Crossing to the Morgans Bluff, Andros

Innamorata
Steve & Carol
Sun 12 Jan 2025 20:29
25:10.577N 078:01.710W After a bad nights sleep for us both and looking at the morning weather updates we decided to head across to the Bahamas. Once out of the Lake Worth inlet we soon were sailing with Mizzen and Genoa and were making reasonable progress although the waves were pretty bows on at this point, we knew it would be bouncy and salty especially at the beginning of the trip but I wasn’t counting on quite so much water on the deck as we had a few times which led to the saloon hatch leaking and water getting into the boat via the companionway 😱I hate saltwater in the boat, I have to be honest at this point I did say lets go back 🤣. However we carried on and soon the sea calmed down and waves went to on the beam and then further round as the wind piped up and went to NW earlier than all the predictions forecast, so we had 25-28 knots from behind for a couple of hours, then at about 13.45 the wind died quickly to 8 then 4 knots and so we had to motor, this wasn’t forecast at all, fortunately after a couple of hours of no wind it filled in again and we had what was a really nice sail across to Great Bahama Bank gybing a few times along the way. The NW Providence Channel between the bank and Grand Bahama Island is very busy at one point there were 9 cruise ships on AIS as well as numerous ships so we had to keep a good watch out - the cruise ships don't seem to mind passing close to sailing boats where as the ships tend to be happy to alter course to give you a wide berth! Passing the ailboat on Great Bahama Bank ![]() Once on the Bank we had a slow but good sail through the night until 9am when we began to motor again. We arrived at Morgans Bluff Andros by lunch time and set about trying to anchor, the bottom looked like nice sand in places but our Spade anchor had trouble setting so eventually we settled for a not very well dug in anchor so we could get checked in and then be free to go anywhere we pleased. I filled in the rest of our cruising permit request C2C online while Steve got ready to go ashore. As there was no response from the harbour master he contacted a local to take him to the customs and immigration at the airport and was soon on his way. His check in went smoothly and he got back to the boat surprisingly quickly with our passports stamped and cruising permit both for 90days, you can buy a years cruising permit but we went for the 3 months. We had hoped to stay and see some of the island but with the anchoring shenanigans we had and strong northerly winds forecast to set in in a couple of days we decided we wouldn’t stay and look around. |