Donna departed for a visit home on March 16 and Dave passed the time for a few days doing taxes and planning our passage up the US east coast to return to the Chesapeake. The weather during this period was quite cool with morning low temperatures around 50* F.

On March 20th, long time Norfolk friends David & Claire were due to arrive on the island for a week in a timeshare condo and Dave eagerly awaited hosting them for some company, day sails, and ruminiscing . Dave met up with them on shore on the 21st and took them sailing on the 22nd and 23rd. These were nice day sails and the biggest excitement was David landing a nice mahi on the transom, but seeing it shake the hook and slip away before Dave could get it under control. Dave's fault. We had a few other strikes, but no luck. Poor weather prevented any more sailing and David and Claire departed the island on the 27th.

While aboard David helped Dave troubleshoot the house batteries and discovered that one of the eight big cells was dead. These batteries are original equipment on the boat and Dave has been babying them to keep them going, recognizing they are a couple years past their design service time. He had been tracking a slight reduction in voltage over the past several weeks and concluded this voltage drop was the slow degradation characteristic of a battery’s end of life. Finding the dead cell was confirmation. David and Dave disconnected the dead cell and, since then, the rest of the cells have been hanging in there and should safely get us back to the Chesapeake, where Dave could arrange their replacement . 

On March 29 a strong cold front with thunderstorms came through and Dave observed a wind gust during one squall reaching 52 kts. That’s 60 mph. It was daylight and Dave saw leaves, branches, and other debris flying sideways from shore and covering the boat. It was pretty intense. Many other gusts were in the 40-50 knot range, the most we had ever experienced on the boat. Fortunately Dave and the boat survived and before sundown the storms were over. We love our anchor. It wasn’t until the next morning when Dave read an e-mail sent from friend Wally in Norfolk that he learned that at least one tornado had struck the island during the storms, killing a couple of workers in the commercial port area west of Port Lucaya. While out in the dinghy after things subsided, Dave could see evidence of downed trees and damaged roofs.

Donna was greeted with all of this information from the airport cab driver as well as Dave upon her return March 30, accompanied by her sister, Clara, for a week visit . Over the next few days we entertained Clara in Port Lucaya while awaiting a weather window to cross over to the U.S. mainland – our destination would depend on the wind speed and direction when we depart. We decided to depart the Bahamas on April 2, leaving Port Lucaya at 6:00 pm with our destination Lake Worth, Florida (Palm Beach), expecting to arrive there mid-day on April 3rd.

Sailing along the shores of the Freeport section of Grand Bahama we experienced the most congested shipping traffic we’d seen so far and Clara got a good demonstration of our AIS equipment that tracks all commercial vessels. Despite being swept a bit further north by the Gulf Stream than planned, we arrived without incident in Lake Worth, anchoring adjacent to some beautiful Palm Beach homes with mega-yachts on their docks. Listening to a tour operator boating nearby we learned that we were in front of Betty Ford’s home.

The hustle and bustle of the area confirmed we were no longer on island time. We cleared Pas de Deux through U.S. customs via phone, but had to report in person to the West Palm Beach airport to clear immigration. We spent a few days enjoying the Palm Beach area, including a visit to the Flagler Museum. All was very nice and beautiful and the weather was terrific during our stay.