The Windward Passage and Jamaica
One year ago when we were in the planning stages of our two-year sailing trip I read about the Windward Passage for the first time. I sat on our leather couch in our rose colored living room with a view of the RivannaRiver and Goggled: “The best way to get from the Southern Bahamas to Panama”. I pulled a blanket around my feet and read a few blogs from sailors who had gone that route. The Windward Passage is a strait of wild and wily water situated between the west tip of Haiti and the east coast of Cuba. Not unlike the dreaded cuts in the Bahamas (see past blog post) the prevailing easterly winds funnel masses of water from the North Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea resulting in high, chaotic waves and a 5-10 knot increase in the prevailing wind speeds. One of the blog posts I read reported their boat being approached by Haitian fishing vessels. They never stopped to find out what they wanted, but it sounded potentially worrisome. The Windward Passage made me