Tropic of Cancer crossedMar 3, 2008
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Club Thompson Dinner
Macaronni Specialty
| 23 54.6 North 75 03.3 West Thompson Bay, Long Island, Bahamas Somewhere during this day sv MILANO MYST crossed the invisible 27 23.0’ N latitude that, in one way or another, earns her and her crew another badge along the salty road to becoming true mariners of the sea. It is kind of an appropriate reward for us all as we finally broke through the mythical edge of the world that is defined by George Town for many in the cruising community. With the Tropic of Cancer now checked off and having not actually fallen off the edge of the world, we can now set our sights on the Jumentos and the equator. The passing of this land , no water- mark is just a bit blurry as the family on board sv JUBILEE met us in Hamburger Beach on our layover after a purposeful 9 nm passage from Emerald Bay. It is not so much that this wonderful family made us a little blurry as it is that they brought some local grog / detergent called “Fire In The Hole” with them to clean out our bilges and diesel exhaust manifolds. If the product had been used for its’ intended application I am sure the trip to Long Island would have been a little clearer. Our meeting with JUBILEE was as much in the hopes that we could find a parallel path to share as we wind our way through and around some unseen destinations in the Bahamas. Poisoned by this anchor cleaning acid we retire to prepare for what MILANO MYST believes is a much anticipated trip to Thompson Bay. The “Weather Guru” sounds remarkably chipper at 0630 hours as I now have a real reason not to be sleeping. With his nuggets of advice firmly penciled into our log we weigh anchor, raise the main sail and join no less than 50 other boats that are exiting George Town on this brilliant, head ache inducing sunny morning. As it turns out the annual cruising regatta in George Town starts this week and the exodus is a vote by at least 20% of the cruisers as to their desire to play in the geriatric Club Med games on the beach. We even heard the flotilla described over the VHF as a perfectly normal acronym as “BAR” or Boaters Avoiding Regatta. Ouchh! Anyways back to my tale as the radio chatter between JUBILEE and MILANO MYST seems to be getting more distant instead of closer. Comes to be that last night during our navigational planning session it was not made clear that MM is Thompson Bay bound while JUBILEE is Joe Sound bound. Clearly if these two boats are to share a similar path in the future the planning will have to be done over warm milk and cookies. As difficult as it was to let them go their way, we have wanted to do Thompson Bay for 2 seasons and this is finally our chance. Joe Sound is buggy and way too shallow for us and frankly, JUBILEE. JUBILEE has hooked up with two other sailing families; one from Quebec called “sv COXILY” and another from points-not-admitted named “QWITYERBITCHIN”. MILANO MYST Monitoring 9 and 16 ( and SSB 4045 weather) OUT |
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