By Jennifer

We set sail from Ship Channel Cay to Royal Island, a protected anchorage about an hour outside of Spanish Wells. The daylong passage across the Yellow Banks was a bit treacherous. The Yellow Banks is an area of water riddled with coral heads. We had passed through this area a few months ago when sailing from Nassau without any issues. This time sailing through the eastern edge of the Yellow Banks wasn’t as straight forward. The sky was cloudy which makes for difficult visual navigation — everything that may look like a coral head may also resemble a cloud shadow.  We passed over what we thought was a cloud shadow and then “thud.” That did it, we hit a coral head. For the next three to four hours we checked the bilge to see if Real Life was taking on water. None, thank God. For the remainder of our passage through the Yellow Banks, we were maniacs dodging coral heads and cloud shadows. I couldn’t have been happier when we reached the Northeast Providence Channel, that is until the weather arrived in Royal Island.

For days, the single-side-band weather guru of the Bahamas, Chris Parker, had been forecasting an awful front entering the area. His warnings were clear — “get into a protected anchorage,” “winds will blow up to 40-50 knots.” It’s my job to listen to Parker’s weather forecast daily at 6:30 a.m. and this was the first time on our trip that I had heard him throw a 50-knot prediction into the forecast, not to mention the thunder and lightning that was supposed to come with it. We hadn’t seen thunder and lightning at all since we began our trip.  As the hours passed, finally the front arrived. It rained, it thundered, it lightninged. There was a lightning strike in the anchorage, but it didn’t hit any of the 10 or so boats anchored there.

After the dramas of the day, we were ready to head toward sunnier skies in Spanish Wells.