S/V Geru: Crossing the Gulf Stream

Crossing the Gulf Stream from the East coast of the US to the Bahamas is considered a bit of a right of passage for sailors. The Gulf Stream is literally a stream of warm water in the ocean which heads north at two to three knots (nautical miles per hour). This current not only pushes you north as you are heading east from Florida to the Bahames, but if there is any wind from the north (which opposes the direction of this current), you get a very rough and potentially dangerous sea. The passage is also long enough (69 nautical miles or about 124 km) that you're out of sight of land for most of it.

We had to wait for the right weather for our crossing for over a week, which is what enabled us to see as much of Fort Lauderdale as we did. We left Lake Sylvia at four o'clock on Monday morning. As we left the anchorage, we realized that some of our navigation lights weren't working (why is it that things only stop working when you need them?), so we rigged up some temporary lights so we would be seen. It turned out this was necessary, as there was a surprising amount of boat traffic in the pitch darkness. Fort Lauderdale has many bright lights, but it was a new moon and it was very dark on the water. A sailboat crossed our path on the ICW and a megayacht followed us out to sea. Just as we were heading out the harbour mouth, we came upon a freighter which was coming into Port Everglades. This gave us (really just Geoff) pause for thought about the big ships out there in the dark (Ruth grew up sailing in their midst, so she was used to that thought). After pushing over to the side to pass the freighter, we were out and off. As we travelled east, we did see quite a few lights from other freighters off in the distance.

A couple of hours into our trip, we saw an odd light ahead of us - and then watched our first sunrise at sea. Our passage across was smooth. There was little wind, the waves were relatively small, and we motored the whole way. The day was very hot and muggy and it would have been nice to have some wind to cool it down, but we weren't complaining as the lack of wind kept the sea calmer for our first ocean passage. The water temperature was a steady 28C all day. We saw a few groups of flying fish, and then, to our amazement, about two-thirds of the way across (and therefore still over 20 Nm from land), a small bird (a common yellowthroat - thanks for the ID, Janie!) landed on our boat and visited with us for a while before flying off again.

We arrived at Old Bahama Bay Marina in West End on Grand Bahama Island at four o'clock in the afternoon, 12 hours after we left Fort Lauderdale - a long but successful day bringing us to our second foreign country of this trip!