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Chief
Outer Banks, NC
I’m Ketch! My wife and I live aboard our 44’ Antares catamaran “Chief” on the Outer Banks of NC (Wanchese) and cruise seasonally. Currently wandering the Bahamas and headed for Rio Dulce soon.
Quick hop from one bight to another. Furled all the sails and just bobbed around for a while making water.
It was bittersweet leaving Guanaja because we enjoyed it so much, but the excellent sailing to Roatan made things sweeter! We flew the screecher on the inside reef to the south end of Guanaja and then launched the spinny for a perfect downwind run to Calabash Bight, Roatan. We scrounged up a king mackerel and a bonito along the way. Kept the bonito and released the mack. We love bonito if eaten within a few hours of catching after a cold brine soak.
4 days of excellent downwind, down-sea, and down-current sailing from Jamaica to Guanaja on our longest passage to date! Day one we had to motor through lightning storms as we sailed along the North Coast of Jamaica. That night the wind built and we were able to fly screecher and main and make good time. On day two the spinnaker went up and didn’t come down until we began our approach to Guanaja! There was too much sargassum for fishing under spinnaker power most of the time, but we managed a couple tiny mahi on the last day. All in all, it couldn’t have been a much better passage. Though, it would have been sweet if our brand new wind instrument didn’t fail on the first day. Definitely rode the edge off what our spinnaker could handle as we guessed wind speeds. Leaving Jamaica was bittersweet. We had an awesome group of people at dock in Port Antonio we hated to part with. We LOVED Jamaica, which we did not anticipate. Making this passage alongside @bri and @Erin was awesome. We arrived within a few hours of one another and we can’t wait to explore Guanaja! We were glad to have friends close by in that lightning storm, especially because they have a taller rig!
Our time in the Bahamas was unforgettable and hopefully only eclipsed by new adventures on the horizon! We met so many wonderful people, caught lots of tasty critters, and visited insanely beautiful places. Leaving is bittersweet. The passage from Inagua to Jamaica was a mix of everything from glass calm motoring, to heavy “sail busting” reaching. We hooked two blue marlin along the way and landed our first little blue aboard Chief! The other one was about 400lbs and shook off, thankfully. We do have some sail repair, however. Sailing into Port Antonio was definitely the highlight seeing the steep mountains. Jamaica is lush and reeks of culture and jungle (in a very good way). We are stoked to explore with @bri @Erin
