp.me/pKtoE-aG.