And no, it is NOT sailing!!!

We just completed a delivery sail bringing a Hylas 54 sailboat from Charleston, SC down to Cape Eleuthera Marina in the Bahamas, which is where we started the trip, and where we left Harmonie waiting for us.

Adventures in Travel

The marina in Cape Eleuthera is about 50 miles from the main airport on the island at Governors Harbour where American Airlines has just started running twice a week flights to Miami. We left the marina by taxi at 9AM, and an hour later arrived at the airport ready to board our flight. Just one problem. No airplane.

Turns out that a private twin engine turboprop has landed and had its brakes lockup on the runway. So the airport is essentially closed until they can figure out how to move it. Our plane is waiting in Miami for confirmation that they actually have a runway to land on before they take off. Eventually, the mechanics get the brakes released enough that they can move the plane, and our incoming flight arrives, two and a half hours late.

We arrive in Miami 17 minutes before our connection to Charleston is leaving. For anybody who has been through customs in Miami, you already know that you can walk for 20 minutes just to get to the back end of the line. There was no way we were making our connection.

We get through Customs, and to the service counter to rebook, and we find out there are no empty seats available to Charleston for the rest of the day, but they can book us on the last flight of the day, at 10PM, as standby. It is likely we will get on the flight, because we are number 1&2 on the standby list, and there are a lot of weather delays on incoming flights.

Sure enough, they call us at the gate and we get boarding passes, and settle in our seats, the last two seats on the plane. We stow our carry ons, and buckle our seatbelts… then an agent comes up and says, “Sorry! One of the flight attendant jump seats is broken, one of you has to leave, we need the extra seat for crew.”

We decide that we will both bail, since it makes no sense for one of us to get there. Back into the airport we go, to another service counter. The best they can do is a 3:30 flight the next afternoon. Sigh. Well, if that’s it, that’s it. Can you cover our hotel for the night? Nope. It was a traffic delay, not our fault, no hotel voucher.

Now part of this logistical nightmare I do very well, but now we are in the territory of my chef negotiator: I turn Karen loose on them and go sit down. Fifteen minutes later we have a hotel voucher for a 4 star hotel in downtown Miami, and two meal vouchers as well. It’s her magic superpower.

From there on things went as planned expected. Our flight was on time, and we collected our baggage which was on the flight we were pulled off of the previous night, and grabbed an Uber to arrive at the marina in Charleston at 6:30PM.

So how fast is 21st century travel?

As the seagull flies, from Cape Eleuthera Marina to the City Marina in Charleston is 512 miles. In 33.5 hours. For a grand total of: 15 miles per hour. Welcome to the Jet Age! Not all that much faster than we can sail…

And the Sail…

…was mostly uneventful. No nasty weather, although we pushed hard with a lot of motor sailing to keep our speed up because we were racing an approaching cold front and its strong winds to the Bahamas. We arrived 6 slips over from Harmonie about 10 hours ahead of the bad weather. Perfect.

Nothing on the boat broke. We had no unpleasant surprises. Nobody was hurt. Except for a bit of mal de mer in the crew, all was fun and exciting.

And…

From here we get to play on Harmonie for a few weeks before our next paid gig. We are going to bounce around the Bahamas for a while, then head out east to the Windward Islands of the Caribbean, with a next target of Martinique. We will certainly be making multiple stops to get there.