Thursday, White Sound, Green Turtle Cay, 1/17/13

Up early and see boats heading out of the south anchorage. We have a long way to go if we want to make Green Turtle today, 56.4nm. (Nautical miles vs statute miles, 1 nautical mile equal to 1.1 statute mile) We up the m’sail and we motorsail all the way, sometimes going over 7K and nearly catching up with ‘Carolina’ who do a steady 7K. Our autopilot went berserk yesterday doing a 180 and the little boat on the chartplotter was heading backwards, something that has happened to us other times. We’d need a calm flat day to recalibrate the compass, but the chartplotter worked fine with the boat going backwards, we just had to remember that, or I had to, almost heading the wrong way coming out of the anchorage. It was a great sailing day, and if we hadn’t have chosen to go so far, we could have actually sailed! We furled the jib and pulled down the m’sail and slowly motored into White Sound at Green Turtle, the channel notoriously shallow and it was close to low tide. It was about 5:30 so looking for a sandy spot to anchor was impossible. We drop anchor near the catamaran, ‘Luna Sea’—plenty of room, not very many boats anywhere—and I back down on it and feel it grab. We were in a 360 degree sheltered anchorage for the coming blow, a natural anchorage that pirates used long ago.