Stray Cat Sailing: Spinnaker Sailing, Drug Lords and Airplanes

We said Good bye to Warderick Wells around 9:30 Thursday Morning and headed to Normans Cay. The winds light and the seas calm as we headed North. After motor sailing with the jib the winds were still very light and Freddie suggested that we try our spinnaker sail. After our disastrous experience leaving Black Point and considering that the only time we had ever had the spinnaker out before we had tried to hoist it sideways, I was a little skeptical about giving it a go. Freddie reminded me that we will never learn anything if we don’t try it so I dug out the spinnaker. We not only got it flying but did so without any calamities or cross words. Score another one for Fred! For those of you that don’t know a Spinnaker sail is a very lightweight light wind sail. It is made out of what feels like parachute material and fills out with wind high and in front of the boat like a half of a giant balloon. Sailing with the Spinnaker went well and taking it down was a little more tedious but no real disasters or screaming.

We were anchored off of Normans Cay at 2:30 and were in the dingy headed to explore before 3 pm. Normans Cay rose to fame as Carlos Leder’s base during the bad days of Bahamian Drug trading. There are still some bullet ridden houses and crumbling remains of his territory just north of the airstrip. There is also a ditched aircraft in the southern anchorage that we had a great time snorkeling in. We came across the airstrip while exploring the island and had not understood it was still an operational airstrip until we saw a plane landing directly in front of us while we were standing on the air strip. We then noticed the hanger at the far south end of the strip where the plane let off its passengers and took back off. We were long gone back to the beach before we saw it leave not wanting to be plane food. We had a nice chat with some people that have lived on their boat for 4 years and are looking at coming and checking out real-estate in the St. Marys and Fernandina area this summer. Small world. Leaving early in the morning for Nassau around a 40 mile trip,a full day when you only do around 5 knts.