26:31.078N 78:37.868W Grand Bahama

Timeandtide
Tue 6 Mar 2018 17:07
Not one we'd put on our bucket list, it's basically another suburb of Miami. Freeport is full of big hotels, lots of tourists, way too busy for our liking. But again, we wanted to make the journey across to our next destination as easy as possible so decided to do it in small chunks. We are heading for the Abacos, so the first leg was going to be overnight from Bimini to an anchorage in Grand Bahama then on to the Bight of Abaco the next night. This has to have been my worst night so far. It started out great, set off at 4pm from Bimini and for the first time we had the sails up and could finally turn off the engines. It was lovely, weather was calm, all was well. By about 1am the winds had really picked up and sea was a little lumpy, shall we say. Swells of up to 6 to 8 feet but when the winds gusted to over 25 knts these went up to maybe 10-12 feet! TnT just bobbed over them without any problem but we were rolling around a bit more than I would've liked (i'm just a fair weather sailor). Richard handled the boat and me very well, I lost the plot a bit but he was very calm and eventually I slapped myself round the face and got on with it. 
 
*****Captains note;  Although Gill was extremely anxious she understood that I needed some sleep before our dawn arrival and despite her fears she stood her watch well and was on hand to spot the entrance bouy to Bells Channel.  Thankfully as I had slowed the boat to a crawl we arrived with just enough dawn light to give us a good view of the breakers and sand bars at the entrance.  I didn't tell her at the time but as we surfed in at the bottom of one swell the depth sounder showed only 2ft under the keel.  I didn't look again and we made our entrance safely.
 
*****First Mates' note; While Richard was asleep, I'd let the boat go off course slightly to keep the seas behind us and make the motion more tolerable! Very bad! I did confess when he asked why we were so far off course when he woke up.
 
Anyhoo, after much lumpiness we finally found somewhere to anchor at about 7am and then promptly passed out. Spent most of the day asleep then after eating something went straight back to sleep! That's the end of that episode.
 
Today we are recovered, got through a few boat chores and have finally caught up with this blog, apologies for the wait but things have been a bit hectic round here. Getting ready to leave Grand Bahama at 3am for Mores Island in the Bight of Abaco. Hopefully that will be where our cruise of the Bahamas begins properly.
 
No pics of Grand Bahama, see pics of Miami Beach if you want to know what it looks like, it's all the bloody same!