Bahamas Expedition—Cape Canaveral to Melbourne • Melbourne to Saint Lucie

Day 3

We had a great night at anchor! It was our first time anchoring and I’ll admit, up until we did it, I was a little nervous about how it would be SO unlike being safely secured to a dock (as we always have)—where we could sleep confidently! I asked Kyle if he was nervous. Of course, he was not. So, I went with it. The anchor drag alarm only went off once during the night and we only had one child wake up to go potty. A HUGE success in my book!

Our GPS tracked our movement overnight. Here’s a visual on what the boat did while on anchor:

A BIG Day 3 Highlight: WE MOTOR-SAILED! This means we motored with our head sail up. This is exciting on two fronts. One, we gained a lot of experience hoisting the sail, tacking and general feels. And two, we gained SPEED with the assistance of the wind power! Plus, it was just such a beautiful sight seeing the sail do its thing!

We had hoped to dinghy ashore from our anchorage in Melbourne, but upon our arrival thebeind had increased and the water was choppy. We opted for dinner on the boat and a movie.

Day 4

The kids on the lookout for treasure, wildlife and kayakers!

Day 4 provided more opportunity for using the head sail, tacking, etc. The light winds, assisted us again.

The water got super clear near Fort Pierce!

It’s fine if you drool. I did—when I saw this water!

We started seeing more people out doing an assortment of water sports like kayaking, stand-up paddle boarding and windsurfing

Windsurfer

Once we dropped the anchor, I went to work on dinner—Cast Iron Chicken and Alfredo over Whole Wheat Bow-Tie Pasta (Zion’s loves bow-ties!).

In the meantime, Kyle was checking all systems and discovered a possible issue with the stuffing box. The stuffing box is the fitting on the propeller shaft that seals water out. Water out = GOOD. Water in = NOT GOOD. From my understanding, it is supposed to drip 3-4 times per minute while motoring. He was monitoring it and felt that it was dripping too much. The bilge was keeping up with it—it wasn't like we would sink, but after more research and consultation he decided we should resolve it on the hard (on dry land) via boatyard.

It gets really exciting on Day 5 & 6! 😘