26:31.078N 78:37.868W Grand Bahama
Timeandtide
Tue 6 Mar 2018 17:07
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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!
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