Update: Back to Florida, Across the Little Bahama Bank and The Gulf Stream Crossing

We can report another successful trip from the Abacos to Florida. We arrived safe and sound at Vero Beach City Marina around 4:30 Monday afternoon (May 9th) after a 181 nautical mile trip at sea from Green Turtle Cay, Abaco. The trip took us 29 hours and we ran it straight through to Vero Beach with our buddy boat “Casual Class”. We departed Green Turtle just before high tide and had smooth seas until around 1:00 am Monday morning about two hours before starting across the Gulf Stream. The weather forecast was for light winds out of the south clocking around to west Monday and to the northwest and north late Monday into early Tuesday (after our arrival into Vero Beach). Well the weather guessers were correct with the forecast except for the most critical part. The last part! The part where we cross the Gulf Stream. The wind clocked alright. It clocked northwest and then north early Monday morning and was stronger than forecast. Well guess who had to pay the price for their forecast. To make matters worse our Autopilot would not hold a course once the weather started to pipe up. This meant I had to hand steer the boat for 16 hours straight. Not exactly a relaxing trip getting flopped around in steep building seas. Lessons learned from this trip. 1.) Weather Guessers (Meteorologist) are all the same. They are mostly wrong and they still get paid (Actually I have known this for a long time but somehow believed them this time). 2.) Making the trip straight through while long, was not a bad way to attack the beast. 3.) Autopilot should be the highest paid member of the crew.