Sailing Life Day 41: Overnight Sailing from Clarence Town, Long Island to Abraham’s Bay in Mayaguana, our last stop in The Bahamas!

It’s been 6 weeks now since we started our sailing adventure and explored the beautiful islands of the Bahamas.. we’ve learned a lot along the way and made ourselves more comfortable handling our own boat! Today is one of our most important trips, heading on a 130 NM miles sail to our last Bahamian island... Mayaguana is one of the least developed islands in this country since it’s in the Southeastern side and closer to Turks & Caicos than in the capital of Nassau.🏝

We spent the morning preparing the boat again but we had to go to Flying Fish Marina to refuel.. we bought 20 gallons of fuel + 38 gallons of water just to make sure we’ll be ready for our longer crossing as we’ve heard that fuel in other islands on our way to DomRep is expensive or won’t be available.

Incredible day of motor-sailing, we have the best week of weather window where the waves are not that high but also the wind is not that strong which means we have to rely on our motor engine to go faster but the cool thing is that both of our main sails and genoa are up! We were doing 6 knots during day time! It would have been perfect if we caught any fish but we didn’t.. I was hoping for a Tuna but they are too smart for our novice fishing skills! Hahaha 🤞

Jonathan and I were on the cockpit almost the whole day and even cooked our lunch and dinner on our GoSun solar stove (roasted chicken wings and adobo), who said you can’t eat well while underway a passage? 🤪 We know that it’s going to be a long journey for us so I pre-cooked some meals but my chicken wings were only marinated and we had a very yummy roasted one cooked by the sun! How awesome is that?! 🤗

We switched off our engine twice during our journey for an hour each so Captain Ahab can use his litter tray and eat his wet food.. the funny thing aboit our cat is that he only likes eating his dry food and treats (a LOT of it!!) when he’s on the cockpit.. he has sealegs and okay with sailing or heeling, he just doesn’t enjoy the engine noise but he loves being on the cockpit - watching his daddy’s every movement and the ocean!

By 7pm, I needed to sleep since I’m in charge of the helm on overnight passage.. Jonathan couldn’t handle staying late at night, his body just couldn’t handle it which us the reason why he’s not initially keen on overnight passages.. well, we’ve done 3 in the past (Gulf Stream, Bahamas Bank and Exumas sound) and I was able to handle the boat while he’s sleeping so we agreed that we can do overnights.. I actually love it so much!

We moved Captain Ahab back inside the boat and his sleeping with me on our v-berth (bedroom), had to make him a mini- fortress so he won’t hear the engine noise that much! We both slept like a baby! Haha! By 1:30am, Jonathan woke me up to change the shift! He decided to keep our main sail and genoa up and do more downwind sail for me.. this is the first time I handled the boat with boat of our sails up so I have to be more attentive though we have a very good autopilot! ⛵️ I really love night sailing because I can just watch the stars, with less pollution.. it’s just so many of them esp when the moon is hiding behind the clouds but last night it was not that clear because the moon was shining bright (seems like talking to me!). Hahaha!

P.S. I think we’re really improving, we thought it will take us around 33 hours sailing accdg to our previous average speed but we did the 130NM in 27 hours! Thanks to our engine! Lol! Yay!