I65 or thorny path? - sailing 800nm from Bahamas to the lesser Antilles

Sweaty high five. Sweaty high five. So yeah let's go to Guadalupe. And then it was like really critical because for the remainder of the sail we were not able to dismount them because the waves were so big and we could not like risk stopping the boat and working on it. Hello salty sailors and welcome back to a new episode. You might have seen that we did not really manage to do the 24 sailing videos for Christmas. We are very sorry about that but after the last video everything got a little bit messy. So we'll jump right into video 24 so we can then start with the new sailing season. Between the last video and this one we had a lot of friends on board like Terry which you can see here and we had some great sailing trips together which caused us to focus more on our experience than on our cameras. But no worries we'll see more of Terry in some upcoming videos. He's a great guy and it's always fun to have him on board. This video today will focus on one of our longest sails ever. We are sailing about 800 nautical miles from the Bahamas back to the Lesser Antilles. We're hoping to make it all the way to Guadalupe but the waves and winds will decide that for us. When you want to sail back to the Lesser Antilles you have two different kind of routes you can choose from. One is the so-called I-65 which is the offshore version of this route. You normally have to wait for some northerlies and or some southerly winds and then you just sail as much east as you can. So you just go out into the east as long as you can and once the wind turns or the trade winds turn again to easterly you start to sail south until you hit the Lesser Antilles. The other route is also called the horny path and it is along all the different kind of islands between Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles. So you stop from Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and so on. It's a collection of day sails or better said night sails because normally people decide to sail during the night between those islands because then the trade winds are a little bit weaker and you might have some winds which are created on the shores of the islands. We decided to go the offshore route. If you're really happy or not about this decision we will talk about it at the end of this video. This is it. Last moment. A little bit more hectic than we hoped to but we have an amazing weather window for Guadalupe so we're going to take it. This is San Salvador. We unfortunately did not have the time to explore it but maybe next year. Who knows. So yeah let's go to Guadalupe. Sweaty high five. Sweaty high five. We are ready. And while Michael will bring us out the first miles I will take care of the cooking because we did not really have time. So Michael made amazing baguettes to store it all and I will now do some cooking. So we'll have that for the next for the next days. It should be about seven eight days to get there so I try to do a lot of cooking now because there is almost no wind so we will have some water anyhow. The first day at sea was rather calm. We spotted some tornadoes forming in the distance but luckily they stayed far away from us. In general the weather in the Bahamas has been very unstable in the last days and we spent a lot of time dodging squalls. What? Once the Mahimahi was in the pan wind and waves picked up and for the next 500 nautical miles we beat into wind and waves to make it to our destination. I was never so happy to have done all the cooking beforehand because we spent most of our days just laying around reading books and hoping to finally see land again. Our worst time out there from the Bahamas we had like 27 knots and four meter waves and we were like yeah thrown around pretty much and at one point the wave got in exactly on top of the solar panels and they were like yeah breaking apart more or less and then it was like really critical because for the remainder of the sail we were not able to dismount them because the waves were so big and we could not like risk stopping the boat and working on it actually so luckily they are still there. The whole block here broke and also the other connection block here broke so we'll have to get some stronger wood. So we let some weeks pass since our trip from the Bahamian back to the Bahamas from the Hamas back here to the Antilles because it was quite quite a rough one. Not our favorite sail so far so we wanted to get some time in between it we also had some damage on the boat we repaired it and yeah now we took some days to think about it and would you choose again the I-65 over the Anytime. Anytime. No it's definitely more rough but this for six or seven days motoring against the wind and the waves is just not an option for me and if you are lucky and have better wind conditions and the wind actually turns we were just unlucky because the wind never turned to the west or to easterlies basically we had like south easterlies all the time and it never turned back to easterlies so it was a bit of a bad time. That was your error. No no no you just need to time it properly. I would choose the 45. No can't do it. Well it depends also probably on your time window and how quickly you have to move um obviously you know if you sail five or six days straight you just get over over it otherwise it probably takes longer. It would take us probably twice the time to go against the wind against the waves with motor only and we could only go during the night so it's definitely not a easy option or yeah comfortable option. But yeah it's two very different solutions um he would re-choose the I-65 I would re-choose the 45. No not re-choose choose this time the 45. So it's a very personal decision whatever route you will choose in both I hope this video was useful to you and you got an idea of the two different routes to go back to the Antilles from the Bahamas. Like and comment always appreciate it and tell your friends about it and your mom and other sailors and your hairdresser and everybody else who would enjoy it thank you