May 13-16 Green Turtle to Lucaya

Our next stop as we step away from Green Turtle Cay is the middle of nowhere.  An overnight anchorage at Great Sale Cay.  An island in the middle of the Bahamas Bank.  Nobody lives there-no nothing.  It is some 60 miles away.  Barometer Bob's  weather forecast calls for tolerable southeast  winds 11-15 mph.  Instead they switch to the south, southwest at 15-20.  The proposed anchorage inside Great Sale Harbor won't work so we move to the northwest side of Great Sale-not ideal but it gives us a good nights sleep.  The anchor holds well in the sand.

Sunrise after leaving our Great Sale Anchorage

The next morning we pull anchor at 6am-necessary timing to travel to the Lucayan Waterway which cuts across Grand Bahama Island and gives us access to Lucaya which is near Freeport.  We must time our arrival so that we enter the Waterway at mid tide.  Not much water here.  5' at mid tide.  The ride is bordering uncomfortable, the wind is blowing 25-30mph out of the south,  Half of the journey it is on our beam.  Every once in awhile I hear an "o my" out of Judy as the boat momentarily  leans precariously from the beam seas.  As we make our turn towards the Dover channel and the Lucayan Waterway we take the waves on our bow.  A little more comfortable ride, but our next concern is that the wind will blow our tide out.  It is our lucky day.  The tide overcomes the wind and the lowest reading we record going through the Dover Cut is 5'.

The Lucayan waterway was built circa 1970.  It is a dredged cut that was expected to spur waterway development in Lucaya.  Instead it fell flat.  No development along the dredged canal.  A few houses.  It is sad but never the less it is our waterway today.

The Water way is some 7 miles long.  After successfully negotiating the thin water cut at the north end of the canal we must now exit the south end into the Atlantic ocean and travel 4 miles in the Ocean to the Bell Channel at Lucaya.  As we approach the exit to the ocean we see lots of  breaking waves.  Remember we are heading directly into the ocean where the wind has been blowing generously from the south all day. Judy says this won't be fun!  How right she was.  After we became air born going over the first 6 footer we turned tail and came back into the docile waterway.  Having been here before, I knew there was a man made bay off the waterway where we anchored.    After an exciting day on the waterway, we settled into a very delightful evening.

The next morning dawned peaceful, so we pulled anchor and made a delightful journey to the Grand Bahama Yacht Club at Lucaya