Head Torches & an ipad sees us to the Bahamas

We’re alive...with a little adversity! 

Despite the lumpiness we departed florida (finally!!) and decided to make a dash for Grand Bahama! It was all going well...

Freyja, Pippa and Esme started singing sea shanties whilst Abe worked down below.

Slow flight was making good way as we were sailing 5 knots into the rolling waves. 

As we entered the golf stream the sea state increased but our trusty Slow Flight gracefully ploughed through like a big beige submarine. 

It was in the very black and blowy darkness that we started getting warning alarms from our batteries. Suddenly Archie the auto helm, who steers the boat for us, decided he was out of juice and wanted some time out, unfortunately this was just a sign of things to come...

By 1am all the batteries were out of juice and we lost everything apart from the 4 crew members onboard, the engine, a very big torch and speedy the cat who was tucked up below in his bunk. If we thought it was dark before it certainly was now!

Loss of power meant we lost all our navigation equipment bar our trusty compass. The radar and the VHF abandoned us too. However the main challenge we faced was losing our Navigation lights. Being in the shipping superhighway of the Gulf stream we had to rely on our wits and make sure we saw any ships first.

Little old Slow flight was dead ship... all night, we couldn't even make a cup of tea. Whilst we could roll it old school with paper charts and dead reckoning there was a ray of light from Abe’s Ipad. His trusty $40 navigation app not only had our current position but everything else we needed to make safe passage into Grand Bahama. 

With a head torch rigged around our compass, and a spotlight in place of our navigation lights we felt pretty safe. Even a massive cruise ship manouvered to give us right of way. Dawn finally broke and Grand Bahama pulled into sight. All is well and the crew went to sleep. Finally woke up 24hours later in time to Blog, sorry if you missed us.

We’re eating well to restore ourselves for our next bob! 

love, X