As we untied from the buoy in Middle Bight, we headed straight into the ocean to cross the Tongue of the Ocean and hoping to reach Green Cay before night fall. The winds were still fairly strong, so we reefed the mainsail as well as the genoa and did not raise the mizzen at all. The swell was enormous and was hitting us right on the beam. We had several splashes into the cockpit and then one big wave broke right into the cockpit and left us with six to eight inches of water on the cockpit floor. Andre and I just looked at each other as the water slowly drained away through the scuppers. We then again reminded ourselves that we needed to pay attention to the scuppers and find a shorter route for them to drain the water. The waves kept breaking over the bow and splashing into the cockpit, but by then there was no turning back, and Green Cay was still a ways off.
We made it safely to Green Cay and found an anchorage on the west side that was protected from the wind but the surge was unpleasant so there wasn’t much rest that night. At one o’clock in the morning Andre woke me up and said we might just as well sail on because he is not going to get any sleep and we have deep water until the sun comes up the next morning.
I reluctantly got up, helped get us underway, made coffee and went back to sleep for a few hours. By the time the sun rose, we were well on our way to Lark’s cut which is 46nm from Green Cay. It was an amazing sail and we sailed through the cut without any difficulty.
We went through Lark’s cut around 10 am and then had another 87 nm to our destination which was Hog Cay on the southern end of the Ragged Islands.
Although it was quite a stretch, we decided to aim for Hog Cay and if we get tired, we would go into Nurse Cay which was sort of on the way. The ocean calmed down and the winds were almost on the beam, so we had a very comfortable sail all the way to Hog Cay. We sailed almost to the point where we wanted to anchor and dropped the anchor around 2am.