5-15: Serious Sailing in the Sea of Abaco

Actually, it wasn’t so much the serious sailing as the serious navigating. Our plan was to head north from Fisher’s Bay to Green Turtle Cay, a total distance of maybe 12 -15 nautical miles, heading mostly northwest; winds continued to be from the south, southeast. The tricky thing about this sail was the Whale Cay passage. The Moorings considered it tricky enough that they requested each vessel radio them before entering and after emerging from this passage. The problem was that the obvious passage was west of Whale Cay and east of Treasure Cay, a large opening in the Sea of Abaco. ‘Trouble is this large, innocuous passage was rife with shallow water, submerged reefs, even an ominous feature named “Don’t Rock”. Being too shallow for our size boats, the only other passage was to the east of Whale Cay, then west thru a fairly narrow course between Whale Cay and shallow waters to the north. To the east of this passage are the open waters of the North Atlantic. When wind conditions are right (generally out of the east/northeast, a condition locally known a “Rage” develops which result in tricky and dangerous sailing conditions. (Even large cruise vessels sometimes cannot negotiate Rage conditions in these waters.)
But we successfully maneuvered the passage, being aided by GPS waypoints identifying the center of the passage, (by visual means undetectable), and generally by the absence of Rage conditions. Once thru this passage, it was relatively smooth sailing on to the approach into Green Turtle Cay.