If you have been following along you know we left Miami for an overnight sail into the Bermuda Triangle to Nassau in the Bahamas.
We departed with two other boats.... Rick and Doreen aboard the sailing vessel Breathless, and the sailing vessel Ragtime. We had not met Ragtime' crew other than over the radio. All three ships stayed in radio contact as we traveled. Breathless led the fleet. Breathless and Shibumi planned to travel through the night and sail straight through to Nassau. Ragtime intended to anchor in the shallow waters of the Great Bahamas Bank to get some rest before contining to Nassau in the morning.
When it turned dark there was no moon. A few stars peeked in and out of the broken clouds. Breathless's stern light ahead and Ragtime's tri-color, steaming light and nav lights behind us, were the only things visable other than the peek-a-boo stars.
In the dark of night it was hard to judge the distance in the pitch black darkness. However, both Breathless and Ragtime have radar aboard. Their radar helped us maintain our spacing in the dark.
Around nine o'clock the clouds disappeared and the sky was a fantastic field of jewel-like stars. There was no way for me to capture the beauty with my little Fuji camera in the darkness coupled with the motion of Shibumi in the waves.
The wind was 10 to 15 knots, 30 degrees off of the starboard bow. It was not the best sailing conditions but it was a lovely night.
My only concern was going through the Northwest Channel Pass in the dark of night. The NW Channel Pass is a narrow passage from the Great Bahama Bank to the Tongue of the Ocean. The pass is lined with shallow coral heads and the depth of the water rapidly goes from 12 feet to 2400 feet. With the wind out of the east, such as we had, and a ebb-tide flowing east the water in the pass can get very rough.
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